Whitney Zhang ’21 believes within the significance of valuing employees no matter the place they match into an organizational chart.
Zhang is a PhD pupil in MIT’s Department of Economics finding out labor economics. She explores how the technological and managerial choices corporations make have an effect on employees throughout the pay spectrum.
“I’ve been fascinated with economics, financial impacts, and associated social points for a very long time,” says Zhang, who majored in mathematical economics as an undergraduate. “I wished to use my math abilities to see how we might enhance insurance policies and their results.”
Zhang is fascinated with methods to enhance circumstances for employees. She believes it’s essential to construct relationships with policymakers, specializing in an evidence-driven method to coverage, whereas all the time remembering to heart these the insurance policies might have an effect on. “We’ve to recollect the folks whose lives are impacted by enterprise operations and laws,” she says.
She’s additionally conscious of the advanced intermixture of politics, social standing, and monetary obligations organizations and their staff should navigate.
“Although I’m finding out employees, it’s essential to think about the whole advanced ecosystem when fixing for these sorts of challenges, together with agency incentives and world financial circumstances,” she says.
The intersection of tech and labor coverage
Zhang started investigating worker productiveness, synthetic intelligence, and associated financial and labor market phenomena early in her time as a doctoral pupil, collaborating incessantly with fellow PhD college students within the division.
A collaboration with economics doctoral pupil Shakked Noy yielded the 2023 study investigating ChatGPT as a instrument to enhance productiveness. Their research discovered it considerably elevated employees’ productiveness on writing duties, most so for employees who initially carried out the worst on the duties.
“This was one of many earliest items of proof on the productiveness results of generative AI, and contributed to offering concrete knowledge on how impactful some of these instruments may be within the office and on the labor market,” Zhang says.
In different ongoing analysis — “Determinants of Irregular Employee Schedules” — Zhang is utilizing knowledge from a payroll supplier to look at scheduling unpredictability, investigating why corporations make use of unpredictable schedules and the way these schedules have an effect on low-wage staff’ high quality of life.
The scheduling undertaking, carried out with MIT economics PhD pupil Nathan Lazarus, is motivated, partially, by current sociological proof that low-wage employees’ unpredictable schedules are related to worse sleep and well-being. “We’ve seen a relationship between greater turnover and inconsistent, insufficient schedules, which suggests employees dis-prefer these sorts of schedules,” Zhang says.
At an instructional roundtable, Zhang offered her outcomes to Starbucks staff concerned in scheduling and staffing. The attendees wished to be taught extra about how totally different scheduling practices impacted employees and their productiveness. “These are the sorts of questions that would reveal helpful data for small companies, giant firms, and others,” she says.
By conducting this analysis, Zhang hopes to raised perceive whether or not or not scheduling laws can enhance affected staff’ high quality of life, whereas additionally contemplating potential unintended penalties. “Why are these schedules set the way in which they’re set?” she asks. “Do companies with these sorts of schedules require elevated regulation?”
One other undertaking, carried out with MIT economics doctoral pupil Arjun Ramani, examines the linkages between offshoring, distant work, and associated outcomes. “Do the technological and managerial practices which have made distant work doable additional facilitate offshoring?” she asks. “Do organizations see vital positive factors in effectivity? What are the impacts on U.S. and offshore employees?”
Her work is being funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
Placing folks on the heart
Zhang has noticed the totally different varieties of individuals economics and better schooling might deliver collectively. She adopted a twin enrollment observe in highschool, finishing college-level programs with college students from throughout a wide range of demographic identities. “I loved centering folks in my work,” she says. “Taking lessons with a various group of scholars, together with veterans and moms returning to highschool to finish their research, made me extra inquisitive about socioeconomic points and the insurance policies related to them.”
She later enrolled at MIT, the place she participated within the Undergraduate Analysis Alternatives Program (UROP). She additionally accomplished an internship on the World Financial institution, labored as a summer time analyst on the Federal Reserve Financial institution of New York, and labored as an assistant for a various school cohort together with MIT economists David Autor, Jon Gruber, and Nina Roussille. Autor is her main advisor on her doctoral analysis, a mentor she cites as a big affect.
“[Autor’s] course, 14.03 (Microeconomics and Public Coverage), cemented connections between idea and observe,” she says. “I assumed the category was revelatory in displaying the sorts of questions economics can reply.”
Doctoral research has revealed fascinating pathways of investigation for Zhang, as have her relationships together with her pupil friends and different school. She has, for instance, leveraged school connections to realize entry to hourly wage knowledge in help of her scheduling and worker impacts work. “Usually, economists have had administrative knowledge on earnings, however not on hours,” she notes.
Zhang’s give attention to bettering others’ lives extends to her work exterior the classroom. She’s a mentor for the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center College Access Program and a member of MIT’s Graduate Christian Fellowship group. When she’s not having fun with spicy soups or paddling on the Charles, she takes benefit of alternatives to decompress together with her artwork at W20 Arts Studios.
“I wished to create time for myself exterior of analysis and the classroom,” she says.
Zhang cites the advantages of MIT’s give attention to cross-collaboration and inspiring college students to discover different disciplines. As an undergraduate, Zhang minored in pc science, which taught her coding abilities crucial to her knowledge work. Publicity to engineering additionally led her to turn out to be extra fascinated with questions round how expertise and employees work together.
Working with different students within the division has improved how Zhang conducts inquiries. “I’ve turn out to be the type of well-rounded pupil {and professional} who can establish and quantify impacts, which is invaluable for future tasks,” she says. Publicity to totally different educational and analysis areas, Zhang argues, helps enhance entry to concepts and knowledge.
