Sustainable employment for people from vulnerable groups

An analytical framework for active labor market policy and employer characteristics

Abstract

People from vulnerable groups face considerable challenges in securing sustainable employment due to factors such as limited labor market experience and various forms of discrimination. While active labor market policies (ALMP) have been implemented to address these challenges, they have not sufficiently improved sustainable employment outcomes for these groups—possibly because of inadequate consideration regarding how the impact of policy might vary based on employer characteristics. The present thesis aims to fill this gap by introducing an analytical framework that integrates the literature on ALMP and employer characteristics. The framework can offer researchers and policymakers insight into how policies can be tailored to address structural differences between employers and how they influence sustainable employment outcomes. The overarching research question of the thesis is: how can an integrated analytical framework help identify combinations of ALMPs and employer characteristics that contribute to sustainable employment? This is broken into three subquestions:

1. What is the effect of the joint inclusion effort (as a distinct type of ALMP) on sustainable employment?

2. How can employer characteristics impact the probability of sustaining employment for workers with reduced capacity?

3. What is the prevalence of topics on sustainable employment in inclusive organizations, and how does the prevalence vary with employer size?

Each of these three sub-questions is addressed in an empirical study. The first study employs a difference-in-differences design and uses population-level register data to evaluate the effect of the joint inclusion effort, a Norwegian ALMP, on labor market participation and contracted hours for people with disabilities. The findings indicate that the policy has resulted in a small positive increase in labor market participation, but no corresponding effect was found on contracted hours. The second study employs parametric survival analyses on population-level register data to estimate the impact of organizational size, implemented organizational policies, sector, industry, and workplace composition on the probability of sustaining employment for workers with reduced capacity. The results suggest that several employer characteristics significantly impact the risk of employment ending. The third study uses structural topic modeling on transcripts from interviews with individuals at organizations that hire people from vulnerable groups to identify the most frequently discussed topics relevant to sustainable employment. Five key topics are identified in this final study, of which prevalence varies with employer size: training, practicalities of the inclusion process, recruitment, contexts of inclusion, and work demands. Together, these studies inform the integrated analytical framework presented in this thesis, facilitating the identification of productive combinations of ALMP and employer characteristics that can contribute to sustainable employment for vulnerable groups in Norway. The findings presented in this thesis, while based on the Norwegian context, have broader implications for theory, methodology, and social policy. Theoretically, this thesis demonstrates that integrating the literature on social policy and employer characteristics can contribute to a nuanced understanding of the interplay between social policy measures and employer differences and the impact of these factors on sustainable employment outcomes. Methodologically, the findings showcase the value of using both quantitative and qualitative methods and data for a comprehensive understanding of the factors contributing to sustainable employment for vulnerable groups. By identifying employer characteristics that impact employment outcomes, the thesis enables the use of these characteristics as a main explanatory factor in further research. In terms of social policy, the analytical framework, if tested and validated, can serve as a tool in both research and policy design for identifying effective combinations of ALMP and employer characteristics. It invites more targeted approaches to incentivize employers to hire people from vulnerable groups, challenging the “one-size-fits-all” type of policies that have classically been implemented in Norway and elsewhere.