Astriid

Astriid was founded David Shutts OBE, following his cancer diagnosis in 2017. His own lived experience, struggling to find meaningful work whilst battling with his illness left him feeling valueless at a time when he needed all his mental strength. Around one in five of the UK population is disabled and one in three of those disabled people of working age in the UK have an energy limiting condition. Since COVID-19 and the rise of long COVID, this number is increasing each month.

This enormous community of people that we call the 'invisible talent pool' recognise that the value of work is far more than the wages paid. Employment provides routine, a sense of normality, challenges and rewards and when approached correctly can also facilitate a greater sense of well-being. Our aim at Astriid is to support candidates who live with long term conditions by providing practical help and support tailored to their individual needs. We help them to develop a fresh vision for their future by supporting them in CV writing, interview skills and the identification of transferable skills through a self-serve model but is available to anyone within the UK at any time.

The charity is run by small but dedicated team of individuals who have lived through the challenges of long-term health conditions and faced numerous barriers when it comes to finding employment. We have over 2000 candidates signed up to our support program and are committed to providing them with practical help and support that is unique and tailored to their individual needs.

Details of the services we offer

We engage with employers to raise awareness of our invisible talent pool of people with long term health conditions and educate them about how to remove barriers to recruitment and employment for this group.

We source job vacancies from our business partners and seek to make a direct match from among our candidate pool where appropriate, as well as sharing job listings with all our candidates when relevant.

We broker the relationship between candidate and employer where appropriate throughout the recruitment process.

We support candidates in a variety of ways: 1-2-1 mentoring and interview preparation for the ‘work-ready’ tier of candidates; coaching workshops from our volunteer job coaches for ‘non work’ ready candidates, including re-shaping their career direction after acquiring a long term condition, confidence building around reasonable adjustments, CV writing and interview skills.

We provide training workshops as well as e-learning courses for employers and managers on supporting people with long term conditions at work and on inclusive recruitment.

We offer a bespoke research service employers to evaluate disability inclusion in their workforce. This can include an employee survey to measure levels of disability confidence among both disabled employees and their line managers, as well as a focus group for disabled employees to share their experiences and aspirations within a safe space.

Geographical areas we cover

We are UK-wide and all our candidate support work is delivered remotely.