Paul Brown On Meaningful Training To Help People With Disability Secure Employment
Paul Brown is CEO and Co-founder of Jigsaw Australia - a social enterprise which trains and transitions people with disability into mainstream employment.
He has led Jigsaw’s growth from one customer and two employees with disability in 2014 to a national, multi-site business which has provided training to over 1000 people with disability services and business services to over 100 corporate and government clients.
He has innovated a model which revolutionises the way people with disability prepare for work and outperforms current approaches to disability employment. Paul is passionate about the power of social enterprise to create impact and provide a credible, proven alternative to existing models in place to tackle the underemployment of people with disability.
Paul discusses his perspective on the state of impact-led entrepreneurship, focusing on disability employment and social innovation opportunities.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Tom Allen] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what it was that led to this passion of yours in social enterprise?
[Paul Brown] - As with most of the social entrepreneurs I talk to, their backgrounds are diverse. Mine's no different to that. I grew up in the UK and going through school and university wasn't really clear on what I wanted to do long term. (I was) privileged as well to grow up alongside two very close friends, Jordan and Laura O'Reilly and their brother Shane. That would help form my story later down the line.
I started post university while in between jobs to work at a school with kids with challenging behaviours. These were significant challenging behaviours, and it was a very physical job. My job at one point was to get a boy into one class a week, which was quite a challenge, and I don't think I ever did it. What really struck me when I was in that role of helping incredibly challenged young boys with behavioural difficulties was we were still forcing the national curriculum and traditional approach of education on these individuals. I just watched that not work, day in, day out, and when I tried to think about how you could do it a little bit differently and raise that with superiors, I got a pretty firm "no, this professional curriculum is the way we do things." That sparked my passion for the disability space, and my two friends, Jordy and Laura were back in Australia starting this little not-for-profit organisation alongside their brother Shane, who had a disability, to look at ways that we could redesign programs and businesses for people with disability to access their everyday needs, such as employment, accommodation, support and coordination. That really led me to come over to Australia, it led me to get into this whole social entrepreneurship space, and it really gave me the platform to be able to think differently about the way you might do things. That really was my background and spark for this whole journey.
As a Co-founder of Jigsaw, can you please tell us a bit more about projects and work that you're involved in?
Jigsaw is providing a unique pathway to open employment for people with disability.
What we realised was that millions of people with disability in Australia had great skills and foundational skills. They also had a passion to go and work in open employment, and that's what they wanted to achieve, yet the systems in place were failing.
We really wanted to think about how you could do that differently, and essentially, we offer three programs. The first is we prepare young adults with disability for work, and we use work hubs that we open that look and feel like work to train people against a series of soft skills, and they're soft skills that we take for granted. Growing up, in our first part-time job, there's lots of foundational skills like punctuality, reliability, communication and workplace etiquette you learn. All these things we learn through those jobs aren’t afforded to people with disability but are fundamental to your career and success.
The second stage is giving individuals an award wage job as a way of putting all that into practice, and what we saw too often was that jobs for people with disability are subpar. It involved doing meaningless work, and was also underpaid, and so we wanted to create an environment for individuals who had gone through that training to actually put that into practice with real work while being paid an award wage. That forms the second pillar to Jigsaw's model.
The third pillar is taking those individuals, who at that point we truly believe are job ready, and placing them into open employment with corporate and government employers. That forms the model and all the projects and activities that we work on. We are working with the disability community, big corporates and government in Australia to work out how we can move the dial. But it's important to note with Jigsaw and with this whole philosophy that we never wanted, and we still don't have ambitions of just seeing Jigsaw continue to grow and grow and be the biggest thing that we can make it.
What we want to do is try and create systemic change, so a lot of my work now is focused on how to use Jigsaw as a platform to influence change at a government and policy level, so that government funded systems can be more tailored to individual needs.
That's really our passion, that's why we started all of this and that's why we exist. A lot of my work today is right in that space, which is really enjoyable because you can look back at the work you’ve done and advocate for it.
What have been some of the biggest challenges you have faced and key lessons learnt as a result?
Everyone I speak to in this space who have run social enterprises big or small say it's incredibly hard. I don't think that's just because it's the social enterprise space. I think that's just business in general. Some of the things we found really challenging started with firstly the values in which we exist by. Values are so core to everything we do. The detail involved when you are onboarding a client with disability into your program and how to do that is staggering. When they talk through their current situation, they might not have enough funding or they might need something a little bit different, so how do you respond? These are values that we set, and they are so important to us. What enabled Jigsaw to be successful was this ‘yes’ based culture; that you would always work with the community, work with employers and actually make stuff happen for them. You would think of unique, tailored ways to bring them into your program, to support them, place them into open employment, and these are values that we take for granted.
Founders particularly and the first team that you put around you take values for granted, but as you get to scale, trying to keep those core values at the centre of the business is really hard. If you take a step change by 1%, in a few years that will see the business in a very different place from a values perspective.
That for me is probably the hardest thing, and there's no secret formula to keeping those values at the core. Now, it's a lot of hard work to communicate as much as often and talk to people about it. We have to give them case studies and scenarios so that we are all singing off the same hymn sheet when it comes to our values. I'd say this to be honest is one of the biggest challenges we face.
Also, when you land on a model that is different in the market and people are giving you that feedback that there's nothing like it, and they say, “please bring it to my community, you'll be swamped with interest,” that's true to a degree, but you still have to work extremely hard regardless of how unique your model is. This is no matter how amazing your outcomes are to onboard clients, whether that be people with disabilities putting on that training journey or onboarding corporate government employers who have targets of disability employment in their CSR strategies. Actually getting businesses on board is incredibly hard.
That again just took me by surprise; when you think you've cracked enough in terms of the model and what you're offering, you think it's just going to be smooth sailing, but it's not.
Then finally, I guess to wrap all that up, a lot of social enterprises are trying to change mindsets of people and what they think about the work that they're doing, and that's incredibly hard.
You've got to really work with your stakeholders to help them understand why they need to change. Why is disability employment an important thing for their business, and it can't just be the feel good factor.
There are so many other priorities and stresses that big corporate and government organisations have to measure their business by, and it can't just be on the feel good factor or the ‘what's right for the community’ factor. It's got to encompass a whole range of things, so I think changing mindsets and culture is hard.
Those three things for us have been really challenging. When you identify those challenges, it really helps you get focused on where the work needs to be, and so you think about advocacy and change and that really talks to the mindsets and the culture. Constantly telling your story is an important one to continue to share the Jigsaw modelling and get people interested. Obviously, the values piece as well, it's just something that we talk about relentlessly at work. It helps you get focused; those are some of the challenges that we face.
What is your current take on the state of social entrepreneurship in Australia and where do you see some opportunities to improve our communities further?
First and foremost, it's come a long way. I think that 10 years ago when we started to get into this work, the group of social entrepreneurs or social enterprises was so small. You knew everyone and everyone knew each other. Everyone knew your every step and where you were up to in your journey. That's changed drastically now. I think there are businesses and social enterprises that I hear and learn about every week that I just didn’t know about. There has been a lot of growth. I think there's been some great work from government and certain groups in the sector who have really helped stimulate and drive social enterprises and social entrepreneurship.
When I look at the NDIS sector and space specifically, which is where Jigsaw is placed, that's seen a lot of growth, just because the NDIS was a great vehicle to think differently about how you could support someone with a disability, no matter what area you were focused in, and access funding to start your business and start your idea. We've seen a lot of growth in that space and a lot of great ideas, which is exactly what the NDIS should be about. I think, and I'm definitely not saying this because I'm really great at partnering and collaborating, but I think partnerships and collaborations in this space are not very strong, and I'm to blame for that as much as that as everyone else! I think you get so focused on what you are doing and the business you are running, your community and clients.
If we'd worked together more closely with some of the organisations we operate alongside, been more open book, and quickly gotten to the point of what we are both trying to achieve, we would've achieved a lot more together.
As a result (Jigsaw's not changing its strategy, I guess the strategy was always one to partner once we'd built our own footprint), our business strategy now is to teach or grow through others, not ourselves. Hopefully that focuses the mind from our perspective to be more collaborative and work harder with partners, because I just think you can achieve more, and it doesn't always have to be in the same field. I think social enterprises and social entrepreneurs who are attacking all different challenges should come together more regularly and be forced to work together in a way, I think it would just create much better change in this space and we'd see more scale of big and small social enterprises. That's something I would call out, not because I'm great at partnering and collaborating, but everyone needs to change. I think it's the reality of the work we do, we get so fixated on what we're doing .
What advice would you give to other social entrepreneurs who are working hard to create a positive social impact?
Keep going. It's hard, but just keep going.
I think the only way this space will strengthen is if we see more social enterprises in the market, big and small. You get some interesting feedback from corporates and government, but it's a fair point to ask, “why aren't you engaging more with social enterprise?” Why aren't they procuring more with us or working more with us, and after asking a lot of people we speak to they say it’s because there are not a lot of us out there. There's not a number of really big social enterprises at that scale and then there's not a lot of choice.
There's not a lot of smaller, medium and large social enterprises in the market, so I think how we're going to see this change in shape is if we see more enter the market.
Hopefully things like the NDIS in other industries or sectors will help stimulate that. I'd love to see more competition for Jigsaw, because I think that's healthy. I think that makes us really focused on what we are offering, what we are delivering, and I think without that you start to lose that competitiveness. My advice starts with I want to see more, so for those who are interested in it, when it gets hard, just keep going. We need it to be successful as a group and collective.
Through collaboration, partnerships and more people wanting to enter this space, we can see the sector strengthen.
What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently which you believe are creating some positive social change?
Again, I speak obviously a little bit targeted to the disability sector, because that's what I know so well, but I think firstly the thing I'll mention is seeing a lot of traditional large disability organisations want to change. What we see a lot of is organisations in some cases going to the lengths of closing large parts of their business to restart, rethink and do it again. That is challenging in one sense, because there's a lot of people that they support, and that support then becomes non-existent. But it's a good thing seeing more social enterprise and more of this way of thinking in the space. We're seeing a lot of big organisations do that, we are starting early conversations with some great organisations like Kirinari, who are in Albury, Wodonga in New South Wales. They're a fantastic service provider that's been in the sector for many years, but again, are looking to just continually strengthen their programs and learn from others. Hopefully Jigsaw and Kirinari will work together in some capacity to see our programs shared in our respected areas. That’s a really interesting dynamic, when we see large traditional providers starting to get focused on social enterprise, so that for me is probably the biggest standout.
I've also worked with a great group called auticon, who again are mostly New South Wales based but I think have services elsewhere. The way they're thinking about autism hiring and supporting corporate and government organisations in some really technical roles and engaging people with autism is fantastic. Then there is The Field, which Dylan Alcott announced a few months ago, which again is a fascinating solution in this space. What we really want to see is lots of different types of services. We never see these new enterprises step into our space, quickly compare what Jigsaw is doing in comparison to them and then showing how they can do it better. It's actually about just celebrating different solutions, so if we have clients of ours who want a slightly different approach, we've now got someone to refer to.
To finish off then, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?
I'm not the biggest reader, I'll be honest. Interestingly, I have probably learned quite a lot as a sports fan, because I read a lot of sports biographies and the autobiographies of managers. I find that really interesting because ultimately, running a business, running a social enterprise is about your team.
Your team needs to be match fit, they need to be clear on the goal, they need to all be bought into the goal, mission and the vision.
I've actually learned some really fascinating things from that book and sector space. I love to hear about how they plan and pull teams together. How do they make sure their teams are aligned, skills and all. I listen to a lot of interviews and read a lot of books in that space, and it really helps my work.
But more broadly, I think just listening to new social enterprises, their story and why they're doing what they're doing really helps me keep Jigsaw current as well. I love seeing when new stuff comes out and you dig into it and learn about it. You think, "how could that support Jigsaw or how could we work together?" I actually find that new enterprises entering the market and the work that they do around telling their story is really helpful to keep Jigsaw aligned and on track. This is not a great list of really in depth books, but I think it speaks to me! I love getting my hands practical, dirty and into stuff, so I'd recommend a couple of sport books and working with other providers, partners and social enterprises.
