Over the past year, UpSkill America conducted a three-phase study to learn how the pandemic and heightened attention on racial inequities have influenced companies’ employment plans for the months and years ahead. We were especially interested in the impact these changes were having on frontline and entry-level employees and employers’ education and training programs. n this third phase of the research, we spoke directly with employers and asked:

In what ways are businesses adopting technology in the workplace, and has COVID-19 accelerated these efforts?
How is digital transformation impacting skill needs for frontline workers?
What approaches are businesses taking to support development of digital skills for frontline workers?

Millions of workers in the U.S. rely on social policy to sustain them during challenging times—from unemployment to food insecurity, social safety net programs allow people to participate more fully in their lives and the economy despite financial uncertainty. As one of the foundational programs of the social safety net, Social Security ensures a basic level of financial support for people as they age. Shifting demographics combined with little policy change has pushed this program into crisis, with reserves predicted to be depleted as early as 2035 without intervention. Yet, Social Security presents a model of exactly the type of benefit workers need in the 21st century—portable across jobs and available to all workers. In order to offer actionable solutions and to illustrate the magnitude of the current crisis, the following proposal 1) mandates increased employer contributions to Social Security from medium and large employers, 2) requires companies relying heavily on independent contractors to contribute to Social Security on their behalf, and 3) allows and incentivizes additional contributions from small employers and self-employed workers.

Promoting Equity and Inclusion and Connection to Good Fit Jobs for Young Adults describes three categories of practice for employer engagement including leveraging political and financial incentives to influence employer practice change; acltivating connections between employers and young adults to influence employer practices; and working with employers to change practices from the inside. We hope this new publication will be helpful for workforce practitioners looking to engage with employers around supporting equity and inclusion in the workplace and to expand good-fit jobs in their communities.

Improving job quality not only transforms workers’ lives, but it also benefits businesses’ performance and bottom lines. Highlighted in this brief is Sunrise Treatment Center, a leader in the addiction treatment sector that provides stable, sustainable jobs. Founder Dr. Jeffrey Bill, Chief Operating Officer Steven Smith, and Chief Human Resources Officer Brett Burns developed strategies to simultaneously meet the needs of their patients and their commitment to employees. Sunrise Treatment Center saw sustained growth and improvement in both capacity and caregiving by ensuring that the focus of the organization was explicitly two-fold: to provide the highest quality treatment for patients with substance abuse issues and mental illness, and to offer a great place to work for employees.

Government, business, labor, and education leaders need to consider ideas to build and strengthen inclusive systems of lifelong learning that provide opportunities for adult workers to develop and improve the knowledge and skills they can apply to their jobs. This brief explores one such approach: separating training from specific jobs, so that workers can accumulate the benefits of training as they work across multiple jobs or switch jobs frequently, an approach we call portable training. In the following sections, we first contextualize portable training in the current landscape of worker education and training in the US. We then consider the potential strengths and risks of a portable approach. Finally, we look abroad and consider several portable training programs that have been established in France, Singapore, Canada, and Scotland, highlighting how program design choices can mediate the possible challenges of a more portable system of training.

In “To Build Back Better, Job Quality is the Key,” Maureen Conway (The Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program), Jeannine LaPrad (Corporation for a Skilled Workforce), Amanda Cage (National Fund for Workforce Solutions), and Sarah Miller (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta) make the case that improving job quality should be a central goal of economic recovery and rebuilding efforts, and they lay out practical policy ideas toward that end. The report includes a framework illustrating the multiple dimensions of job quality and outlines the variety of institutions and organizations that can play a role in improving job quality. Particular attention is given to the role of federal policy and to the practices of local governments, economic development, and workforce development organizations.

Drawing on recent research, this issue brief – co-authored by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program, the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, and the Democracy at Work Institute – makes a case for why policymakers, funders, and investors who care about racial and gender wealth equity should support employee share ownership. Informed by a roundtable discussion which brought together researchers, philanthropic leaders, investors, policy experts, and advocates, the paper provides a set of concrete policy and practice ideas to expand employee ownership and advance equity and economic justice. We hope this paper contributes to a broader collaborative effort to spread employee share ownership policies and practices that support economic recovery and lay the foundation for a more equitable and resilient economy.

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 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.