This brief set of 13 tips for managers and supervisors offers a framework by which to address scheduling flexibility. Each tip provides useful considerations to keep in mind when discussing flexible remote work options with employees. HR professionals, managers, and supervisors interested in creating work environments that support flexible working schedules may find this resource helpful. Additionally, workforce development and worker advocacy professionals may find it helpful to send this set of tips to employers with whom they work.

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 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.

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.

This issue brief reviews the history and current state of job design, highlights the benefits workers and businesses receive when jobs are designed with worker well-being in mind, and notes emerging issues and practices in job design related to technology, work-based learning, and employee ownership. We hope this brief sparks new thinking and conversations about how we can all encourage and contribute to designing work and workplaces that promote quality jobs.

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 brief provides a framework to help HR leaders design benefits programs aimed at improving employees’ financial health, a common equity concern and component of job quality. The guidance offered centers equity approaches such as broadening access to supports and targeting outreach efforts to financially vulnerable groups. Employers who are interested in embedding a DEI lens into the design of their benefits programs and closing financial health gaps among their workforce may find this resource helpful. Workforce development and worker advocacy professionals may also want to share this with their employer networks.