The Work Equity initiative aims to advance equity in the workplace by developing solutions to the root causes of racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination and biases built into the structure of jobs and employment systems.

Contact Work Equity

supported by the Center for Social Innovation

What We Do

Focus on small and medium-sized organizations often ignored by consulting groups and research centers.

Conduct Equity Innovation Labs to leverage the experiences and insights of people close to the issues.

Recognize that discrimination and inequities are institutionalized (typically inadvertently) into the structure of jobs and employment systems.

Engage teams of both managers and employees to address the root causes of inequity and propose and pilot customized solutions.

Invite a multidisciplinary and racially, ethnically, and gender diverse team of design thinking and DEI practitioners to join our seasoned researchers.

Uphold the commitment of social work to ‘evidence-based practices’ by collecting national and regional data about the state of equity at work.

Offer our services at no fee to businesses or nonprofits.

“In many ways, the disparate impact of COVID-19 links directly to the workplace. The pandemic fundamentally changed assumptions about how work gets done, when work gets done, where work gets done—and who is an essential worker in the U.S. economy.”
Samuel L. Bradley, Jr., Assistant Professor

Our Strategy

Generate Knowledge

Conduct groundbreaking research on the state of workplace equity and organizational resilience in the wake of COVID-19 through the Workplace Equity Study. Findings will inform development of the Workplace Equity Benchmarking Tool to enable organizations to compare equity practices against normative data. We will also prepare a collection of case studies that discuss promising equity practices.

Engage and Innovate

Engage directly with employers, workplace managers, and frontline employees through the Equity Innovation Lab. We'll work initially with 3-4 Massachusetts-based organizations to pilot an innovation process that explicitly identifies structural and systemic root causes of workplace inequities. Working with Innovation Coaches, each participating organization will pilot test an innovative policy or practice that addresses inequity at the workplace.

Mobilize Action

Develop a Work Equity Knowledgebase, targeted to practitioners, which will offer a curated library of equity-relevant publications including survey findings, the Workplace Equity Benchmarking Tool, the collection of promising equity practices and related case studies, and insights gained from the Equity Innovation Lab. We'll also provide a suite of user-friendly tools that enable employers to compare equity at their own organizations against progress reported by their peers. 

 

Who We Are

Samuel Bradley

Samuel Bradley, Jr.

Assistant Professor
Head of the BCSSW Equity, Justice, & Inclusion Initiative

Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes

Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes

Professor Emerita

Kathleen Christensen

Kathleen Christensen

Faculty Fellow

Research

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