Advocating in Disability Employment Services, means helping them find a job - With Nita Shah #004

I recently had the privilege of speaking with the business manager of Ability Options Nita Shah. Nita is a purpose driven leader, who knows how to create a positive workplace culture in order to boost morale and performance. She has more than 7 years’ experience in operational planning, projects coordination, implementation, and leadership in recruitment and the employment services industry.

One of the reasons that I wanted to interview Nita, was because I’ve worked closely with her and have seen her in action. She’s someone that many employment services managers can learn from. Her staff have nothing but praise for her and the way she leads. Nita not only takes the time to coach her team, but knows how to create a positive workplace culture in order to get the best out of them.
Two things that Nita said that stood out to me during our chat were.

What great leadership means to her
“I’ve always been very passionate about building people’s capacity and team’s capacity to doing bigger and better things. It Doesn’t necessarily mean bigger and better means just placing participants into employment, it also could be learning new skills throughout their careers or preparing more future leaders.”

Advice she would give to new staff members who need to do reverse marketing, but are a little nervous.
“Know your participant, build a relationship with your participant, and that’s when you pick up the phone……….Once you are passionate about it, I think it becomes natural. To me, it doesn't matter what script you have and how many phone calls you make, I think it's quite obvious when you are speaking to employers either by the phone or face-to-face, it is your passion that that will get you through. So, it's about having a buy in in what you're doing and not giving up. Because when we are accepting these roles and we are going to help people, we are becoming a voice for them and we are saying you know what I'm happy to advocate for you and advocating means, at least in disability Employment Services, helping them find a job, helping them feel included and supporting them stay in that employment.”

What we covered in the full podcast:
1.An overview of the Disability Employment Services and parentsNext programs.
2.What great leadership means and how Nita gets the best out of her staff.
3.How there’s no better ROI than spending time with your team.
4.A success story of how Nita’s team at Ability Options changed someone’s life with a disability, by placing them into sustainable employment.
5.How a role was created for a participant with a disability and the positive outcome for both the participant and the workplace it created.
6.The benefits of job carving and why it’s important.
7.The myths and misconceptions in disability employment.
8.How Ability Options takes pride in their core values and how they use them in both recruitment and placing people into work.
9.Advice Nita would give a new staff member who may be a little nervous to do Reverse Marketing.
10.Why Nita chose to work in employment services.

You can connect with Nita Shah on her LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitashah45/

You can find out more about Ability Options here: https://abilityoptions.org.au/

Find out more about Employment Services Training: https://www.employmentservicestraining.com/