In this brief, the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program discusses Participatory Decision Making (PDM), including its history, the outcomes it helps create for workers and businesses, its importance in helping firms navigate technological changes and design work-based learning, and numerous examples including those from employee-owned companies.The scope of this brief is intended to help organizations working at the intersection of job quality and business competitiveness better understand how incorporating workers’ ingenuity through PDM is important for firm success and good jobs. This brief is a resource for workforce and economic development organizations, community development finance institutions, and other organizations that advise businesses or focus on or fund employer practice change, to help inform their job quality conversations and efforts with employer partners.

This profile of the North Carolina Employee Ownership Center and the Employee Ownership Expansion Network provides an overview of ongoing efforts to build infrastructure supporting the adoption of employee ownership. Focus is given to the strength of the North Carolina approach in centering racial equity, which may provide guidance for employee ownership work in other states, and on the role of state centers for employee ownership linking local actors and efforts with the national employee ownership movement. Philanthropic investors and others interested in addressing the racial wealth gap may also gain insights about how employee ownership can advance their goals.

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.

This fact sheet, released at the 2024 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum, summarizes some of the latest research on employee ownership with a focus on employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs).

This fact sheet, released at the 2024 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum, examines what message types, business characteristics, and business owner characteristics influence responsiveness about employee ownership as a succession plan.

This piece provides an overview of job quality challenges affecting LGBTQ+ workers, including economic need, discrimination, and barriers to career advancement. The piece also contextualizes these challenges in the current landscape of anti-LGBTQ+ policies being passed in the United States.

In this event, Benjamin Lorr, author of “The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket,” traces the history and evolution of the modern-day supermarket, exposes the grocery supply chain, and reveals the often exploited and underpaid labor that goes into making sure shelves are stocked. Lorr paints a vivid picture of how agricultural and meat processing workers, fisherman, truck drivers, and grocery store workers, among others, often endure poverty and sometimes worse as they work to feed our country.

Recent research by UpSkill America and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) has found that only 25% of the HR leaders who took part in a December 2023 i4cp survey perceived workforce development as a strength of their organization, and just 9% of more than 100 private and public company board directors surveyed indicated they were very confident in their company’s ability to effectively upskill its employees for the future. Read the brief to learn more about next practices in upskilling, including internal training, apprenticeship, and tuition assistance that will help any organization to be more productive and resilient for the future.

In this event, Natalie Foster, author of “The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy,” asks us to imagine a new economic framework that casts aside the failures of the trickle-down approach and builds economic security and well-being from the bottom up. Foster, who serves as president and co-founder of the Economic Security Project and as a senior fellow with the Institute’s Future of Work Initiative, describes a bold vision in which housing, health care, higher education, dignified work, family care, and an opportunity to build generational wealth are guaranteed for all by our government.