Job quality is vital not only for workers, but also for small businesses and communities. Yet too many jobs today miss the mark on one of the key characteristics of a good job: providing enough pay to live on. Only 56% of full-time workers in the United States make enough money to cover their families basic needs. This problem is particularly acute at small businesses. Nearly 60% of low-wage workers work at businesses with fewer than 100 employees, and 35% of low-wage workers work at micro-businesses with fewer than 10 employees. Small businesses also struggle to address other characteristics of a good job, like providing adequate benefits, stable scheduling, and a positive work culture.
Recognizing this context, in 2022, the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program (EOP) launched the Shared Success project, funded by the Gates Foundation. The project supports 11 community development financial institutions (CDFIs) across the country to integrate job quality support into their small business services with the goal of improving job quality for small business employees and building business resilience. Three years later, EOP has seen how grantees have used innovative approaches to recruit, advise, and incentivize small businesses to improve job quality.
In this event recording, leaders of CDFIs, their small business clients, philanthropic supporters, and other experts discuss the lessons learned from Shared Success, ranging from practical tips about strategies for engaging small businesses in discussions of job quality to the range of job quality improvements CDFI clients helped their businesses make.
A career in trucking was once considered a pathway to the middle class. Yet the quality of jobs in the industry has steeply declined in recent decades. Long-haul truckers, who might spend days or weeks away from home, have seen their salaries fall by as much as half since the deregulation of the industry a half century ago, and annual turnover hovers near 100%. Short-haul truckers are frequently misclassified as independent contractors, stripping them of benefits and worker protections and burdening them with the costs of owning and operating a truck. And predatory leasing arrangements are pushed on truckers by the industry, saddling many with debt that they struggle to pay off. All of this is in spite of the fact that truckers work year-round, at all hours of the day, while exposed to hazards, to ensure that our economy keeps moving,
In recent years, a common narrative developed that there is a shortage of truck drivers. What is missing, however, is that this shortage is driven in large part by the industry’s turnover rates and the lack of good jobs that allow truckers to thrive. Today, there are nearly three times as many people with the necessary licensing and qualifications as there are trucking jobs. In addition, new developments in technology promise to upend the industry as companies embrace automation and increasingly deploy methods of surveillance.
As a key pillar of our economy and supply chain, and one of the largest occupations in the US, the job quality of workers in the trucking sector has far-reaching implications. Watch this event recording to explore the challenges truckers face and ideas for improving the returns for the essential work they do.
Developed as part of the Shared Success Demonstration, this tool offers guidance for business advisors at CDFIs on how to have conversations with small business owners on job quality improvements. It centers business value and includes a variety of information and resources to assist business owners in addressing poor job quality.
For a guide of resources that complement this tool, see our topic guide on Small Business Job Quality Advising.
These toolkits are designed to eliminate bias across different areas of the workplace, using specific “bias interrupters” that change existing norms and practices to create more equitable workplaces. Toolkits include: Compensation, Hiring and Recruitment, Family Leave, and more. Employers may find this tool useful for developing successful, equitable workplace practices. Additionally, workforce development and worker advocacy professionals may find this toolkit helpful to share with their employer-partners.
This toolkit is a collection of over 60 workplace policies that can help support, stabilize, and retain employees in low-wage work. The toolkit also contains sections on gender-based violence workers may be experiencing in their home lives and second-chance employment for formerly incarcerated individuals After a quick registration for a free account, the Employer Toolkit search feature can help you identify specific policy recommendations, many of which include sample HR policy language that companies can draw from. Topics include wages, benefits, child care, paid time off, scheduling, recruitment, training and education, and transportation.
The document outlines the six principles of Opportunity Employment, which prioritizes equity, inclusion, and opportunity, and mobility within a company while generating business value. The principles are associated with the various stages of Opportunity Employment: strategy and set up, recruiting and hiring, retention and advancement. HR professionals, managers and organization leaders, and practitioners can all benefit from this resource.
This page hosts all of Gallup’s articles and briefs on employee enagegement in the United States and abroad. It includes links to results from Gallup’s various employee engagement and experience surveys. It also includes opinion pieces and advice on improving employee engagement. These resources can be helpful for HR professionals, managers and other organization leaders, researchers, and practitioners interested in understanding employee engagement.
These sets of resources aim to help managers, supervsiors, HR professionals, and employees clarify roles and set goals. Many of these resources help readers consider equitable and inclusive ways of establishing expectations and goals. All resources can be downloaded and include estimate reading times. This also includes paid training from the Management Center for social justice and educational equity leaders and staff. All the other free resources on this page, however, can be helpful for HR professionals, recruiters, supervisors, managers, or employees in any industry.
On this page, there are various tools, templates, and tips for hiring and onboaring new employees. Resources can help recruiters or managers decide what they need in a new employee, mitigate bias during the hiring process, create a recruiting strategy, and properly onboard new hires. All resources can be downloaded and include estimate reading times. This page also includes links to paid training from the Management Center for social justice and educational equity leaders. All the other free resources on this page, however, can be helpful for HR professionals, recruiters, or managers in any industry.
This guide outlines how employers can create an onboarding process that gives employees all the information they need to be productive. The guide draws from HR experts and provides additional resources on creating on onboarding program and an optimal first day for new employees. It also details how human resource teams and upper management can evaluate the onboarding process and shift to employee retention and satisfaction. This guide is intended for employers, human resource leaders, and managers across industries looking to hire new employees for the first time or who are revamping existing onboarding processes.