Labor market participation for employees with disabilities: a cross-organizational review in India

Abstract

This paper aims to review the current state of workplace inclusion of employees with disabilities in India. Specifically, this work uses the human resource (HR) practices to examine how employees with disabilities are accommodated and integrated with the non-disabled workforce in organizations. A qualitative research design was adopted. Interview responses were collected from HR heads and employees with disabilities in sixteen organizations of foreign multinationals, Indian multinationals and Indian start-ups operating in India. This study found that the disability inclusion practices and programs, social and professional networking opportunities, and career development factors of employees with disabilities vary across different types of studied organizations. The country specific context becomes relevant for the implementation of disability inclusion initiatives. The findings are relevant to HR executives, who are entrusted with the responsibility of accommodating employees with disabilities. This paper serves as a guiding principle for rolling out initiatives targeted towards employees with disabilities.

Points of interest

• Organizations need to proactively implement initiatives to facilitate the inclusion of employees with disability in the workforce.

• Supportive human resource principles, policies, programs, practices, and climate would enable employers to better accommodate people with disability in the workplace.

• The disability inclusion practices, social and professional networking opportunities, and career development factors of employees with disability vary across different types of the organizations along with specific context of the country in which they are operating.

• Given that majority of the disability research is focused on organizations operating in western countries, our study is a novel attempt to capture the perspective of employees with disability in an emerging country.

Keywords:

• Employees with disabilities
• diversity
• inclusion
• human resource practices
• India

Acknowledgements

We thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.