This blog post is based on an article published in Social Policy and Society by Rik van Berkel and Talieh Sadeghi.
The labour-market participation of people with disabilities is much lower than that of the working-age population. In the European Union, this labour-market participation gap is about 25 percentage points. This gap is problematic, not only for people with disabilities, but also for society in general. Many people with disabilities would like to work but face barriers in finding a job that matches their competences and limitations. For society, the gap implies a significant untapped human resource, which becomes especially clear during periods of labour-market shortages.
Why focusing on employers matters
Traditionally, social policy makers have addressed this problem mainly by developing what are called supply-oriented measures: policy measures aimed at people with disabilities and improving their employability. More recently, it has become clear that these supply-oriented measures are insufficient. They need to be supplemented with demand-oriented measures: policy measures aimed at employers who, after all, are the gatekeepers to labour-market access for people with disabilities. This re-orientation of policy measures is also more in line with the World Health Organization’s definition of disability, which argues that disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers.
Well-known demand-oriented policy measures include anti-discrimination legislation, quota, wage subsidies and subsidies for work accommodations. These measures aim to strengthen employers’ motivation to hire people with disabilities, either through sticks (fines and maluses) or through carrots (financial incentives).
Beyond motivation: capabilities and opportunities
In our article, we argue that this focus on motivation is too limited. Employers not only need to be motivated to employ people with disabilities. They also need to be capable of doing so: they need to have insight into people with disabilities’ competences and limitations, and to know how to adjust work tasks and workplaces to accommodate these competences and limitations. In addition, they also need to have opportunities to employ people with disabilities. For example, they not only need to have vacancies but also to see opportunities to fit these vacancies to what people with disabilities can and cannot do. This is what scholars call the COM-B model: when employers have the Capabilities, Opportunities and Motivation to employ people with disabilities, they will be more likely to Behave accordingly and hire people with disabilities.
In our article, we report on a study that used this COM-B model. In our study we examined close to 1,200 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): private organisations with less than 250 employees in the Netherlands and Norway. These two countries are quite similar in terms of social policies aimed at engaging employers in employing people with disabilities; in terms of high labour-market participation and low unemployment rates; and in terms of the important role of social partners’ involvement in social policy making. In the study, we looked at four groups of employers: inclusive SMEs (SMEs employing people with disabilities), SMEs currently not employing people with disabilities but with the intention to do so (inclusion-willing), SMEs currently not employing people with disabilities but with past experience in employing them (inclusion-experienced), and non-inclusive SMEs.
Based on survey data, and looking at the two countries separately, we found that non-inclusive SMEs score significantly lower on capabilities and opportunities than inclusive SMEs. The two groups did not differ in their motivation to employ people with disabilities. Inclusion-willing and inclusion-experienced SMEs hardly differ from inclusive SMEs. This means that in terms of the COM-B model, inclusion-willing and inclusion-experienced SMEs are close to making the step towards becoming inclusive organisations. Of course, this remains a theoretical assumption. Future research could examine whether this statement is supported by empirical evidence.
When comparing SMEs in the Netherlands and Norway, we found that overall, there are only small differences between the capabilities, opportunities and motivation when looking at the four groups separately. Nevertheless, SMEs in both countries do differ with regard to their specific motivations to employ people with disabilities. Norwegian SMEs have a more positive attitude towards inclusion and employing people with disabilities than the Dutch SMEs. Norwegian SMEs score higher on intrinsic motivators (for example, employing people with disabilities is seen as adding value to the company), are more willing to contribute to an inclusive labour market, and experience or expect more positive reactions from colleagues and clients. On the other hand, Dutch SMEs see employing people with disabilities more as their social responsibility.
We conclude that in trying to promote the engagement of employers in addressing the labour-market participation gap of people with disabilities, policymakers should address employers’ motivation as well as their capabilities and opportunities. Apart from the traditional sticks and carrots approach, they should invest in building a system of public employer-oriented services. In delivering these services, professionals in public employment services agencies play a vital role as service delivery requires direct interaction and collaboration with employers, as well as tailor-made approaches. These professionals can engage employers in discussions about how routine organisational and human resources practices create barriers for people with disabilities and how these barriers could be removed.
Implications for policy and practice
Providing employers with information, advice and expertise on recruiting, selecting and placing people with disabilities may help remove those barriers. In addition, the professionals can support employers in building a business case for employing people with disabilities. Supporting employers by increasing their capabilities for inclusion and by helping them identify opportunities for inclusion in their organisations is specifically important for SMEs that often do not have the resources to organise this expertise in-house within HR departments.
Reference
van Berkel, Rik, and Talieh Sadeghi. 2026. “Employers’ Capabilities, Opportunities, and Motivations to Employ People with Disabilities.” Social Policy and Society: 1–16. doi: 10.1017/S1474746426101389.
About the Authors
Rik van Berkel is Associate Professor, Utrecht School of Governance, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
Talieh Sadeghi is Research Director, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway.
