Dawn Dawes – Vendor Merchandiser

Dawn Dawes doesn’t need to use a map or satellite navigation to find her way around the hundreds of miles she regularly covers in her job as a Vendor Merchandiser. She relies on her well trained memory to remember the routes in her patch around the Black Country and Worcestershire.

Dawn, who works for Walsall based company Coinadrink, has dyslexia, which was diagnosed when she was a teenager. She can read but finds it difficult to make sense of sequences of words. “If I look at a page of text, words just seem to be running all over the page” says Dawn. She also memorises words, bar codes, stock supplies and even conversations rather than depend on reading words.

Employer’s story

When she became Dawn’s line manager, Operations Controller Joanne Hall, wasn’t even aware that Dawn had dyslexia. She says: “It isn’t something we’ve ever really needed to discuss especially as most of our communication is verbal anyway.”

When she recruits new Vendor Merchandisers, Joanne says that her priorities are to find people with the ability and the personal qualities for the job. The recruitment and selection process gives both disabled and non-disabled candidates a fair chance to prove themselves before they’re actually employed. “We have an interview process but interviews don’t tell you much about how someone will actually perform in a job so we give all candidates the opportunity to try the job out for a day” says Joanne.

Work trials

The ‘work trial’ approach is effective in identifying candidates who have the stamina for what can be a physically demanding job. Like Dawn, some Vendor Merchandisers have to drive hundreds of miles every week. Customer liaison is also an important part of the job and this says Joanne, is one of Dawn’s key strengths. “Dawn is very good at building relationships with customers and is generally quite good at communicating. She provides a lot of valuable feedback from customers, which helps us improve what we do as a company.”

Employee's story

According to the British Dyslexia Association, ‘Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty which mainly affects the development of literacy and language related skills.’ During her early years at school, Dawn knew that she had a problem reading words. However, she enjoyed learning and particularly enjoyed history and geography. A teacher finally diagnosed her dyslexia when she was 14 but at the time, no specific support was offered by her school to help her deal with it.

Self-support strategies

Dawn doesn’t need any specific support to do her job. She says: “The only thing I do suggest, is that people talk to me rather than write things down. Also, when I took my Food Hygiene Certificate and City & Guilds qualifications at work, one of the things I found really helpful, was being able to take a verbal test which meant I didn’t have to read questions and write down answers.”

As someone who has had a disability for many years, Dawn believes that the best thing employers can do when recruiting disabled people, is to support them to develop their own strategies for managing their disability. Dawn’s strategy of developing her memory skills, has been very successful and ensures that her disability is neither a barrier for her or for her employer.

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