they’ll have all this work experience and it’ll mean they can essentially come into the workplace and won’t require a huge amount of training or support. “Conceptually, everybody wants that but it’s pretty rare that you can find someone who can just step into a role and do everything. “There’s a bit of fear of employing someone who might be a bit different, someone who might have a disability that you can see on their face or someone who you can identify pretty quickly has severe anxiety, or maybe they’ve got other issues going on in terms of their housing or something like that. “It is educating the industry a bit more about the fact that hiring someone with a disability or with anxiety, it doesn’t have to be a terrifying thing. They just bring so much to businesses in terms of their abilities.
“There’s been evidence in terms of employing people with disability that often their attendance is much higher, they usually stay in a job for a lot longer. “Employing someone with a disability, a lot of the time you end up employing them for life. If you treat them well, they will show up every day and love being there. “I’m not speaking on behalf of someone with a disability but from what I’ve been told, from the people that I have worked with, is that they know how hard it is to get their foot in the door.” Ms Briffa, who worked her way up from a volunteer to head chef alongside her brother at Kinfolk (a social enterprise café) in Melbourne, moved to Tasmania in 2014 and quickly identified a skill shortage in hospitality in the state. It set the wheels in motion for Hamlet, which has now grown to offer two 10-week courses in front of house and kitchen, a food relief program
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