Something Happened This Week That I Think Really Matters
Sometimes when you start pushing for change, you don’t really know if anyone is listening.
You send emails.
You tell your story.
You explain, over and over again, that a wheelchair is not just a piece of equipment; for those of us who rely on them, they are.
- our independence,
- our mobility,
- our dignity,
- they are, in many ways, our legs.
About a year ago, I wrote to a few people at Qantas asking if we could start a conversation about wheelchairs and how they are handled in the aviation industry. Not to blame anyone. Not to attack anyone. But to try and help people understand what it actually means when a wheelchair is damaged.
Since then, I believe, something quite remarkable has happened.
- I’ve done toolbox talks as training sessions,
- Made a training video,
- I’ve spoken with ground crews,
- had several Zoom meetings
- about to do a ramp tour.
I’ve had honest conversations with the people who physically lift and load our chairs every day.
And this week, Qantas shared that message across their global staff newsletter, Roo News, so that their people all around the world could hear directly from someone who actually travels in a wheelchair and lives with the reality of what happens when a chair is damaged.
Think about it for a moment.
The message is now being seen by the people who load the aircraft.
The people who manage the airports.
The training departments.
The executives.
The decision-makers.
This, I believe, is how change happens; being when understanding spreads through an organisation from the ground up and from the top down.
What has impressed me most throughout this entire process is that the people I have dealt with at Qantas have never treated me or what drives me as a PR exercise. They have treated it as an education issue and a human issue. They have wanted their people to understand the why, not just the process.
Because when people understand why something matters, they start to care.
And when people care, behaviour changes.
There is still a long way to go in the aviation industry. Wheelchairs are still being damaged far too often all around the world, and there is still a lot of work to be done across all airlines and ground handling companies globally.
But this week felt like a step forward, a HUGE & real one.
So I just want to say thank you to the people at Qantas who have and are still listening, who have been willing to learn, and who have been willing to educate their own people.
Not many organisations are willing to listen to one customer and then share not just my but our story across their entire global workforce.
But they did, and here it is:
And this deserves to be recognised and celebrated.
Stuart
The Travelling Para