Introduction
Research Questions
- How can employer-based work-family interventions impact work and non-work outcomes for workers, particularly those with low incomes, and their families?
- How can existing evidence on the effectiveness of employer-based work-family interventions inform opportunities for future E&T research and evaluation?
The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE), within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has a long history of supporting rigorous research and evaluation on the broad range of human services programs that fall under ACF’s auspices. Many of ACF’s programs support employment among low-income populations, and, consequently, OPRE regularly supports numerous evaluations of employment and training (E&T) programs for low-income populations. Though many E&T programs for populations with low incomes have historically been heavily influenced by the field of Economics, OPRE looks more broadly for theories and approaches to inform its work.
OPRE funded MEF Associates, in partnership with MDRC, to organize and facilitate a roundtable and prepare a series of white papers to explore future research topics related to employment and training programs for low-income populations. The first white paper discussed the current knowledge gaps and suggested areas for further research on designing effective E&T programs for low-income populations (Fishman et al., 2020). The second white paper discussed ongoing trends in the labor market and their potential effects on the nature of work over the next 10 to 15 years for low-income populations (Miller, 2021). The last two white papers—of which this brief is one— seek to identify approaches from fields not typically drawn on in E&T research that present opportunities to potentially strengthen the design, delivery, and effectiveness of E&T programs through research and evaluation (Fumia and Yau, 2021; Putnam et al., 2021).
This brief focuses on employer-based work-family interventions intended to reduce the inherent conflict many employees face in managing work and life demands. This conflict can have significant implications for workers with low wages and employers themselves. This brief provides background on work-family interventions and reviews relevant research on employer-based work-family interventions focused on supportive supervision, stable scheduling, flexible work arrangements, and paid leave. It concludes with implications of this work for E&T research and evaluation.
Purpose
Employers’ role in creating workplace policies and practices and the work environment has increased relevance for low-wage and historically marginalized workers because they often work in occupations with greater job and schedule instability, fewer workplace protections, and fewer benefits. Drawing upon research from several academic disciplines such as Social Psychology, Industrial Organizational Psychology, and Sociology, this brief discusses how employer-based work-family interventions can impact work and non-work outcomes for low-wage workers and their families, reviews select literature on work-family interventions, and provides strategies to engage and encourage employers to participate in studies of work-family interventions. It identifies promising pathways for further research and evaluation that could inform directions for OPRE’s and other federal agencies’ research and evaluation portfolios and for the broader field of researchers and practitioners.
Key Findings and Highlights
- Employer-based interventions that make the work environment more conducive to employees’ family obligations, including those that increase supervisor support, schedule stability, flexibility in work arrangements, and access to paid leave, can reduce work-family conflict and improve other employee outcomes. These interventions also hold promise for improving employer outcomes, such as overall productivity, retention, and revenues.
- Researchers have used a range of methods to evaluate work-family interventions. The selected studies described in this brief demonstrate the range of methods used including employer-based randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental designs, and natural experiments.
- Research demonstrating the effect of work-family interventions among low-income workers remains relatively limited. Available evidence suggests effects differ by individuals’ baseline characteristics such as family structure, care obligations, income, and job sector. Future research could expand the evidence on effective employer-based work-family interventions for low-wage workers by rigorously evaluating work-family interventions for low-wage workers, investing in data collection, and updating research on barriers to employment for low-wage workers.
Methods
This brief was developed through an iterative and exploratory process. An initial literature scan identified seven promising academic disciplines that provide new perspectives and approaches to the field of E&T. The disciplines included Public Health, Business and Management, Human-Computer Interaction, Sociology, Geography, Psychology, and Anthropology. A broad scan of research and scholarship between 2010 and 2020 within those disciplines revealed topics and experts with a focus on E&T activities or low-income populations. The topic of this brief, employer-based interventions to support workers with low incomes, emerged as one of the focal topics during conversations with experts within those disciplines who are advancing research on interventions and approaches related to E&T that could support improved outcomes for low-income and vulnerable populations served by ACF programs.
Recommendations
- Evaluate employer-based work-family interventions rigorously for low-wage workers.
- Expand data collection, such as by collecting longitudinal data through employee surveys pre- and post-intervention and obtaining employer-level data.
- Update research on barriers to employment for low-wage workers to reflect recent changes in the nature of their work and consider how employer-based interventions can help address these barriers.
- Engage employers in this research through employer recruitment strategies that promote the benefits of participation, such as the economic and social returns on investment, and involve employers and other partners throughout the research process.
Citation
Fumia, Danielle and Eunice Yau. 2021. New Directions in Employment and Training Research and Evaluation: Employer-Based Work-Family Interventions. OPRE Report 2021-242, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.