Employer engagement

According to Ingold and Stuart (Reference Ingold and Stuart2015), employer engagement can be seen as having two faces: ‘employer involvement with ALMPs and providers’ necessary engagement with employers’ (p. 444). Studies by Dall et al. (Reference Dall, Madsen, Larsen and Dokkedal2023) and Ingold (Reference Ingold2018) represent the second face by examining how staff within employment services work to involve employers. This article explores the first face, that is, the actions of employers.

Studies on the actions of employers have focussed on the motivations of employers to engage in ALMPs, and have generally found that it is driven by a combination of social and financial concerns (van Gestel & Nyberg, Reference van Gestel and Nyberg2009). Van der Aa and van Berkel (Reference Van der Aa and van Berkel2014) found hiring new workers, lowering costs and enacting social responsibility to be the main drivers of employer engagement. Simms (Reference Simms2017) reported that employers’ willingness to be engaged is dependent on the alignment between activation policies and the companies’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) and human resources (HR) logics. In smaller enterprises, the personal motivation of the manager to include vulnerable employees from the local community is often emphasised (Breimo et al., Reference Breimo, Anvik and Olsen2021). Other motivations include gaining improved access to low-skilled, low-wage labour (McGurk & Meredith, Reference McGurk, Meredith, Ingold and McGurk2023) and being proactively contacted by employment services with the purpose of work training or hiring (Ravn, Reference Ravn2022). However, several studies have found that there are distinctions between employers’ motivations to hire and their actual hiring (Bjørnshagen & Ugreninov, Reference Bjørnshagen and Ugreninov2021; Bredgaard, Reference Bredgaard2018).

Studies have also highlighted that employers take different roles in ALMPs. According to Van der Aa and van Berkel (Reference Van der Aa and van Berkel2014), employers can embody different roles, as either passive ‘clients’ or more pro-active ‘co-producers’. Building on this distinction, Orton and colleagues (Reference Orton, Green, Atfield and Barnes2019) refer to employers’ roles as those of ‘reactive gatekeepers’ (e.g. passive recipients of ‘job-ready’ jobseekers) or ‘proactive strategic partners’ (e.g. being part of the design and implementation of ALMPs). The authors emphasise that the roles are not incompatible, and the same employer can perform both.

Ingold and Valizade (Reference Ingold and Valizade2015) divide employers into those who are ‘instrumentally engaged’ in one-off or ad hoc activities and those who are ‘relationally engaged’ through deeper and more systematic engagement in ALMPs. Further, Van Berkel (Reference Van Berkel2021) distinguishes between ‘vacancy-centred’ and ‘candidate-centred’ approaches. The former entails employers targeting candidates with the necessary skills and qualifications to fill vacancies, often recruiting from public employment services (PES). The latter entails developing a job or task that fits the skills and qualifications of the candidate and thus resembles customised employment.

Overall, the literature indicates that the concept of ‘engagement’ is varied, and that employers can frame their roles and inclusion efforts in different ways, depending on their employment needs and motivations for including vulnerable citizens. However, while recognising the value of empirical studies that develop relatively broad typologies of employers’ motivations and roles in ALMPs, it is noted that they often provide limited insight into employers’ roles towards jobseekers, or the specific activities undertaken by managers and other actors involved in the employment processes. In fact, few studies in the literature on employer engagement have investigated the micro-practices and behaviour of engaged employers. One exception is a study by Breimo et al. (Reference Breimo, Anvik and Olsen2021), which explores the role that committed employers play regarding jobseekers, in their case, youth with mental health problems. Breimo et al. find that employers spend considerable time motivating, encouraging and following up with the young people concerned and thus take on the role of social workers.

We contend that more systematic knowledge is needed on this and other forms of engagement from the perspective of managers’ micro-practices. While increasing attention is being paid to management and human resource management (HRM) practices in the employment of disadvantaged jobseekers (Ingold & McGurk, Reference Ingold and McGurk2023), emphasis is typically on the barriers to employment and managers’ lack of motivation rather than on the practices that promote sustained employment (Nagtegaal et al., Reference Nagtegaal, de Boer, van Berkel, Derks and Tummers2023; Schloemer-Jarvis et al., Reference Schloemer-Jarvis, Bader and Böhm2022). Understanding how managers promote the sustained employment of disadvantaged jobseekers requires insight into the leadership these managers perform – and more specifically, the type of inclusive leadership.

Inclusive leadership

Inclusive leadership is a leadership approach that actively seeks to promote diversity and equity across teams and workplaces. It emphasises the vital role and behaviour of managers in ensuring inclusion (Chrobot-Mason et al., Reference Chrobot-Mason, Ruderman, Nishii and Day2014; Ferdman & Deane, Reference Ferdman and Deane2014), and has been defined as ‘words and deeds by a leader or leaders that indicate an invitation and appreciation for others’ contributions’ (Nembhard & Edmondson, Reference Nembhard and Edmondson2006, p. 927) and as ‘leadership processes that promote experiences of inclusion among followers’ (Nishii & Leroy, Reference Nishii and Leroy2022, p. 686). Hence, it pays specific attention to the actions of managers in their inclusion efforts, and thus offers a useful complementary analytical lens to that of employer engagement.

According to Roberson and Perry (Reference Roberson and Perry2022), research on inclusive leadership entails two perspectives. One perspective draws on the diversity literature and focusses on leadership contributing to employees’ feelings of inclusion (Ferdman, Reference Ferdman2017). This literature is heavily inspired by optimal distinctiveness theory (Brewer, Reference Brewer1991), which contends that individuals have a basic need to be both similar and different from others. Thus, inclusive leadership entails managers’ ability to create work environments where employees from diverse social groups can be their unique selves and still identify with the workgroup – in other words, balancing between needs for belongingness and uniqueness (Shore et al., Reference Shore, Randel, Chung, Dean, Holcombe Ehrhart and Singh2011).

Another perspective draws from the leadership literature, and more specifically from leadership approaches emphasising the relational aspects between leaders and followers (Uhl-Bien, Reference Uhl-Bien2006) as well as studies under the umbrella of positive organisational scholarship (Dutton et al., Reference Dutton, Glynn and Spreitzer2008). Research from this perspective has highlighted how inclusive leadership entails building high-quality, trust-based relationships with employees (Nishii & Mayer, Reference Nishii and Mayer2009). In such relationships, employees feel valued and respected for their contributions, which both requires and reproduces employees’ feelings of psychological safety and empowerment (Nembhard & Edmondson, Reference Nembhard and Edmondson2006; Shore & Chung, Reference Shore and Chung2022). Furthermore, the positive lens on leadership underscores how managers are responsible for the personal and work-related growth of employees, identifying and nurturing their strengths and advantages (Dutton et al., Reference Dutton, Glynn and Spreitzer2008).

Reconciling these two perspectives is thus useful to understand the role of inclusive leadership in creating inclusive work environments consisting of people from different, as well as socially marginalised and disadvantaged, groups (Roberson & Perry, Reference Roberson and Perry2022). Inclusive leadership is particularly crucial for employees from marginalised groups, as these groups are often vulnerable to exclusion (Van Knippenberg & Van Ginkel, Reference Van Knippenberg and van Ginkel2022), experiencing either low belongingness and/or uniqueness, which create imbalances to the further disadvantage of the employees (Shore & Chung, Reference Shore and Chung2022).

Elaborating on the requirements for managers to balance between employees’ feelings of belonging and uniqueness, Korkmaz et al. (Reference Korkmaz, Van Engen, Knappert and Schalk2022) synthesise inclusive leadership behaviour as fostering employees’ uniqueness (e.g., promoting diversity), strengthening belongingness within a team (e.g., building relationships), showing appreciation (e.g., recognising efforts) and supporting organisational efforts (e.g., promoting the organisational mission on inclusion). This balancing, and inclusive leadership more broadly, occurs at multiple levels, namely, in one-on-one relationships with an employee in building strong, cohesive teams, and in creating inclusive organisational cultures (Nishii & Leroy, Reference Nishii and Leroy2022).

Notwithstanding these key leadership actions, there is a risk that managers might discriminate against jobseekers on the basis of their conception of the ‘ideal worker’ (Foster & Wass, Reference Foster and Wass2013). This means that managers could favour employees who align with their own, potentially biased, view on typical employee qualities. Studies on disability discrimination have highlighted how people with disabilities may face managers’ and co-workers’ ableist constructions of them as different from themselves or their own group (‘othering’) (Mik-Meyer, Reference Mik-Meyer2016) or assumptions that they are less productive than other groups of employees (Jammaers & Zanoni, Reference Jammaers and Zanoni2021). However, studies demonstrate that managers can also perceive certain disabilities and impairment-related competencies as particularly valuable (Lundberg & Solvang, Reference Lundberg and Solvang2022). Such a ‘value in disability’ perspective refers to managers’ deliberate efforts to identify and shape work around the abilities of jobseekers. This perspective fits well with the basic tenets of inclusive leaderships’ emphasis on identifying and nurturing the strengths and advantages of employees; however, this link has thus far been under-emphasised in the literature.

To date, very few studies on employer engagement have incorporated insights from inclusive leadership literature. One exception is Moore et al., Reference Moore, Hanson, Gustafson, Ingold and McGurk2023), who followed the development of an inclusion initiative at the multi-national cosmetics retailer Sephora. More et al. highlight the essential role of managers and the importance of inclusive leadership in fostering an environment of trust. Like Moore et al., we are interested in exploring different kinds of inclusive leadership engaged employers utilise in their efforts to sustainably employ vulnerable citizens. We believe this is the key area for gaining insights into managers’ behaviour towards disadvantaged groups and addressing some of the gaps in the employer engagement literature.

Employer engagement in Norway

The study is situated in Norway, which has a strong tradition of involving social partners, such as employers’ organisations and trade unions, in policy-making through the Inclusive Working Life Agreement introduced in 2001. Instead of imposing formal obligations on employers (Halvorsen & Hvinden, Reference Halvorsen and Hvinden2018), the agreement is a ‘demand-side’ policy, as policy-makers use persuasion strategies and rely on the voluntary efforts of companies (Hvinden, Reference Hvinden2004; Østerud & Vedeler, Reference Østerud and Vedeler2022). The government uses economic incentives, such as wage subsidies, in addition to support and follow-up provided to companies by job specialists from the PES. In recent years, due to international pressure, there has also been a greater willingness to implement disability-specific anti-discrimination legislation in Norway (Chhabra, Reference Chhabra2021). However, Norwegian employers have responded positively, but passively, to these regulatory measures (Østerud, Reference Østerud2020). Overall, evaluations have shown that political efforts to engage Norwegian employers have had limited effect on the labour market participation of disadvantaged individuals (Mandal et al., Reference Mandal, Midtgård and Mordal2019).

Sampling

We selected primarily managers from SMEs (i.e., companies with fewer than 250 employees, according to the EU definition) in Norway. Managers in smaller organisations typically have a financial responsibility at the company level and are thus less likely – or cannot afford – to perform ‘diversity washing’ (Baker et al., Reference Baker, Larcker, McClure, Saraph and Watts2022), that is, employing disadvantaged jobseekers merely to be perceived as inclusive.

On the basis of a positive deviance approach (Spreitzer & Sonenshein, Reference Spreitzer and Sonenshein2004), we also selected companies with positive experiences of employing disadvantaged jobseekers. Specifically, the companies needed to have employed and retained at least one disadvantaged jobseeker within the last 2 years who was still employed by them at the time of the study. The employed jobseekers needed to be on regular, paid work contracts to avoid selecting companies that recruited people on temporary work contracts or for apprenticeships.

About two-thirds of the companies were recruited through our contacts in the PES, who recommended them as highly inclusive. The rest were recruited through snowballing. We cannot verify how well the sample ‘ranks’ with regard to the included companies’ inclusiveness, but we have strong reason to believe they represent inclusive companies.

Data collection

The study builds on material from sixty-nine interviews in twenty-one companies (see Table 1). Before starting data collection, the study was registered at the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (SIKT) in line with national research integrity guidelines.

Table 1.

Overview of the sample

(*) The relative number of disadvantaged jobseekers in each company

(*=1–2, **=a larger number, ***=the majority of the employees).

In each company, we typically interviewed the general manager (GM) first, and in the largest companies, the HR manager, and asked to be put in touch with included jobseekers, their co-workers and if relevant, their collaborating partners from public or private employment services. These additional interviews are important, as interviewees, especially more senior managers, may give an overly positive or biased impression of themselves and their work (Schaefer & Alvesson, Reference Schaefer and Alvesson2020).

The interviews with managers focussed on their micro-practices in employing and retaining disadvantaged jobseekers. We probed into what they did in terms of their efforts to be inclusive and their reasons for doing so, often asking for specific examples of successful and unsuccessful inclusion. Interviews with the disadvantaged jobseekers focussed on their inclusion stories and their perceptions of the managers’ and others’ roles in the inclusion. We also probed their views of the managers and used these views to cross-check the interviews with the managers.

The interviews were conducted by two researchers between September 2021 and December 2022 and lasted between 30 minutes and 2 hours. The interviews with the managers typically lasted longest and often included a tour of the workplace as well as a more informal chat. In addition, we often received documents, such as presentations or documentation of the inclusion work. Most interviews were conducted at the workplace, but during lockdown some were conducted on Microsoft Teams or by phone. All interviews were recorded and transcribed with the explicit permission of the interviewees.

Data analysis

We took a hermeneutical approach to data analysis that allowed us to stick close and do justice to the material, and at the same time, spot the less obvious, underlying meanings in it (Van Manen, Reference Van Manen2023). The coding process was iterative, as we shifted between inductive coding of the material on the basis of insights from grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, Reference Corbin and Strauss1990) and more theoretical coding on the basis of the core themes of the interview guides (i.e. motivation and experiences, organisation of the inclusion work, description of a [successful] case of employment, support, cooperation and financial benefits). Thereafter, we iterated between in-depth analysis on the basis of each interview transcript and comparisons across interviews and companies using mainly the case reports (Glaser & Strauss, Reference Glaser and Strauss2017).

To identify micro-practices, we operationalised the concept as consisting of three elements. The first, underlying element was the managers’ motivation to employ disadvantaged jobseekers. The second element was the type of caring they provided, understood as the emotional support provided by the managers. Caring was not originally part of our research guide, but the emotional aspects it encompasses proved central in the managers’ inclusion work. The third element was the job carving (if any) conducted to accommodate disadvantaged jobseekers, that is, the identification of key components of a job and specific tasks that could be successfully performed by disadvantaged jobseekers. Hence, whereas caring involved the emotional side of micro-practices, job carving involved the concrete and practical side.

As we compared the three elements across the interviews and companies, we eventually grouped them into three overarching micro-practices of employer engagement. These micro-practices thus exhibit key commonalities in the managers’ engagement. They are not mutually exclusive, meaning that managers can display elements from two or more categories (see Table 1). We have categorised nine managers as vacancy-oriented, three as ability-oriented, and fourteen as growth-oriented, with some being placed in two categories. Contextual variables, such as industry, work tasks, and size (medium-sized or small), are not integrated in our analysis. It is worth mentioning that ability-oriented companies are more focussed on a specific skill (e.g. data skills/programming) or characteristic of the target group (e.g. young people from PES) than most other companies. An overview of the empirical material, including the three elements of micro-practices (motivations, caring, job carving) with analytical codes and illustrative quotes, is presented in the Appendix.

Vacancy-oriented engagement

Vacancy-oriented engagement resembles ordinary recruitment through its selection of relatively ‘easy-to-include’ jobseekers from the PES for vacancies in a company. Jobseekers are given limited follow-up and are only included to the extent that they conform to the job demands. Vacancy-oriented engagement is a rather standardised and ‘one-size-fits-all’ type of inclusion, and it is streamlined to make the employment processes as similar as possible to those of ordinary recruitment.

Vacancy-oriented engagement is primarily a sensible recruitment strategy if a company needs labour. The facility services, for example, ‘have no choice but to recruit from [the PES] because of the labour shortage’. Moreover, they can only employ people who can work ‘alone, many hours, every day’. Still, vacancy orientation is inclusion, as a key difference from ordinary recruitment is that these companies recruit actively from the PES:

Vacancy-oriented engagement requires what we define as ‘instrumental caring’. This means that it is quite superficial and confined to workplace matters, such as managers being attentive and accessible to employees during the workday – to ‘make them stay at work’, as one of the managers formulated it. In times of personal crisis for the jobseekers, managers can practise extra-role behaviours. For example, when one jobseeker in the facility services suffered mentally (during the pandemic), managers helped her find a place to stay and called her in the evenings. However, managers are aware of the need to keep a balance between being caring and responsible and not ‘becoming a social welfare office’ (HR manager, facility services).

This rather limited and instrumental level of caring may not always be a deliberate strategy; rather, it may occur because managers lack the knowledge and skills to include disadvantaged jobseekers in their daily work. Consequently, managers identified as having this type of engagement were more reliant on support from the PES than were those in the other types.

The level of job carving to accommodate individual jobseekers is only slightly higher in such workplaces than could be expected in an ordinary working relationship. Typically, new jobseekers are given more time to learn new work tasks and offered slightly shorter workdays during the first weeks or months, when the company is supported by wage subsidies from the PES. After a short period, however, the jobseekers are progressed into more ordinary forms of labour relations. Interestingly, jobseekers’ not conforming to work expectations is typically explained by managers as a ‘lack of motivation’. This seems to be often used as a justification for letting the jobseekers go.

Hence, a critical aspect of vacancy orientation is managers’ limited sense of responsibility for inclusion. The managers are positive about the employment of disadvantaged groups and willing to make small adjustments and invest time and energy in accommodating jobseekers’ needs, especially at the start of the employment.

Ability-oriented engagement

Ability-oriented engagement involves the reframing of certain disabilities or disadvantages into abilities or advantages by focussing on specific types of skills and creating social businesses around them. Jobseekers are not employed simply to provide labour (as in the vacancy orientation) or as a pro-social motivation to help others (as in the growth orientation), but to provide a specific expertise for the employing organisation. Often, the employing organisations are social enterprises (or display key traits of social enterprises) in which creating social value for the jobseekers is prioritised. Managers are motivated to develop companies that can thrive in the market on the basis of a social mission of work inclusion (Battilana et al., Reference Battilana, Sengul, Pache and Model2015) that involves a clear idea of what types of jobseekers companies need and want. For example, IT company A has clear hiring requirements:

As ability-oriented engagement is an explicit and formal approach, it is less dependent on a single manager. In both the companies that employ people with Asperger’s syndrome (IT company A and technical drawing consultancy) as well as the car valeting company, the GMs emphasise their ‘model of inclusion’ and spend considerable time trying to keep the community informed about what is being done there. In this way, inclusion becomes established in the business’s identity and trademark and is not dependent on the personality and tacit knowledge of the manager.

Ability-oriented managers perform what we characterise as ‘pragmatic caring’. This means that they make no strict distinction between their employees’ private and professional lives, but they do not necessarily venture into the personal domain to meet individual requirements. For example, the manager in the technical drawing consultancy says that helping with and becoming involved in events in employees’ lives outside the workplace is a large part of her work, yet the caring is confined to making the business work: ‘the business works because the managers care for the whole person’.

In IT company A, pragmatic caring involved protecting the sense of ‘normalcy’ among employees with Asperger’s syndrome. In this company, we were not allowed to interview the employees, only the managers, as interviewing the former could have sent a signal that we saw them as ‘abnormal’. In the car valeting company, responsibility for caring is shared between managers and jobseekers’ mentors, whose role is to be a ‘good friend who cheers for them’. Managers and mentors talk to jobseekers through regular, informal coffee chats, where they discuss work but also issues in their private lives. In these managers’ experience, informal talks of this kind are the only way they can develop the mutual trust needed to support disadvantaged young people. Interviews with the included jobseekers highlighted the importance of this form of communication in tackling matters with which they struggle at work or at home.

In terms of job carving, the ability orientation focusses on creating work environments that accommodate the needs of the wider disadvantaged group. Although there are individual differences, these workplaces are relatively homogenous as they hire from the same target group. This means constructing the physical environment around some general requirement; for example, in the technical drawing consultancy, it was necessary to minimise noise and maximise work predictability:

Creating workplaces attuned to the needs of a larger group also means that managers must exclude jobseekers who do not fit with these requirements, for example, those who are very talkative or have rigid work expectations. Thus, the targeted selection of jobseekers by ability-oriented managers risks creaming (Lipsky, Reference Lipsky2010) jobseekers who initially present as well-functioning and job-ready. For example, the GM at the car valeting company offers only full-time, permanent positions to ‘people who can work and are motivated. We don’t work with people who are too sick’. Hence, despite being important arenas for work inclusion, these companies also contributed to marginalising jobseekers who do not conform to managers’ expectations of the ‘ideal worker’.

Growth-oriented engagement

Growth-oriented engagement is a personalised and bottom-up approach to inclusion involving the nurturing of employees’ learning and personal development and viewing jobseekers’ capabilities as malleable. This approach also gives jobseekers with severe work limitations, the so-called hardest-to-employ jobseekers, a proper chance. Growth-oriented managers express a genuine personal motivation to help people from disadvantaged groups, describing work inclusion as ‘the apple of my eye’, ‘a life project’ and ‘part of my personal wellbeing’. Typically, they have profound experiences of inclusion work and emphasise the value of being patient and willing to ‘try and fail’ in the inclusion processes. Conversely, managers are described by the included jobseekers as being ‘warm’ or ‘having a big heart’. The following is an example:

Our interviews with the included jobseekers underscore the value of growth-oriented engagement from their perspectives, as shown in the following quote from an included jobseeker in IT company B:

The managers perform what we characterise as a ‘holistic’ type of caring. This means helping the jobseekers with practical – and often non-related – matters, such as finding a place to live and buying a car, helping them apply for health or welfare services and showing an interest in their state of being and everyday life. In this caring, the managers take on many different roles: ‘you’re both a priest and a psychologist and an educator and a mum and a lawyer’ (GM, kindergarten).

Managers often consider jobseekers’ motivations to be a pivotal factor when deciding whether to employ them. In our observation, complex social or health issues faced by jobseekers are frequently simplified by managers into a single rationale: a perceived lack of motivation for the job. However, rather than dismissing a jobseeker because of a seeming lack of motivation, growth-oriented managers recognise that patience is crucial, or, as the manager in grocery store C expressed it, ‘building them up slowly but surely’. It takes time for people who have been out of work for a long period to become motivated and resume a work rhythm, and the managers take an active role in making the jobseekers motivated and contributing to their personal growth:

Several of our managers in this category seek to capitalise on the community and camaraderie in the workplace to create a sense of belonging for the jobseekers. They do so by initiatives such as a shared morning coffee, team-building activities, such as games and sports, and strategically placing the jobseeker in teams with employees known to be friendly and good with people.

The growth orientation is also about speaking out, addressing problems directly and being clear about what the managers require from the jobseekers – especially (young) people with little or no work experience. For example, at the storehouse, the HR manager sees it as their duty to teach young people on work training ‘the norms of working life’, such as getting into a good circadian rhythm, what to eat in the morning before work and how to get properly dressed for work:

In terms of job carving, the growth orientation starts with what the jobseeker wants to do and is capable of doing. The managers go to great lengths to adapt work tasks to the person. For example, the owner of the kindergarten describes a jobseeker who did not have the needed skills and personality to work with children and finding other tasks that suited her better. It turned out that she loved shopping for groceries and keeping the kitchen tidy and clean – ‘and that was gold for us, who do not like it’, according to the manager.

Growth orientation also comes at a cost for the managers, as it involves significant emotional work: ‘You must pick them right up and build them up again, many times […]. Sometimes you must drive to the person’s home and collect them in the morning to make sure they get to work’ (GM, wholesaler). In addition, managers emphasise the emotional strain from the ‘pain or disappointment when it does not work’, such as when jobseekers fall back into drug abuse or do not show up for work. As the landscape gardener observes, ‘we have many success stories, but even more non-success stories’. Still, the emotional aspect of inclusion is perhaps a key ingredient in forging strong bonds between the manager/workplace and the jobseekers, as illustrated by the GM in the gadget store:

In sum, the growth-oriented approach is the most ambitious but also most demanding form of inclusion by managers. It draws on the managers’ pro-social motivation and involves extensive care and emotional work as well as job carving to create a suitable work environment for the jobseekers. However, and conversely, it also involves considerable rewards – both personally for managers as well as more broadly in the workplace.