PurposeThis exploratory qualitative study examines both the impact of mental health conditions on self-perceived job performance and how individuals with mental health conditions cope with their conditions at work.Design/methodology/approachA total of 257 responses to a qualitative questionnaire and 17 in-depth interviews with individuals with mental health conditions are analyzed.FindingsThe findings show that mental health conditions can negatively impact self-perceived job performance in the form of lower quality of one's work, slower pace, and more mistakes. In addition, the findings reveal coping strategies that positively and negatively affect one’s performance at work. Strategies that negatively influence one’s performance include substance abuse and self-harm, suppressing and hiding one's symptoms, and forcing oneself to continue to work when feeling unwell. Coping strategies that tend to positively affect their performance include accepting one's condition and taking time off, medication and counseling, mindfulness activities, transparent communication, humor, and a compensation strategy.Originality/valueA growing number of individuals struggle with mental health conditions at work, impacting both organizations and employees. However, little is known about the influence of mental health conditions on one's performance at work, how individuals cope with their mental health conditions at work, and what effect those coping strategies have on organization-relevant outcomes.

This study uses an empowerment theory perspective to examine how a disability quota system affects the decision to disclose one’s disability at work. The study reports on 39 life story interviews with disabled individuals who recently entered or were seeking to enter the labour market in France. The study shows that when considering the disclosure decision, disabled workers reflect on personal attributes, such as their educational level, the visibility of their disability and whether they need workplace adaptations; on the organisational environment, such as the organisation’s commitment to diversity; and on the legal context (underpinned by the biopsychosocial model), in this case, the quota system. These reflections determine whether the disabled workers perceive their disability status as a valuable attribute and whether legal disclosure can be empowering. This study proposes a nuanced perspective by highlighting both the system’s potential for empowerment and for propagating inequality among disabled workers.

Drawing on 36 semi-structured in-depth interviews with individuals with a variety of disabilities who are active in the labor force, we examine how such individuals construct positive work-related identities at work. The findings show how disabled workers use downward social comparison as a stigma identity management strategy, to compare themselves with individuals with disabilities that they perceive to be more stigmatizing, and how this affects their ability to construct a positive work-related identity. This perception of stigma is influenced by four disability characteristics: its visibility, severity, controllability and whether the disability needs workplace adaptations. Moreover, a range of contextual factors were identified to impact their capacity to construct a positive work-related identity.The disabled workers in this study tend to compare themselves with other disabled workers with disabilities that are more severe, more visible, less controllable and present more constraints for employers. Interestingly, they use the characteristics of one's disability as resources to construct a positive work-related identity, while those characteristics simultaneously stigmatize them as a social group. However, disabled individuals who cannot engage in downward social comparison are put in a marginalized position and struggle to construct positive social identities.

This article examines disabled people's employment in Great Britain and France. Although both countries have poor rates of employment for disabled people compared to non-disabled people, Great Britain's disabled people's employment rate is lower than France's. Possible explanations include weak enforcement mechanisms in Great Britain, British judicial resistance, the lack of an institutional role for British trade unions resulting in an implementation gap and the proactive form of French law, a quota-levy scheme, which has no British parallel. The conclusions suggest which of these explanations are the most plausible and propose that Great Britain considers adopting some French provisions, thus tempering Britain's voluntarist approach.