By Mikayla van Loon
Knoxbrooke is looking to expand one of its Mount Evelyn based disability support and employment opportunities with a long term vision of doubling in size.
Outsource, the social enterprise’s packaging and distribution warehouse located on Clancy Road, currently employs around 42 people with a disability who may have never been considered for work.
With the main arm of the social enterprise, the Yarra View and Bushland Nursery, flourishing over the last couple of years, Knoxbrooke Group CEO Kristian Dauncey said it’s now time to turn the focus to Outsource to provide more employment opportunities for local people.
“We want to bring some of that excitement over here and give it the same love, care and attention because the nursery is not for everybody, not everyone likes to work in the great outdoors, in the sun or rain,” he said.
“Some people like noisy machinery, wearing high-vis and PPE, others like packaging and the camaraderie and talking with people so it’s a different type of work and what we’re trying to do is accommodate all people with disabilities.”
Joining Outsource six months ago as general manager to help grow the organisation’s reach, Abdul Bakhach said for workers, each day can be different, with so much variety in tasks and customers using their services.
From packaging bonsai kits to essential oils and lollies, to chopping wood for kindling, Mr Bakhach said “that’s why a lot of our employees here love it because they’re never bored”.
With 20 odd customers already using Outsource on a regular and loyal basis, Mr Bakhach said the work is there ready for more supported employees to come on board.
“We’re looking to grow and our strategy and our wish is to be 100 employees within 12 months. We’ve started now to try and recruit new employees and then with that, new staff as well,” he said.
As more and more manufacturing is done onshore by Australian companies, Mr Dauncey said there is an opportunity there for people with a disability to have secure work.
“We’ve come out of the Covid lockdowns and there’s a supply shortage and so people are understanding the importance of onshoring their work.
“There’s this real push for onshoring whatever they can, having that security of supply and that’s worked out really well for our business because for many years it’s gone the other way, offshoring whatever they can.
“We’re not about packaging and we’re not here about profit, although profits are important, we’re really here to create opportunities for people with disabilities…and ultimately, we’ll stop growing when every person who has a disability, who wants to work, has a job.”
Within Outsource, Mr Bakhach said there are internal offerings of learning for employees to grow and work towards bigger goals.
“You can be operating a machine, you can be working on a heat sealer today, you could be working on some counting scales tomorrow,” he said.
“But we go further than that, each employee has an individual employment plan so they have the opportunity to put down their aspirations of what their goals are for the next 12 months.”
Whether it be gaining a forklift licence or working other machinery, Mr Bakhach said supervising staff are available to facilitate that.
“Eventually when we become bigger, we also want to give our employees the opportunity to step up to become group leaders.
“At the moment we have able bodied supervisors looking after each team of three or four or five employees, we want to try to get our employees to a level where they can become a group leader.”
Mr Dauncey said each of Knoxbrooke’s supported employees have been identified as having a disability “so significant and profound, they have been granted a disability support pension for life and for every one of these individuals, they need never work”.
“But every one of those individuals have said my disability is not going to define me and give me an opportunity, I’d love to have a job.”
Actively trying to recruit people who fall into this category of not wanting to be discarded by society but may have attempted work elsewhere and been unsuccessful, Mr Dauncey said he’d encourage them to apply.
“We know there’s a good number of people in our community who have finished school, may have attempted work, become despondent by that experience and haven’t worked since.
“It’s those individuals we’d love to reactivate and give them that opportunity because we know often in mainstream employment, it can be a really isolating experience, there isn’t any support around that individual.”
Expressions of interest can be submitted via email to ndis@knoxbrooke.com.au
