About

Erin 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. Her research investigates the implications of workplace policies and management practices for firms, workers, and families, with a joint focus on equity, wellbeing, and organizational performance. Kelly’s work has been published in top sociology, management, and interdisciplinary journals, and she has received recognition with awards such as the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award and the Max Weber Award. She authored the book 'Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do About It,' published by Princeton University Press in March 2020, which received notable awards and recognition. Her research explores topics including workplace scheduling, diversity policies, work redesign, and worker voice, with ongoing projects examining work conditions in e-commerce warehouses and low- to moderate-wage jobs. Kelly holds a PhD from Princeton University and a BA from Rice University, and she previously taught at the University of Minnesota.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Business
• Economics
• Public relations
• Sociology
• Engineering
• Computer Security
• Social Science
• Process management
• Knowledge management
• Geology
• Management
• Environmental health
• Demographic economics
• Social psychology
• Medicine
• Nursing

Selected publications

• Effectiveness of a Participatory Voice Intervention on Psychological Well-being among Warehouse Workers: Results from the Fulfillment Center Intervention Study

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Can a Voice Channel Reduce Turnover? Evidence on Employee Voice and Exit from a Cluster-randomized Trial in U.S. Fulfillment Centers

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• An Interdisciplinary Approach to Reducing Serious Safety Events by Implementing a Proactive Safety Framework

  Pediatric Quality and Safety · 2025-08-01

  articleOpen access

  Introduction: Children’s hospitals across the country have experienced an increase in their serious safety event rate (SSER) over the past 2 years. This is largely attributable to the “pediatric surge” in late 2022/early 2023, which accelerated the staff turnover and attrition that began increasing during the COVID-19 pandemic.1–4 At Komansky Children’s Hospital, several root cause analyses were conducted for these events, and each one identified communication among staff as one of the root causes. In July 2023, we began implementing proactive safety huddles across our 4 inpatient units as part of the Solutions for Patient Safety Proactive Safety Framework initiative, with the primary aim of decreasing our SSER (number of serious safety events/10,000 patient days) by 50% by December 31, 2024. Methods: This ongoing QI study used the Model for Improvement with a series of sequential interventions. Our interdisciplinary QI team consisting of nurse champions, physicians, unit nursing and physician leaders, advanced practice providers, and a quality and patient safety specialist created a key driver diagram (Fig. 1). We used the following family of measures: the SSER (outcome), the number of proactive safety huddles (process) and compliance with completing monthly hospital acquired infection audits (balancing). We tested the following interventions through 6 plan–do–study–act cycles including staff education about the proactive safety framework, implementation of the huddles, rounding on units to gather frontline staff input to help identify areas of focus for each unit, targeting huddles to specific patient populations on each unit, developing an Epic SmartPhrase for documenting huddles, and engaging our safety coaches as champions. We also launched an interdisciplinary committee to proactively review all rapid response activations for opportunities to improve our processes before the occurrence of a safety event. We collected data via chart audits, Epic reports, and our hospital event reporting system. Data were analyzed using the statistical process control “U” chart. We applied Associates for Process Improvement rules to detect special cause variation.Fig. 1.: Key driver diagram identifying the primary and secondary drivers that were used to generate tertiary drivers. The tertiary drivers were used to define the sequential interventions that were implemented. RRT, rapid response team; Q&A, question and answer session.Results: We reduced the SSER from 1.6 to 0/10,000 patient days (Fig. 2). There was an average of 7 huddles documented monthly. There was no decrease in the rate of compliance in performing monthly hospital acquired infection audits. Our hospital-wide process for performing these audits changed in October 2024, leading to an increase from 28 audits per month on average to 47 audits per month. An unanticipated result was an increase in enrollment in our safety coach program, with 8 new coaches enrolled since August 2023, compared with 1 new enrollment before rollout.Fig. 2.: U chart showing the SSER from January 2021 to January 2025. January 2021–June 2023 is baseline data, with the sequential interventions beginning in July 2023. Timing of each sequential plan–do–study–act cycle annotated numerically on the chart, with corresponding descriptions in the accompanying table. A centerline shift from 1.8 serious safety events per 10,000 patient days to 0 SSEs per 10,000 patient days beginning in June 2024 is shown. Directional arrow along y-axis indicates desired direction of the SSER. CL, centerline; ICU, intensive care unit; RRT, rapid response team.Conclusions: Adoption of a proactive safety framework with implementation of safety huddles can improve interdisciplinary communication and may lead to a reduction in the SSER. Future interventions include expanding the proactive safety huddles to other clinical situations, formalizing the documentation process in our electronic medical record system, and expanding to other inpatient pediatric areas within our hospital system.

  PublisherDOI

• Work Unit Conditions and Emotional Exhaustion

  Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine · 2025-10-17

  article

  OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to examine how work unit-level job control (ie, decision authority and schedule control) modifies the association between psychological job demands and emotional exhaustion (a dimension of burnout) among nursing home staff. METHODS: We analyzed four waves of data from 1144 employees in 126 units at a long-term care organization. Emotional exhaustion was measured using the Maslach Burnout Inventory, with unit-level decision authority, schedule control, and demands derived from coworker responses. Quantile regression assessed associations across emotional exhaustion levels. RESULTS: Higher unit-level demands increased exhaustion, whereas schedule control generally reduced it. However, decision authority and schedule control buffered the effect of job demands on exhaustion for less exhausted employees but intensified exhaustion for already exhausted workers. CONCLUSIONS: Tailoring strategies accounting for initial employee exhaustion levels and considering work unit-level dynamics may increase capacity to enhance worker well-being and effectiveness.

  PublisherDOI

• The Fulfillment Center Intervention Study: Protocol for a group-randomized control trial of a participatory workplace intervention

  PLoS ONE · 2024-07-18 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Warehousing and storage is an economically vital industry, with 1.2 million workers in 2020. The Fulfillment Center Intervention Study focuses on workers in fulfillment centers in the e-commerce segment of this industry. Fulfillment centers are a growing yet understudied work environment which provides a unique setting to further examine how working conditions and worker voice influence health. The Study involves a group-randomized controlled trial comparing participants in worksites randomized to launch the participatory intervention (Health and Well-Being Committees, or HaWCs) with participants working for the same firm in control sites. HaWCs serve as a new formal voice channel where a small group of frontline workers and supervisors solicit workers' concerns and ideas about safety (e.g., physical hazards), the psychosocial environment (e.g., how workers feel about their treatment at work), and work organization (e.g., workflow, training opportunities, scheduling) and then develop and implement improvement projects in response. The primary objectives of the study are to evaluate the efficacy of the HaWC intervention and its effect on mental health outcomes and changes in the conditions of work within fulfillment centers, and to conduct a process evaluation of key contextual factors that support effective intervention implementation and sustained engagement. To our knowledge, this will be the first trial of a participatory intervention within a fulfillment center setting. Anticipated challenges include competing demands and company initiatives that may limit management support and high turnover. Should the intervention be shown to be feasible, the outcomes from this study will inform future randomized controlled trials of participatory interventions. Trial registration: This trial is registered with the ClinicalTrials.gov registry (NCT05199415) and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Protocol: 200800024).

  PublisherDOI

• THE GOLDEN TICKET: THE PATHOGNOMONIC FINDING OF GOLDEN SPUTUM IN PATIENTS WITH ACUTE CHEST SYNDROME

  CHEST Journal · 2024-09-18

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Points of departure: family leave policy and women’s representation in management in U.S. workplaces

  Social Forces · 2024-06-08 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract This paper theorizes the interplay of public and organizational policies by investigating whether the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) shifted patterns of gender inequality within U.S. workplaces. Did this leave law increase women’s representation in positions of authority (moving more women into management jobs)? We argue that the impact of public policies will vary by organizational context, hypothesizing different effects by organizations’ points of departure—the corporate policies in place when public policy changes. Analyzing establishment-level panel data from approximately 800 U.S. private-sector establishments in 1990–1997, we found that women’s representation in managerial positions increased in the years immediately after the FMLA. Importantly, women’s representation in management increased the most in workplaces that provided more generous leave benefits even before the FMLA. The increase in managerial representation was most prominent for women of color. Consistent with relational inequality theory, these findings suggest that women may find it easier to make claims for leave and for career advancement when both legal and organizational policies lend legitimacy to their claims. More broadly, this study points to the need to explicitly evaluate how policy impacts vary by organizational norms and commitments.

  PublisherDOI

• Fostering Socio-Ecological Resilience to Wildfire by Interconnecting Knowledge Systems at Cal Poly Humboldt

  Humboldt Journal of Social Relations · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access

  The wildfire-related challenges of Northern California and many other regions in the western United States are daunting in scope and magnitude. Ecologically and culturally salient solutions that limit the negative impacts of wildfire and promote resilience of human and ecological systems will require newer approaches. Through Cal Poly Humboldt and the Fire Resilience Institute, there is greater emphasis on the interconnection of knowledge systems across education, training, research, and management. Here we highlight several on-going efforts that seek to enhance the fire resilience workforce, promote socio-ecological resilience through interdisciplinary projects, and inform management through monitoring and research projects that intentionally incorporate multiple knowledge systems. Shifting to a more inclusive process has many potential benefits but will also pose challenges and require modification of approaches. Here we emphasize some on-going efforts at Cal Poly Humboldt to intentionally bridge knowledge systems to make advances on wildfire-related challenges. Socio-ecological resilience and coexistence with fire can be fostered but the long-term effectiveness will greatly benefit from approaches that are inclusive, equitable, and interconnected across the many stakeholders affected and disciplines involved.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How Do Employer Practices Affect Economic Mobility?

  Industrial and Labor Relations Review · 2023-07-21 · 7 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  How can employers facilitate economic mobility for workers, particularly workers of color or those without a college degree? The authors integrate a fragmented literature to assess how employers’ practices affect enhanced economic security and mobility. This article first identifies three pathways linking employers’ practices to mobility: improving material job quality, increasing access to better jobs for historically marginalized workers, and promoting sustainability of employment. The authors provide a critical assessment of the research literature on recruitment and hiring practices; pay and wages; promotion practices; scheduling; leaves; diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; and work systems as these practices relate to economic mobility. They then identify strategic questions and feasible designs for enhancing future research on these questions in order to guide policy and management practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Employee Cardiometabolic Risk Following a Cluster-Randomized Workplace Intervention From the Work, Family and Health Network, 2009–2013

  American Journal of Public Health · 2023-11-08 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access

  Objectives. To examine whether workplace interventions to increase workplace flexibility and supervisor support and decrease work–family conflict can reduce cardiometabolic risk. Methods. We randomly assigned employees from information technology (n = 555) and long-term care (n = 973) industries in the United States to the Work, Family and Health Network intervention or usual practice (we collected the data 2009–2013). We calculated a validated cardiometabolic risk score (CRS) based on resting blood pressure, HbA 1c (glycated hemoglobin), HDL (high-density lipoprotein) and total cholesterol, height and weight (body mass index), and tobacco consumption. We compared changes in baseline CRS to 12-month follow-up. Results. There was no significant main effect on CRS associated with the intervention in either industry. However, significant interaction effects revealed that the intervention improved CRS at the 12-month follow-up among intervention participants in both industries with a higher baseline CRS. Age also moderated intervention effects: older employees had significantly larger reductions in CRS at 12 months than did younger employees. Conclusions. The intervention benefited employee health by reducing CRS equivalent to 5 to 10 years of age-related changes for those with a higher baseline CRS and for older employees. Trial Registration. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02050204. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(12):1322–1331. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307413 )

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Flexible Work and Well-Being Center at the University of Minnesota

  NIH · $6.7M · 2005–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Phyllis Moen

  University of Minnesota

  194 shared

• Jeremy W. Bray

  116 shared

• Ryan Olson

  101 shared

• Michael J. Mills

  University of Massachusetts Lowell

  101 shared

• Brad Wipfli

  Portland State University

  101 shared

• Carolina Barbosa

  RTI International

  100 shared

• William N. Dowd

  RTI International

  100 shared

• Leslie B. Hammer

  Oregon Health & Science University

  84 shared

Labs

• MIT Sloan Work and Organization StudiesPI

Awards & honors

• 2024 Ellen Galinsky Generative Researcher Award from the Wor…
• 2021 Max Weber Book Award for Distinguished Scholarship from…
• 2015 Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Famil…