Job performance of employees with disabilities: Interpersonal and intrapersonal resources matter

‘Sometimes you just need someone to take a chance on you’: An internship programme for autistic graduates at Deutsche Bank, UK

Autistic individuals often face significant challenges to obtaining and maintaining meaningful employment – more so than other disability groups. Work placements appear to be an important step to promote employment outcomes, yet there remains a lack of knowledge about the real-life experiences of those involved in such schemes. This study is the first to take a multi-informant, longitudinal approach to examine corporate work-placement schemes: specifically, an internship for autistic graduates at Deutsche Bank, UK. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with interns, their hiring managers and the colleagues who worked alongside them. Results demonstrated positive, meaningful experiences for the majority of those involved, however, some interns also reported anxiety, difficulties in judging communication and confusion regarding office rules. The current findings contribute to a better understanding of the experiences of skilled autistic individuals in work, and should inform the creation of subsequent programmes aimed to promote employment opportunities for autistic people.

Is There a Downside of Job Accommodations? An Employee Perspective on Individual Change Processes

By modifying the work environments, work routines, and work tasks of employees with health restrictions, organizations can effectively help them continue to perform their jobs successfully. As such, job accommodations are an effective tool to secure the continued employment of aging workers who develop disabilities across their life span. However, while accommodations tackle health-related performance problems, they might create new challenges on the part of the affected employee. Building on the organizational change and accommodations literatures, we propose a theoretical framework of negative experiences during accommodation processes and apply it to qualitative data from group interviews with 73 manufacturing workers at a German industrial company who were part of the company's job accommodation program. Although problems associated with health-related impairments were mostly solved by accommodation, affected employees with disabilities reported about interpersonal problems and conflicts similar to those that typically occur during organizational change. Lack of social support as well as poor communication and information were raised as criticisms. Furthermore, our findings indicate that discrimination, bullying, and maltreatment appear to be common during accommodation processes. To make accommodation processes more successful, we derive recommendations from the organizational change literature and apply it to the accommodation context. We also emphasize unique characteristics of the accommodation setting and translate these into practical implications.

Childhood-onset disability, strong ties and employment quality

Purpose

Persons with childhood-onset disabilities are among the most marginalized populations, often unemployed or underemployment in jobs providing neither adequate hours for financial self-sufficiency nor fulfillment through skill-utilization. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which social capital in the form of strong ties with family and friends is associated with enhanced employment outcomes for persons with childhood-onset disabilities.

Design/methodology/approach

Questioning the current theoretical consensus that strong social ties are unimportant to employment quality, the authors draw on disability research and opportunity, motivation and ability social capital theory to propose a model of the impact of strong ties with family and friends on paid-work-hours and skill-utilization as well as the potential moderating role of gender and disability severity. The authors then test this model using data from 1,380 people with childhood-onset disabilities and OLS regression analysis.

Findings

As theorized, family-of-origin-size is positively associated with hours worked. Family-of-origin-size is also associated with having more close friends and children. These strong ties, in turn, are positively associated with hours worked. The impact of having more children on hours worked and skill-utilization, however, is positive for men but non-significant for women.

Originality/value

This study breaks new ground by focusing on the association between strong ties with family and friends and employment quality for people with childhood-onset disabilities – a marginalized and understudied group. Findings further indicate the particular vulnerability of women with disabilities.

Workplace inclusion of persons with a disability

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to integrate research on human resource systems with work on disability management practices to outline how multinationals across India and Germany are engaged in efforts to increase workplace inclusion of persons with a disability.

Design/methodology/approach

Semi-structured interviews with respondents from multinational corporations in India and Germany were conducted, transcribed, and analyzed.

Findings

Employers followed three guiding principles (i.e. beliefs): importance of harnessing diversity, encouraging multi-stakeholder engagement internally, and engaging with the external ecosystem to build internal human resource capabilities. Respondents further noted two interdependent and mutually constitutive programs that covered the life cycle of the employee: job flexibility provisions and integration programs. Country-specific differences existed in terms of perceived external stakeholder support and availability of talent.

Research limitations/implications

The results complement prior research with respect to the importance of organizational factors for the inclusion of persons with a disability and also extend prior research by shedding light on the role of the national context in such inclusion endeavors.

Practical implications

Findings indicate that disability-inclusion principles may be universal, but their operationalization is region specific. Global organizations must be aware of these differences to design effective inclusion programs.

Social implications

The study helps in designing and evaluating appropriate inclusion initiatives for persons with disabilities, an important yet underutilized group of potential employees in both India and Germany.

Originality/value

This is the first study to investigate country-specific commonalities and differences in fostering workplace inclusion of persons with disabilities in India and Germany.