Outreach Email for Worker Interviews

Subject: Identifying Collaborators for Employment Processes as Barriers to Employment in the Low-Wage Labor Market Study Team 

 

Dear <Name>, 

Abt Associates, in partnership with Dr. Susan Lambert at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Public Policy, and Practice, is conducting a project to better understand how employment processes can present barriers to employment and career advancement for workers of color, as well as explore and identify potentially promising strategies to address biases in the low-wage labor market. The project is sponsored by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As part of the Employment Processes as Barriers to Employment in the Low-Wage Labor Market project, we are conducting one-on-one discussions with BIPOC workers in the low wage labor market to ensure that our work is informed by the experience of individuals who most directly experience the problem that the project seeks to address. We also plan to speak with employers, representatives from worker advocacy organizations, workforce development practitioners, developers of HR software, and relevant federal agency staff.

Based on your role at (Organization) we are hoping you would be able to connect us with a BIPOC worker who would be interested in participating in one of these discussions to inform potential future efforts to create more equitable workplaces. The call would take about an hour of their time, and we will be conducting interviews between April 20^th and June 30^th. Calls would be over Teams or WebEx. Participants will receive a $35 gift card as a token of appreciation for their participation in the discussion.

Topics that we will cover include potential sources of bias in various steps of the employment process, including how workers learn about opportunities, the application and hiring process, characteristics of low-wage jobs, and opportunities for promotion. The information from the discussion will be used to inform subsequent tasks on this project, including a literature review and identification of promising initiatives to combat bias that may be candidates to study further. For more information about the project, please see the attached description.  

Please feel free to forward this email and the project description to anyone who might be interested in participating. Please don’t hesitate to contact me should you have any questions. For general information about the evaluation, please contact <COR>.