On March 25, 2026, the Shift Project gathered for the March monthly meeting to hear Professor Erin L. Kelly present new research on U.S. fulfillment centers, turnover, and worker well-being.
Guest Speaker: Erin L. Kelly is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Work and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Co-Director of the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research. She is a sociologist who uses mixed methods and often field experiments to investigate the impact of specific workplace policies and practices on employees, their families, and firms. Her collaborative work on so-called flexible work includes her book with Phyllis Moen, *Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What To Do About It*. Erin’s research has been published in a variety of sociology, organizations, public health, and interdisciplinary journals.
Presentation: “Can a voice channel improve retention and worker well-being? Evidence from a cluster-randomized trial in U.S. fulfillment centers”
Building on the long tradition of research on employee voice and its potential impact on both employee and organizational outcomes, we investigate whether a new voice channel improves worker well-being in e-commerce fulfillment centers. A cluster-randomized trial compared hourly workers in sites randomized to launch the new voice channel (Health and Well-Being Committees, or HaWCs) with those employed by the same firm in control sites. This participatory intervention involved a small group of frontline workers and supervisors who solicited concerns and ideas about safety, work processes, and other workplace stressors from the broader workforce and then developed and implemented action projects in response. Using administrative data, an intent-to-treat (ITT) analysis finds individual workers’ monthly probability of exit fell by 1.3%-points in HaWC buildings in the year after randomization, representing a 20% decline relative to pre-intervention exit rates. Using survey data, we find that workers in intervention sites had lower psychological distress at the 6-month follow-up compared to control sites, with no significant intervention effect at 12-month follow-up. Gender moderation analyses suggest the HaWC was particularly effective in reducing psychological distress among men. These findings indicate the feasibility of improving worker well-being and addressing firms’ turnover concerns through employee voice, even in tough conditions like non-unionized fulfillment centers.
The presentation drew on two co-authored papers by Kirsten F. Siebach, Yaminette Díaz-Linhart, Laura D. Kubzansky, Lisa Berkman, Molin Wang, Lin Ge, Alexander M. Kowalski, Hazhir Rahmandad, and Erin L. Kelly.
