Great Teamwork Helps Successfully Integrate 5 Deaf Employees!

Teqal (Pty) Ltd (www.teqal.co.za), a unique plastic packaging manufacturer that supplies 100% biodegradable packaging solutions, and is based in the highly successful Dube Tradeport SEZ in KZN, are proud to have successfully placed and integrated 5 deaf employees.

I must admit it was a daunting thought for the Teqal team!  We had to make sure we could integrate our deaf employees successfully into our manufacturing plant.  Being able to communicate effectively and ensure we could provide a safe workplace was crucial to our requirements – and we had no idea how to do that!  We also had a great deal of training to do and had no clue as to where to start doing it!

Fortunately for us, we have a  great affiliation and 2 fantastic service providers!

Our affiliate, Bradshaw LeRoux Consulting (www.bradshawleroux.co.za), who are South Africa’s leading disability inclusion and awareness specialists, helped us understand what was required and gave us comfort that the task was not so daunting, the requirements not that different, and referred us to eDeaf.  We would not have begun this journey without their professional, calm and very experienced help.  The fact that the owner of Bradshaw LeRoux is in a wheelchair herself, and is so competent and optimistic, actually made us excited about our decision!

eDeaf (www.edeaf.co.za) are the leading provider of (Deaf) Skills Development training in South Africa.  This amazing team supplied the CV’s of our staff, arrived with sign interpreters and a deaf consultant, and helped us effectively understand how best to communicate, do the interviews, taught us basic sign.  Their effective and efficient training gave us the tools and knowledge we needed. They are an extremely professional outfit who’s competence and proficiency make them a perfect fit for Teqal!  Their regular follow ups are also of great help to us.

Last but not least, our long serving and extremely capable OVS Solutions team (www.ovs-solutions.com) assisted with the changes we needed to make to our workforce compliance software – Rapid – so we could ensure the health, safety, induction, site access and communication with our new team members was easy and fully compliant.  This brilliant software and support team ensure our ongoing sustainable compliance and training – not only for our deaf employees but for our whole team!  Teqal would not be the world-class manufacturing facility it is today without this team and software.

What we anticipated to be an enormous task turned out to be a seamless process, which would not have been possible without these 3 phenomenal teams and the Rapid software.  We would like to thank everyone who helped us and look forward to many more placements with the collaboration of this great team!

Renee Kirkham

December 2020