Engaged with field work in East Africa, South Asia, and in several large hybrid organizations in the United States, Professor Whillans places a focus on exploring questions with strong theoretical motivation in the social psychological literature and relevant implications for policymakers and managers. Her current research spans three primary interests. First, time demands: how does unpaid labor—such as the long hours spent on chores and childcare—shape the wellbeing and productivity of working women and men—particularly those living in developing markets who are struggling to make ends meet. Second, time negotiations: what factors shape employees’ willingness to access the resources needed to experience wellbeing and succeed in their jobs, such as asking for more time on adjustable deadlines. Third, time-use in hybrid organizations: how can employees and teams structure their time within and across days to predict wellbeing and productivity, and what interventions can be successfully applied to improve the employee experience for knowledge workers employed in time-demanding jobs.
Currently, Professor Whillans is working in the Thar Desert region of India to estimate the impact of a novel time-saving technology—rainwater collection technology (i.e., tankaas)—on the wellbeing and earnings of individual family members within 200 households. This project asks a critical policy question by testing whether and how time-saving technology increases the wellbeing of individuals and families living in an arid agricultural region. This project was motivated by an initial project in Nairobi, Kenya—the largest informal settlement in East Africa—which documented a positive impact of time-saving services (laundry and meals) on the wellbeing of working mothers, and the self-reported earnings of small business owners.
A related project, also set in Nairobi, Kenya, develops a novel behavioral measure of the value of time. This measure is collected daily through behavioral sensing methods and captures changes in opportunity cost within and across people. In doing so, this measure is able to reveal respondents’ economic situations and well-being across time. A pilot project of 500 individuals from the same region using this measure has documented meaningful patterns. For example, women have a higher value of time than men at most hours of the day (contrary to what value of time inferred from labor market wages would suggest), and this difference is especially large in the evening, corresponding to greater housework for women. This measure can also capture the impact of societal events. For example, the national election period is marked by a significantly lower value of time across the board, and especially for women. This result can be explained by an uptick in protests and violence which often disrupts work and makes it especially unsafe for women to be outside, which predicts an increase in idle periods and lower productivity.
In a second stream of research, Professor Whillans and colleagues explore factors that predict whether employees are willing to ask for the resources that they need to succeed in their jobs. This project was motivated by Prof. Whillans’ earlier work showing that women do not ask for time on adjustable deadlines as frequently as men, undermining task performance and wellbeing. In this current investigation, Prof. Whillans is exploring factors like on-the-job experience, social norms, and workplace policies in predicting whether people are comfortable negotiating for time.
In a third stream of research that involves two well-established companies in the United States, Professor Whillans is conducting large-scale descriptive research to explore the relationship between time-use and the employee experience within hybrid organizations. First, cutting-edge machine learning is being used to understand how dispersion patterns have changed in the year following the pandemic, and how changes in where team members are located relative to their peers predicts various aspects of the employee experience. Second, daily-diary research with thousands of employees in a hybrid organization seeks to understand how daily shifts in employee work location (e.g., home vs. office) and location relative to one’s team predicts employees’ experience of wellbeing, stress, connection, and productivity. Finally, a field experiment with two-hundred teams tests whether collaboration norms can reduce the perceived burden of interruptions for hybrid workers and causally improve the employee experience.
Currently, Professor Whillans is working in the Thar Desert region of India to estimate the impact of a novel time-saving technology—rainwater collection technology (i.e., tankaas)—on the wellbeing and earnings of individual family members within 200 households. This project asks a critical policy question by testing whether and how time-saving technology increases the wellbeing of individuals and families living in an arid agricultural region. This project was motivated by an initial project in Nairobi, Kenya—the largest informal settlement in East Africa—which documented a positive impact of time-saving services (laundry and meals) on the wellbeing of working mothers, and the self-reported earnings of small business owners.
A related project, also set in Nairobi, Kenya, develops a novel behavioral measure of the value of time. This measure is collected daily through behavioral sensing methods and captures changes in opportunity cost within and across people. In doing so, this measure is able to reveal respondents’ economic situations and well-being across time. A pilot project of 500 individuals from the same region using this measure has documented meaningful patterns. For example, women have a higher value of time than men at most hours of the day (contrary to what value of time inferred from labor market wages would suggest), and this difference is especially large in the evening, corresponding to greater housework for women. This measure can also capture the impact of societal events. For example, the national election period is marked by a significantly lower value of time across the board, and especially for women. This result can be explained by an uptick in protests and violence which often disrupts work and makes it especially unsafe for women to be outside, which predicts an increase in idle periods and lower productivity.
In a second stream of research, Professor Whillans and colleagues explore factors that predict whether employees are willing to ask for the resources that they need to succeed in their jobs. This project was motivated by Prof. Whillans’ earlier work showing that women do not ask for time on adjustable deadlines as frequently as men, undermining task performance and wellbeing. In this current investigation, Prof. Whillans is exploring factors like on-the-job experience, social norms, and workplace policies in predicting whether people are comfortable negotiating for time.
In a third stream of research that involves two well-established companies in the United States, Professor Whillans is conducting large-scale descriptive research to explore the relationship between time-use and the employee experience within hybrid organizations. First, cutting-edge machine learning is being used to understand how dispersion patterns have changed in the year following the pandemic, and how changes in where team members are located relative to their peers predicts various aspects of the employee experience. Second, daily-diary research with thousands of employees in a hybrid organization seeks to understand how daily shifts in employee work location (e.g., home vs. office) and location relative to one’s team predicts employees’ experience of wellbeing, stress, connection, and productivity. Finally, a field experiment with two-hundred teams tests whether collaboration norms can reduce the perceived burden of interruptions for hybrid workers and causally improve the employee experience.
