The new normal? A study about disability and enablers, remote work and inclusive work environment with departure in the corona pandemic

The project is based on the ongoing corona pandemic and investigates how people with disabilities experience/have experienced how it is to work from home.

In Sweden, people with disabilities are to a lesser extent employed than the general population, and they also experience more discrimination in working life than others.

The corona pandemic has led to a huge increase in working from home and it is a unique opportunity to study how people with disabilities are experiencing this transition.

The theoretical starting points of the study are inclusion, work accommodation and the disclosure of disabilities, areas that are well studied before, but not from the perspective of working from home.

The study is qualitative in nature and empirical evidence will be collected through photo elicitation interviews, digital diaries, semi-structured interviews and learning seminars. We believe that the diversity of methods will give us in-depth knowledge of a relatively unexplored area.

The study will be conducted in two metropolitan municipalities and respondents will be employees with disabilities (physical or cognitive and visible or non-visible), managers and HR or other support functions with knowledge of disabilities.

Collecting data through employees and management at the same municipality is unusual in studies of employees with disabilities, instead a convenience sample is often used when it comes to recruiting respondents, which leads to them rarely coming from the same organization. With our selection, we can study organizational conditions and obstacles in the two municipalities.

We will adopt an intersectional analysis perspective, which means that we take gender and ethnicity into account in our thematic analyses. Previous research has shown intersectionality to be important in understanding people´s working conditions.

The aim of the study is to contribute knowledge to a working life that is inclusive for people with disabilities after the corona pandemic.