Apt - Making it Work final report

Part Two - Introduction to the Making It Work Project

The Making It Work project has been delivered by the Scottish Union of Supported Employment (SUSE) with the aim of improving retention rates for people at risk of becoming economically inactive, particularly disabled people and those with long-term health conditions in Scotland and to help to tackle child poverty. The project had a focus on building employer capacity in the voluntary and private sector to support these individuals, thereby reducing economic inactivity.

Project delivery had significant contributions from a range of partners and stakeholders and the SUSE Experience Network of people with lived experience of disability.

The project had 4 key elements which were taken forward as workstreams:

• Equitable Induction & In-Work Support: Developing bespoke strategies for employers to support new employees.
• Positive Workplace Conversations: Encouraging disability disclosure through positive conversations including utilising the SUSE Why You Askin’ campaign.
• Digital Access Review & Action Plan: Assessing and improving the accessibility of employers' eLearning resources and information systems.
• Improving Workplace Consultation: Creating mechanisms for employers to improve communications and consultations with disabled employees. This may include developing groups within workplaces to enable disabled employees to contribute to policy development.

Project Outputs

The project has produced resources and guides for employers, aiming for long-term changes in workplace culture and practices. A guide has been developed from each workstream:

• An Employer’s Guide to Equitable Workplace Induction & In-Work Support
• An Employer’s Guide to Positive Workplace Conversations (including an introduction to the Why You Askin’ campaign)
• An Employer’s Guide to Workplace Digital Accessibility. how to make eLearning & Intranets accessible for all employees
• An Employer’s Guide on improve workplace consultations including establishing employee groups.

Later in this report we have described the resources. These will be online documents but hard copies can be produced as required.

Launch and Early Actions

The project was discussed with the Scottish Government for several months and was given the go ahead in June 2025. It was officially launched by then Minister for Business and Employment, Richard Lochhead on 19 August. In the first months of the project our main actions were:

• Defining the approach to the 4 workstreams – The activities we carried out with the employers to test our ideas and generate the evidence required to develop the final 4 products, the employer resources. For example, how to test what employers do when they induct and recruit new workers.
• Recruiting partners for the workstreams and getting those underway. We have been keen to avoid an overly formal approach – with lots of meetings and paperwork – but the workstreams are key to generating ideas and getting input from experts on the correct approaches to take for each activity. We put out a call to stakeholders and made some direct approaches to partners that we knew could make a contribution. For example, Alliance for Inclusion who we knew had carried out positive activities in the BBC and BT to promote inclusion.
• Developing action plans for each of the workstreams to detail the actions we will take to ensure steady and rapid progress towards the project’s objectives. We found that these had to be regularly reviewed and updated as many of our assumptions were not accurate. For example, the very diverse approaches to communications within businesses, therefore the need to adapt the positive conversations activities.
• Reviewing and updating the Employer Assessment and Quality Assurance processes to be used in the project. Small changes to existing resources were made to ensure they were appropriate for Making It Work.
• Employer recruitment, which was the main activity in the first months of the project with the whole SUSE team working on this intensively. As we have reported consistently it is challenging to recruit employers from a standing start and for the Making It Work project we needed to engage new employers rather than ones we have worked with before. It takes several months to get an organisation on board (particularly private sector employers), therefore we were satisfied to get sufficient numbers and variety of employers in a short period of time. We’ve provided some narrative on this activity in the next section.
• Promotion in the sector and to our range of stakeholders. This was important to help us recruit employers but we also wanted to attract new partners who could work with us and generally promote the aims of the project in the voluntary sector. This was aimed at creating an audience and users for the resources the project has created as our stakeholders will be key to raising awareness of the resources with employers.
• We met regularly with colleagues at the Scottish Government to report on progress and get support when this was required. We established a productive and effective relationship that helped the project to make progress. Regular meetings continued through to the end of the project.

Action Plan

The SUSE team developed a project action plan to ensure all of the intended activities could be scheduled and the appropriate resources identified. Specifically, we included the stakeholders and partners that we intended to approach to work with us and their role in project delivery and the production of the resources we needed.

The action plan was necessarily flexible as the timescales were dependant on employer recruitment and the timing of this was not in our control. We had agreed four workstreams for the project, therefore we had to recruit employers who were interested in these activities and saw a benefit for their business in participating. We hoped to make progress with employers from August 2025, but this had to be put back on several occasions and we were not able to start work with some of the employers until October. This meant that in many cases we only had six months to work with an employer with the Christmas break during that time.

Workstreams

An early priority, as we worked to recruit employers, was to establish the Workstreams and invite stakeholders to participate. We put out a general call to SUSE members and partners and selected participants that had an interest in the subject area and who were able to make a contribution – specifically, able to work directly with employers. As well as partner organisations, several members of the SUSE Experience Network also joined the Workstreams and their contribution proved to be very valuable. SUSE staff co-ordinated and chaired the Workstream meetings.

The Workstreams met from w/c 22^nd September 2025 onwards, at intervals of about four weeks, with a break for Christmas. The groups helped us to develop ideas for each of the employers with potential activities to carry out and they supported us to recruit delivery partners. For example, from an early stage, for the Equitable Induction Workstream, we decided we wanted to review the induction and onboarding materials from several employers to allow us to get an idea of current practices. The Workstream group was able to suggest a number of appropriate partners to carry out these reviews and the approach to be used to ensure consistency. Similarly, the Digital Access Workstream helped us to identify and recruit people with lived experience to carry out the testing with our IT partner, Cole AD. Members of the SUSE Experience Network who participated in the workstream meetings were paid for their time and for any subsequent project delivery they were involved in.

It was agreed at an early stage that the outputs from the project would be employer guides – one for each of the workstreams we had proposed to the Scottish Government. These were central to our thinking at all stages of the activity from early employer recruitment, employer assessments, workstream meetings and training and consultancy activities. We were conscious at all points that our actions should support the development of the guides and this provided a structure – ensuring we did not set out on activities that were unlikely to give us learning that could be used in the documents.

Workstream Partners

Equitable Induction and In-work Support

Alliance for Inclusion: Strives to empower companies and individuals to create a culture that values and supports disability and neurodivergence.

The Lennox Partnership: Helps businesses provide employment opportunities and staff to help them meet their objectives.

DFN Project Search: Their supported internship programme provides young adults with structured in-work job coaching to help them transition from education into employment.

Visibility Scotland: offers a wide range of evidence-based training programmes that equip employers with the skills and knowledge to confidently support people with sensory loss.

Positive Workplace Conversations

Changing the Chemistry: are committed to building inclusive leadership and employment pathways, particularly for underrepresented groups through peer-support, practical applications and fostering positive conversations.

Cope Ltd: social enterprise and charity which provides employment and skill development for adults with learning disabilities or autism.

Values Into Action Scotland: charity offering numerous employability services across Scotland for people with learning disabilities ensuring they have the same opportunities as everyone else to achieve their goals.

Alliance for Inclusion: Strives to empower companies and individuals to create a culture that values and supports disability and neurodivergence.

Digital Access Review & Action Plan

Cole AD: Support SUSE with digital expertise for our Digital Access Reviews and Digital Recruitment Reviews, as well as offering accessible products across animation, branding, graphic design and media buying.

Passion4Social: A social enterprise offering creative marketing solutions including accessibility audits, graphic design, wed design, app development, content creation and management and digital marketing.

Alliance for Inclusion: Strives to empower companies and individuals to create a culture that values and supports disability and neurodivergence.

Improving Workplace Consultation

Into Work: helps disabled and neurodivergent people and those with long-term health conditions find, build and maintain great jobs. Into Work also offer a variety of bespoke training courses for employers.

CSL Training, Evaluation and Development: independent consultant who is regularly commissioned to offer advice and support to voluntary sector organisations.

Your Options Understood: Lived Experience consultant, and chair of SUSE’s Experience Network, who provides a range of training and educational packages, including consultancy services such as accessibility audits for employers.

Alliance for Inclusion: Strives to empower companies and individuals to create a culture that values and supports disability and neurodivergence.

Several members of the SUSE Experience Network. We’ve described the network below.

Comments from Workstream Stakeholders

‘The topic covered as part of the digital access workstream is essential to ensure employers have the digital capability to allow disabled staff to play a full and active part in working life. The work so far has been well managed by the SUSE team - allowing all contributors the opportunity to have an input. The workstream was a good start; but does require more time to both reach out to more employers and provide those companies involved with the necessary skills to ensure their products area fully accessible, particularly for users of assistive technology.’

Allan Mackillop, Alliance for Inclusion

‘We see digital access as fundamental to equity. Without it, people risk being excluded from work, learning and progression. We recognise that many employers are making positive strides, but our involvement in the Digital Access workstream shows there is still more to do to address the less visible barriers within intranets and e-learning. This is not just a technical challenge; it is a matter of fairness and inclusive growth. We hope this work supports Scottish Government and employers to build on that progress by embedding accessibility as standard practice, so no one is left behind in an increasingly digital workplace.’

Karalyn Becker, Passion 4 Social CIC

‘Digital accessibility in the workplace should not require disabled staff to repeatedly explain barriers or justify their specific needs. Digital accessibility in the workplace should be viewed as a fundamental quality standard rather than an optional addition, comparable to cybersecurity, data protection, and health and safety. Working with a mixed group of disabled users face-to-face helps us build a better understanding of the barriers they encounter daily. User feedback is critical because it offers an intuitive solution to issues they have lived with all their working lives. You can't beat lived experience, especially in a working environment.’

Garry McCann, Cole AD

SUSE Experience Network

The SUSE Experience Network is a group of people who have lived experience of disability who support SUSE to develop and deliver projects and services. There are about 20 members of the group currently with half playing an active role as consultants or trainers within projects.

The group includes people with a range of disabilities and long term health conditions. They come together regularly and are self facilitated with administration support provided by SUSE. Within the Making It Work project members of the Experience Network carried out various roles including delivering training to employers, consultancy activities such as reviewing employers’ induction materials and testers in the Digital Access Reviews workstream. They also supported the development of the employer guides. These were paid roles within the project.

Project Budget and Spend

The total project budget was £98,736.91. This includes costs for staffing, operations, marketing, IT support, product development, partner training delivery and partner employer consultancy. The budget was designed to ensure effective project delivery and the development of resources and guides for employers. The project was delivered to the agreed budget with a very small underspend.

The budget we submitted was an accurate reflection of the costs as it was based on past experience of operating projects of this kind. We spend more on staff salaries and less on consultants. This was due to project staff carrying out more of the face-to-face work with the employers as the time constraints made this necessary and we found that some elements such as action planning with employers were more effectively carried out by SUSE staff.