Job Coach Training for Sustainable Employment for Persons with Disabilities

During the period 19th ~ 22th September 2023, Project for Promoting Employment Support of Person with Disabilities (ESPD) conducted a first job coach training in Colombo for HR managers in the private sector in order to introduce necessary skill and knowledge for supporting workers with disabilities at workplace. The trained managers are expected to be a core member for promoting employment of persons with disabilities (PWDs) in cooperation with the public sector. The project invited professional lectures for this training from Malaysia where there are many successful cases of sustainable employment of PWDs.

Job coach provides support for PWDs, employers and co-workers to create better and sustainable employment. Each session of the training consists of lecture, group assignment including role-play and summary with the active involvement of the participants.

Mr. Kumaragura from Colombo Chamber of Commerce (CCC) said that their organization has been involved in ESPD from the beginning. CCC has supported the base line survey of the project by sharing information on their member companies. This training was a very good chance to learn the idea on how to sustain the PWDs’ employment.

Ms. Upulka Samarakoon of John Keells Holdings stated that employing and increasing career opportunities for PWDs is one of the John Keells Group’s DE&I priorities and this training would help them improve support for PWD colleagues who are already employed in the group. She went on to state that a number of representatives from various companies in the group are among the attendees and they plan to brainstorm on sharpening the PWD policy and making it more relevant through this training. She stated that they would like to assign job coaches at the group companies and offer necessary support for a wide range of PWD colleagues.

Ms. Wendy who is one of the lecturers of this training says that the participants have high level of enthusiasm, very engaged and show great interest in learning Job Coach. She hopes that they will use the knowledge and skills they learned in this training to promote sustainable employment of persons with disabilities.

The ESPD project has so far focused on supporting PWDs to find employment in companies under the Linkage Creation Programme. Besides working on creating employment opportunities, the project also starts initiatives to improving quality of employment by collaborating with the private sector.