Hormoz writes about 8 years of working with Liverpool John Moore's University and their Disability Staff Network.

You know that great feeling of getting back to known territory with people you have previously worked with? Well, the start of the year has given us that gift! It’s so good to work with people who are part of organisations which take developing their staff seriously.

Our relationship with one such organisation – Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) – started 8 years ago. We designed and delivered a programme consisting of 3 workshops and 3 x 1-1 coaching sessions at the request of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion department following consultations with the Disability Staff Network which had heard about our work at the University of Manchester.

That pilot was really well-received, and we went on to deliver similar versions 2 more times.

The last time we delivered this programme we focussed on how the culture the staff are part of can be influenced by a good/bad manager on the quality of the work experience staff have. The Social Model of disability emphasises the responsibility of society and employers to remove barriers for disabled people.

We were therefore asked to design a half-day awareness workshop for managers working with disabled staff in 2018 which was repeated for 2 years after that. The later iterations were promoted to anyone interested in disability with the title of the workshops being ‘Let’s talk Disability’.

Alas, the pandemic put a stop to any delivery for 2 years.

So it was a great pleasure to be asked after a gap to continue where we left off. We are delivering both the programme for disabled staff (called From Strengths to Transformations - FST) and Let’s talk Disability for managers and others who have general interest in the topic. The FST programme is now also featuring Action Learning Sets (ALS) to help embed learnings through their journeys of development.

We have started with both groups, have met some wonderful people already and can’t wait to carry on working with them.

If anything you’ve read here appeals to you and your organisation, please contact us.