Ep #3 - Michelle Braham: How Employment Options co-created with people living with disability

In this episode Dan Bentley & Tracey Newman are joined by Michelle Braham the CEO of Employment Options Inc. A not for profit organisation in Adelaide, Australia. They speak to Michelle about a program she developed named ‘BizAbility’ and how its positively changing the lives of people with disability, by helping them to learn human centred design techniques so that they can explore self employment. 

 

Here’s a taste of what Dan & Tracey cover during their conversation:

Michelle talks about the program that they co-created with people living with disability and other stakeholders, to teach participants how to explore self employment using the human centered design process. How the team at Employment options had participants bring in their idea and they assisted them to understand whether it was a viable product or service. Then, how they could take their idea to market.Michelle shared some stories of what she found when she had people going through her first few cohorts of the program.Michelle shares how the program built a sense of community among the participants.Tracey discusses how she helped Michelle and her team create a plan to co-design using an empathy workshop. Discussing how giving people an opportunity to explore self-employment was what they originally set out to do, but found it was more helpful to guide participants to an endpoint that was right for them. It didn’t have to be self employment.Dan gave credit to Michelle and the team’s execution, and the important role their evaluation and continuous improvement mindset had one the success of the program.Michelle gave her top tips on how to get started if you also wanted to use co-design to develop a similar program.

Links from the episode

The 'Innovate For Impact Self Assessment': Click hereImpacto Consulting on LinkedIn: Click here