The Relationship Between Strategic Human Resource Management Practices and the Employment of Vulnerable Workers: A Two-Wave Study Among Employers.

Only 438 of the 994 invited follow-up respondents completed the second survey. Follow-up respondents were more often from non-profit organizations than non-respondents. The baseline descriptive sample was reported as 4,719 employers, but the follow-up regression analyses used 438 employers. A single director or HR/general manager answered for each organization and may not have known all practices. Organizations reporting night work were excluded, and they more often offered inclusive practices and employed or hired vulnerable workers. The follow-up period was nine months, so the study cannot show long-term employment or retention. The study cannot show that HRM practices caused hiring; employers may have adopted practices after hiring vulnerable workers. Most measures were binary yes/no items, and the descriptions may not have been clear to all respondents. Employers may use several practices at once, and the models examined practices separately, so the study cannot show how much any one practice contributed. The study did not measure employee tenure or turnover, so it cannot speak to how long vulnerable workers stayed. The study reports employer-level associations, not patient-level outcomes, so it cannot guide direct therapy for an individual patient.

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Do not read these HRM practices as proven causes of hiring vulnerable workers. The study measured employers at baseline and follow-up and cannot rule out that employers who already employ vulnerable workers are more likely to report these practices. It also cannot separate the contribution of one practice when employers use several together.