Following the COVID-19 pandemic, companies faced pressure to improve factors that contribute to job quality, including wages, benefits, workplace safety, racial and gender equity, and opportunities to learn and grow. But often overlooked is the content of the work — how does what we do align with who we think we are? In this event, Eyal Press, author of “Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America,” explores the toll of moral injuries at work, highlighting the working conditions of jobs that typically go unseen and raising disquieting questions about our society and its dependence on these jobs.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the important role that benefits play in workers’ lives. Paid leave, health insurance, workers’ compensation, and retirement plans cushion life events and equip workers to live safe and dignified lives. Our current system of benefits, though, leaves millions of workers behind. In this event, panelists discuss how to make work-related benefits accessible to more people, including public and private sector approaches to portable and universal benefits. We hear from leaders who have worked on innovative benefits programs for workers, covering a range of sectors and benefits. Each speaks about their efforts to expand benefits to more workers, shares lessons learned, and offers insights for others interested in developing new approaches.

This event serves as a capstone to a year-long study on how the events of 2020 and 2021 — including the COVID-19 pandemic and heightened attention to racial inequality — affected businesses, including their operations, skill needs, hiring, human resources, and education and training programs. Panelists discuss what they learned from employers and what can and should be done to help workers build the digital skills needed to advance in the workplace.

One year after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, about half of non-retired adults said its lingering consequences would make it harder for them to meet their financial needs and goals. This event focuses on what companies can accomplish when they strive to improve the financial health and resilience of their workers. Senior executives from major companies discuss how they came to prioritize this issue, some of the surprises and challenges encountered, and lessons that others can build on. The companies represented on the panel are part of the Worker Financial Wellness Initiative, which was launched in October 2020 by PayPal and JUST Capital, in collaboration with the Financial Health Network and Good Jobs Institute.

As a crucial source of employment in local communities, small businesses have an important role to play in advancing economic opportunity and job quality. Yet even before the pandemic, time and resource constraints could make it challenging for small business owners to invest in workers. Around the country, innovative community development finance and economic development organizations are pursuing strategies to support small businesses to navigate the pandemic and strengthen job quality for workers. During the webinar, you’ll hear from leaders using these approaches – and forging innovative partnerships with local organizations – to encourage small business practices that are good for workers, good for business, and good for communities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the value of caregiving work and the need for equitable and affordable access to care – for children, for elders, for those with a disability, and for all of us in hard times. Yet care work remains underpaid and often invisible, contributing to the inadequacies of the US care system and deepening challenges for caregivers and families. As we move from crisis to recovery, how can policy contribute to building a care economy that dignifies the work of caregivers and expands access to quality, affordable care? How can our systems center gender and racial equity to construct a care economy that serves all families? And how can our society support a healthy and sustainable caregiving system for our post-pandemic future, one in which the demand for caregiving is poised to continue to grow?

The pandemic led to unprecedented changes in how businesses operate and the way people live and work. These changes have included the acceleration and adoption of digital technology in the workplace. UpSkill America, with the support of Strada Education Network and Walmart.org, spent six months conducting interviews and surveys with employers about how the events of 2020 have affected their businesses. In the process, we learned about how businesses have adopted new technologies to respond to workers’ and customers’ needs. For many companies, digital transformation has led to changes in how they think about the skills frontline workers need to be successful in their jobs and the investments in education and training programs needed to support workers’ development.

Learn about results of our survey of over 340 business leaders and hear directly from leading employers in food service, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail. Panelists share how their businesses have responded to events in 2020, including ways they have responded to technological change and racial inequities in employment.

While California boasts a strong economy by many measures of growth, too many Californians have not enjoyed the benefits of the state’s broader economic success and the extraordinary wealth generated. As the nation grapples with demographic and geographic economic inequities that have been growing over the first two decades of the 21st century, and that have been exacerbated in this time of national crisis, what does the Golden State plan to do so that workers of every race, ethnicity, geography and gender have what they need to support themselves and their families, and thrive now and in the future?

Established prior to the COVID crisis, California’s Future of Work Commission has been tasked with confronting this question. It aims to create a new social compact for California workers, based on an expansive vision for economic equity that takes work and jobs as the starting point. We invite you to join this discussion and hear firsthand what California is doing to build a brighter future of work.

Our economy doesn’t just need more jobs, it needs better jobs. How should policymakers and practitioners define job quality and make improved job quality their guiding principle? What ideas can help restore the ideal of work as the pathway to the American Dream? In a shared statement, the Aspen Institute’s Job Quality Fellows drew on their diverse experiences and perspectives to develop a shared set of policy principles to improve job quality for working people across the US. This interactive event features Betsy Biemann (Chief Executive Officer, Coastal Enterprises Inc., Brunswick, Maine), Jose Corona (Vice President, Programs & Partnerships, Eat.Play.Learn Foundation, Oakland, California), Caryn York (Chief Executive Officer, Job Opportunities Task Force, Baltimore, Maryland), and moderator Maureen Conway (Vice President, The Aspen Institute; Executive Director, Economic Opportunities Program).

Among the many unexpected lessons of 2020 was a recognition of the importance of essential workers. We saw how much we rely on the people who work in our food systems, who care for our children and our loved ones, who deliver packages, and who keep our public spaces clean. We learned to say thank you to so many of them, and in this season of thanks, we reflect on how we can do more than say thank you by improving the quality of essential jobs. As the year drew to a close, we discussed the important role of essential workers in our economy and society and a variety of approaches for improving essential work