The Linked Employer-Employee Study of the Socio-Economic Panel, Vers. 2 (SOEP-LEE 2)

The Linked Employer-Employee Study of the Socio-Economic Panel was first conducted in 2012 and is now entering its second round. The focus of SOEP-LEE2 is on longer-term changes in labor relations in the context of ongoing digitalization. In this context, the project examines how the corona pandemic has affected human resources management and leadership.

A key feature of the study is the linkage of individual and organizational data. Specifically, those companies are surveyed, in which (consenting) SOEP respondents are employed. This allows for linking of employer and employee data. This makes it possible, for example, to analyze changes in individual employment histories and social structures, educational behavior and the utilization of human capital, opportunities to achieve personal potential and job and life satisfaction. The linkage of individual, household, and workplace data in SOEP-LEE enriches the SOEP not only with additional variables but also with an additional data source. The project also contributes to survey-methodological research, for instance, through the combination of a survey with Internet searches for reliability testing.

In addition to the SOEP-LEE2 employer-employee data, there are separate stand-alone studies on corporate cybersecurity and resilience are conducted jointly with uzbonn since autumn of 2024. These two studies investigate resilience in companies and cybersecurity in small and medium sized companies. Furthermore, two stand-alone studies are geared towards employees. One of these studies investigates decision making under uncertainty, which is explored in a 2-country comparative design. The second study investigates occupational integration of people with migration background and aims to identify factors shaping the decision to stay or return and to formulate recommendations for companies and administration against the background of a shortage of skilled employees.

The project started in June 2021 at the Socio-Economic Panel at DIW Berlin and at the Institute for Human Resources and Labor at Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg. The employer surveys that are linkable to employees began in the fall of 2021 and are conducted by infas (Institute for Applied Social Science) in three waves. Once data processing is complete, the waves will be made available to the research community by the Research Data Center for Business and Organizational Data (RDC-BO) and the RDC SOEP at DIW Berlin. The stand-alone studies on selected topics are conducted in 2024 and 2025.

Documentation and information on data access can be found here.