Written by SIC Announced as Disability Specialist of the Year at 2022 RIDI Awards!
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- Sick in the City (SIC) is a social enterprise working across the UK.
- SIC provides training, consulting, and workshops to thought-leading businesses in disability in the workplace, neurodiversity in the workplace, and unlocking the power of disabled customers.
- Founded by Rachael Mole (she/they) and Alice Hargreaves (she/her) in 2021, the business has gone from strength to strength.
- The Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative (RIDI) celebrates businesses that are creating accessible recruitment policies. There Disability Specialist Award celebrates innovative new ways of approaching the disability employment gap.
7 December 2022, Coventry, UK. The SIC team is thrilled to announce today’s success which recognises the work that we do with businesses in the UK and the support we provide to disabled professionals.
In just over 18 months, the team at SIC have worked with over 200 disabled people. And had 11 trainees with a 100% success rate of helping them in to work.
They have worked with over 100 businesses – running consulting projects with 15 and directly supporting a further 23.
All the income that SIC generate pays to support disabled people in work, and in 2023, they will be launching their e-learning hub. This will be a free-to-access series of career-orientated programmes, bringing together the expertise of disabled people and industry thought leaders.
Rachael Mole, CEO reflects that “winning our RIDI award was so unexpected. All of the work we do focuses on connecting disabled people with talent-short organisations and this recognition demonstrates that there’s a huge need for what we’re doing.”
Alice Hargreaves COO continues, “Considering our fellow award winners were huge multinational companies like Virgin Atlantic, HSBC, and HS2, this award is a huge honour. We’re only a small team and haven’t been around for anywhere near as long so it’s amazing to have even been a nominee, let alone a winner.
Sick in the City CIC (trading as SIC) is a social enterprise that works to reduce the disability employment gap.
They recognise that:
- The purple pound is worth £274 billion to UK businesses each year.
- Hiring disabled people creates more diverse workplaces.
- More diverse workplaces create greater innovation.
- It’s been estimated that when disabled people enter the workforce it saves the government £44,000 per year.
SIC exist to connect the dots between talent short organisations and talented disabled professionals.
There are two ways they work to solve the disability employment gap.
Firstly, they help people who really need support. In 2023, they’ll be launching a first-of-its-kind e-learning hub, that’s free to access and accessible.
They also help organisations to create more accessible and inclusive businesses, aiding them throughout the recruitment cycle and throughout an employee’s journey.
They have an abundance of on-demand resources. Three core workshops, The Foundations of SIC, that cover neurodiversity in the workplace, disability in the workplace, and how to unlock disabled customers. These are created for teamwide learning and development and provide industry or pain point-specific video case studies. They also provide bespoke consulting services to support the entire journey of attracting, hiring, and retaining disabled and neurodiverse talent.
The income generated from these services funds the support they offer to disabled people.
Visit the website for more here: www.sicofficial.co.uk
Contact Alice via partnerships@sicofficial.co.uk
The Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative (RIDI)
RIDI has one purpose: to break down the barriers faced by the millions of disabled people who are entering or progressing through the job market.
RIDI believes more needs to be done to build disability confidence into recruitment and employment strategies and campaigns actively to achieve this.
They help recruiters and employers to become disability confident and offer more job opportunities to people with disabilities.
They give recruiters and employers the tools they need to make a difference such as the Clear Kit online toolkit, which allows organisations to identify and remove the barriers in their recruitment, and the Clear Assured self-assessment framework.
In 2014 they came together for the first time to celebrate progress on disability in recruitment at a spectacular RIDI Awards ceremony.
They recognised the need to celebrate the great strides being made in the industry and the RIDI Awards are now becoming a regular fixture on the recruitment industry calendar.