This question bank includes targeted questions that workforce development professionals can ask retail business representatives to have learning focused conversations and deepen relationships. The tool includes questions to help understand a business and its workforce, employee engagement, development and advancement in a firm, and wages and scheduling practices.

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.

This report details the findings from a randomized 2019 Gallup survey of over six thousand American workers to understand their perspectives on job quality. The study offers a definition of job quality based on ten dimensions workers care about and provides useful findings and implications about who has a quality job and how job quality impacts quality of life.

This report identifies 12 evidence-based practices companies can use to help break down barriers women face in the workplace while simultaneously creating a competitive business advantage. This resource has applications for employers and the practitioners who work with them to create and implement policies that support a workplace that is gender inclusive.

In this paper, authors Karen L. Corman and Ryne C. Posey outline several key considerations for implementing a pay audit to assess pay disparities among current and incoming staff. Topics explored include the potential benefits and drawbacks of pay equity audits, the purpose and parameters of the audit, privilege considerations, practical guidance for conducting the audit, and post-audit considerations and remediation strategies. HR professionals and other individuals involved in conducting pay audits may find this resource useful. Additionally, those who work with employers may be interested in sharing this with their partners. You may access this downloadable document by clicking on the “PDF” symbol towards the top, right-hand side of the linked webpage.

What will it take to make sure everyone in the United States has quality jobs?

The Aspen Institute and Urban Institute have been exploring this issue through different vantage points, to better understand the challenges that we face and the implications for policies and practices that improve job quality. And while the issue of quality jobs is one of national importance, solutions also need to respond to the needs of different places and communities across the country and be inclusive of all, regardless of race, gender, or other factors. Governments at all levels, businesses, civic, labor, and community organizations and more, all have roles to play in addressing the need for quality work.

What do we know and what do we need to know so that we can build a world of work in which hard work truly does lead to a dignified living? This conversation brings together different experiences and perspectives to explore this question. We feature a senior researcher from the Urban Institute together with Aspen Institute Job Quality Fellows from business, community development finance, and workforce and policy development who are working to create quality jobs in their communities.

Since 2008, more than 2.5 million new jobs were created in the most prosperous ZIP codes, while the least prosperous areas lost nearly 1.5 million jobs, according to research from the Economic Innovation Group. New jobs have flowed into cities, with rural areas across the country still yet to fully recover from the Great Recession. And within cities prosperity is not broadly shared; income inequality is higher in large cities than the country as a whole and wealth inequality has a large and persistent racial bias.

Opportunity Zone investments have the potential to address these economic divides by supporting small business growth and local ownership in communities that have thus far been left out of the recovery. But effort and expertise are needed to ensure that these investments create opportunities that reach people in the targeted communities, and that they extend to women, people of color, those who have been involved with the justice system, and others who have traditionally faced barriers to economic opportunity.

This event explores these issues and considers ideas to focus Opportunity Zone investments in ways that will create jobs and wealth for communities and support small business development and ownership in places that have for too long been left on the sidelines of the economy.

The personal and economic needs of gig workers can be as varied as the platforms they use. In what ways is independent work working for people? In what ways can it pose problems? How can we build systems in which gig work is good work?

As a society that encourages work, we need to also consider what the rewards for hard work should be. We know that working people need access to benefits such as health insurance and paid sick days, but who should provide them? What kind of flexibility do workers need and how well does that match with business needs for flexible access to workers? Can gig jobs support both thriving businesses and thriving workers and families?

This event explores the issues and opportunities facing gig workers and offers ideas for building supports to make gig work good work.

Food retailers play an important role in communities, serving as major employers and anchor institutions. But local chains are facing challenges from market consolidation, new competitors, and new technologies that threaten to alter business operations and replace workers. Some stores are finding ways to differentiate and improve business performance by investing in workers – which helps them create exceptional customer service and cater to local communities. Research by the National Grocers Association, the trade association for independent supermarkets, indicates that more than 80 percent of consumers still prefer their local store to an online alternative, and they value local, quality items and friendly staff.

This event explores how grocers can succeed – and can advance economic and racial equity – by investing in workers. Bringing together food access advocates, food retail leaders, and workforce development experts, we discuss what consumers, business owners, and policymakers can do to encourage good working conditions for the people behind our groceries.

Running a company with job quality in mind is good business, and a metric for quality jobs could improve decisions about where to invest, whom to lend to, and which companies to do business with. However, until now, there was no easy and consistent way to measure a businesses’ “people outcomes” and benchmark to industry peers.

In 2018, the Economic Opportunities Program’s Good Companies/Good Jobs Initiative, in partnership with Working Metrics, unveiled a new tool that assesses businesses’ job quality performance for frontline workers and benchmarks them against others. This tool is part of a unique nonprofit-for profit collaboration with Working Metrics to get this tool into the hands of investors and businesses’ procurement systems to help them include firms’ treatment of workers in their decision making – thereby creating strong incentives for business change.

This Working in America event includes a presentation on this tool and discussion with businesses who contributed to it and used it to improve their practices.