Change For Inclusion

Change4Inclusion is a ESF project led by GTB in partnership with EPR (Belgium), SIVA (Latvia), Fundación Intras (Spain) and three partners from Flanders: Sterpunt Inclusief Ondernemen, Pulso Europe and GRIP.

Employers can create inclusive workplaces for people with disabilities and employees with health problems. People with disabilities prefer internal support and mentors rather than external job coaches. The project thus aims to support employers to make the shift of mindset and to work towards inclusive workplaces and a learning and inclusive organisation culture. It should also help to anchor inclusive job design, including by means of job crafting and job carving, in a sustainable way in an enterprise or organisation.

There is a link with an earlier project, Talentoscoop (and project page in Dutch), led by GTB (Belgium) and involving CRPG (Portugal) and Inserta (Spain). For this learning platform which had as main aim to change the mindset of managers to focus more on diversity within their organisation, EPR operated as facilitator and as European dissemination partner. Talentoscoop developing a service model in which every social NGO has a single point of contact to connect organisational questions with recruitment of new staff, retention of already employed staff, workplace learning and job creation.

Whereas Talentoscoop dealt more withquestions of professional inclusion and human resource management, the focus of Change4Inclusion is more on how (top-)management can realise an inclusive organisation, based on own values and the own service mission and on how the organisation culture can be changed in a sustainable manner towards one promoting the inclusion of workers with a disability or health problem.

Objectives of Change4Inclusion

Main objective: Creating inclusive workplaces for people with disabilities (PwD) or with health problems.

Main activities in the context of Change4Inclusion

• Identification of a set of competences needed for experts by experience – i.e. people with disabilities – and training them on those competences.
• Creation of network of trained experts by experience to allow an organisation to incorporate the users’ viewpoints on inclusive workplaces.
• Elaboration of a job profile and training curriculum for mentors/internal job coaches.
• Organise a test phase for the self-assessment tool (for the enterprises or organisations), the training tools and the service design for the adapted workplaces or jobs.
• Do impact evaluation of the project deliverables, i.e. of the job profile and training curriculum for mentors.
• Put together concrete case studies which combine the inclusive employment approach with an organisational renewal approach and share those examples of tested successful practices.
• Write up a script, based on the case studies, to motivate employers to engage in a process to exchange their experiences with inclusive workplaces and job design supportive to inclusive employment.
• Communication and dissemination of project activities and results which will be shared – free of charge – on a digital hub.

Key outputs of Change4Inclusion

• A toolbox of self-assessment instruments to find out and visualise what the current organisation culture is and how the future should look like to make it more.
• A network of trained experts by experience to allow the incorporation of the viewpoints of people with disabilities on inclusive workplaces.
• Elaboration of a job profile and training curriculum for mentors/internal job coaches – as trained organisational change experts – to help realising a learning and inclusive organisation, promoted and backed by the leadership.
• A compilation of case studies which combine the inclusive employment with an organisational renewal approach.
• A script to motivate employers to engage in a process to exchange their experiences with inclusive workplaces and job design supportive to inclusive employment.

EPR is facilitating the mutual exchange and learning, including by

• Organisasing the transnational meetings and activities.
• Reporting back on transnational activities to the Flemish Advisory Group.
• Coordinating of the communication and dissemination strategy.
• Setting up the project webpage on the EPR website.
• Coordinating the evaluation strategy.

Contact

The Change4Inclusion project coordinator and person of contact is Mathias Maucher, Senior Project and Programme Officer at EPR, mmaucher@epr.eu.

This project is being carried out with the support of the European Social Fund.
Flemish ESF Call 481 Transnationality V – Project number 9593

Dit project wordt gerealiseerd met steun van het Europees Sociaal Fonds.
Vlaamse ESF Oproep 481 Transnationaliteit V – Projectnummer 9593