Marjolein Dennissen

110 The Herculean task of diversity networks The disability network has organized an all-day network event. The HR director gives a speech during the morning session. He starts by telling about how the disability network has contacted him and presented examples of chronically ill employees: “I thought: this cannot be true. As a result, we as HR management, sped up with our support and facilitation [of the network]”. The HR director states he is very happy with the initiation of the network, “because HR needs to know how to get in touch with employee groups, and what is going on in daily practice”. He continues that it is important to gather input from the employees themselves before making and implementing organizational policies: “Considering the size of our organization and the political complexity of a lot of problems, nobody is able to solve them alone. You always have to.. multidisciplinary, different perspectives together at the table and also put the tension on the table: ‘you want this, but that does not match with that’ – engage in the discussion about that, because that will take you a step further. You [as manager] can maybe think that, after working in this organization for 40 years, you know what is going on, but that is just not the case. Policy proposals are developed by means of collecting information [throughout the whole organization]. We hope to build trust, by working together, collecting information, seeing things your way”. The director finishes his speech with mentioning the latest policy developments. He utters that much of the content is literally retrieved from his first conversation with the disability network. He mentions the development of a policy note on disabled and chronically ill employees and “how to deal with that”. And finally, he addresses the issue of managers and leadership: “…especially with [disability]: it does not matter what is written in the policy note, it is about what happens in daily practice between colleagues and managers. (..) We are working on a new leadership development course, and due to various input, we explicitly included dealing with the first symptoms of illnesses as well as the assistance of ill employees”. [Observation disability network, Govt] This instance illustrates how the disability network is not only able to feed the organization with information about disability-related issues, it also provides them with the possibilities to intervene. The network members oppose the abstraction of organizational rules and policy regulations by presenting HR with real-life cases of disabled and ill employees. These real-life cases serve as exemplifications to prove HR the need to develop policies based on the experiences of real employees and the actual situations and struggles they have to deal with. By providing these concrete and straightforward examples, the network is challenging the organization on the development of, and strict adherence to general policies. Confronting HR with real-life cases of disabled and ill employees, the network members justify why policy changes are needed. Due to the involvement and negotiation of the disability network, the HR director does not only acknowledge the importance of proper organizational policies on managing disabled and chronically ill employees, but also the value of a bottom-up network for policy development. He asserts that the