1. (Prof. of Employment Relations & Diversity)
10th International Critical Management Studies (CMS) Conference Time to radically re-think workplace inclusion and well-being: developing a strategy to challenge ableism in contemporary neo-liberal workplaces
Deborah Foster
(Prof. of Employment Relations & Diversity)

2. Central question: what would an inclusive model of workplace well-being look like?
Intention is to take forward debates in: 1. Foster and Wass (2013) ‘Disability in the labour market: an exploration of concepts of the ideal worker and organisational fit that disadvantage employees with impairments’. Sociology 47(4): 705– Foster, D (2017, early view) ‘The Health and Well-being at work agenda: good news for (disabled) workers or just a capital idea?’ Work, Employment & Society.

3. Employers & the state are interested in defining a generic ‘ideal worker’ & ‘one best way’ of working.
‘Scientific’ work studies and job design standardise work roles. Workers become abstracted and disembodied from jobs.
Analysed taken-for-granted organisational behaviour using ET scripts, highlighting ableist norms and assumptions.
Concluded: the organisation of work has become increasingly complex.
Standardised performance expectations make it difficult for disabled people to achieve organisational ‘fit’.
Concepts of the ‘ideal worker’ and ‘organisational fit’ have disadvantaged employees with impairments (Foster & Wass, 2013)

4. A radical re-think of work that goes beyond inventing an abstract job to fit an ‘ideal’ employee, or adapting this ‘ideal’ to accommodate a person with an impairment.
A strategy to challenge embedded ableist ways of working in areas of job design, recruitment, career progression/advancement, retention and retirement.
Workplace well-being agendas need to be reclaimed from management consultants and HR and collectivised, using co-production to effectively integrate disabled people.
What is needed?

5. Employer discourses on workplace health and well-being (H&WB) dominate
H&WB terminology uncritically embedded in HRM and academic vocabularies.
Employer H&WB initiatives focus on individual employees and improving employee ‘resilience’, rather than exploring workplace problems.
UK Labour Force Surveys show that work-related stress, depression and anxiety are a prime cause of work-related ill- health.
A social model of workplace WB is needed, which focuses on social and collective barriers, to counter employer initiatives that medicalize and individualise.
Value-judgements in current H&WB programmes are oppressive: reinforcing normalcy & ableism; judge worker life- styles; encourage ‘ideal worker’ expectations around a specific view of the body and of mental and emotional well-being.
Employer discourses on workplace health and well-being (H&WB) dominate

6. Academic books on workplace resilience
“In an era of longer hours and shorter contracts, of tighter margins and frequent organizational change, stress can undermine both the mental health and performance of employees. A culture of resilience in the workplace, however, offers the potential to support psychological wellbeing and improve the performance of both people and organizations”.

7. Resilience is a neo-liberal discourse (see Foster, 2017)
Resilience = ‘a sense of recovery and rebounding despite adversity or change’ (Lewis et al., 2011: 3).
BUT, resilience promotes ‘the idea that optimism is an essential and learned behaviour’ (Cotton, 2012: 7).
This logic appeals to governments pursuing austerity and seeking to justify reductions in welfare to the ‘undeserving poor’.
Joseph (2013: 40–43) argues: ‘resilience represents a form of neo-liberal governmentality. This takes the form of prioritizing the management and adaptability of the self, subjectivity and individual responsibility, thus facilitating ‘governmentality from a distance’.
Resilience is a neo-liberal discourse (see Foster, 2017)

8. Workplace stress: the contemporary ‘epidemic’.
In 2014/15, stress accounted for 35 per cent of all work- related ill-health cases and 43 per cent of all working days lost due to ill-health in the UK (LFS reported in HSE, –6).
Key reported causes of work-related stress are increased workloads (tight deadlines, too much pressure/responsibility), lack of managerial support; violence and role uncertainty (LFS 2009/10 – 2011/12, reported in HSE, 2015: 7).
Types of work & stress: in 2015, the UK HSE found professional occupations (often associated with discretion and autonomy) had ‘significantly higher rates of work related stress than the rate for all occupations’ (HSE, 2015: 5).
Workplace stress: the contemporary ‘epidemic’.

9. Trade union perspectives on H&WB at work programmes
The UK TUC: HR-led H&WB initiatives are increasingly being used as a means of bypassing union statutory workplace H&S representatives.
TUC describe H&WB programmes as: ‘a convenient label for almost any health related initiative’ (TUC, 2013: 2).
Some unions have produced workplace wellbeing toolkits to highlight healthy working practices: flexible working, work–life balance, participation and consultation, workplace adjustments.
Reframing ‘well-being’ debates in this way is important, providing alternatives to austerity and lean management, ideal worker discourses.
Trade union perspectives on H&WB at work programmes

10. What might an inclusive model of H&WB look like?
It would question definitions of H&WB that refer to a norm of physical, mental and emotional health:
‘if we rethink our assumptions about the universality of the concept of the norm, what we might arrive at is the concept that preceded it: that of the ‘ideal’’ (Davis, 2006: 4)
It would normalise difference rather than expect assimilation
It would question the current assumption that if a person is not suitable for a job because of an impairment it can be adjusted and instead ask: how do we adjust a role to suit the talents of the person?
What might an inclusive model of H&WB look like?

11. The advantages of using a critical disability studies lens
Rejects a narrow individualized and medicalized account of health and disability.
Problematizes impairments and their effects within a social, collective and political context
Offers a political critique of disabling social relationships in work that arise directly from socio- historic material conditions embedded in capitalism
The advantages of using a critical disability studies lens

12. Questions to the audience!
In countries where wage subsidies dominate as a way of ‘integrating’ disabled people into the labour market, how can this proposed agenda work?
What could the role of HR and trade unions be?
Questions to the audience!