For many workers, jobs with low-wages and limited benefits left them uniquely vulnerable during the pandemic. This webinar features leaders from organizations that have worked with vulnerable workers to discuss how they are adjusting to new needs and challenges. This conversation features opening remarks from Dan Porterfield, president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, and a focus on strategies for strengthening supervision of frontline workers. Quality supervision is a key element of a quality job, and supervisors can play key roles in supporting frontline workers. We heard about two organizations’ work with companies on supervision of frontline workers and how that work changed in the context of COVID-19.

Workforce development has long recognized the importance of a quality job to a person’s life and has well-developed tools and strategies for preparing people to succeed in quality jobs. But what role can workforce leaders play on the demand side of the labor market equation to improve the odds that a quality job will be there for a qualified worker?

This conversation explores how workforce development leaders can encourage improved job quality in their communities, hearing from innovators from different types of organizations and engaged in very different local labor markets. We consider the role workforce organizations play with respect to influencing public systems, incentivizing changed business practice, empowering worker constituencies, and leveraging their own organizational practices.

To achieve vibrant communities and expand economic opportunity, capital must play a key aligning role. Business lenders and investors, including those such as CDFIs that seek social impact as well as financial returns, are important contributors to the local economy and job creation. But what kinds of jobs are the businesses they finance creating? What kinds of jobs do we want them to create? Can we influence the quality of these jobs? And what can job quality advocates in workforce development and other fields learn from pioneering investors and lenders about strategies to measure job quality in firms and drive business practice change?

This event features representatives from CDFIs and investors to discuss these questions.

In her book Unbound: How Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It, Heather Boushey, President and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, considers how inequality is restricting growth and imagines how a more equitable economy would function. The book also raises two key questions: How can we better measure our economy to understand how it can improve the lives of individuals and how do we better support working families so we can set them and their children up for success?

The Economic Opportunities Program, Ascend, Financial Security Program, and Program on Philanthropy and Social Innovation hosted a book talk with Heather and a panel discussion including other experts to explore these questions about defining and measuring economic success and how we can work more broadly to create growth with purpose.

Lack of access to quality jobs is a key contributor to rising inequality. Race, gender, and place all play a critical role in who has access to quality work and economic mobility. How can leaders across fields take concrete steps to assess and address disparities in job quality in a regional labor market and improve outcomes for all workers? This event explores the following questions: Why prioritize and measure job quality in your work? What data sources, tools, and approaches can you put to work immediately to assess job quality in your local labor market? How can you disaggregate data by race, gender, and place, and analyze disparities in job quality in a region?

In an engaging book, Beaten Down, Worked Up – The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor, veteran New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse relates how working people organized to address similar challenges in the past, how the gains they achieved began to erode, and how working people today are again finding their voice. Like their predecessors, workers are uniting in common purpose to respond to today’s challenges and demand a better world of work for themselves and for future generations.

Enjoy this conversation with one of the nation’s leading labor reporters discussing the past, present, and future of work in America and the role of working people in determining that future.

This article discusses the barriers the lack of affordable childcare presents to parents and working people and the benefits the US would receive if this challenge were addressed

In this article, the authors present findings from their research demonstrating the benefits of profit-sharing and worker ownership models for both employees and businesses. They describe different models of profit-sharing and also cite past studies documenting a range of benefits for employees participating in these businesses, including higher wages and better benefits compared to peers. This article has application for business leaders exploring different job quality strategies as well as policy and economic development leaders positioned to expand the use of profit-sharing models.

This fact sheet displays the disproportionate effect technological change may have on Black workers and presents potential benefits that effective training programs could have on Black communities. This resource is useful for practitioners seeking to design training programs that center equity.

To make the business case for improving retention, employers can use this simple calculator to get a ballpark estimate of hard costs of turnover. Partners can complete this exercise with businesses to show the value of their services or talent management practices that reduce turnover. Unlike many other turnover calculators, this tool includes both direct costs, such as the cost of hiring or orientation, and indirect costs, such as lower employee morale or poorer customer service.