Organisational Policies and Practices for the Inclusion of Vulnerable Workers: A Scoping Review of the Employer’s Perspective

Abstract

Purpose Current models of inclusive workplaces are primarily based on the perceptions of vulnerable workers, whereas attention for employer’s perceptions is lacking. This scoping review addresses this issue by mapping the literature that covers employer’s perceptions on the application and importance of organisational policies and practices aimed at the inclusion of vulnerable workers. Methods A literature search for qualitative and quantitative research articles was conducted in MEDLINE, Scopus, ProQuest, PsychInfo, Google Scholar and Web of Science. Studies were included when (a) they reported on practices aimed at the inclusion, participation, or rehabilitation of (b) workers with disabilities, a low education or migration background, or who were long-term unemployed, and (c) were based on samples of employers or their representatives. Results The search resulted in 3,134 articles. In total, 38 articles met the inclusion criteria of this study. We identified seven types of inclusive practices to stimulate the inclusion of vulnerable workers that employers applied and/or perceived as valuable: senior management commitment, recruitment and selection, performance management and development practices, job accommodations and redesign of work, supportive culture, external collaborations with other employers, and monitoring. Conclusions Our review identified seven categories of inclusive practices that pertain to all stages of the employee journey of vulnerable workers. These categories move beyond those reported in studies based on employee samples, for instance by highlighting the importance of monitoring and collaborations with other employers. Hence, our findings stress that insight into employers’ perceptions about effective measures is crucial to increase labour market participation of vulnerable groups.

Sustainable Employment for People with Disabilities: A Scoping Review on Workplace Practices and Positive Employment Outcomes

“…Whereas 17 articles reported on positive employment experiences of PWD, only three articles described positive employment experiences of stakeholders in the organization. This finding is not surprising, as we know from previous research that there are far more studies on PWD's perspectives than employers' perspectives (Ingold & Stuart 2015;Kersten et al 2023;Van Berkel et al 2017). Employee well-being is highlighted as critical at the organizational level, where thriving workers directly contribute to the benefit of the organizations (Cavanagh et al, 2021).…”

The Relationship Between Strategic Human Resource Management Practices and the Employment of Vulnerable Workers: A Two-Wave Study Among Employers

“…Future research could benefit from including validated, multi-item and Likert-scales [e.g., 19]. Eight, although we included a wide variety of organizational practices, we recommend future researcher to include other potentially relevant (HRM) practices, related to senior management commitment, organizational culture, and monitoring of the (perceived) inclusion of vulnerable workers as well [15]. Further, we recommend future research to study whether the relationship between inclusive HRM practices and employment of vulnerable groups differs between different groups of vulnerable workers, e.g., people with learning disabilities, people with physical disabilities, people with a migration background, refugees.…”

“…This is an important omission since employers have a substantial influence on the access to sustainable work for vulnerable workers [7], but often do not know how to successfully recruit and retain these workers [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. So far, the literature on Human Resource Management (HRM) practices that targets the employment of vulnerable workers has focused primarily on the importance that employers attach to these practices and on the prediction of hiring intentions [15][16][17]. Only a few studies have investigated the relationship between HRM practices and the actual employment of vulnerable workers, for instance by studying the effect of organizational policies on the inclusion of workers with disabilities [18,19].…”

“…Hence, more insight is needed into the value of HRM practices for the employment of a broader population of vulnerable workers. This specifically holds for strategic HRM [7,12,14,15], which could help to apply a more strategic lens to the relevant societal topic of inclusion of vulnerable workers. Strategic HRM pertains to the idea that organizations are driven by certain strategic goals that underly their business model [20].…”

“…This strategic HRM focus is essential, as this promotes the alignment between the HRM-related topic, in this case the inclusion of vulnerable groups, with the overall goals of the organization, hence increasing the strategic relevance [20]. In addition, most of the literature has focused on predicting the intention to hire vulnerable workers instead of the actual hiring of these workers [15]. However, research has shown that hiring intention may not always lead to actual hiring of vulnerable workers [21].…”