Workers - Publications - Faculty & Research

22 Oct 2021
Research & Ideas

Want Hybrid Work to Succeed? Trust, Don’t Track, Employees

workers over the past several months, Neeley says managers should keep three things in mind as they develop long-term plans for hybrid work. 1. Trust in employee autonomy While working from home, employees have enjoyed an unprecedented... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

21 Aug 2023
Book

You’re More Than Your Job: 3 Tips for a Healthier Work-Life Balance

The days of sticking with one job through retirement are long gone. Younger workers are prioritizing happiness over workplace loyalty, often out of necessity. Harvard Business School senior lecturer Christina Wallace offers a roadmap for... View Details

Keywords: by Kara Baskin

28 Aug 2023
Research & Ideas

How Workplace Wellness Programs Can Give Employees the Energy Boost They Need

While companies may tout their wellness programs as a way of investing in their employees’ well-being, many are overly focused on reducing healthcare costs, so they tend to offer step challenges and gym discounts that workers don’t have... View Details

Keywords: by Hise Gibson

09 Jun 2022
HBS Case

From Truck Driver to Manager: US Foods’ Novel Approach to Staff Shortages

workers to select and manage products in its warehouses. By the middle of 2021, US Foods, which employs about 26,000 workers, had 1,000 unfilled driving and warehouse positions. "You’re saying you might be a truck driver for a while, but... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

16 Nov 2021
HBS Case

How a Company Made Employees So Miserable, They Killed Themselves

Markets Unit at HBS. The cases hold a crucial lesson for business leaders: Tormenting workers can result in dire consequences. While the cases describe an extreme example, Montgomery wonders if the improper pressure tactics used at France... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

16 May 2023
HBS Case

How KKR Got More by Giving Ownership to the Factory Floor: ‘My Kids Are Going to College!’

workers like his father a share of the profits and get them to think like owners. The case studies, written by HBS Professor Dennis Campbell and assistant professor Ethan Rouen, describe the sea change in motivation that happens when... View Details

Keywords: by Avery Forman

10 Mar 2020
Research & Ideas

The Little Understood Problem Confronting Diverse Workplaces

Knitting together a workforce with diverse backgrounds, cultures, and other demographic differences is challenging even for experienced managers, who must socialize those employees into the organization and also help them form new work identities. Sometimes, concludes... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

29 Nov 2021
Research & Ideas

How Bonuses Get Employees to Choose Work Over Family

pay—and that has the potential to lay the groundwork for an overworked, unhappy existence, according to research by Ashley Whillans, an assistant professor in Harvard Business School’s Negotiation, Organizations, and Markets Unit. The research shows that View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Kim Raczka

17 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Blue Skies, Distractions Arise: How Weather Affects Productivity

Autumn has sprung, and the cold, dreary days of winter are around the corner. But take heart, wistful sun lovers. It turns out that lousy weather is actually good for business operations. A new research paper reports that a decrease in sunny weather is directly related... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

05 Dec 2022
Research & Ideas

5 Companies Where Employees Move Up the Ladder Fast

Companies vying to fill entry-level roles should take a page from AT&T and American Express and offer aggressive advancement opportunities to workers without college degrees to help expand the talent pool, says a new report. According... View Details

Keywords: by Pamela Reynolds

07 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

Supervisor of Sandwiches? More Companies Inflate Titles to Avoid Extra Pay

research out of Harvard Business School. In fact, these are just a handful of suspect titles companies are using to classify hourly workers as supervisors and avoid paying an estimated $4 billion in overtime a year, finds a study by... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

29 Jan 2018
Book

How 'Teaming' Saved 33 Lives in the Chilean Mining Disaster

Workers test the NASA-engineered capsule used to lift trapped miners to the surface. Hugo Infante/Government of Chile via Wikimedia Commons (Editor's Note: Amy Edmondson advises managers to think of teams as a verb, "teaming," which means... View Details

Keywords: by Amy C. Edmondson; Mining

27 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

How One Late Employee Can Hurt Your Business: Data from 25 Million Timecards

late on average by 21 minutes. 11.6 percent of shifts were marked absent. Employees missed the start of morning shifts—between 6 a.m. and noon—most. Part-time workers struggled most with coming in on time. One employee’s lateness or... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Retail

06 Jun 2018
Research & Ideas

Cut Salaries or Cut People? The Best Way to Survive a Downturn

finding: Sales reps who remained in their jobs didn’t slack off. In fact, some even worked harder. “What surprised me the most was that the people who stayed didn’t work any less hard,” Stanton says. Still, those workers never regained... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne

26 Feb 2018
Working Paper Summaries

Different Strokes for Different Folks: Experimental Evidence on Complementarities Between Human Capital and Machine Learning

Keywords: by Prithwiraj Choudhury, Evan Starr, and Rajshree Agarwal; Information Technology

19 May 2021
Op-Ed

Why America Needs a Better Bridge Between School and Career

Over a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, there are hints of optimism as more people gain access to vaccines and the federal government injects more stimulus money into the economy. Yet, the outlook for workers remains mixed. The crisis has... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph B. Fuller and Rachel Lipson

01 Nov 2022
Research & Ideas

A Penny for Your Thoughts? For Big-Picture Ideas, the Right Pay Structure Matters

to focus employees on a particular task and base their pay on the workers’ performance need to be aware of the potential tradeoff when it comes to the willingness of workers to develop innovative ideas, she says. “Companies want more... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Van Voorhis

Article

Landing the First Job: The Value of Intermediaries in Online Hiring

By: Christopher Stanton and Catherine Thomas

Online markets for remote labor services allow workers and firms to contract with each other directly. Despite this, intermediaries—called outsourcing agencies—have emerged in these markets. This paper shows that agencies signal to employers that inexperienced workers... View Details

Keywords: Marketplace Matching; Agency Theory

Citation

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February 2009
Article

Just Because I'm Nice, Don't Assume I'm Dumb

By: Amy Cuddy

We often judge colleagues on the basis of their perceived warmth and competence, finding clues to these qualities in stereotypes rooted in race, gender, or nationality. Many of our decisions about fellow workers are thus premised on faulty data—harming judged and... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Perception; Nationality; Race; Judgments; Competency and Skills; Gender