Employing People with Disabilities by Ewa Giermanowska & Mariola Racław & Dorota Szawarska

Author:Ewa Giermanowska & Mariola Racław & Dorota Szawarska
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030245528
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Integration in the labour market as an element of value;

Fostering full accessibility;

Relationships with suppliers and subcontractors;

Social action;

Communication as a responsible tool.

Activities related to fulfilling the CSR-D standards recommendations are voluntary because socially responsible initiatives of companies should be undertaken voluntarily as a conscious commitment. Therefore, the key factor in the process of creating the above standards is the non-obligatory “auto-standardization”, which does not use hard tools and does not enforce the law (Mazur 2016). Sociocultural aspects are important. The companies operate as allowed by the broadly defined external environment, which is confirmed by observations of Polish companies (Barczyński 2015). The observations revealed the reluctance of some entrepreneurs to publicize information on the employment of disabled people. This was connected with the fear of products or services of such companies labelled as of lower quality (as produced by people with disabilities). The unfavourable media climate, which was due to numerous irregularities in the use of public financial support dedicated to the employment of disabled people in the early 1990s, was also discouraging. Employment of people with disabilities was treated by entrepreneurs as a “promotional ballast” (Barczyński 2015, p. 25).

In promoting social responsibility, “diversity teams” often help companies, ensuring that the prohibition of discrimination is respected and that employees’ talents are developed regardless of the socio-demographic characteristics of the employed. The relational dimension of CSR activities emphasizes the need to conduct a proper personnel policy that will ensure a satisfactory standard of living for employees and their professional development, appropriate organisational culture and internal communication within the company. Entrepreneurs began to take notice of diversity after many lawsuits filed against large corporations at the end of the twentieth century (mainly in the United States) for unequal treatment of employees (Dobbin and Kalev 2016). Unfortunately, modern programmes to combat prejudices and increase diversity often refer to practices used in the 1960s and have low effectiveness in the fight against stereotypes. Sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev (2016) indicate that they are based mainly on controlling the behaviour of managers and shaming them with imposed rules or with the help of re-education programmes. Meanwhile, the most effective programmes to promote diversity engage managers in working for diversity; they enable them to have more intense professional contacts with representatives of minority groups, diversified by gender, age or disability. They use the natural need of managers to build a positive image in the eyes of others. Voluntary training, cross-training, participation in special task teams for diversity, participation in programmes aimed at recruiting employees from minority groups or mentoring are considered to be more effective tools (Dobbin and Kalev 2016).

Although disability is a fundamental dimension of diversity in organisations (in addition to gender, nationality, age, sexual orientation or ethnic origin), still—as shown by the analysis—there is “the conflict between disability and the ableist business case for diversity management has contributed to a limited attention to disability within diversity management practice and diversity management research” (Thanem 2008, p. 589). It is connected with the focus on the economic aspects of employing disabled people (profit/loss analysis), omitting social aspects.

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