SOUTHERN TECH 100


TM number 99: Microlink


Dr Siabi and the case of the vanishing students


For many years Dr Nasser Siabi and his Microlink co-founder Vee Ganjavian had been at the forefront of training for students with disabilities. By pulling together a wide range of enabling technology, they’d helped many thousands of people with challenges – from dyslexia to cerebral palsy – to successfully navigate an unaccommodating education system. Then waved them off to the workplace ... where they vanished. Alison Tilley found out more’


Perplexed, they approached the corporate sector. “We said: ‘We’ve pushed 200,000 students your way. What’s happened to them? They’ve disappeared into thin air.” And most of them said: ‘Well, they don’t disclose ... what can we do?’.”


What can we do? is the question Siabi was made to answer. Today, the father of two and OBE is a globally respected authority on how to help disabled people access a normal life.


But growing up in Iran, he’d never have guessed at such a future.


“I couldn’t see very well, so for the first 10 years of my education I failed miserably, more so in all important subjects of science. At 15 I was diagnosed with a rare eye condition. I was almost blind in one eye and had 30-40% vision in the other.”


It was rare – but fixable. Fixed, he came to the UK to get a PHD in electronics and quantum physics. Barely out of Southampton University, he and Ganjavian (who is dyslexic) happened upon their vocation.


“What we set up 25 years ago was purely by chance. We spotted a gap in an area of work. Disabled people were asked to go and do lots of things on their own. They weren’t really helped, just told ‘Here’s some money – find a solution’.” We brought those solutions together; offered a single port of call for problems, support, delivery, training – and it worked. We use enabling (assistive) technology to help people to


overcome the impact of their disability in education.”


Enabling students was one thing. What happened to them next was another. Siabi realised the workplace was failing them – and itself – very badly.


“Most of these people end up going into employment and start struggling all over again.”


If they even get that far. Online applications and formula, linear interviews are a barrier from the outset, he says.


“Ask a dyslexic person to be creative and they’ll blind you with knowledge and experience but that’s not how the tests are done. Job matching is really poor. People just get by, then end up in a job they’re not suitable for. So they underperform, and just like at school they’re called stupid, underperforming; accused of wasting their manager’s time. They end up either having a breakdown or moving on.”


So Microlink spread decisively into the corporate field. Its star player is Lloyds Bank which has invested to the tune of £640 per person, on average, to implement Microlink’s programme. The average time spent solving that person’s issues is 14 days.


Dr Nasser Siabi


“What the bank has gained from this investment has been more than 80% reduction in condition-related absence, significant gains in productivity, large increases in engagement scores and disclosure rates but above all, huge improvement in the wellbeing and no doubt retention of talent,” says Siabi.


The world is cottoning on; Microlink programmes are rolling out across the US and Canada. As well as its Chandler’s Ford base in Hampshire there’s an office in Cape Town. The business blossomed, contracted through the downturn and is now blossoming again as more and more employers catch on to the long-term benefits.


“We turn around a sour relationship between a line manager and employee, between an employee and a team, between a person and a whole organisation,” explains Siabi. These sour relationships cost money to manage and often end up in tears for both sides and it’s been accepted that it’s just a fact of life.


“It doesn’t have to be any more.”


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH COAST – FEBRUARY 2017


businessmag.co.uk


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