Unlocking Potential: Could SIC Be The Solution To Your Access And Inclusion Requirements In 2024?

15 Jan

It’s 2024, and fostering diversity, inclusion, and a supportive environment is not just a buzzword.

At SIC, we’re experts in creating accessible and inclusive workplaces for disabled and neurodivergent professionals, delivering a variety of consulting services and workshops for businesses in the UK and beyond.

If you’re sitting on the fence, or weighing up your options, we get it. Here’s why you should consider working with us.

Not-for-profit impact

We operate as a not-for-profit social enterprise, positioning impact at the core of our mission. By collaborating with SIC, your organisation becomes a catalyst for positive change, directly contributing to the free support we offer disabled and neurodivergent professionals.

The SIC Learning Hub is and will always be free. We provide free-to-access e-learning, events, mentorship matchmaking, resources, a magazine, and hire from this community. By working with us, you’re going to be ensuring the continuation and the growth of the vital resource.

The social economy is a true catalyst for change. According to Social Enterprise UK, there are more than 131,000 social enterprises in the UK, that contribute £60bn to the economy and employ around 2.3 million people. Many outperform other businesses when it comes to growth and product innovation, reducing inequalities, creating jobs and building a more inclusive economy. More and more, businesses have goals to increase their contributions to the social economy in their supply chains. By working with us, you could inadvertently be hitting a company KPI.

Our model, helps us to support the people who need us most (our community) while also providing a much-needed and valuable service to businesses.

The SIC mission. Four elements connected into a circle by arrows. From top left: train disabled and neurodiverse people so they're job ready, connect them with employers, train employers on how to be accessible, create work for disabled people

Lived experiences that resonate

Our team's unique blend of professional expertise and personal experiences sets us apart. Each consultant at SIC brings their own lived experiences of disability, chronic illness, and neurodivergence to the table. This authenticity forms the foundation of our consulting approach, ensuring a nuanced understanding of the challenges faced by individuals with diverse needs.

We embrace that disability and neurodiversity are not homogenous, and actively seek and present case studies that represent the varied intersectionality of disabled voices. None of our consulting or workshops will ever come from one perspective. For us, disability is not a monolith, and our consulting and workshops represent this.

Adaptable and evolving consulting

We’re always learning and adapting. The world of disability and neurodiversity is constantly evolving, and we want to reflect this in what we do.

Our approach doesn't remain static year-on-year or even month-on-month. We’re small, mighty, and agile and continuously integrate the latest research and understanding into our methodologies. This adaptability ensures that the consulting solutions provided are always at the cutting edge of inclusivity.

Fun in learning

Addressing serious subjects doesn't mean the learning process has to be dull if we just spoke to your teams as if we were addressing a lecture theatre we don’t think anyone would remember anything we said. We’re a creative bunch that brings fun into our consulting and workshops. We’re marketers, creatives, theatre-makers, writers, and artists.

By employing innovative methodologies such as Lego Serious Play and gamification inspired by Dungeons and Dragons (yep, we can do that), we create memorable learning that supports real organisational change. An energised and inspired team is more likely to implement lasting change and a serious mission can be approached with a light heart.

Don’t believe us? We’ve worked with some incredible companies, all of whom have seen increased knowledge and understanding in their teams.

Safe spaces and no judgment

We create safe spaces for difficult questions. No question is considered silly, and judgment has no place in the work we do. We all make mistakes, but together we can reduce the risk of those mistakes moving forward.

Navigating the complexities of disability and neurodiversity requires open dialogue so we actively foster an environment where individuals and organisations feel safe to ask the questions that truly need answering. We’ll give you the answers too!

We work with organisations who really care

We do not expect you to be an expert. You do not need to be a Disability Confident Leader or have every policy perfected. You need to be open to learning, developing and engaging.

From local authorities and universities to tech companies, games companies, and social causes, we’ve worked with them all.

Our content and approach are tailored to the unique needs and dynamics of each organisation, ensuring that the impact is not only meaningful but also sustainable.

We can be an internal equity, diversity, and inclusion lead in your pocket

Our consulting doesn’t end after your workshop. Our add-on gives you access to one-to-one support all year long. Whether you want a monthly catch-up, or find something like Voxer or WhatsApp easier and more beneficial, we can support smaller teams and organisations to operate at the top of their game.

Whether you’ve got ambitions of becoming a B-Corp, a RIDI Pioneer, or a Disability Confident Leader, our team can help you get to where you need to go.

Partners, partners, partners

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again - we’re small but mighty. With that in mind, we love collaborating with partners who can help you across the whole breadth of equity, diversity and inclusion. Need neurodivergence coaches, employee advocates, an Access to Work solution, councillors, recruiters, HR, wellbeing applications, or tech solutions for accessibility and inclusion - we got you!

Get in touch today to discuss what you’re looking for, we’d be happy to facilitate an introduction. (For some of these, we’ll receive a little kick back which helps our Learning Hub stay in operation.)

You might not have to pay for our support

Did you know that Access to Work could fund the support that we offer? If one of your disabled or neurodivergent teammates thinks that disability or neurodivergence awareness training for their colleagues would be a huge help, we have and can make this happen.

Here's what you’ll need to think about:

The person applying will usually apply for a variety of support including software, physical adjustments, transport, coaching, a support worker, and awareness training.
This process will usually take between 4 - 12 weeks.
We recommend adding a workshop or consulting to an application as early as possible so that you can request a specific consulting offering from us.
If you can, chat with us before applying.

If you’ve got this far, thank you. We’d love to work with you as consultants and workshop facilitators in 2024. Why not book a discovery call with me, Alice, SIC CEO, today here?