Overview

Employer practices such as hiring, scheduling, promotion, supervision, and on-the-job training determine workers’ day-to-day reality and long-term prospects in the labor market. The growing prevalence of independent contractors and contingent workers underscores the continued fissuring of employer-employee relationships.

Working Knowledge

A worker stocking shelves at a store.
Employer practices Last updated on May 12, 2025
Research Summary

Are Unpredictable Work Schedules and Workers’ High-Cost Debt Connected?

Food and retail workers who experience unpredictable scheduling, such as canceled shifts and schedule changes on short notice, are more likely to take out payday loans, use a pawnshop, or take on other forms of debt with high interest rates and fees.

Annabel Stattelman Scanlan

Last updated on May 12, 2025
Employer practices Last updated on March 04, 2025
Research Summary

What Works to Reduce Workers Changing Jobs in US Manufacturing

More than half of US manufacturing employers say their biggest challenge is recruiting and retaining skilled workers. What affects whether manufacturing workers want to leave their jobs? Research shows that their opinions on their jobs, their workplaces, and how their jobs impact their home lives may play an important role.

Annabel Stattelman Scanlan

Last updated on March 04, 2025
Employer practices Last updated on January 07, 2025
Research Summary

What Does it Take for a Fair Scheduling Policy to Work in Practice?

A study of service workers found many are unaware of their rights and face pressure to waive protections, highlighting the need for enhanced enforcement and education funding and more explicit language to prevent loopholes.

Mariana Icaza Diaz

Last updated on January 07, 2025
African American technician worker holds part of robotic arm
Employer practices Last updated on November 19, 2024
Video

WorkRise Shorts: Overcoming Racial Disparities in Manufacturing Recruitment and Training Programs

Can a new local manufacturing workforce development program that targets workers who are not traditionally engaged in the sector overcome racial disparities in its hiring and wage rates?
Last updated on November 19, 2024

Research

Employer practices Report Last updated on January 22, 2025

Job Quality and Employer Practices: Evidence from B Corporations

A new WorkRise report, Job Quality and Employer Practices: Evidence from B Corporations, examines differences across firms in employer practices related to job quality, and how those differences relate to outcomes for both workers and businesses.

William J. Congdon, Oluwasekemi Odumosu, Molly M. Scott

WorkRise Research

Last updated on January 22, 2025
Employer practices Last updated on December 04, 2024

Centering Workers and Advancing Business Needs: Nine Case Studies of Partnerships in the Manufacturing Sector

Last updated on December 04, 2024
Employer practices, Young workers Last updated on December 04, 2024

Advancing Economic Mobility in Manufacturing

In today’s labor market, manufacturers, like many employers, recognize that recruiting and retaining workers often means rethinking diversity considerations and identifying new talent pools.
Last updated on December 04, 2024
Employer practices Report Last updated on October 25, 2024

The Minneapolis Small Business High-Road Labor Standards Intervention Pilot Project

The Minneapolis Small Business High-Road Labor Standards Intervention Pilot Project seeks to provide services that support immigrant, black, indigenous, and people of color owned small businesses so that they can create healthy, just, and equitable jobs through meeting and or exceeding minimum city labor standards.

Grantee Research

Last updated on October 25, 2024
Employer practices Brief Last updated on September 19, 2024

Extreme Heat at Work

This research brief offers the first nationally representative estimates of how outdoor and indoor workers are affected by extreme heat, highlighting that low-wage workers, defined as adults earning less than $15 an hour, face greater risks than higher-wage earners.

Lisa Clemans-Cope, Dulce Gonzalez, Sara McTarnaghan, Michael Karpman

WorkRise Research

Last updated on September 19, 2024
Employer practices Report Last updated on May 21, 2024

IKEA Self-Scheduling Intervention: Baseline Report

Widespread unpredictability in work scheduling leads to decreased job satisfaction, higher turnover rates, economic instability, and compromised worker health. To address these challenges, IKEA partnered with The Shift Project to develop a Self-Scheduling Intervention for its hourly workers to give them greater control over their shifts. They selected intervention and comparison stores to measure its impact on worker and business outcomes, and over four years, held weekly meetings to strategize and analyze data. This report contextualizes self-scheduling research, delves into pre-intervention conditions, introduces new features, outlines the research design, and explores future directions.

Grantee Research

Last updated on May 21, 2024
Employer practices Report December 13, 2023

Temporary Staffing Industry Testing Report

The temporary staffing industry is a $186 billion sector. The National Legal Advocacy Network team used matched-pair testing in Harris County, Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee, to generate evidence on potentially unlawful employment practices in this industry and found widespread racial and gender discrimination in access to work. These tests showed that agencies offered fewer job opportunities, lower wages, and less frequent follow-ups to workers who were women and/or Black than they did to Latinx workers and men.

Grantee Research

December 13, 2023
Employer practices Executive Summary October 18, 2023

Who Has Access to Paid Sick and Safe Leave?

A new report by Family Values at Work and World Policy Analysis Center charts access to paid sick and safe leave in the US and identifies the most equitable policies in effect.

Grantee Research

October 18, 2023
Employer practices Executive Summary June 26, 2023

A Workplace Divided: Survey Research and Stakeholder Engagement to Advance Equitable Workplaces

A national survey by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University explores workers' perceptions of discrimination and unfair treatment based on race and ethnicity. The survey reveals significant percentages of Asian-American, Black, and Latino workers experience discrimination in private-sector and government workplaces. Black workers are more likely to view workplace discrimination as a significant problem than white workers, with Black female workers reporting the highest levels of discrimination. The study highlights the impact of discrimination on career advancement and the need for government and employer interventions to promote workplace equity.

Carl E. Van Horn, Ronald Quincy, Jessica Starace, Anton House

Grantee Research

June 26, 2023
Employer practices Report December 10, 2022

The National Study of Workplace Equity

The National Study of Workplace Equity surveyed just over 1,000 workplaces to find that equity is inconsistently implemented across employment systems. Researchers from the Boston College School of Social Work and Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) find that equity is strongest in recruitment and hiring, compensation and benefits, and orientation and onboarding.

Samuel L. Bradley, Jr., Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, Kathleen Christensen

Grantee Research

December 10, 2022

Upcoming Events

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21

Aspen Institute

How Good Jobs Support Small Business Success: Lessons from the Shared Success Demonstration

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May

22

Aspen Institute

How Employers Are Tackling Mobility Blockers in Public Benefit Programs

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