How firms can genuinely help stigmatised groups

A young male jobseeker from deep in a rural village might alter his accent in Nairobi so that no one mocks where he came from. A woman living with a physical disability might avoid certain public places because strangers stare for an uncomfortably long time.

A former prisoner might keep painfully silent about his past during a job interview, hoping instead that one missing detail will not cost him a new future with a job.

Our present-day society often speaks grandly about diversity, equity, and inclusion, but regular people in everyday life still exchange unkind glances or mocking tones that send many people to shrink themselves and try to hide in plain sight to just fit in professional environments.

The painful tension that most of us take for granted sits at the centre of interesting just released research by Jan Lodge, Wesley Helms, Thomas Roulet, and Paul Tracey. Their research asks a difficult question that many of us managers in churches, schools, NGOs, and companies would rather avoid. How exactly can organisations help stigmatised groups enter society with dignity on a more equal footing?

What is unique is that the study is not about how organisations can polish their own image by looking inclusive. But instead, the research revolves around how entities can genuinely help people who face various forms of exclusion. That difference in intentionality matters to excluded people more than many leaders actually realise.

The scholars posit that organisations typically function like stages in a theatre setup. On theatre stages people often presented to different audiences in different ways.

As an example, a company, school, hospital, or even a café can decide whether or not to quietly shield a stigmatised group from sharp hostile public scrutiny or instead put that group more visibly before various audiences that could be more supportive.

Essentially, the study highlights how entities tend to rely on two broad approaches when hiring marginalised employees in that they can either conceal them or they can normalise them in all aspects of the organisation.

Activists may jump up and initially claim that concealment appears negative and the wrong approach. But the idea around concealment actually carries much more nuance than many observers would expect.

A lot of times, organisations merely feel the heartfelt need to protect vulnerable staff and think that hiding them from the public could actually protect them from immediate harm, especially if the stigmatised group faces severe hostility.

An example could entail a rehabilitation centre avoiding to publicise the identities of recovering drug users to reduce external social punishment on those individuals.

Also, an employer might quietly try to support people with criminal records but without broadcasting their pasts to every single client, customer, and employee.

Firms often feel that in such moments, concealing their pasts or conditions does not deny them their dignity but rather gives them breathing space to be treated like everyone else.

On the other hand, normalisation works completely differently and can be a heavier lift for firms. Organisations can bring the stigmatised groups into the light and present them practically and organisationally as ordinary workers who are equally worthy to be there and fully human just as anyone else.

A business that highlights disabled employees as capable equal hard working colleages rather than mere tokens as inspirational symbols can shift perceptions of all staff, both inside and outside of work.

Further, a university may openly support students from marginalised pastoralist communities not as exceptions to be tolerated and showcased but as normal intelligent competent equal members of campus life.

Many leaders, though, get one crucial thing wrong when dealing with marginalised groups. We often assume that if our organisations can run one nice inclusion programme, then we can solve all the deeper problems within the firm. But the study warns that integration alone does not happen simply because an organisation congratulates itself for doing good as an exercise.

The real question asks what happens to the stigmatised group after the press release, the celebration with the cake cutting, after the donor report, after the LinkedIn post seen around the continent. Do hostile audiences punish the stigmatised groups less after shallow gestures? No. Do supportive audiences accept them more? Yes.

An organisation may improve its own reputation while leaving the hurt group only slightly better off. Instead, entities should follow through with concealment or full acceptance depending on the circumstances and what the groups want rather than just mere shallow acclamations.

In the end, the study offers a sobering but hopeful message. Inclusion does not begin and ends with changing the stigmatised person. It requires managing the audience.

The question for Kenyan organisations therefore does not merely ask whether or not they care about people but whether they know when to shield, when to spotlight, and when to do both with great care. That may sound theatrical, but real life often is.

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