Small Business Job Quality Advising

Learn how to incorporate job quality in your CDFI’s small business advising practice, demonstrating to your clients how improving jobs can drive business success.

Developed as part of the Shared Success Demonstration, this tool offers guidance for business advisors at CDFIs on how to have conversations with small business owners on job quality improvements. It centers business value and includes a variety of information and resources to assist business owners in addressing poor job quality. The tool revolves around two central questions: How can implementing certain job quality improvements help business owners achieve desired business outcomes? What strategies can be used by business advisors to demonstrate how these outcomes may surface? This tool also encourages CDFIs, who mainly work with business owners, to consider the perspective of the business employees themselves. Ultimately, there are many opportunities for small businesses to improve the quality of jobs of their employees as part of their work in building a successful business.

See the links below for additional resources on following six categories of job quality detailed in the tool:

• Hiring and Onboarding — Implementing job quality begins before you even hire an employee. While hiring and onboarding, it is important that you implement equitable practices and provide adequate training. 
• Compensation — Offering a competitive, transparent, and equitable compensation package to employees. 
• Benefits — Providing additional support to employees besides the salary. This may include health insurance, paid time off, stipends, etc.
• Workplace Culture (including Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) — Having policies and practices to establish effective communication channels for employees, implement respectful supervision, and promote diversity and inclusion. 
• Employee Development and Advancement — Offering programs and resources that contribute to career growth.
• Operations — Building job quality through a variety of operational practices. These may include providing workers with the possibility to adjust their work hours and/or work location, providing employees reliable hours with advance notice of schedule, and maintaining a safe and healthy work environment for workers, among others.

As you use the guide, if you have experiences and ideas that you would like to share, we would love to hear from you! This version of the guide is a beta version. We hope to continue to collect feedback as the guide is used and tested. We will then later update the tool and release a final version of the tool. Please use the following link to share any comments, feedback, or stories about how you used the guide: Feedback Form.