This is a profile of Charm City Run, a Baltimore-area running and walking specialty store, as part of the Good Companies/Good Jobs initaitive research.
In this report, Investing in Workforce Program Innovation: A Formative Evaluation of Five Workforce Organizations’ Experiences during the Human Capital Innovation Fund Initiative, we describe the five organizations’ experiences planning, implementing, and adapting new strategies. Investing in Workforce Program Innovation offers insights into the complex work of developing and maintaining relationships that cross institutions. We discuss factors grantees considered when identifying partner organizations, the approaches they used to find common ground and work effectively together, and the ways in which partnerships evolved and deepened over time. We describe how organizations cultivated long-term relationships with employers to not only inform workforce program design and promote job placement, but also to engage employers to reflect upon their hiring and employment practices. Finally, we discuss the ways in which HCIF-supported organizations tailored comprehensive and ongoing supports to the unique needs of their participants to help them succeed in and beyond training programs.
This playbook from UpSkill America, an initiative of the Economic Opportunities Program, is designed to highlight examples of employers investing in upskilling strategies to support worker advancement and business competitiveness. This playbook has relevance for employers interested in adopting training and education strategies or for practitioners advising businesses to invest in their workers.
This Harvard Business Review article, written by a professor of operations at MIT Sloan School of Management, explains research findings about why good jobs—those with livable wages, predictable hours, training, and opportunities for promotion and growth—can also make retail businesses more stable and competitive. This article can be used to understand the business case for the “Good Jobs Strategy,” which involves investing in labor while strengthening operational effectiveness.
This issue brief by PHI analyzes the impacts of recent policy changes in New York state impacting home care aides and defines what a quality job looks like for a caregiver. The elements of a quality job in this occupation are organized in three categories: compensation, opportunity, and supports. While designed for care workers, the framework has relevance across industries and application for all practitioners seeking to define and assess job quality in an organization.
Investments to renew our nation’s infrastructure offer many possible benefits to our economy and our society. One of the most often cited benefits is that these investments will create good jobs. In communities across the country, much has been learned about how to invest in infrastructure projects in ways that support economic development goals and help people in the community connect to good jobs.
In this panel, hosted by the Economic Opportunities Program, speakers discuss the opportunities for work created by infrastructure projects as well as the benefits that renewed infrastructure offer for both workers and business. Panelists share examples from companies and projects around the country, highlighting the business case for investing in workers, training, and safety, not only to benefit workers, but also to improve company operations and America’s critical physical assets.
The Good Companies/Good Jobs Initiative at the Aspen Institute looks to sectors that have the potential to house good companies and good jobs, including health care and manufacturing, as well as retail, hospitality, and other service industries. It also explores tools to better align capital deployment to firms with good jobs outcomes. Mark Popovich, former vice president for The Hitachi Foundation’s Good Companies@Work program, joined EOP to direct this initiative.
This event features examples of companies that intentionally provide jobs that are good for workers and good for companies. We also shared more information about the interrelated goals of all three of The Hitachi Foundation legacy gifts, including to the MIT Sloan School of Management and Investors’ Circle.
High unemployment rates among teens and young adults have caught the attention of the popular press, policymakers, and many others. Labor market participation – working or actively seeking work – has fallen for these groups at alarming rates since 2000, especially for teens. While the declines have affected all young worker demographic groups, unemployment is even more acute for young people of color who have lower levels of labor market attachment overall.
In this event, we ask: what is causing these trends? Is the economy experiencing structural or cyclical changes that would explain it? Is it sluggish job growth or technology? Have employers just altered their preferences? This panel explores trends in young adult workforce participation and potential factors driving them. Panelists take a close look at the role employers and stronger connections to employers can play in helping teens and young adults access career-launching work experience. Panelists also discuss policies that may be contributing to the problem as well as those that may help to improve young worker access to early work experience and economic prosperity.
A good job has long been the foundation for both financial stability and economic mobility. However, labor markets are changing. Of the 30 occupations expected to have the largest growth in the next decade, 23 will require a high school diploma or less. In addition to lower wages, these jobs, in industries such as home healthcare, retail sales, food preparation and service, often have irregular hours, limited benefits and limited opportunities for advancement.
These jobs are found all across the country, which is why we took the Working in America series on the road to the Midwest. We partnered with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City to host a luncheon forum to explore strategies for improving the quality of lower wage workers’ jobs in addition to creating opportunities for career advancement. Panelists discussed the importance and advantages, to both workers and employers, of shifting our employment and workforce strategies to focus on “building ladders and raising the floor.”
New ways of developing skills, expanding access to jobs, and encouraging the creation of quality jobs are critical for building an economy that works for everyone, including businesses, workers, and communities. To accelerate such strategies, we are pleased to announce the release of the Communities that Work Partnership Playbook. The Playbook emerges from the Communities that Work Partnership, jointly launched by AspenWSI, FutureWorks, and the US Economic Development Administration in April 2015. Since then, the initiative has documented and accelerated the development of employer-led regional workforce partnerships across the country. Seven regional teams — composed of leaders from diverse sectors in Buffalo, New York; Phoenix, Arizona; Houston, Texas; the San Francisco Bay area in California; northwest Georgia; New York City; and Washington, DC — engaged in a learning exchange focused on strengthening local talent pipelines and improving access to quality employment. The Communities that Work Partnership Playbook, published by AspenWSI and FutureWorks, highlights key takeaways from the seven regional teams’ work. The “plays” describe strategies that will be useful for those creating talent development approaches that leverage knowledge, capacity, and resources of not only education, workforce, and economic development partners, but also business partners.