Staying

Moving to a new job is high risk

by Christina Ryan DLI CEO

The decision to apply for a new job and progress your career is an exciting one. Recognising that it’s time to stretch yourself into a bigger skill set and explore new fields and ways of doing things, should be something everyone experiences.

What happens when it’s too much to contemplate? When progressing your career or changing jobs, for whatever reason, is something that fills you with trepidation and exhaustion?

Starting a new job is a major event for any person, but for disability leaders it can be particularly complex. For those who require adjustments, including flexible arrangements, it can also be a time of apprehension and doubt.

Recent discussions with disability leaders have pointed to a common concern; changing jobs means leaving the arrangements already in place and starting all over again. Repeating the long labour of being granted hard won adjustments or flexibility, and the even longer labour of educating your colleagues about specific measures you might need – like captions in meetings, larger font emails, or quiet zones and muted lighting – so that you can do your job effectively.

Disability leaders talk about wanting to change jobs, yet to change jobs is to risk losing the mechanisms that have been put in place, and which may have taken months or years to establish.

Additionally, changing jobs also means moving further into the unknown and potentially experiencing unsafe conditions in the new position. It is a high risk business, and the more senior the disability leader the greater the risk. Few senior disability leaders are open about their disabilities, and a move is a big gamble that can be career ending if the new workplace isn’t supportive.

Being open in one workplace doesn’t mean it’s safe to be open in the next workplace, but once that door has been opened there is no going back.

Moving jobs means revisiting the need to build trust, the emotional labour of educating colleagues about disability and about your disability specifically, and it can also mean enduring quite intrusive questions and an expectation that you must explain your personal circumstances and justify why you need solutions that are different to what is currently available.

In recent conversations, a number of disability leaders have shared their decision that now is not the time to dive into this uncertainty, and they have made the difficult choice to stay in a position that is limiting their career advancement. They know it will take substantial time and energy to go through a transition process, on top of the usual shifts in routine that a new job presents to everyone. That level of effort is only possible when there are no other major challenges going on, and for many disability leaders there are often other major challenges going on.

Disability leaders are faced with two stark alternatives: take the big risk to follow your career and hope your vital workplace arrangements can be locked in without too much effort or stick with what you know even though it might be career limiting.

Thanks to the many DLI members who shared thoughts and experiences for this article.

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Christina Ryan is the CEO of the Disability Leadership Institute, which provides professional development and support for disability leaders. She identifies as a disabled person