The roles of workplace personal assistants (PAs), who support disabled people to do their jobs, needs to be more clearly defined and better supported if accessible workplaces are to flourish, new research has said.
The study found that workplace PAs have little guidance to draw on when stepping into situations that vary widely in terms of what is expected of them. And now Disability Sheffield has been asked to develop training materials based on the study.
“The research project highlights the lack of support both for workplace PAs and the disabled people they support,” said Dr Jenni Brooks, a senior lecturer in sociology at Sheffield Hallam University, who conducted the work with colleagues at the University of York.
“There’s very little peer support for PAs more generally, and we didn’t find any specifically catering for workplace PAs, who can be quite isolated,” Dr Brooks added. “Similarly, working disabled people are often effectively doing two jobs in one day – their own job, and managing their PA – and this is rarely recognised by colleagues or managers.”
The research – the first of its kind – was based on interviews with 17 PAs supporting people with physical and sensory impairments, along with 15 clients and representatives of six employers. It found PAs, who can assist in both personal care and work-related activities such as note-taking and other admin tasks, were described by various job titles, leading to ambiguity in how they were perceived.
Disabled people and PAs involved in the study also expressed a range of views as to what boundaries they considered appropriate and who was responsible for enforcing them.
“One of the most important things to come out of this research is the need for people to have upfront conversations with their workplace PAs about what will be expected of them in the workplace,” said Dr Brooks. “This could be as simple as setting out how formally to dress, when to talk to clients’ colleagues, or whether it’s acceptable for a PA to look at their phone during any off-time during the working day.”
Where assistants were directly employed by a person with a disability, many described feeling ‘invisible’ within the workplace due to having no acknowledged role. Some mentioned lacking access to IT systems or to their client’s employer’s buildings – with one employer even saying that PAs “exist but don’t exist”. By contrast, the few PAs employed by the disabled person’s workplace organisation were likely to be better supported but could find their loyalties divided between employer and client.
Some disabled people, meanwhile, worried that asking managers for assistance in managing often intense relationships with PAs could be seen as a sign of weakness.
Based on the findings of the project, the study team has now developed a website, workplacepersonalassistant.org containing a list of useful conversations disabled people can have with their workplace PA and with their line manager. It also includes tips for both workplace PAs and line managers.
Researchers have also commissioned not-for-profit organisation Disability Sheffield, which promotes independent living, to develop training materials based on the study. These will be made freely available following trials with final-year Sheffield Hallam University students during autumn 2019.
You can see the whole report here
