Aon’s apprenticeship program has drawn widespread attention for a reason. It works. Since its inception in the US in 2017, the firm has supported nearly 300 apprentices. Within the Chicagoland cohorts, Aon reports an apprenticeship completion rate of more than 80%. Successful completion requires that students meet performance standards for both work-based learning and academic program requirements. The program is intentionally inclusive, supporting apprentices of color, women, and first-generation students as they move into good jobs. Students graduate from their programs debt-free, as Aon covers all costs of attendance at partner colleges. Aon also pays salary and benefits for apprentices, with starting salaries of $42,000-46,000 depending on location. Upon completion of the program, apprentice graduates are offered full-time employment and work in many departments, including insurance, IT, and human resources, and enter those roles as experienced, valued colleagues who earn competitive wages with exceptional benefits packages.

This brief, featuring McDonald’s Archways to Opportunity, Amazon’s Career Choice, and UPS Metropolitan College programs, describes this rare but exciting program design aspect, wherein large employers work to develop talent for opportunities beyond the business.

LeeHealth is the largest public health system in the state of Florida, serving Lee County and the surrounding areas. With over 14,000 employees and 1,800 beds, the nonprofit system engages with more than 2 million patients each year through its four acute care hospitals, two specialty hospitals, multiple skilled nursing facilities, outpatient centers, and walk-in clinics. Like many health care systems, Lee Health has persistent and acute challenges within its talent pipeline, especially among frontline staff. In nearly all hospitals, some patients require more monitoring and support than clinical staff can provide. These patients may be at risk of falling, struggle with confusion or agitation, or be at risk of harming themselves or others. The system had been exploring moving to virtual monitoring and observation for years, shifting the “safety tech” role from in-person to virtual. Lee Health needed a unified system that could enable quick decisions, comprehensive information, and, especially, clear communications between safety techs and clinical staff. After safely piloting the virtual safety tech role, employees are now observing patients in all four acute care facilities. The program has resulted in improved job quality for techs and cost savings for the system. Supported by effective upskilling and thoughtful implementation, Lee Health realized financial benefits and created new capacity to support patients and clinical staff.

At the inaugural Employee Ownership Ideas Forum, leading policymakers, practitioners, experts, and the media convened for a robust discussion on how we can grow employee ownership for the shared benefit of American workers and businesses.

In this event, Zeynep Ton, author of “The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone’s Work,” discusses the components of a “good jobs” system, which ensures a living wage, dignity, and opportunities for growth to employees, and helps to foster shared success for both workers and organizations. Ton — a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and president and co-founder of the Good Jobs Institute — explores the benefits of this approach; the disadvantages of low-paying and high-turnover jobs; how labor investments can pay for themselves; the obstacles to creating a good jobs system; and how leaders can break free and overcome these challenges to create good jobs.

In this event, panelist discuss how employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) can improve job quality, reduce wealth inequality, and strengthen our economy. They highlight how the coming “silver tsunami” of retiring business owners represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to grow the number the ESOPs. And they explore the policies, supports, and assistance that businesses — including publicly traded companies — need for ESOP conversion.

In this event, Rick Wartzman, author of “Still Broke: Walmart’s Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism,” considers the experience and history of Walmart moving toward a more conscious capitalism and the recent efforts the company has made to provide higher wages and better benefits and opportunities for its employees. Wartzman raises important questions about how much an individual company can do on its own to improve the quality of jobs and people’s ability to earn a living through their work; the degree to which business imperatives encourage companies to improve jobs and when those incentives conflict with that goal; and whether public sector action, through either labor market regulation or the provision of social supports, needs to be strengthened to ensure that work in today’s economy is contributing to an inclusive economy in which all can thrive.

In this event, panelists discuss the possible impact of guaranteed income on the labor market and especially on the quality of jobs. This bipartisan idea — which has roots in the nation’s founding, the New Deal, the Nixon Administration, and the Civil Rights Movement — is gaining momentum and is now being piloted in more than 100 demonstration sites across the US. How might the security of a guaranteed income provide workers agency, strengthen competition, and raise the floor for all?

In this event, Saket Soni, author of “The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America,” discusses the story of a group of immigrant workers who experienced significant abuses in the US. Soni deals with these weighty questions by telling a gripping tale — a story of love, dreams, betrayal, greed, courage, redemption, and hope. Ultimately, it’s a story about learning to see across our society’s divides of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and geography to find our common humanity.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, set forth a set of civil, social, and economic rights that inspired the development of human rights’ laws around the world. In this context, the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and The New School’s Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy announced the Partnership for a Human Rights Economy in 2022. In this event, panelists discuss the legacy and lasting influences of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the philosophies and values that have come to shape our economy, and their consequences; and ideas to build a moral and inclusive economy based on human rights.