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Many OECD countries invest heavily in labour-market programs to prolong careers. Although active labour-market programs designed for this purpose have frequently been evaluated, less is known about the employment impact of more passive regimes that make labour-market participation later in life feasible. This study focuses on the latter by investigating the hiring opportunities of senior job candidates who partake in a system that ensures older labour-market participants a company supplement in addition to unemployment benefits when they are dismissed. Therefore, we conduct a state-of-the-art scenario experiment in which 360 genuine recruiters evaluate fictitious job candidates who have spent varying durations unemployed in regimes with and without the company supplement. Because they evaluate candidates with respect to both hireability and productivity perceptions, we can identify the mechanisms at play. Overall, we find no evidence of employer-side stigma hindering the re-employment of older unemployed in the program. On the contrary, the longer-term unemployed even benefit – in terms of hiring chances – from partaking in this regime because it seemingly mitigates the regular stigmatisation of long-term unemployment, especially for men. More concretely, recruiters judge the long-term unemployed more mildly, especially with respect to perceived flexibility, when they receive the company supplement and still apply.

The existing burnout literature has predominantly focussed on the determinants of burnout, whereas its consequences for individual careers have received little attention. In this study, we investigate whether recently burned-out individuals and persons with a very high risk of clinical burnout differ in job preferences from non-burned-out workers. Moreover, we link these differences in preferences with (1) diverging perceptions of job demands and resources in a job, as well as (2) distinct weighting of such perceptions. To this end, a high-quality sample of 582 employees varying in their history and current risk of burnout judged fictitious job offers with experimentally manipulated characteristics in terms of their willingness to apply as well as perceived job demands and resources. We find that recently burned-out employees appreciate possibilities to telework and fixed feedback relatively more, while being relatively less attracted to opportunities for learning on the job. Moreover, employees with a very high risk of burnout are more attracted to part-time jobs. These findings can be partially explained by differences in the perceived resources offered by jobs.

To study hiring discrimination against cancer survivors, we conduct a vignette experiment in which American and British recruiters evaluate fictitious job candidates. Candidates differed by periods of non-employment in their career, including non-employment due to suffering from cancer. We study the effect of cancer experiences on the recruiters' hiring decisions, as well as its effect on underlying candidate perceptions, related to various potential forms of stigma identified in the literature. We find that employment opportunities are lower for candidates with a history of cancer, compared to candidates without such a gap. This penalty is particularly explained by perceptions that these candidates will have higher sick leave probabilities and create additional costs. However, relative to candidates with a comparable gap due to depression or personal reasons, former cancer patients are less stigmatised, with relatively favourable assessments of their emotional abilities, social abilities, motivation and positive impact on workplace culture.

To explain the mixed findings on hiring discrimination against homosexual applicants, we explore the perceptual drivers behind employers' evaluations of gay men and lesbian women. Therefore, we conduct an extensive vignette experiment among 404 genuine recruiters, for which we test systematically-selected perceptions theoretically associated with homosexual job candidates in earlier studies. We find causal evidence for distinct effects of sexual identities on candidate perceptions and interview probabilities. In particular, interview probabilities are positively (negatively) associated with the perception of lesbian women (gay men) as being more (less) pleasant to work with compared to heterosexual candidates. In addition, interview chances are negatively associated with the perception of gay men and lesbian women as being more outspoken. Furthermore, our data align well with the idea of a concentrated discrimination account, whereby a minority of employers who privately hold negative attitudes towards homosexual individuals are responsible for most instances of hiring discrimination.

Recent studies have explored hiring discrimination as an obstacle to former burnout patients. Many workers, however, return to the same employer, where they face an even more severe aftermath of burnout syndrome: promotion discrimination. To our knowledge, we are the first to directly address this issue in research. More specifically, we conducted a vignette experiment with 406 genuine managers, testing the potential of the main burnout stigma theoretically described in the literature as potential mediators of promotion discrimination. Estimates reveal that compared to employees without an employment interruption, former burnout patients have no less than a 34.4% lower probability of receiving a promotion. Moreover, these employees are perceived as having low (1) leadership, (2) learning capacity, (3) motivation, (4) autonomy and (5) stress tolerance, as well as being (6) less capable of taking on an exemplary role, (7) having worse current and (8) future health, (9) collaborating with them is regarded more negatively, and (10) managers perceive them as having fewer options to leave the organisation if denied a promotion. Four of these perceptions, namely lower leadership capacities, stress tolerance, abilities to take on an exemplary role and chances of finding another job explain almost half the burnout effect on promotion probabilities.

Hiring discrimination towards (former) burnout patients has been extensively documented in the literature. To tackle this problem, it is important to understand the underlying mechanisms of such discrimination. Therefore, we conducted a vignette experiment with 425 genuine recruiters and jointly tested the potential stigma against job candidates with a history of burnout that were mentioned earlier in the literature. We found candidates revealing a history of burnout elicit perceptions of requiring work adaptations, likely having more unpleasant collaborations with others as well as diminished health, autonomy, ability to work under pressure, leadership capacity, manageability, and learning ability, when compared to candidates with a comparable gap in working history due to physical injury. Led by perceptions of a reduced ability to work under pressure, the tested perceptions jointly explained over 90% of the effect of revealing burnout on the probability of being invited to a job interview. In addition, the negative effect on interview probability of revealing burnout was stronger when the job vacancy required higher stress tolerance. In contrast, the negative impact of revealing burnout on interview probability appeared weaker when recruiters were women and when recruiters had previously had personal encounters with burnout.

This study is the first in the world to investigate the expected impact of the COVID-19 crisis on career outcomes and career aspirations. To this end, high-quality survey research with a relevant panel of Belgian employees was conducted. About 21% of them fear losing their jobs due to the crisis—14% are concerned that they will even lose their jobs in the near future. In addition, 26% expect to miss out on promotions that they would have received had the COVID-19 crisis not occurred. This fear of a negative impact is higher in vulnerable groups, such migrants. In addition, we observe that many panel members believe they will look at the labour market differently and will have different work-related priorities in the future. In this respect, more than half of the panel members indicate that they have attached more importance to working conditions and work-life balance since the COVID-19 crisis.

While a considerable number of employees across the globe are being forced to work from home due to the COVID-19 crisis, it is a guessing game as to how they are experiencing this current surge in telework. Therefore, we examined employee perceptions of telework on various life and career aspects, distinguishing between typical and extended telework during the COVID-19 crisis. To this end, we conducted a state-of-the-art web survey among Flemish employees. Notwithstanding this exceptional time of sudden, obligatory and high-intensity telework, our respondents mainly attribute positive characteristics to telework, such as increased efficiency and a lower risk of burnout. The results also suggest that the overwhelming majority of the surveyed employees believe that telework (85%) and digital conferencing (81%) are here to stay. In contrast, some fear that telework diminishes their promotion opportunities and weakens ties with their colleagues and employer.