Employment for people with disabilities: communication dilemmas

In France, public communications promoting the employment of people with disabilities are hindered by the government’s controversial policy objective – that 6% of the workforce of organisations should be made up of disabled people, with financial sanctions threatened for non-compliance. This quota system has negative effects. For people with disabilities, companies mainly reserve jobs with little gratification, low levels of skills and responsibilities, and little possibility of careers development. Employees are also encouraged by their company to declare a disability and have it recognised, in order to benefit from public assistance, improve companies’ inclusion figures, and obtain tax exemptions.

Our recent research suggests that incentives and coercion methods supporting employment for people with disabilities encourage company directors, managers and recruiters to consider the employment of these people as a troublesome obligation, rather than an opportunity to improve the overall work structure and everybody’s quality of professional life. This leads to public communication campaigns being chosen based on considerations of management efficiency rather than moral values, ethical judgements or feelings like empathy or compassion. And this choice to opt for an argument based on performance rather than emotion is not without its consequences.

The analysis of communication campaigns for the employment of people with disabilities highlights how rare it is to see emotions expressed in a professional setting, as well as the highly restrictive norms that dictate the “right ways” of doing so. Disability remains a subject that is complicated to tackle for communicators. It raises little interest even at best, and at worst, audiences identify painfully or guiltily with unemployed people with disabilities, causing a strong temptation to look away.

A mainly management-based rhetoric

The corpus of our study included pieces of audiovisual communication broadcast in 2018 by two partners, Association de Gestion du Fonds pour l’Insertion Professionnelle des Personnes Handicapées (Agefiph) and the Department for the Disabled, on the YouTube and Dailymotion platforms.

One of the campaigns we examined was the yearly "Duodays" campaign, which features joint interviews with disabled employees and able-bodied colleagues and managers; a documentary showing the Junior Minister for Disabled People visiting an Établissement et Service d’Aide par le Travail (ESAT); and a video of these two people giving a political speech.

In the videos, economic arguments dominate and negative emotions are edited out, to be replaced by seemingly artificial joy and a systematic “happy ending”. It is a question of proving through videos, portraits and interviews that disability is not a barrier to employment. These videos deny the reality of the difficulties people with disabilities have to overcome to get a degree and find an adequate job, and thus awaken little empathy, compassion or admiration. They paint the picture of ideal employees, efficient, enthusiastic, and prepared to face any task.

To reject any idea of people being reliant on assistance, they show people with minor disabilities, who work and are autonomous with regards to their entourage and society. In line with managerial mindsets, they are valued because they are responsible for their own outcomes and the success of their careers. The disabled interviewees are happy to work, helping to ease the heavy conscience of the able-bodied.

"Duodays" is the biggest campaign in terms of videos produced and broadcast, always featuring pairs of employees interviewed together, most often a disabled person and their able-bodied colleague or manager. These videos are the result of a large amount of work in selecting the clips and editing them, as shown by the many cuts. In the interviews, the disabled people always have the majority of the speaking time.

The framing is not neutral – the person with the disability faces the camera while the able-bodied person is generally in three-quarter profile. The able-bodied person has a protective yet not condescending attitude, agreeing and smiling in an understanding way. This raises the dignity of the disabled person, as the gaze is positioned on them.

The campaign video above features a story from two perspectives, interviewing an ESAT employee known only by his first name, who completed a daylong “internship” at Naturalia, and the manager who hosted him. It conveys a certain level of emotion, unlike the other videos. The manager on the nominally described day insists on the banality of Sébastien’s onboarding process, his autonomy and competence, and the personal benefits that he drew from this experience.

Sébastien describes his wish to work in a company rather than at the ESAT and his newly acquired confidence. He mentions a “lightbulb moment for working in retail”, tasks where he “feels comfortable” and “capable of doing many things”. Something stands out in the part of the video when the store manager of Naturalia in Sceaux explains with spontaneity and emotion, naturally expressing himself, that he not only welcomed Sébastien at his store, he also spent a day with him at the ESAT:

"I spent a very pleasant day, with people who showed a lot of enthusiasm in their shining eyes, a desire to share and show me their work.""

This part of the video illustrates the dilemma of communication around employment for people with disabilities, and the difficult balance to strike between management-based arguments and emotional ones, as employees are not recruited for their "shining eyes".

Two videos were broadcast during European Disability Employment Week in November 2018. One was on the topic of “employment for people with disabilities”, a documentary that aims to go "behind the scenes of an Établissement et Service d’Aide par le Travail (ESAT), which allows disabled people to enter the social and professional world".

This documentary film does not mention performance, just employees whose disabilities are never described and who are clearly happy to work and have the Minister visit: “our workers immediately offered to host the Minister and experience everyday moments with her”. The disabled employees at this ESAT represent characters that are perfect for video. They welcome the Secretary of State enthusiastically and express their happiness to work uninhibitedly, not by being interviewed, but solely through their facial expressions.

The second video for the “Launch of European Disability Employment Week” shows the two ministers Sophie Cluzel, the Secretary of State in charge of People with Disabilities, and Muriel Pénicaud, the Minister for Work, who speak in turns, facing the camera, framed by an American shot. They read a speech, describe governmental measures, and call for the employment of disabled people.

Part of the speech clearly targets company directors, designated as the main people responsible for the lasting discrimination: “Because companies that should be employing 6% disabled people are only employing 3.6%! Nowadays, an unemployed person with a disability is twice as likely to remain unemployed,” states Muriel Pénicaud.

The Minister also emphasizes the importance of “changing perspective”, i.e. “seeing people with disabilities not as a problem, but as an opportunity for companies, who are seeking talented profiles.” A subtle way to designate once again the message’s target audience: managers, recruiters and employers.

Editing out emotion

These communication campaigns are mainly aimed at company directors, recruiters and managers, but also at all employees who might have an influence on hiring and employment policies for colleagues with disabilities. It is therefore important to not give rise to any negative sense of guilt or jealousy. This is why communication videos promoting the employment of people with disabilities seem to ignore positive discrimination and compensation policies. They conceal the fact that managers may need to provide disabled employees with specific resources to work “normally”. On the contrary, the videos convey the promise that disabled workers will be vectors for increased performance, with a win-win fairy-tale mindset.

These videos do not place blame on company directors, recruiters and managers. They never denounce the inconsistencies between their behaviour towards disabled jobseekers and the moral standards and values that they intend to defend as part of their corporate social responsibility (equality, equity, non-discrimination, respect, tolerance, indulgence, humanism, personal development).

The campaigns could make use of emotions such as empathy, compassion, admiration, or even existential angst, through identification, but this is not the case. In all the videos, the persuasive stroke of emotion is used in a minor way, far behind the argument that disability inclusion employment policy is profitable for companies.

Emotion is only present as a sort of tranquil serenity for the disabled and subtle goodwill with hints of paternalism. This rhetoric lacks argumentative power. These campaigns promoting the employment of people with disabilities are the perfect example of a classic rhetorical dilemma: the art of making an appeal resides in striking the right balance between the dignity of a rational argument and the persuasive power of open emotion.

This piece is based on theresearch article titled «Management and emotion based rationales in public commuication videos promoting employment of people with disabilities» published in « Les Cahiers Protagoras » in 2020.