This framework can help employers and their partners define job quality and design high-quality job opportunities in collaboration with workers, based on a menu of components of a quality job. The tool is built around three pillars that can help to attract and retain talent: foundational elements of a quality job such as wages and benefits, support elements such as training, and opportunity elements such as recognition.

MIT’s Good Jobs Institute created this framework to help employers seeking to improve worker experience, retention, and productivity to assess their performance across nine “essential elements” of a quality job. These include meeting an employee’s basic needs, such as through fair wages and a flexible schedule, and meeting “higher needs” such as personal growth, belonging, and recognition. While designed for employers, the framework has relevance for all practitioners seeking to define and assess job quality in an organization.

This resource includes an at-a-glance overview of commuter benefits targeted at employers. A more comprehensive guide is available as a paid resource. Employers and the practitioners supporting them may find these resources useful for launching or enhancing a commuter benefits program.

This assessment is a tool to help employers (primarily >150 employees) benchmark their talent management strategies against those other employers are undertaking and to determine where to focus practice change efforts. The topics covered in the survey include recruiting, hiring, retention, advancement, and more. A separate resource section also provides a variety of business-facing tools. Practitioners who work with businesses could direct them to this tool and even walk them through it.

This PDF provides a helpful model for assessing business practices. Employers are asked questions about the quality of their jobs through factors such as diversity, benefits (e.g., paid leave), health support, and flexible scheduling. Although some questions are specific to New Mexico’s policies, this application may be used as a model for organizations interested in assessing job quality for current and potential employer partners. This tool could also be used internally for employers who would like to assess their own practices.

This brief synthesizes existing knowledge on the landscape of benefits available to workers in the United States and the impacts of those benefits. It begins by defining workplace benefits and providing a brief history of their use. It then explores the connection between workplace benefits and job quality, mapping known impacts against key components of job quality. Finally, it reflects on opportunities for improvements in job quality and for future research.

This piece provides a summary and highlights from “Job Quality in the Fields: Improving Farm Work in the US,” an Opportunity in America event that highlighted the challenges of agricultural workers and ideas for improving their working conditions.

This report examines findings from phase two of the Gig Worker Learning Project, an effort of The Workers Lab and the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program. The purpose of this effort is to understand more about gig work and workers directly from gig workers themselves – motivations to do gig work; challenges being faced; and solutions that would impact gig workers personally, their families, and their work. The first phase of the Gig Worker Learning Project produced an analysis of existing research and recommendations. The phase two findings presented in this latest report emerged from participatory research which included more than a dozen focus groups and several participatory analysis sessions led by an incredibly diverse set of workers. It marks the beginning of The Workers Lab’s plan to help build greater advocacy for gig workers nationally.

This fact sheet, released at the 2024 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum, provides some updated statistics regarding employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) in manufacturing in total, and, separately, for ESOPs in publicly traded corporations and closely-held corporations

In this fact sheet, released at the 2024 Employee Ownershipo Ideas Forum, the authors provide some updated statistics regarding ESOPs in rural counties with a focus on closely-held corporations where rural ESOPs are most prevalent.