My work with Pakistani employers for the job placement of persons with disabilities: an autoethnographic journey

Abstract

For eight years, I was associated with a disability inclusion initiative called the Network of Organizations Working with People with Disabilities, Pakistan (NOWPDP). It specializes in skills training of persons with disabilities and making workplaces disability confident. The purpose of this autoethnography is to explore my journey in developing and utilizing effective approaches at NOWPDP to persuade Pakistani employers to hire persons with disabilities. In its programmatic activities, NOWPDP embraced the social model of disability, defined by Michael Oliver, viewing disability as a social construct. The concept of intersectionality has been applied to understand how different social locations play a major role in experiencing privilege and discrimination. In our journey to provide job placement opportunities to people with disabilities, we faced barriers like inaccessible public infrastructure, preconceived negative notions about people with disabilities, overprotection from family members, and a feeling of hopelessness from the system experienced by individuals in the disability community. Despite challenges in job placements, we applied various innovative strategies, employing a carrot-and-stick approach, to persuade employers to hire individuals with disabilities. Social cognitive theory has also been applied to understand how employers adopt the practice of hiring people with disabilities by observing other employers and assessing the consequences of their actions. Some of these strategies included creating success stories and case studies. We did this by specifically targeting industry leaders, which had a trickle-down effect in persuading other industry players. While studying the successful strategies, I have also analyzed the structure of NOWPDP, which had a board with influential leaders but did not have the representation of persons with disabilities. This brings us to the notion of inclusive governance which goes beyond the concept of inclusion and aims towards inclusive decision-making. To better understand how people with disabilities are perceived in society, I have also applied the stereotype content model that helps us understand how we perceive a social group based on the dimensions of warmth and competence. The impact of colonization had a pivotal impact on how employers judged the competence of employees like the ability to speak fluent English. The concept of power, as defined by Foucault as ubiquitous, had a significant impact on our understanding of inclusion and on our interactions with individuals with disabilities. We initiated a specialized vocational training program through our research with the British Council Pakistan that enabled us to know the top trades that have the highest possibility of job placements for persons with disabilities. We utilized public relations to highlight our partnership with the companies to push other organizations to come on board. We also organized campaigns like 100 Days, 100 Lives, which connected 100 persons with disabilities with 100 industry professionals to create job opportunities within 100 days. We encouraged government institutions to legally compel organizations to hire people with disabilities and highlighted us as a possible partner to help them with this journey. Our partnership with the State Bank of Pakistan was one of our biggest successes. It helped us draft a banking policy and convince banking institutions to lay out a three-year-long plan to make their organizations accessible for customers and employees with disabilities, allowing us to open doors to job placement for people with disabilities.