Varieties of engagement: exploring the micro-practices of managers in employing disadvantaged jobseekers

Abstract

Despite the increased emphasis on ‘employer engagement’ to take advantage of demand-side active labour market policies, little attention has been paid to managers. In this paper, we examine the micro-practices of engaged managers in including jobseekers from disadvantaged groups. Through a qualitative study of managers, jobseekers and other stakeholders in twenty-one companies with a history of employing disadvantaged jobseekers, we identify three broad types of engagement by managers: vacancy-oriented, ability-oriented, and growth-oriented. The types of engagement involve crucial differences in motivation, caring and accommodation on the part of the employing managers. Our findings highlight the multi-facetedness of employer engagement when examined from the perspective of managers and propose ‘inclusive leadership’ as a useful lens to understand engaged employers.

Introduction

The concept of employer engagement, which has become increasingly central in social policy studies (Ingold & McGurk, 2023; Ingold & Stuart, 2015), denotes ‘the active involvement of employers in addressing the societal challenge of promoting the labour market participation of vulnerable groups’ (Van Berkel et al., 2017, p. 503). Employer engagement is a feature of the current ‘demand-side’ orientation of governments’ active labour market policies (ALMP), which see employers as gatekeepers to the labour market and hence as core stakeholders in ensuring the success of activation policies (Bredgaard et al., 2023; Van der Aa & Van Berkel, 2014).

Recent studies have highlighted governments’ inter-organisational relationships with employers, for example, through public service providers as boundary spanners (Ingold, 2018), thus denoting shifts towards a new public governance mode of activating employers and ‘co-producing’ services with them (Larsen & Caswell, 2022; van Gestel et al., 2019). However, less is known of the intra-organisational relationships and practices within companies, including who the ‘employer’ is in inclusion processes, variations in practices and motivations among companies in employing disadvantaged jobseekers and the more fine-grained role of management in inclusion processes (see McGurk & Ingold, 2023).

In this article, we take a micro-perspective on employer engagement (see Ingold & McGurk, 2023), focussing on the micro-practices of managers when employing disadvantaged jobseekers. We define micro-practices as specific and relatively repeated actions exhibited by engaged managers. In so doing, we extend the concept of employer engagement to encompass not only how governments and service providers can engage managers or how managers address ALMPs, but also the situated, day-to-day micro-practices of managers seeking to employ disadvantaged jobseekers in the organisation. The research puzzle guiding our study was to understand why and how those managers whom Bredgaard (2018) designated ‘committed employers’ ensure the sustained employment of disadvantaged jobseekers.

To elucidate differences in the employer engagement of managers, we draw on interviews with managers, disadvantaged jobseekers who have been employed (henceforth, ‘included jobseekers’) and other key stakeholders in twenty-one small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). On the basis of a qualitative analysis of micro-practices, we elaborate on three types of employer engagement: (a) vacancy orientation, characterised by more or less standardised recruitment of relatively ‘easy-to-include’ jobseekers; (b) ability orientation, involving deliberate strategies by managers to construct a business around disadvantaged jobseekers as a group; and (c) growth orientation, which entails managers’ pro-social efforts towards ‘unconditional inclusion’ (Dobusch, 2021) of the most disadvantaged jobseekers,

The three types of engagement involve considerably different types of micro-practices by managers in their inclusion work, thereby showcasing the multi-faceted nature of employer engagement. They also reveal the interconnectedness of managers’ engagement and features of inclusive leadership, which we believe may be a valuable concept for increasing understanding of the behaviour of engaged employers.

Theoretical background

Employer engagement

According to Ingold and Stuart (2015), 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. (2023) and Ingold (2018) 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, 2009). Van der Aa and van Berkel (2014) found hiring new workers, lowering costs and enacting social responsibility to be the main drivers of employer engagement. Simms (2017) 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., 2021). Other motivations include gaining improved access to low-skilled, low-wage labour (McGurk & Meredith, 2023) and being proactively contacted by employment services with the purpose of work training or hiring (Ravn, 2022). However, several studies have found that there are distinctions between employers’ motivations to hire and their actual hiring (Bjørnshagen & Ugreninov, 2021; Bredgaard, 2018).

Studies have also highlighted that employers take different roles in ALMPs. According to Van der Aa and van Berkel (2014), employers can embody different roles, as either passive ‘clients’ or more pro-active ‘co-producers’. Building on this distinction, Orton and colleagues (2019) 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 (2015) 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 (2021) 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. (2021), 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, 2023), 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., 2023; Schloemer-Jarvis et al., 2022). 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., 2014; Ferdman & Deane, 2014), and has been defined as ‘words and deeds by a leader or leaders that indicate an invitation and appreciation for others’ contributions’ (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006, p. 927) and as ‘leadership processes that promote experiences of inclusion among followers’ (Nishii & Leroy, 2022, 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 (2022), 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, 2017). This literature is heavily inspired by optimal distinctiveness theory (Brewer, 1991), 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., 2011).

Another perspective draws from the leadership literature, and more specifically from leadership approaches emphasising the relational aspects between leaders and followers (Uhl-Bien, 2006) as well as studies under the umbrella of positive organisational scholarship (Dutton et al., 2008). Research from this perspective has highlighted how inclusive leadership entails building high-quality, trust-based relationships with employees (Nishii & Mayer, 2009). 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, 2006; Shore & Chung, 2022). 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., 2008).

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, 2022). Inclusive leadership is particularly crucial for employees from marginalised groups, as these groups are often vulnerable to exclusion (Van Knippenberg & Van Ginkel, 2022), experiencing either low belongingness and/or uniqueness, which create imbalances to the further disadvantage of the employees (Shore & Chung, 2022).

Elaborating on the requirements for managers to balance between employees’ feelings of belonging and uniqueness, Korkmaz et al. (2022) 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, 2022).

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, 2013). 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, 2016) or assumptions that they are less productive than other groups of employees (Jammaers & Zanoni, 2021). However, studies demonstrate that managers can also perceive certain disabilities and impairment-related competencies as particularly valuable (Lundberg & Solvang, 2022). 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., 2023), 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.

The study

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, 2018), the agreement is a ‘demand-side’ policy, as policy-makers use persuasion strategies and rely on the voluntary efforts of companies (Hvinden, 2004; Østerud & Vedeler, 2022). 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, 2021). However, Norwegian employers have responded positively, but passively, to these regulatory measures (Østerud, 2020). 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., 2019).

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., 2022), that is, employing disadvantaged jobseekers merely to be perceived as inclusive.

On the basis of a positive deviance approach (Spreitzer & Sonenshein, 2004), 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, 2020).

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, 2023). The coding process was iterative, as we shifted between inductive coding of the material on the basis of insights from grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 1990) 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, 2017).

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.

Findings: three types of managerial micro-practices of employer engagement

Vacancy-oriented engagement

We need people. That is perhaps the most important thing. What we’ve been seeing, especially last year, is that it’s harder to get good employees, so when we can do this important job [work inclusion] but we also can get a loyal employee, it’s a double bonus (GM, wholesaler).

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:

It [work inclusion] started with the fact that we are a profession under great pressure because we lack qualified labour. So […] we must look to the PES and those who can assist us in getting people. I must admit that if we had the opportunity to pick and choose craftsmen with professional experience, we would have chosen them, I must honestly admit that (GM, mason).

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

Not only are our people clever, but they can be even cleverer than consultants, precisely because of these qualities. So, we’re trying to turn a disadvantage into an advantage, really (GM, IT company A).

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., 2015) that involves a clear idea of what types of jobseekers companies need and want. For example, IT company A has clear hiring requirements:

We make two demands […] that you have Asperger’s and that you have IT competence. And the third thing that we say is a bit invisible, but it is important, is that you must be ‘an outsider’. We only recruit from Nav. If you are functioning well in a job elsewhere and just want another job, then we probably won’t hire you (GM, IT company A).

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:

If we generalise the needs of this group, then it is first and foremost to have peace in the workplace. That it is quiet. And that they always know what to do. So, all our employees receive a written plan once a week […] In that way, they are confident about what must be done first and last (GM, technical drawing consultancy).

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, 2010) 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

Instead of making a lot of demands as an employer, you must put aside your own requirements and instead live a little through the premises of that person. To try to find out who this person is (GM, nursing home).

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:

He deals with me in a way that no other manager has ever dealt with me. With understanding and with respect that I have challenges […] And he is very direct, in a way. He does not ‘beat around the bush’, as I have found that many previous employers have done (Included jobseeker, landscape gardener).

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:

She [the manager] was somehow more concerned with finding a position for me, I felt, when we talked together to begin with, than that she had a position that necessarily had to be filled. It was a good approach for someone who felt that he couldn’t contribute much […]

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:

Because many people have been out of work for so long, I don’t think they have any motivation, they don’t want to go to work. And then you must sort of light a spark in them, so they want to go to work. And they must be met by trust, eventually […] So that’s the essence of everything, I think (Production manager, bakery).

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:

These are people who need close follow-up, every day, every week. They need strong supporters, and they also need, from me and the other leaders, correction, and guidance even when it comes to personal hygiene […] First, I was like ‘okay, is this working life?’ But now I understand that these things have to do with the diagnosis and that no one else in society takes that role (GM, grocery store A).

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:

My experience is that when you see them in pain, you get a stronger relationship much faster, if you do it in a nice way. […] Then I have suddenly gained such a strong bond with people.

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.

Discussion and conclusions

Despite broad agreement on the critical role of managers in successful employer engagement (McGurk & Ingold, 2023), few studies have investigated why and how managers perform employer engagement in everyday organisational life. In this article, we have examined managerial micro-practices regarding the employment of disadvantaged jobseekers drawing on a sample of managers in organisations that have a history of employing people from this group.

While it is not a simple exercise to condense a range of different managers’ activities and motivations into a simple categorisation, we have nevertheless attempted to do so by highlighting vacancy-oriented, ability-oriented, and growth-oriented engagement among managers. These orientations are neither arbitrary choices nor strategic efforts by managers, but rather a combination of how managers handle at least two different (more or less incompatible) concerns: whether to focus on a business rationale or social (the jobseekers’) concerns and whether to employ jobseekers on the conditions of the company (‘take it or leave it’) or adapt the workplace to meet the needs of the jobseekers. In this sense, the three types of engagement represent three responses to this complexity, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The three types of engagement.

A key finding in our study is therefore, to put it bluntly, that there are different ways for managers to be inclusive. Our categorisation shares similarities with van Berkel’s (2021) distinction between ‘vacancy-centred’ and ‘candidate-centred’ engagement and Ingold and Valizade’s (2015) identification of ‘instrumental’ and ‘relational’ engagement. We add to these frameworks by elaborating further on the various micro-practices of managers, as our qualitative approach allows us to probe these practices in more detail. We also believe that the ability orientation provides an additional dimension, as it highlights a more group-oriented approach, as ability-oriented managers have rather clear ideas about the types of jobseekers they want to hire, that is, ideas of the ‘ideal worker’ (Foster & Wass, 2013). Hence, these managers showcase what disability researchers have labelled ‘value in disability’ (Lundberg & Solvang, 2022). Whereas earlier studies on disabled jobseekers have emphasised that such value work is conducted primarily by the disadvantaged persons themselves (Jammaers & Zanoni, 2021), our study shows that managers may also conduct such work.

We also believe the managerial micro-perspective taken in this study enables a conceptual connection between employer engagement and inclusive leadership, which has remained surprisingly absent in the literature on employer engagement. As disadvantaged jobseekers often face numerous psycho-social barriers to employment and may require support to overcome negative self-perceptions, inclusive leadership in some form is necessary to successfully employ disadvantaged groups. Korkmaz et al.’s (2022) four traits of inclusive leadership – fostering employees’ uniqueness, strengthening belongingness within a team, showing appreciation and supporting organisational efforts – provide conceptual resources to further understand managers’ engagement.

Vacancy-oriented managers, driven mainly by the need for labour, are not particularly concerned about jobseekers’ uniqueness. Managers of this type focus on jobseekers’ roles within the workplace (team) only insofar as jobseekers adhere to pre-established expectations and ways of working. The primary responsibility for ‘fitting in’ lies with the jobseeker, with managers not viewing their own role as critical. Inclusion is not seen as an organisational mission but is a ‘nice bonus’, in the words of one manager. Despite good intentions, this leadership approach is a form of partial inclusion (Schein, 1970) and assimilation (Shore et al., 2011).

In contrast, growth-oriented managers go ‘all in’ with their behaviour, encompassing all four key traits of inclusive leadership (Korkmaz et al., 2022). The jobseeker’s uniqueness (i.e. their needs and wishes) constitutes the starting point of the employment process. The manager fosters inclusion and socialisation in the workplace by building high-quality relationships and tailoring tasks to the individual, making sure to also recognise the small steps jobseekers take towards employment. Such managers assume a role akin to that of a social worker (Breimo et al., 2021) and conduct a type of unconditional inclusion (see Dobusch, 2021).

Ability-oriented managers empower their employees by cultivating their ability to learn and work (Wang et al., 2019), and emphasise the value of a shared identity at the workplace. Unlike growth-oriented managers, they adopt a more group-centric approach in expressing appreciation and use more explicit language to articulate their visions for inclusion.

Our article highlights the ‘small’, everyday practices of engaged employers rather than the formal HR and leadership strategies that have dominated the literature (see Ingold & McGurk, 2023). We have highlighted practices that are developed and implemented as needed, in the flow of daily operations, rather than being planned out in advance as part of a strategic HR vision. The managers combine personal characteristics and motivation (e.g. a passion for inclusion) with efforts to make ends meet. Moreover, they perform inclusion merely as a way of managing, by creating meaningful work for themselves and others. We believe that an improved understanding of inclusive micro-practices can contribute to increasing the workforce participation of disadvantaged groups. This study serves as a first step in that direction.