Tameside Council

Proud to be a Disability Confident Employer

Policy

Tameside is a ‘Disability Confident Employer’ Disability Confident is a scheme that is designed to help you recruit and retain disabled people and people with health conditions for their skills and talent. We do this by providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process.How?

By:

• Identifying and addressing any barriers that may prevent or deter disabled people from applying for jobs, including where you advertise, the words you use and how people can apply
• Making sure online or offline processes are fully accessible – for example, providing a named contact, telephone number and email for applicants to request support or ask questions
• Getting your recruitment process tested by disabled people, and if there is a barrier either removing it or providing an alternative way to apply
• Providing a short but accurate job description that clearly sets out what the jobholder will be required to achieve, accepting there are different ways to achieve the same objective 
• Making sure all documentation is available in different formats, if required (written and online) 
• Accepting job applications in a variety of formats
• Making sure people involved in the recruitment process are conversant with Disability Confident and know how to support disabled applicants.
• By offering an interview to an applicant who meets the minimum criteria (for example sometimes shown as desirable skills) for a job as defined by the employer.

Recruitment

What does this mean when you apply for a job?

• If you meet the essential criteria for the job we will guarantee you an interview. The essential criteria are shown in the Person specification for each job. You need to make sure:
  • That you tell us that you consider yourself to be disabled by answering the relevant question on the monitoring part of the application form. This monitoring information is not available to the Shortlisting Panel but Human Resources will note that you consider yourself to have a disability on the information they supply to the Panel.
  • That you give us enough information in your application to show that you meet the essential criteria.
• If you have any difficulties completing the standard application form we are happy to accept your application typed, recorded on an audio of video cassette or in Braille. If you use one of the alternatives please follow the format of the standard application form. If you have a Disability Employment Adviser they may be able to help you.
• When we invite you to interview, we will ask you if there are any adjustments we need to make to cope with your disability at the interview.
• All the employees involved in the interview will have had training about the needs of people with a disability.
• We will give you the name of someone not directly involved in the recruitment process who can help and advise you.
• If we offer you the job the Manager responsible will work with Human Resource Advisors and our Occupational Health Service to consider what reasonable adjustments we can make to the job to fit your needs.

Employment

Our commitment carries on after you have started employment. All Tameside Employees have a meeting with their manager at least once per year to discuss their development needs.  If this doesn't happen you should speak to your Manager's superior or contact Human Resources.  This will give you the opportunity to discuss the adjustments we have made and any further changes that may be required if your needs have changed.

Other Assistance

The Employment Service has a specialist team of Disability Employment Advisers. The local team can be contacted via local Job Centres. Further information can be found on our People with Disabilities Index

Positive about avoiding Age Discrimination in Employment

Tameside Council is an Age positive champion. This is an award made by the Government to recognise Employers who are committed to tackling age discrimination in their own workplace and taking practical steps to change their employment practices.

We have relaxed our previous bar on employees working beyond 65. We have over 600 employees aged 60 and over (609 as at May 2008) with our oldest employee being 78.

Our Age Positive Good Practice:

Our job advertisements do not include specific age limits or any covert age related restrictions.

Our recruitment monitoring system analyses applicants and appointees by age, to ensure that our recruitment policy is non discriminatory. By monitoring in this way we are able to identify the age profile of our workforce and the applicants we attract. This has led to us needing to consider our approach to succession planning.

Our application form encourages applicants to include relevant non-work related experience in support of their application; to avoid discrimination against those applicants who may not have had extensive job related experience.

We have consulted our Citizens Forum of 2,000 Tameside residents on employment related issues, including their desired means of being informed about council vacancies. The results have been analysed by age to inform our recruitment advertising policy. This piece of work informed and helped shape elements of our recruitment practice. Residents told us where they would typically look for job opportunities. As such, more information is now on our internet page and we are considering a regional text messaging campaign.

We are part of a recruitment consortium which has commissioned focus group research into the attitudes of people to local government careers. This specifically includes the views of young people.

Our flexible working policy allows employees to voluntarily reduce their hours or change working times.

For more information go to www.gov.uk/