Founder Advice Series: The Ventures Removing Barriers to Work
Founders of four Year Here ventures working towards accessible and inclusive employment offer their insight and advice.
We know the working landscape in the UK is not an even playing field. Systemic barriers like disability and chronic illness, contact with the justice system, and lack of access to education and opportunity play a huge part in widespread unemployment. In fact, around two and a half million people, or 3.8 per cent of the UK, are currently unemployed. Year Here ventures Bua, 100DaysOfNoCode, Soda and Breakthrough are tackling this lack of access to employment in the UK. Here, they share what they’ve learned since launching.
Bua
Only around half of disabled people in the UK are employed, despite research showing that disabled employees generally take fewer sick days and stay in positions longer than their non-disabled counterparts. 2020/21 Fellow Caitriona Snell founded Bua to increase disabled and neurodiverse employment and inclusion. It’s a lived experience-first organisation, meaning everyone that works with Bua has lived experience of disability, including long-term health conditions or neurodiversity.
“Your vision is different from your go-to-market. You might have a vision of supporting hundreds of people, gaining hundreds of thousands of pounds in revenue and giving TED talks about your social mission. But how do you get there? What are the smaller milestones and then the steps to those? They are different questions for me, and I found it really helps to separate them when planning to give myself more structure and tangible progress markers.”
Cat Snell, Bua
100DaysOfNoCode
Like many industries, the world of tech doesn’t truly represent who is using digital spaces. 2019/20 Fellow Max Haining founded 100DaysOfNoCode to democratise tech so we’re less dependent on the 0.3% of the world’s population who can currently code. The goal is to build a world where anyone can bring their ideas to life by creating more inclusive digital spaces, making careers in tech more accessible, increasing digital literacy, enabling more entrepreneurship and empowering a new wave of problem solvers from different backgrounds.
“Get clarity on the transformation you want to help someone through and what part you can specifically play in that journey. For example, we teach non-techies digital skills they can leverage to start freelancing careers, their own ventures and more. Having clarity on this allows us to create intentional learning experiences with tailored pathways to meet the needs of our users. I also recommend having a good means to track how your product or service is performing against the outcomes you want — this will inform what to double down on.”
Max Haining, 100DaysOfNoCode
Soda
One in five people in the UK have a disability or chronic illness, which means around 14 million people need accessible products and services. But often, they’re not included in the design process. This year, the UK government was actually found to have acted unlawfully when developing their National Disability Strategy as they failed to consult disabled people properly.
2021 Fellows Charli Skinner, Alex Eisenberg and Oli Clayton, founded Soda to empower chronically ill and disabled young adults to design more inclusive and accessible products and services that work for everyone. Soda does this by connecting chronically ill and disabled young adults with commercial and public services, supporting them to collaborate on inclusive design processes, and ensuring they get paid fairly for their time and expertise.
“You need stability alongside your ambition, and a good way to achieve this is through freelancing or contracting. If you can, align your business ambition with whatever you’re providing. The work that we’re doing alongside Soda is still within the health space, so it compliments it.
It’s very easy to burn out if you don’t manage your time and energy properly. This is definitely the case for disabled or chronically ill founders, but anyone can take that piece of advice. If you’re a cofounder, make space for yourself and make space for each other. If you’re working on your own, don’t completely work on your own. Have someone close to you, a friend or a mentor, that you can bounce off.”
Charli Skinner, Soda
Breakthrough
Minority group overrepresentation in UK prisons and a lack of post-release support to find long-term, meaningful employment means the UK has one of the worst reoffending rates in the world, with nearly half of prison leavers reoffending within a year. This results in a cost of over £18bn to the government, loss of talent in job markets and creating cycles of crime, with more victims in our communities.
During her placement with Stand Out in Wandsworth Prison, 2019 Fellow Dee Norval learned that prison leavers who are employed are half as likely to reoffend as their unemployed peers, and yet only 16% of prison leavers are employed within 12 months. Breakthrough focuses on employment as the key driver for success but goes beyond, by collaborating with other organisations and building a holistic support springboard.
“Try and have fun and make sure you have people around you that you enjoy spending time with. You will work very hard, and decisions will be tough, so it’s important to take moments to enjoy when you can. You’ll be a better leader for it.
Hire early. It’s scary to bring others on board when you aren’t sure you can afford it. But by the time you are sure, it’s probably too late (hiring takes forever). Be bold and back yourself today, so you have what you need when tomorrow comes.
Business plans are overrated. When you start up, you will have no idea what works and doesn’t. Use something like The Riskiest Assumption Test to drive your work and experiment continuously. You should start writing business plans when you aren’t calling yourself a start-up anymore.”
Dee Norval, Breakthrough
How to support the ventures
If you’re interested in improving inclusion within your business, reach out to Cat from Bua to:
- Advertise creative roles to disabled/neurodiverse job seekers;
- Increase your social impact by sponsoring and/or assisting with training programmes (as little as a logo to as much as a whole tailored programme);
- Improve your inclusion by running disability/neurodiversity-specific workshops, for example, to improve customer service for neurodiverse people.
The Soda team is interested in connecting to anyone who has worked in accessibility and inclusive design, from designers to UX or digital designers. They are also keen to speak to user research professionals. You can email hello@acoprojects.co.uk or DM them on Instagram at @soda.venture.
If you’d like to bring your ideas to life but don’t come from a techie background, 100DaysOfNoCode can support you on that journey with their range of free and paid products. If you know of organisations or individuals that want to do the same but need some support, you can put them in touch with Max. Take advantage of their completely free 100-day program here and see their full range of products here.
Breakthrough is always looking for expert volunteers, advisors and connections. Reach out to them at hello@wearebreakthrough.org.
