Raising the curtain on careers

Hello everyone! My name is Natalie Duo, I’m a co-trainer at Mencap, delivering awareness training to employers so they can make their workplaces more accessible to people with a learning disability . I have a learning disability myself, and previously studied on Mencap’s supported internship programme.

 I am passionate about shining a spotlight on the work Mencap does and on the amazing employers who support us and the people on our programmes. To do this, I am interviewing people from employers we work with, learning about all the different kinds of work people with a learning disability can do.

Recently, I did one of my most exciting interviews yet! I spoke to Jenny Scorer who is the lead General Manager at Delfont Mackintosh, the theatre group and one of the major employer partners we work with. We spoke about how Delfont Mackintosh and Mencap are working together to create amazing opportunities for learners on our supported internships .

Jenny on stage at the Gielgud Theatre with Natalie
 

Natalie: Some people may not have heard of Delfont Mackintosh before. Could you tell us about what the company does?

Jenny: We are a theatre group in the West End of London, operating eight theatres in total. We have a mixture of theatres like the Sondheim, Victoria Palace and Novello, that are home to long running shows like Les Miserables, Hamilton and Mamma Mia, and then we have venues like the Gielgud that run lots of different types of shows – plays and musicals - that run through the year for a shorter time.

N: What is your role at Delfont Mackintosh and how do you work with Mencap?

J: I’ve been working for Delfont Mackintosh for ten years now and am very lucky in that I love my job! There’s two parts to my role currently. I’m the General Manager of the Gielgud Theatre and look after the general operation of that venue. But I’m also the lead General Manager for the Group. I have lots of different hats in this role, working across our different theatres. One of my responsibilities is to work with Mencap to find placements for the learners who come to us as part of their supported internship. We started with one person on a placement and found it worked really well for them and for us too, so we quickly expanded it.

N: How many learners have you supported and what kind of work do they do?

J: We’re currently on internship number four. We started with placements at the Gielgud and the Prince of Wales theatres, then we had one at the Wyndhams and we’re just about to start one at The Victoria Palace. The first learner we took on placement was offered a job at the Prince of Wales and another learner has just been offered a role.

I would like every Delfont Mackintosh venue to have had a learner on placement eventually, though we know not every placement will necessarily be right for every learner. We did have one learner, for example, who had to leave their placement because the timings didn’t work for them. We are part of a night-time economy ultimately and we do finish late sometimes which doesn’t work for everyone. But this is part of what work experience is about – finding out what does and doesn’t work for you and what fits your life. If we can give people a taste of work to see if it works for them or not, then that’s great too.

Every learner we’ve taken on placement has worked on front of house and we try to give them a wide range of roles - everything from ticket scanning to directing patrons, selling ice creams and programmes, and working on the cloak room and kiosks. Front of house is a really important part of the customer experience. We always say that the moment when customers first walk through the door is when the show starts for them. Some of the learners we’ve had in these roles have really understood this and have been amazing. The young man we have at The Gielgud currently is a demon on the kiosks! I’ve never seen anyone sell like he can, he’s incredible!

We try to find our what role learners are most comfortable in, but we also try to push them out of their comfort zone and help them realise what else they can do. Theatre is a great workplace for doing this because it provides such a sociable work environment. 

You can’t do theatre over Zoom, we entirely rely on people being there. There’s quite a lot of down time too while the show is on when you can really get to know the people you’re working with and so people can quickly make friends and develop their confidence in the workplace. We had one learner, for example, who was very shy at first. But once he started to click with a few members of the team we really started to see his personality and what a dry sense of humour they have, and they became much more confident! Another learner came to our closing night party for a show and we all celebrated that together. So theatre is naturally a really inclusive place that attracts a wide range of employees anyway, so working with Mencap and with their learners was a really good fit for us.  

Working with Mencap also provided a great chance to offer people an opportunity they may not have considered before. I think it’s quite common that people don’t really think of theatres as an employer, but it’s a great place to work and there’s a real variety of work you can do. 

If you’re a friendly person and you like customer service, front of house is a fantastic job and a right giggle! It’s not just acting, there’s so many roles like lighting, box office and front of house, and in London especially, we’re so well connected and accessible. It’s a great industry that anyone can work in and I’d thoroughly advise anyone to consider the theatre as a career option if they haven’t before.

N: What have you learned from working with people with a learning disability?

J: We’ve probably become better employers for everyone since we’ve began working with Mencap and their supported internship learners because we no longer make assumptions about what people know before they come to us. Previously, we’ve assumed people knew things about the roles we offer, like the fact that we have really busy periods and then periods like when the show is on where not much happens. We’ve found it really helpful to have to think about breaking these kinds of things down for people.

It’s been great for our team as well to have to think about how they train new staff members and to be adaptable to the learning style of the person they’re training. It’s really made a lot of people far more tolerant and more aware of what they’re saying and how they’re saying it.

We’ve also learnt to make little adjustments to help people really thrive at work. We’ve always made reasonable adjustments when required but we’ve been able to think a little more broadly about what we can do. For example, the learner who works at The Prince of Wales just started to click with the team down there having started at The Gielgud, so we said: ‘go there full time if that works best for you’. He has a great cheeky chappy thing that really works with our audiences we get down there for ‘The Book of Mormon’.

We’ve realised as well that the range of responsibilities that the learners can take on is broader than we first thought. We started with a list of three roles and then we thought: ‘hold on a minute, they could also do this, this and this’. The learners have proved this to us and showed us that they can do it and we’ve adjusted roles to fit their skillsets.

N: How has Mencap supported you to work with people with a learning disability?

J: When we first started working with Mencap, we had so many questions. We didn’t know much about the learners - what level they’d be at, how much experience they would have. Mencap were really patient with all our questions and provided answers to all of them.

Then there are the Mencap skills coaches who support the learners in their placements and who to be honest act as a safety blanket for us as much as the learners! I remember one of the learners we’ve had would tell their skills coach to leave them alone because they felt ready to do it all themselves and eventually, we too  want to reduce this support so learners can work independently But for us, to know we have someone there who can support and answer our questions is really helpful. The skills coaches have also been fantastic in letting us mentor the learners as well, rather than just taking over. As much as it’s a sign of the learners’ progression, we’re always sorry to see the skills coaches go as we develop great relationships with them as well as the learners.

It's also really great to be able to feed back to Mencap about what the learners learn about when they’re in the classroom with their Mencap tutors and what we think it would be beneficial for them to work on. Sometimes this is specific procedural stuff, like with one young man who we wanted to develop a script to use in different scenarios such as when there’s a late comer who needs to be shown to their seat once the show has already started. This helped them to think about such scenarios that do come up, with a bit more time, without the immediate pressure of it actually happening. 

But more often than not, it’s things like workplace dynamics and how to be a good colleague, of what is and what’s not appropriate in the workplace. These are things that could have been tricky for us to raise directly with the learners, but we could raise it via the skills coaches so it could be covered in classes instead. It’s been really rewarding to work on solutions to issues together in this way and to see how people improve as a result.  

N: What are you most proud of about working with people with a learning disability?

J: To see how learners progress to the point where they can be offered paid employment and knowing that we’ve given them the training and support to get there is a really proud achievement for us. I’m under no illusion that our placements will be right for every learner that walks through the door. But to know that we can do it, and that we can adapt our workplace and still offer the exceptional quality of customer service that we pride ourselves on at Delfont Mackintosh, is amazing.

Now when I talk to colleagues about taking on placements, I tell them: ‘don’t worry, they can do it!’ People are often anxious about telling people when they need to improve, but we’re managers, we manage people. I’m really proud that we’ve been able to offer true work experience where we help people to improve.

We do have other employees as well who have learning difficulties that we didn’t know about because they hadn’t disclosed them. They had found our training processes more difficult than we’d anticipated but, for whatever reason, they hadn’t wanted to ask for any reasonable adjustments. 

But now they see use working with Mencap and with the learners on the supported internship and they understand that it is absolutely fine to ask for such adjustments. Making the theatre a more accessible place to work for everyone in this way is also something I’m really proud of.