Beyond public relations: how to promote the recruitment and inclusion of disabled people?

Legislation to promote the recruitment of disabled workers in France – and, in particular, a quota requiring companies to recruit six percent of workers with disabilities – has existed for over two decades. Yet, most French companies are still struggling to meet this quota, with a national average of 3,6% of direct recruitment in 2023. To explain the failure to meet this quota, it is necessary to enter the black box of French companies to see what concrete disability programs have been put in place and what could be improved. In my research, I explore these questions in detail.

Understanding the limitations of existing approaches to disability inclusion

To understand organizations’ challenges to tackle these questions, I interviewed insider activists – i.e., actors who sought to mobilize inside their organizations to improve the corporate approach to disability inclusion. These actors were already mobilizing ten years ago to try to improve how companies dealt with disability inclusion, and they developed revealing diagnoses of some key issues explaining our challenge to meet the 6% quota. First, many companies did not implement any policies to meet this quota, preferring to pay the fine, rather than hiring more disabled workers. Second, many companies have focused their efforts on public relations and communication on disability inclusion, instead of the key issues of direct recruitment and workplace accommodations. Third, while the state promoted collective bargaining with labor unions to favor disability recruitment and inclusion, companies had a minimal approach to these collective bargaining, using them to save money, while keeping unambitious targets of recruitment. Fourth, programs of disability inclusion and accommodation tend to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach that fails to integrate how disabilities are varied and how solutions need to be tailored to each individual. These limited approaches to accommodation could be particularly detrimental to workers with invisible disabilities, whose needs for accommodations are not easy to capture, and who might balk at disclosing their disability if they do not feel secure about the impact it will have on their career. Last, my interviewees described how many line managers refused to recruit qualified disabled jobseekers, showing how there are deep-rooted forms of workplace ableism in workplaces.

These various factors can explain why, despite a relatively ambitious progressive legal context, French companies are still lagging to meet their quota. During interviews, insider activists often analyzed how they faced individual and organizational apathy to implement significant programs of disability inclusion. Corporate actors initially lacked knowledge about disability inclusion; they didn’t necessarily take action to meet the quota or enforce the law, and if they did, their action could be superficial and reflect their own prejudices or limited understanding of the variety of disabilities.

A roadmap for action

Where to go from there? The insider activists I interviewed had several concrete plans and suggestions to improve disability inclusion in firms. First, they advocated for more proactive corporate commitments, with voluntary collective agreements to foster disability recruitment and disability inclusion in a more proactive way. Collective agreements can be a tool to set recruitment targets, ensure access to workplace accommodations, and proactively ensure career development for workers with disabilities. By contrast, spending on communication and company-wide training should not be prioritized (while this has been the case, according to my interviewees, in several companies). Organizations should favor direct recruitment of disabled workers for long-term contracts and keep a significant budget for tailored disability accommodations to ensure long-term positions for workers with disabilities.

These actors also tried to promote a secure a position as disability manager – a position mandatory in France for companies with more than 250 employees since 2019. My study demonstrated that such positions are crucial, as there is a strong need for “relational regulation” around disability inclusion. Disability referees are essential to incentivize their colleagues to hire disabled workers in their team. They also play a crucial role in helping the coordination necessary for truly relevant workplace accommodation, e.g., for connecting with office managers, IT services, front-line managers, or HR departments for different accommodation needs.

This study was also helpful to uncover the requirements to be an efficient and relevant disability manager. First, becoming a disability manager requires specific expertise. It should not be a side job for someone who has already a full-time job, which seems to be the case in many companies today, where human resources professionals take on the role of disability referees without having been trained for it. Disability accommodations are very diverse in nature, and therefore disability managers need to train to develop awareness of this broad variability and the range of possible responses. For these positions, recruiting someone who has some intimate knowledge of disability and who can see the various barriers to be removed (interpersonal, structural, logistical, environmental) can be a great asset. Often, the insider activists in my research were disabled themselves, but they all stressed the need for open communication with any disabled workers to be able to truly meet their needs, beyond general categories of accommodations.

An invitation to take the job of disability managers seriously

My research thus urges companies to take seriously the need to recruit and train competent disability managers. While the law is increasingly stringent around the question of disability inclusion, appointing symbolically disability managers without giving them the tools, resources, and appropriate training will not help them become more inclusive. This is a legal, financial and reputational risk for non-compliant companies, while solutions exist to be truly inclusive.