This resource from the National Center for Employee Ownership offers a quick overview of four forms of employee ownership: Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOPs), Equity Grants, Employee Owned Trusts, and Worker Cooperatives. The resource gives an introduction to which types of companies these forms of employee ownership are best suited to, the tax implications, how equity works within each model, and more questions on governance and execution.

This research brief and landscape analysis focuses on pervasive racial disparities in elements of job quality (e.g., pay, health & safety, adequate hours) and some of the causes behind them. The authors pull together research on established laws, institutional practices, and cultural norms (e.g., occupational segregation, nonstandard work arrangements like the independent contractor classification, hiring discrimination) to create a cohesive narrative outlining how these structures have resulted in systemic disadvantages and discrimination for workers of color, particularly Black workers. These racial disparities not only persist today but were magnified during the ongoing COVID-19 and resulting racial reckoning. Individuals involved in work influencing policy decisions and institutional practices to improve labor market opportunities for workers of color may find this resource helpful.

This brief provides a framework to help HR leaders design benefits programs aimed at improving employees’ financial health, a common equity concern and component of job quality. The guidance offered centers equity approaches such as broadening access to supports and targeting outreach efforts to financially vulnerable groups. Employers who are interested in embedding a DEI lens into the design of their benefits programs and closing financial health gaps among their workforce may find this resource helpful. Workforce development and worker advocacy professionals may also want to share this with their employer networks.

This report introduces behavioral design as an approach that can help disrupt behaviors that perpetuate the U.S. gender pay gap. An alternative to individual-focused bias and diversity training, this approach can help employers design interventions to address systems and norms. The report aims to help employers shift behaviors away from those that disadvantage women and toward those that benefit all employees. Although written to help employers reimagine their role in creating fair and dignified workplaces, this report may also be useful for organizations that work with businesses, to share with employer partners.

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the value of caregiving work and the need for equitable and affordable access to care – for children, for elders, for those with a disability, and for all of us in hard times. Yet care work remains underpaid and often invisible, contributing to the inadequacies of the US care system and deepening challenges for caregivers and families. As we move from crisis to recovery, how can policy contribute to building a care economy that dignifies the work of caregivers and expands access to quality, affordable care? How can our systems center gender and racial equity to construct a care economy that serves all families? And how can our society support a healthy and sustainable caregiving system for our post-pandemic future, one in which the demand for caregiving is poised to continue to grow?

While California boasts a strong economy by many measures of growth, too many Californians have not enjoyed the benefits of the state’s broader economic success and the extraordinary wealth generated. As the nation grapples with demographic and geographic economic inequities that have been growing over the first two decades of the 21st century, and that have been exacerbated in this time of national crisis, what does the Golden State plan to do so that workers of every race, ethnicity, geography and gender have what they need to support themselves and their families, and thrive now and in the future?

Established prior to the COVID crisis, California’s Future of Work Commission has been tasked with confronting this question. It aims to create a new social compact for California workers, based on an expansive vision for economic equity that takes work and jobs as the starting point. We invite you to join this discussion and hear firsthand what California is doing to build a brighter future of work.

Our economy doesn’t just need more jobs, it needs better jobs. How should policymakers and practitioners define job quality and make improved job quality their guiding principle? What ideas can help restore the ideal of work as the pathway to the American Dream? In a shared statement, the Aspen Institute’s Job Quality Fellows drew on their diverse experiences and perspectives to develop a shared set of policy principles to improve job quality for working people across the US. This interactive event features Betsy Biemann (Chief Executive Officer, Coastal Enterprises Inc., Brunswick, Maine), Jose Corona (Vice President, Programs & Partnerships, Eat.Play.Learn Foundation, Oakland, California), Caryn York (Chief Executive Officer, Job Opportunities Task Force, Baltimore, Maryland), and moderator Maureen Conway (Vice President, The Aspen Institute; Executive Director, Economic Opportunities Program).

The COVID-19 pandemic placed enormous stress on small businesses and their workers, as closures and new public safety measures demanded that business owners shift operations and take creative steps to keep employees and customers safe. Small business owners became increasingly aware that the wellbeing of their employees is essential for business survival – and they forged new partnerships and took new approaches to support their workers.

Watch this discussion, hosted by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program and the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, to learn about strategies that small business owners and workforce organizations took to strengthen job quality for frontline workers in the wake of COVID-19. In this session, we hear from two restaurant owners in Baltimore, along with a workforce professional who helped them prioritize job quality through the pandemic.

Even before the pandemic, in an allegedly strong economy, workers at the bottom end of the opportunity scale were struggling to support themselves and their families. No single metric is more striking in this respect than the divisions in wealth between men and women, and between white households and households of color. White households have roughly 10 times the wealth of Black households. Households headed by single women have less than 40% of the wealth of those headed by single men. Broadening opportunities to participate in the ownership of business assets can help address this wealth divide and offer working people the opportunity to meaningfully participate in the success of our economy.

This discussion includes perspectives from research, business, policy, and worker-owners.

Questions about the future of work shifted during the pandemic, prompting overdue discussions about workplace health and safety, the unemployment system, health insurance, and fair wages and benefits. What policies can support a thriving future of work? What roles do we want private business to play? And what strategies will build a future of work that addresses long standing inequities and inequalities and provides opportunities for all to thrive? California’s Future of Work Commission and Jobs and Recovery Task Force had been working on these questions since before the pandemic and had begun implementing innovative policies to address the critical challenges facing working people in today’s economy and tomorrow’s.