The cost of sympathy: coworkers’ attempts to include hard-of-hearing employees in the workplace

Research demonstrates that disabled people, across different functional impairments, face social exclusion within the workplace. However, there remains a lack of understanding regarding the mechanisms and reasons behind these exclusionary processes. Drawing insights from the sociology of emotions and microsociology, I examine interactional attempts to include hard-of-hearing employees in conversations through the lens of sympathy. Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two workplaces and 29 interviews with hard-of-hearing employees from 19 different workplaces, as well as with colleagues and managers without hearing loss, I find that demonstrating sympathy carries costs such as restrained emotional buildup, emotional exhaustion and efforts to manage emotions. The analysis suggests that the lack of social inclusiveness cannot be attributed solely to stigmatisation and a lack of knowledge about disabilities among workplace colleagues. It also stems from the unwillingness of colleagues to actively engage in the interactional challenges associated with displaying sympathy due to failed interaction rituals. These results underscore the significance of companies fostering environments that facilitate strong interaction rituals for employees with diverse functional impairments and suggest structural changes at the company level to avoid reliance on individual employees to achieve workplace inclusion.