Living Reasons is a concept of charity and business working together to achieve the best results possible for neurodivergent people by promoting and developing employment, recruitment, volunteering and learning opportunities that focus on a neurodiverse work force.

We believe that making the work environment more accessible for neurodivergent people, we will make a better place to work for everyone whether neurodivergent of not, leading to a happier, healthier and ultimately more productive workforce. With a focus on working less but being paid more, having fair time off and the focus being on personal development and fitting the role around the person, building a culture rather than enforcing a false sense of one.

We are currently in the set up stage of the charity, we are recruiting trustees and once we have three trustees on the board, we will be incorporating the charity as a CIO and moving on to the funding phase - if you would like to be involved as a trustee, please follow the link to our volunteer vacancies in the main menu at the top of the webpage.

Below you will also see our plans to ensure any employee working for or on behalf of the charity, will have a focus on development, fair pay and a defined work life balance - the beneficiaries of our charity will be the people who work and volunteer on behalf of the charity.

Press the plus signs below to read what our 8 charity goals will be.

Creating employment opportunities through traditional charity operations including volunteer management, support work, financial operations, human resources, training and development, retail, fundraising, marketing and events. Additionally, funding commercial business projects in various sectors that promote and develop people who are on the neurodivergent spectrum and promotes true neurodiversity in all operations and trading activity.

Recruitment and employment support for people who are on the neurodivergent spectrum and related conditions within existing organisations. Supplying comprehensive training and understanding to employers regarding neurodivergent workers – including policy writing, day to day management and reasonable adjustment support.

Sign posting to, support through and supply of mental health, lifestyles and general support for day to day living for people who are on the neurodivergent spectrum.

Training, personal development and confidence building within in the neurodivergent community to increase employability and sustainable employment and learning opportunities.

Support in relation to communication , interaction and access with public services for neurodivergent people, including but not limited to NHS, Job centres and benefits and legal systems.

Progression of the neurodivergent community to ensure support in the community from people who understand the needs of the community.

Advocacy for people with neurodevelopmental conditions and learning difficulties within all areas of day-to-day living, predominantly led by neurodivergent people and people with learning difficulties, ensuring that all solutions are right for the people affected by these conditions.

The supply of services and commercial outlets that are neurodivergent friendly, catering for all neurodiversity through research and user led environment planning, adaptations and adjustments.

When employing staff internally or with our partner company that will be running our income generation and trading activities, we will always ensure we do all we can to be as flexible as possible with working hour.

Living Reasons will have a maximum working week of 28 hours per week (4 days) to ensure that we are always working towards a work life balance that works for everyone.

There will be flexible working opportunities for all roles and if able, work from home will be the default option, unless the employee would rather work in an office.

We will always discuss flexible options at interview and stick to it.

Read the next section for our pay structure which will show that although we are ensuring people work less hours, this doesn’t mean less money. We believe how time is spent at work, is more important that how much time is spent at work.

When employing staff internally or with our partner company that will be running our income generation and trading activities, we will pay a minimum hourly rate that £5 above the governments allocated ‘living wage’ but also that the minimum we will pay for any role, regardless of a persons age, is £20. Meaning that the minimum hourly rate we will pay, is £20 for an entry level role until the ‘living wage’ reaches more than £15 in which case we will increase this minimum to £5 above the new ‘living wage’ hourly rate.

This means, that an entry level role that is allocated 21 hours per week would pay £21,840.

In contrast, the ‘living wage’ allocation for 2024/2025 is £11.44 per hours, an person working 35 hours on this wage would be paid £20,820.80 (over £1,000 less per year for working 14 more hours a week).

Additionally to this, anyone who is employed on behalf of Living Reasons, will receive a 5% pension contribution as standard, even if the employee decides to only take the minimum enrolment amount of 3%. - that is £1 for every hour worked that will be set aside for everyone’s future.

When employing staff internally or with our partner company that will be running our income generation and trading activities, the paid time off that will be given will ensure that employees will truly spend more time not at work. The below is our paid time off plan:

6 week bookable annual leave

4 welfare days that can be taken when needed (additional to annual leave).

All general operations of the charity will not take place from 23rd December to 2nd January, this time will be paid time off. If there was a need to have staffing during this time for emergency cover, it would be paid at an increased hourly rate.

Everyone can have their birthday off or if that is not possible, the person will be paid double time or have a day in lieu to use later (which ever they choose).

Annual leave is actively encouraged at all times to ensure people take it, there is no point having the annual leave, if you don’t take it.

When employing staff internally or with our partner company that will be running our income generation and trading activities, there will always be a focus on personalised development and progression planning.

The first six months of a persons employment will be focused on settling in to the organisation, the people in the organisation and the employee’s team getting to know the new employee. In this time period, rather than focusing intensive induction time and pushing for high level results it will focus on understanding each other and building the relationship. In this period, only gross misconduct would lead to disciplinary action and potential dismissal, everything else will be dealt with as a learning experience for both the employee and the organisation/team/line manager. This time period is also to get to know the role the employee will be undertaking.

The following 6 month period is a personalised personal development plan, led by the employee and guided by the line manager and training team. This is about building on what was learnt in the proceeding 6 months and working together to build skills needed for the role but also looking at how the role fits with the person and the productivity of the team. There is a clear focus on developing skills in this period to make sure everyone is as productive as possible while also understanding individual needs.

This leads to a 12 months is the period that is used to build the role with the role holder in mind and will use the knowledge and skills built up in the previous 12 months to make decisions of how the role and the management of the employee will look moving forward.

During the above 12 month period and beyond, progression training and development will be an option for all employees, whether this is progressing internally or externally, the future of all employees are focused on - whether staying in their role but getting more from it or moving on to a new role, the focus is constantly on development throughout employment.

When employing staff internally or with our partner company that will be running our income generation and trading activities, recruitment options for both paid staff and volunteers will offer a preferred method of communicating.

The plan is to have applications and interviews through both verbal and written means, incorporating video as an option to apply for roles and have interviews over WhatsApp calling, the purpose for this is to ensure everyone has the opportunity to apply for roles and are not put off.

Applications and interviews will also be more focused on the individual and transferrable skills or ways of working and thinking so, again this opens up conversation rather than searching for answers to specific questions that can be practiced, we actually get to know people.

Also, we would look to be open and honest and look at other roles that are available that would be more suitable for a person if they were not right for the role they have applied for - sometimes we just don’t know what job we would be best at and a little nudge can make a massive difference, especially when development is the main employment focus.