Recruiting and hiring, which refers to both formal and informal practices related to disseminating job announcements, screening applications, selecting applicants for interviews, and making job offers, received the highest equity score among the 10 employment systems with a mean score of 3.03 on a 4-point scale. But the numbers suggested that there is still plenty of room for improvement. While nearly three-quarters of respondents reported that their organization welcomes diverse applicants during the recruitment and hiring process “to a great extent,” only one-fifth said that their organization routinely audits the fairness of recruitment and hiring “to a great extent.”
Job structures, which refer in part to when people work, where they work, how much they work, and the extent to which they have some choice over these variables, ranked second-to-last in equitably among the 10 employment systems with a score of 2.55 out of 4. More than 50 percent of respondents said that fewer than 25 percent of their employees have control over the times and days they are expected to work, according to the survey. Over 70 percent of respondents reported that fewer than 25 percent of their workforce can compress the work week by working longer hours on fewer days.
“I want to be sure that employers understand the importance of recognizing job structures as a part of the equity conversation,” said Pitt-Catsouphes, who co-founded the Center on Aging and Work at Boston College in 2005. “Employees in all sorts of situations, including parents and other caregivers, want some choice in when, where, and how they work. After the pandemic, I think that a lot of people had their fingers crossed that they would have more flexibility, but this study shows that it’s not at all clear that this is the case.”
Overall, the equity of employment systems was stronger among:
- Organizations with at least 50 employees
- Organizations with higher percentages of women employees
- Organizations with higher percentages of employees of color
The researchers also found that organizations with more overall equity in their employment systems had higher levels of organizational resilience, making them better able to respond to disruptive forces such as the COVID-19 pandemic. “Organizations with higher equity indicators also reported that, during the past two years, they have been able to make changes and even innovate in response to changes in the business/organizational environment,” the report said, “and they have remained agile and expect their organization to thrive in the future.”
As part of their study, the researchers identified seven pathways to change that employers might pursue to strengthen employment systems. These pathways to change, or “Levers for Change,” are:
- Policies
- Practices
- Planning and evaluation
- Roles and accountabilities
- Culture
- Climate
- Communication