Capturing and analysing the working conditions of employees with disabilities in German social firms using focus groups

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Abstract

Background

Social firms – a type of social enterprise – provide job opportunities to people with mental or intellectual, sensory, physical or multiple disabilities who are disadvantaged on the general labour market. Given the limited number of studies on working conditions of employees in inclusive workplaces, the aim of this study was to explore job demands and resources experienced by employees with disabilities in German social firms.

Methods

Three focus groups were conducted between September and October 2020 with 14 employees with disabilities from social firms in the catering and cleaning sector in Germany. The Job Demands-Resources model was used as a theoretical basis for developing the semi-structured interview guide. Audiotaped data were transcribed verbatim, analysed deductively and inductively using the qualitative content analysis according to Mayring.

Results

The results show that employees of social firms experience specific job demands and resources regarding work content, work organisation, social relations and work environment. Job demands were mainly reported with respect to work organisation, e.g. high workload, time pressure or challenges in collaboration, whereas social relationships with colleagues and supervisors were most frequently mentioned as important resources at the workplace.

Conclusion

First exploratory study results on the working conditions of employees in social firms in Germany were obtained. Given the pivotal importance of employment for people with disabilities, the identified job demands and resources of this study highlight the relevance of a healthy workplace, especially for employees in social firms. Future interventional research is needed regarding the development, implementation and evaluation of workplace health promotion measures in social firms.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-022-12689-w.

Related collections

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Author and article information

Contributors

Ilona Efimov: i.efimov@uke.de

Julia C. Lengen: j.lengen@uke.de

Ann-Christin Kordsmeyer: a.kordsmeyer@uke.de

Volker Harth: harth@uke.de

Stefanie Mache: s.mache@uke.de

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Public Health

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Public Health

Title: BMC Public Health

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2458

Publication date (Electronic): 1 March 2022

Publication date PMC-release: 1 March 2022

Publication date Collection: 2022

Volume: 22

Electronic Location Identifier: 413

Affiliations

GRID grid.13648.38, ISNI 0000 0001 2180 3484, Institute for Occupational and Maritime Medicine (ZfAM), University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), ; 20459 Hamburg, Germany

Article

Publisher ID: 12689

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-022-12689-w

PMC ID: 8886669

PubMed ID: 35232418

SO-VID: 88a06a84-5bae-4448-abeb-bf774e4b03b4

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 3 June 2021

Date accepted : 25 January 2022

Funding

Funded by: Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) (5411)

Open Access :

Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: job demands,job resources,social firms,employees,working conditions,qualitative research,focus groups,social enterprises,occupational health

Data availability: