Transcript — Big Impact, Big Challenges: Lessons from Collaborating with Large Businesses to Improve Job Quality

The following transcript comes from our webinar, “Big Impact, Big Challenges: Lessons from Collaborating with Large Businesses to Improve Job Quality,” hosted by the Economic Opportunities Program on October 9, 2025. For more information, including video, audio, speaker bios, and additional resources, click here.

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Matt Helmer 00:05

Good afternoon everyone. I’m Matt Helmer. I’m the Director of Job Quality and Worker Well-Being at the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program. It’s my pleasure to welcome you to today’s conversation, “Big Challenges, Big Impact: Lessons from Collaborating with Large Businesses to Improve Job Quality.” A big title there as well. This conversation is part of our Job Quality in Practice series, in which we really try to highlight practical ideas and strategies that different types of organizations can use to address what we see as the biggest economic opportunity challenge we face today in our country, which is fixing work. Before we start today, I just want to go really quickly over our technology. Many of you are familiar with this drill, but I’ll say it again. Everyone is muted. Please use that Q&A button at the bottom of your screen to submit and upvote questions, share your ideas, perspective resources in that chat. We’ll have a quick survey at the very end of today’s event. We always appreciate your feedback. If you want to post about this conversation on social media, please use our hashtag at #TalkOpportunity. If you run into any technical issues today, please message us in the chat or email us at eop.program@aspeninstitute.org. We are recording this event. You will get a copy of that via email, and we’ll put it on our website as soon as we can. And we do have closed captions available, just click that “CC” button at the bottom of your screen to activate those. I want to start today’s conversation by just kind of acknowledging the world we’re in, there’s kind of no escaping it, right? I think things feel really tough for a lot of us right now? Things are challenging. The word that I’ve been kind of leaning into lately is that things feel really heavy. I think no matter your politics, it’s clear that our country, you know, is in a challenging place right now. We’re in the middle of a government shutdown. It looks like the economy is slowing in some respects, as it relates to the date to today’s conversation in our work, we’re seeing some worker protections start to be rolled back, around worker safety, around the right to join a union, and there’s just a lot of political and social instability, and that seems to be rising, and it’s leading, I think, to real pain, real violence, real suffering. You know, we have people today that in our country that are afraid to leave their homes, they’re afraid to step into their communities, they’re afraid to step into their schools, they’re afraid to step into their own workplaces. So I think, you know, it’s fair to ask at this time, why do we all keep doing this work? Why do we keep focusing on job quality? Why do we keep having conversations like the one we’re having today when it feels like there’s so many other pressing matters going on that need to be addressed. And I think our panelists will have some powerful answers in response to this question. But I want to tee us up a little bit with a few thoughts, and I’ll say I think this, this broader instability that we’re all experiencing and that we’re all feeling right now, it’s not separate from what many workers really have been experiencing for decades in our country. It’s really an extension of it, these feelings of economic insecurity, the feeling that you know, work is no longer delivering what people need to live, is part of what’s really fueling, I think, some of the instability that we’re seeing across our society, our country, is built on many things, right? It’s built on some shared values, family, tradition, community, innovation, entrepreneurship, opportunity and immigration and a lot of it’s built around, fundamentally, around how we design work, how we design jobs, the rules that we set for our economy, and at times that’s meant that’s, you know, that’s led to a lot of worker exploitation and worker suffering as well. But I think we all know, and we’re all here today too, because we know that jobs aren’t just about what goes into your wallet. They’re not just about the paycheck. Jobs are worse. We spend a lot of our work waking hours, right? They’re the foundation we rely on to build stable, meaningful lives. And when work stops delivering on that promise, as it has for too many, I think it really starts to tear at the fabric of our communities and the fabric of our society. Weakened civic engagement. We lose trust in our institutions. We lose faith, faith and trust in one another in many respects. And all of that leaves us very vulnerable, I think, to division and scapegoating, and that’s a little bit of where we are when work doesn’t work, a lot of other things can start. To unravel. And I’m not saying that’s the only reason we’re in this situation where we’re at with our country, but I think it is a big part of it. So I think pulling ourselves back up as a country and out of this spot that we’re in as a country requires us really to fix work. It requires us to really think about and move towards building an economy that works for everyone, where everyone feels like they have a real stake in our country’s future. But that’s not possible when so many people are being excluded from good jobs and from economic security. I read the most recent stat the other day that said the top 1% in the United States hold more than $50 trillion in wealth, and the bottom 50% nearly 10 times less than that, over 10 times less than that, at just $4 trillion so it’s hard to ask people to believe in this shared national project of America when so many people are left out of their share. So we’re not going to, you know, fix political gridlock on today’s call, but we’re going to talk about some of the root causes that I think are fueling some of what we’re the challenges that we’re experiencing as a country. And we’re going to talk about ways that we can ensure people have access to stable, dignified work that leads to stable, dignified lives and gives them a stake in the future of their communities and our country. And yes, large companies, large corporations like we’re going to talk about today, have a big role to play. They employ millions of people. They touch nearly every part of our lives. We wake up each day and are surrounded by everything they produce and everything that all aspects of our society that they touch for work. They set standards across entire sectors, across entire industries, and across entire geographical regions. These large companies can be anchors that support a strong middle class, or they can be ones that trap people in poverty and low wages. And I think too often for many large companies, we’ve seen the latter.

Matt Helmer 07:01

Some people will say, Matt, you’re right, but the answer is worker organizing, it’s unionization, it’s protest, it’s campaigns, it’s policy and labor law reform, it’s shareholder activism. And my answer to that is yes, and this is a big, complex problem, and we need every tool we’ve got right now to fix it. That includes all those things I’ve mentioned, but it also includes collaboration. We need solutions within companies. We need to work, be working alongside companies as well for practical, scalable strategies that are driven from the inside, while there’s other actors may be pressuring from the outside. So it’s pretty easy, I think, sometimes, to get stuck in this trap of vilifying corporations. And believe me, I know that that urge all too well, but I think it’s also limiting, because I think no matter what company you think is enemy number one when it comes to workers and supporting good jobs, I promise you that within those companies, there are good people on the inside who care deeply about the workforce, who care deeply about good jobs and justice, and I know them. Some of them are my friends and colleagues, and I think they need our support. They need our partnership. They need our allyship. So that’s a little bit where we’re going to focus. Today’s conversation is on how do we collaborate with large businesses and large corporations? And I’ll end with just a few other thoughts, you know, again, around like why we’re doing this work right now and why it matters. And I’ve been talking to my colleague Maureen at the Aspen Institute a bit about this, and she keeps coming back to this, this idea that ideas matter. Shining a light on a different way of doing things matters, particularly now, when a lot of ideas, and the idea of sharing ideas feels like it’s under attack, these ideas matter. We never know when they’re going to take roots and grow. So I’ll say lastly, I’ve been reflecting on something I’ve heard from a civil rights leader, Sherrilyn Eiffel, say a few years ago, she said, sometimes we’ll get to see the harvest, but often we have to be the ones planting the seeds. And this echoes kind of this ancient Greek proverb that says a society grows great when people plant trees whose shade they who shade they know they will never sit in so, you know, we may not see the results of this work tomorrow. We may not see it in four years. We may not see it in the next 10 but we can keep the ball moving down the field right. And I’m more optimistic than ever that. I think the work that we’re doing today, including the wonderful speakers that we’re going to hear from in just a few minutes is really laying the foundation for an economy that is stronger, more just and more lasting. So let’s get to it a little bit. I want to introduce some of my favorite people, some of the organizations I respect most in this work of kind of job quality practice we. Have Ellen Frank-Miller, who’s the founder and CEO of Workforce and Organizational Research Center WORC for short. We have Scotty Nash, who’s the Director at Talent Rewire at FSG. And we have Cindy Williams. Cindy Williams, Executive Director of Work Life Partnership. Thank you all for being here and being willing to take the time. I want to start with each of you just talking a little bit about your organization and your work, and also offer you an opportunity to talk a little bit about why in these challenging times you think this work and conversation continues to matter. And Ellen, I think I’ll start with you. Hi.

Ellen Frank-Miller 10:38

Well, I’m so delighted to be here. Thank you for having me and at work, we envision a thriving economy where every worker has a job worth having. And so as I really appreciated what you just said, Matt, about the idea that sometimes we reap and sometimes we sow, and the idea that we’re planting trees we may never sit in the shade of I’ve been doing this work for 35 years, and there have been advances. And in some ways, sometimes people come up with a brand new idea talking about that for 30 years. But I do think that the answer to a lot of the division that we see in this country is work with dignity, work that supports people’s economic well being, and if you have those things, I think we don’t need the kind of scapegoating that’s going on, because it’s nobody’s fault, because people have what they need.

Matt Helmer 11:29

Thanks Ellen, Scotty, I’ll turn to you next.

Scotland Nash 11:34

Thank you, Matt. Thank you also for the introduction this morning and the time to reflect on how difficult it is right now. As Matt said, I’m with FSG. We are an organization that works with companies and foundations to understand and implement equitable systems change. And within FSG, I work with an initiative called Talent rewire, and we take that idea of equitable systems change and work with companies and help employers think about corporate transformation and how do they do a better job at center, centering employee voice to create quality jobs for their frontline and entry level workers, really helping companies think about what is culture and readiness for change, for people to attain quality jobs, and I think that’s really resonant with some of what Matt was talking about earlier. I think it matters now more than ever, because we’re in a time where there’s a lot of political and technology upheaval and change in society, and we need to remember that the greatest strength in companies is not the technology that is a tool, but it’s the people who bring the tools to life. And we want employers to think about listening deeply to employees, because it’s an act of engagement, it’s an act of trust. It’s grounded in equity, and it’s about helping people feel seen and heard and empowered to grow. And ultimately, innovation in corporations of any size is going to come by listening to the humans who are doing the work, and it will help resilience in this complex time. So I’m going to end there.

Matt Helmer 13:16

Thanks Scotty, that was beautiful. Cindy?

Cindy Williams 13:20

Thanks, Matt, and thanks everyone who joined us today. I’m excited for this conversation, and I echo Scotty’s note, Matt, really I appreciated your introduction, how you queued us up today. So I’m Cindy Williams. I’m the Executive Director at work life partnership. We are a nonprofit social enterprise that serves businesses and their employees across the country, the core of what we do is help, typically, low and moderate income workers overcome any kind of challenge to workplace stability. We do that work because we believe firmly that work should be foundational to achieving any further economic mobility for individuals and their families. At the same time that we work one on one with individual employees to clear obstacles to stable work. We also work very, very closely with business leaders to help them understand what is happening inside of their workforce. And we do that very intentionally, because really our Why is to influence business practice change. It is to create awareness and then prompt action from employers, because they really do have an opportunity to change outcomes for their employees. So as I reflected on the question of, you know, why have this conversation right now? I went back to some basic data and it’s not new data, so while there are a lot of factors that make it feel very urgent in the moment, there are still 38 million Alice households in this country. And Alice household is an asset limited, income, constrained, employed household. That’s 30 838 million households that are working really hard every single week and don’t have enough money at the end of the. Months to pay for everything that they have on their on the table to pay for. And there’s a growing need. There’s a lot of changing dynamics in our policy and our government funding, and there’s a growing need for those households and those families that isn’t getting smaller. There’s reports every single week about continued pressure on nonprofits to respond to an increased need. So I think there’s just this opportunity in this moment for business leaders to really think about what role they can play in improving outcomes for these hard working families across the country. So that’s really why I think this conversation is so vital.

Matt Helmer 15:40

Thanks, Cindy, thanks for that data. And I agree business leadership is needed now, now more than ever on this issue. So we’re going to start getting into the conversation a little bit more about just the challenges, the unique challenges that it comes with working with large businesses. And I promise all of you who are interested in maybe thinking about small and medium, medium sized businesses, we’re going to circle back around that at the end of today’s conversation, but most of today’s conversation will be focused on big business. So I think if we ask a lot of people at this event today about the challenges of getting big business to improve jobs for their workers. We’d likely hear a number of different comments about kind of shareholder capitalism, the short term focus of corporations, what Zainab Tom would say as a corporate culture that often treats workers and labor as a cost to be minimized, rather than an asset to be maximized. A little bit of what you were getting at Scotty in terms of companies, resource being greatest resource being the people, and getting more companies to adopt that line of thinking. And of course, this imbalance of power, I think that we see between workers and labor and companies. And those are undoubtedly factors. So I don’t want to dismiss them, and I want to acknowledge them, but we have seen a lot of companies that choose to do differently in spite of those dynamics, and in some ways, those are the things that are more visible to see and blame when there’s a lot more going on with large companies that may be hidden or less clear, that are barriers to change. So that’s part of what I want to start to unpack with you all in this kind of first round of questions and discussion. So Ellen, I’m going to start with you again. You know works research and work has looked a lot at how you engage large businesses and making changes to improve jobs and to improve the workplace for their workers. So in your experience, what are some of the big challenges you’ve seen in getting businesses to invest in initiatives and ideas that improve jobs and support workers?

Ellen Frank-Miller 17:48

We’re a team of organizational researchers and sociologists, so you know, we really are looking at how businesses are operating, you know, as an organism, an organism made up of people. And there’s a few things that I want to highlight which the first one is that when you’re talking about large companies, you are talking about stakeholders who are navigating incredibly complex systems, those of us who are not part of a large corporation, it’s a little bit hard to get visibility into how those complex systems are structured and what the pathways are to decision making and potential barriers. So I think that, you know, that sort of first piece of recognizing that it seems so straightforward, my person’s excited, and why aren’t they adopting, you know, has a lot to do with the fact that this was, you know, a very complicated system that people have to make their way through to get to, yes. Secondly, I would, I would talk about incentive alignment, and this is often quite hidden. I think a lot of times we see organizations that are trying to work to make jobs better, and that’s, that’s the type of research that we do. We see them come with a really strong business case for why companies will benefit from taking whatever step is or using whatever program it is. And the problem is that a strong business case is not enough. I am so sorry to be the deliverer of this bad news, but we need to have strategic alignment with where the business is at. So a business that says, you know, our highest priority for the success is that we get our supply chain, you know, organized so that we’re able to, you know, get, get product into the country when we need it, talking to them about turnover. Even though you’re offering is incredibly strong at reducing turnover. It’s going to be very hard to get heard that said, if that’s the goal of the overall organization, but a division that you’re interested in is experiencing high turnover, you may have an opportunity. So the understanding and navigating the complexity is really difficult, and you are often going to be most successful when the stakeholders that are close to the decision makers are feeling a lot of pain. So not. Not to exploit people in their in their difficulties, but when you see somebody who is in a lot of pain and they have a responsibility to deal with a big problem, that’s a good opportunity, because then they will have more chances of successfully navigating a complex system because they’re being held accountable. And the third piece of it I just want to end with is that timing matters, and it stinks, right? Because we’re ready to go now. But if an organization is not ready to take a step, it’s going to be, you know, an uphill battle. If the stakeholder or the you know, the person who you are trying to, you know, engage and to become a champion is retiring in a year, you may not know this, right, but they’re just not moving, and they’re kind of delaying, and you don’t understand why, if they’re retiring in a year, are they going to take on something that’s going to have a two to three year success horizon? Probably not. And it’s not because what you’re doing isn’t valuable or important to the company. It’s because individual incentive alignment plays out too. So I will stop there. Thanks.

Matt Helmer 21:02

Thanks Ellen. Cindy, you’ve been collaborating with a lot of very large companies recently, at work life, providing services and supports to their workers. What have you been learning kind of around, what’s challenging around engaging them in those services and then getting them to this place of practice change of how they kind of design work and support their workers?

Cindy Williams 21:25

Thanks, Matt, and I think kind of build on Ellen’s answer to a large extent. So there’s, there’s three things that we’ve observed in our efforts to work with large enterprise, size business in two situations, work life was launched inside of the workforce. Innovation teams of those businesses and by and large had really strong success working in pilot, reaching lots of workers, having high utilization, delivering high impact, meeting the demand of large workforces, diverse and spread out workforces. But at the point that the programming was looking to maybe go full scale and spread across the entire organization and shift from Workforce Innovation to HR, it stalled. And it stalled because once you get to that space and you’re outside of the innovation team now, you have a big group of stakeholders who have to all come to agreement around what the business priorities are. And unfortunately, getting that consensus is quite difficult, and usually the consensus is going to come around. As Ellen eloquently said, the workplace priorities. What is it that is really a key initiative for that business right now, and if, if you don’t fit into that, no matter how strong your case is, no matter how much impact you’ve delivered, then it may not go where you want it to go. And so I think we saw that happen in two instances, which really, I think, informed our thinking about how we do approach businesses. But the next piece I’d say is that there’s, unfortunately, in very large businesses, often a lack of understanding of what employees are really dealing with, and so there’s this big remove that I think prohibits the business from really making those Workforce Innovations a priority. And honestly, even though your managers, your frontline managers, you’re on the ground, HR team may have a good sight line into what’s happening with the workers in different locations. Your senior level. HR leaders are there. They’re generally more focused on compliance and driving forward the C suites initiatives than they are necessarily on workforce and workforce innovation. And so you have to kind of factor that in that there’s just this disconnect and dissonance between what’s really happening with workers and the folks who are really driving the priorities for the business. And I think there’s also this piece that comes into play with just capacity. We met with a number of CHROs as part of a project that we’ve worked on over the last several years, and the thing we actually heard resoundingly was that when considering a new initiative, it’s not necessarily money, but time that drives the decision making. And so I think when those business leaders are deciding where they’re going to put their time, they end up putting the time into those business priorities. And the last thing I would say is that cost matters still. In another pilot that we ran with a large franchise organization several years ago, they had a pool of money to start launching our services. Everything was going great, high impact, high usage, all those good things, those usual measures for success, for work, life partnership. When that pot of money ran out, they couldn’t prioritize funding it, and so the services were not able to kind of continue forward. And so I think money does matter, even though we aim to keep our costs very competitive for an enterprise business, less than $1 per person per month, it still it is still an expense, and so it has to be considered as a factor when. You’re asking businesses to make a decision about even the most amazing offering that you can put forward.

Matt Helmer 25:06

Thanks, Cindy Scotty, I think, I think you hear kind of this, this notion of culture coming up, in some respects, as a challenge as well. And as we talked a little bit out up front. I think the mindsets oftentimes in large companies or in corporate America is not always open to this type of job quality work. I wonder if you can talk a little bit around these challenges of mindsets and culture and kind of what you’ve observed and learned at Talent Rewire.

Scotland Nash 25:42

Yeah, thank you, Matt. I was holding on to what Ellen said when she said, the business case just isn’t enough. Like we all want to pretend that the business will the you know, the profits will drive the business. And there’s something to be said for the bottom line. However, we’re still all human. And you asked about culture, and I believe and at talent rewire, we talk about how mindset and mental models is really that deepest part of culture, and it’s not just what people say, it’s what they value, it’s what they truly believe. It’s a lens in which people can see the world. It’s the silent rules that we all follow and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s possible and what’s not possible, and that happens at every level of an organization. And the thing is, is what makes that part of culture even more complex is that mindset doesn’t live by itself. It’s not in isolation, but it has to do with the relationships. It has to do with the power dynamics that are in the organization, and it has to do with the folks who feel seen and heard, and the folks who don’t, and all the things that impact people and how people are impacted. So when we’re talking about organizational change, just as Ellen was talking about, you know, the business case, we do oftentimes focus on that visible part of an organization. We talk about how policies can fix it. We talk about how programs can fix it. If we shift resources, we can fix it. The reality is, is that the change is actually going to happen at those layers that we don’t see. So as I mentioned, relationships and power dynamics among the people in the organization and the mindsets that individuals hold is really what’s driving the everyday behavior that is ultimately going to drive that long term success. So I’m going to share an example. We worked with a company that was more of a mid sized company, and the CEO of the company, who founded the company, was having some aha moments about hiring and people who were working and access to jobs. And so he talked about with his HR team and the hiring managers that he wanted to remove barriers to employment so they changed in practice, their job descriptions. And sometime later, what they realized is that the hiring practices weren’t actually changing, and they weren’t changing because managers who were doing the hiring didn’t have the same sense of why or purpose that the CEO did. And it’s not that they didn’t agree with them, it’s not that they didn’t want to, but we all default to our own biases. You know, it’s part of what we do for comfort, what we confirm what we already know to be true, and what we already know works. So we worked with that leader to dive into sharing his mindset and thinking about why his story and his purpose mattered. And so Cindy, you talked about this idea of people needing to align around the same initiative, the same idea, the same innovation. And so when we talk about mindset shift at talent rewire, we’ve actually come up with a handful of ways that really support somebody helping to shift minds in their organization. So I’m going to just briefly share Matt those four. The first one is about education and storytelling. So if you believe in something deeply, it’s really important that you lean into sharing your why and that you get the stories out there of your why, and the stories out there of other people who you’ve seen impacted by your why. So if you want to change your hiring practices, tell them why, not just what or how, but tell them why that matters, and then share examples from people who you know were impacted by that change. We talk about proximity. Get close. If you are a large organization, you’re really many layers away from people who are in entry level and Frontline roles, and so don’t keep them at arm’s length, but build relationship and conversation with people who are going to be impacted by the change in the culture that you want to make in your organization. We talk about space. For skepticism. Not everybody is going to be on the same page all the time, but we know that our why can be rooted and stronger by understanding what people don’t understand. So when they come and ask you questions, opening up and asking further questions of curiosity about helping to understand what they’re thinking, so that you, in turn, can help them understand what you’re thinking and come to more common ground. And the last piece, I’d say, is around peer accountability, and that’s really hard in today’s public facing world, in the political climate that we’re in, but it’s really important to create relationships with people in your organization and people cross organization who have values that are aligned with yours, so that you can think about the fact that you’re not making the change alone. So you can think about it within your organization, but you can think about it with counterparts in other organizations. So we want to go back to what Simon Sinek says, and its start with your why to help change those values and mindsets and cultures so that people can understand what you’re thinking and not just do the what now.

Matt Helmer 31:07

I love that framework. Scotty, thank you for sharing that, and we’re going to come back in a minute, I think, to unpack a little bit more around kind of like worker and employee voice kind of fits into that framework and fits into kind of the practice change. Ellen, I want to pivot just briefly for a minute, but stay on this kind of topic of culture and mindset for a minute as well, and go a different direction. So, you know, I think you and I both share this affinity for worker and employee ownership, and I think we also see opportunities for how big companies could be doing more in that respect to share a financial stake with their workers. So I want to ask you about that a little bit in the context of today’s conversation around like what opportunities employee ownership offers, and kind of this with large companies and large corporations, and where you kind of see challenges, but I think, as we both know to employee ownership works best when it’s surrounded by a culture that really lifts up worker ideas, worker participation. So it’s also about culture and mindset. So I wonder if you could both speak to the opportunities and challenges of employee ownership in the context of large companies and corporations and where you see challenges there, but then also maybe talk a little bit about the critical culture piece that you’ve done some work on.

Ellen Frank-Miller 32:35

Well, I think one of the big challenges is awareness and understanding of what employee ownership is. Employee Ownership doesn’t mean that I sell my company and I’m out it can, but employee ownership can mean that I have some element, some stake in the business, while others remain in charge. So I’m an employee owner, but I have not, you know, it fully taken over. So when we think about large companies, you know, there are a range of structures for becoming employee owned. One of the challenges is that some of these are extremely complex and highly regulated, so an employee stock ownership plan or an ESOP regulated by the Department of Labor under ERISA, the Internal Revenue Code. So it has a lot of complexity. There are some big benefits to businesses, but I think that is one of the challenges, is that people don’t necessarily understand and have the awareness of how those structures work, and particularly with large companies, you know, where there are benefits to them, beyond the wonderful things we talk about with respect to workforce and outcomes, but even just the, you know, the tax advantages, for example, and there’s also, you know, sort of, I think misinformation out there about, you know, whether or not being employee owned, you know, is beneficial. But there’s good research that supports that. It that it really is, in terms of the opportunities, you know, addressing wealth inequality is incredibly challenging, but with employee ownership, folks have a stake in the outcome of the business, and it is an incredibly powerful way to build wealth. When you are a business owner, we know that employee ownership from the research, leads to better quality jobs. Employee owned companies tend to pay more. They tend to lay folks off less when there are tough times. And what we know, what we’re talking about today, is that improved job quality leads to better financial outcomes for the business. So, you know, it’s an incredibly powerful, powerful tool. And in kind of getting at what Scotty was saying about culture. You know, culture is a is a real engine for how businesses do things. And, you know, as social scientists, we think about culture as a definition of this is how we do things around here. So this is how we as an organization do things around here. This is our business’s way of doing business. Yes, and the we, who is the we? Though the we organize. Organizations are organisms made of people. The we is both the business management, how the business does things, as well as the employees and how people do things. So when we think about, you know, what, where does culture come from? Well, culture comes from behaviors. It comes from the behavior of the companies. So for example, we talk in terms of what ignites an Ownership mindset that Scotty was talking about mindsets, and it has to do with businesses doing things differently than they generally do. Changing the way businesses do things changes the way employees think about their jobs and what is wanted of them, and what their role is in the business’s success. When my mindset changes, my behaviors change, and it’s those ownership behaviors, like making suggestions to reduce costs or helping my co worker when I see them making a mistake, those ownership behaviors come from the way I think about it. Do I am I an owner of this business. And what you referred to Matt about, you know, the fact that creating ownership stakes, so the financial incentive, you know, that is a that is a lever that does have some evidence behind it that it will change behaviors. But when those rewards are far in the future, as they tend to be, when you become a business owner, you know, through an ESOP, or whatever it might be, the strength of that effect is weakened substantially. So when we when we say that financial incentives, okay, you’re an owner now, you will behave in a way that makes the business better. It’s not enough. What there is, unfortunately, you know, relationships that we were talking about that you cannot neglect, that if you want to make the most of the significant investment that most companies make to become employee owned, and what that requires the business to do things differently, so that employees will think differently, with different mindsets and behave differently. And I feel like I’m given a lot of bad news today, but there is no magical ownership culture fairy that is going to wave her magic wand and transform your culture. The Business People managers need to manage differently, so that employees think differently and behave differently. So I think that culture, you know is a is a pivotal piece, and it’s much harder to get your hands around. But that’s why I know we’re going to be talking about measurement. That’s why really clear and precise measurement of the factors that create an ownership culture, you know, is very powerful. And when people say we have to transform our culture, that’s incredibly difficult. So when we can have a really actionable diagnostic and roadmap that says how to do that, what steps to take that, that creates the opportunity for real change.

Matt Helmer 37:42

Thanks Ellen. Yeah, I think you know, when we look at employee owned companies, when it when it’s designed and done well, right? Which isn’t always the case, but it’s very often the case, what you see is a culture where employees tend to have a little bit more autonomy, to be able to go about their day to day work, to be able to innovate, to be able to solve problems. There’s a culture of transparency when it comes to the financials, and there’s avenues and different formal and informal mechanisms for how employees can kind of share their ideas and perspectives around making the company perspective or successful. So this gets a little bit, I think, to kind of this employee, worker voice, part of the equation that I think we all recognize is absolutely critical in, kind of, in pushing change within companies of any size. You know, the voices and experiences and perspectives of employees is such an empower, powerful catalyst for making that happen. So let’s talk a little bit more about that piece of the puzzle and what you all are learning there, and how we can think about approaching it in this context of large businesses. So Scotty, I want to come back to you a little bit kind of on this point. Talk a little bit more about kind of your systems change approach to talent rewire, and maybe give us an example of how that works in practice, including how you build in worker voice and perspective into those efforts.

Scotland Nash 39:17

Yeah, you know, Ellen, I like what you said, employee ownership is about listening to employees. And we do wish that there were probably more folks out there who were thinking about employee ownership. And at the same time, there are a lot of ways to build in systems and structures to listen to employees. And we know, again, it can’t just be what we say at the surface of systems change with a policy change or a practice. We’re going to collect a survey. We’re going to say that from a policy perspective, once a quarter, we’re going to collect this input. Because what we found is that even when you’re centering the employee in the way you think you’re doing things, the system isn’t going to change if you’re not at. Actually building the culture around it. And so when we talk about systems change, you know, I mentioned earlier, there’s this idea of the practices and policies and resources that are that visible change, but then there are those power dynamics and the relationships that ultimately sit at a surface where people can have those conversations. So it’s a little bit deeper. And then, you know, the mindset pieces. And so when we talk about a systems change and a true systems change, we do talk about all three of those levels. And we also say that we need to center employees in all of those conversations. So oftentimes, leaders and companies will say, You know what, I am going to give that survey, that employee engagement survey, I’m going to find out what they really think about this work. And you know, Ellen is a data person, but as we know, like not all of the data is being shared. Not all of the data is actually being collected. So talent rewire was looking a number of years ago at doing some research around looking at employee engagement and understanding employee voice more through employee engagement, and we realized, as I think many companies do, that actually the numbers of people responding to the employee engagement surveys and different mechanisms of sharing voice was going down, so not as many people were being represented and the answers that were being shared. So we decided to take a step back, and we said, what is necessary in an organization for an employee to want to share, for an employee to know that they are in a space that is safe, for them to be able to share. And through our research, we really found that there were five enabling conditions for people to be able to feel confident and comfortable and able to share how they felt about the workplace, how they felt about the practices and policies that were being implemented, that they could look at that power dynamic and relationship aspect of the work and say, I can talk to these people, and that my voice will be heard, and that I do have power in the organization. So we talk about shifting the narrative. And so with that first enabling condition, the idea is to remember that the people who are doing the work are the people who have the answer to the work. They’re the people who are experts in understanding, delivering, and implementing what needs to happen. They’re the contributors to success. We’ve heard a lot lately about our second enabling condition, which is psychological safety. The reality is, we wouldn’t still be talking about it so much if it was happening everywhere that we were and in all the companies that we were working in. It’s really important to do team checks and vertical checks and horizontal checks, that people feel comfortable sharing ideas, raising concerns, taking risks, knowing that they’re not going to be punished, that they’re not going to be dismissed, but that they have the opportunity to raise questions. Psychological safety doesn’t mean agreeing with everything that your boss says, we talk about authentic and executive and management buy in, and that the idea is that everybody at every level of an organization needs to believe that these things are true, that the employee needs to be centered so a CEO may say it, and a frontline employee might say it. But if everybody in between that hierarchical structure doesn’t believe that employee voice is centered to the culture and to change, then it’s not going to happen. We talk about listening for understanding. I think that there was some conversation earlier about this idea that, you know, I mentioned, the idea of curious questions. Go into a conversation and ask with true curiosity, listen, hear, and don’t go into the conversation with all the answers, but try to understand what is truly being said. Try to understand how people are really experiencing the work. And the last piece is this idea about following through on commitments, that if you implement a survey, if you have a focus group, if you have some interviews and you learn some information, it’s really essential that you report back what you hear, and if you can’t support what’s being asked of you, letting people know why, when you get the information and you don’t report back, we actually know that culture erodes. So if you’re going to survey, if you’re going to focus group, if you’re going to have one on one conversations, make sure you follow up with the company and let people know across the organization what you’ve learned and what what’s going to happen. The last thing I’ll say is that these aspects are not check boxes. They are slow change. They are culture change. And it takes time, and it takes revisiting. It’s not going to be a one and done, so I encourage you to think about the one small next step you can take and revisiting frequently.

Matt Helmer 44:53

Thanks, Scotty. There’s so much, so much great wisdom in there in terms of thinking about capturing worker voice and. And responding to it. Cindy, I want to turn to you a little bit now to get your thoughts on this matter. You know what has been your approach at work life, to kind of gathering and communicate, communicating data and stories that leadership and management, that companies need to have, to recognize that there’s a problem as well as an opportunity for change.

Cindy Williams 45:24

Yeah, so one of work, life partnerships core values is data, storytelling, and that’s very intentional, because, as I said at the top, our real why is to encourage businesses to do things differently, to change the practices that they put in place for their employees, but in order to do that, they need to be close to their employees. They can’t be just making decisions in a vacuum. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses are relying on survey data that’s not actionable or they may not know what to do with maybe it’s actionable, but they’re not sure where to go with it, or they’re relying on their benefits brokers. We could do a whole webinar on the intersection of job quality and benefits brokers, but so I’m going to park that one for today, but talk a little bit about how we’ve thought about encouraging that practice change with businesses, at work, life partnership. So one of the advantages that we have is real proximity to employees in a business. They come to us. The employee comes to us when they need help solving a problem. And so when we are in that moment with that individual, we are able to hear from them directly, in a moment that they’re experiencing something, whatever that thing is, this is what’s going on. This is what is distracting me at work. This is what is causing me to call in sick and I need help resolving it. And we gather all of that data, and we bring it back to employers on a monthly basis and a quarterly basis. We talk about it, and we say, this is what we’re seeing with your work workforce that’s very different than what a business gets in a survey. A survey can’t tell a business what percentage of their employees is living unstably housed or experience an experiencing an undue burden because of childcare or elder care, and that’s what our data brings forward to the business. And in fact, one of those large companies I mentioned earlier, one of their biggest Whys to work with work life partnership in the beginning was because they knew they had a data problem, and they felt like we’re going to get a much better take on what’s really happening with our workers by working with work life partnership. And it’s sort of this hidden asset that businesses get when they work with us, because we bring it back and we say, this is what we helped people with, this, this, this quarter, this is what they came to us with. And I think that becomes very, very impactful in terms of not just helping the businesses understand but then define solutions and take action to it. And so it’s really become one of the greatest tools that we use in driving practice change at those businesses and honestly, it’s really, I’m sometimes surprised at how quickly businesses react when they see what’s really happening. They say, oh my goodness, I didn’t realize I have a huge transportation problem because this facility is, you know, kind of in a rural area, and so we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to keep our folks from quitting because they don’t have transportation. So employers really do when they know what’s really happening and they can get close to it, whether because they are proximate themselves, using what Scotty just outlined, which is an incredibly powerful framework, or because they’re using some other outside sources of data, I think that’s the marriage of really trying to get businesses to make the kinds of job quality actions we want them to make priorities, not just the supply chain piece, but the actual workforce innovation that we want to see that’s going to create better outcomes for employees. And I would say that, you know, one of the reasons I kind of always wonder about whether small and medium sized businesses are faster to move is because they’re closer to the problems. They see them more on a day to day basis. We work with a 1200 person manufacturing company with facilities in four locations. And when they see a problem, they act. They don’t just sit and think about maybe in 2027 we’ll think about that problem. They really do act because they’re closer to it. And I think, again, that’s one of the challenges for big, big or enterprise businesses. They’re just there. They’re so much further from it, and the folks who see it are so much further from the decision makers that it’s really challenging to start to solve those problems for workers.

Matt Helmer 49:46

Yeah, thanks, Cindy. I mean, I completely agree the power of stories from workers is incredible. I think you all are probably familiar with this, and I’m not sure how. How this person got the data, but the new the CEO of Ford I saw recently learned that a lot of his entry level workers working full time at Ford were also having to pick up like night shifts at local warehouses or other places, and that really caused a lot of concern for him, so he decided to raise wages as a result of this. And this has probably been going on for a long time, right? But it was the first he’d kind of been exposed, or kind of learned about what some of his frontline workers were experiencing, and at least in this one instance, that was that was the catalyst for change. But it gets at these issues of like proximity and the disconnect between leadership and what’s kind of happening with workers, right? That has to be solved for in large companies. Ellen, I want to stay with you a little bit on this, this question of employee and worker voice and kind of surveys, I think, you know, I I’ve heard so many large companies when asked about how they engage workers and their employees, say, Well, we have an annual survey. You know, if I had a nickel for every time I heard that, I’d be I’d be a rich person at this point. But I think, like any tool or instrument, there are surveys that work and ones that don’t. For those that are supporting companies with this type of kind of engagement and data collection. What do you think is important for them to keep in mind and kind of know about how to go about that?

Ellen Frank-Miller 51:27

I want to come back to something that Cindy said, but I think you had on something really important when we talk about surveys that work, surveys that don’t. There are absolutely bad surveys out there. There’s no question about it, but oftentimes it’s a question of, are you using the right tool for the job? If you want to paint a wall, do not pick up a hammer, right? And so with a survey, if you want to, you know, understand somebody’s, you know, healthy eating habits, don’t ask them about their interest in weightlifting. So a key piece is, are you asking the right questions in order to get the right data that will allow you to take the right action, and Cindy is absolutely right. You know, as we are mixed methods researchers at work, and that means that we use numbers and we use words, so we use surveys and we use all the kinds of qualitative methods like interviews and focus groups, et cetera, because surveys can tell us how many, how much, they can tell us the magnitude, but they can’t tell us why, and we often have to make very difficult choices about surveys, right? So when Cindy was saying, you know, we don’t know that folks are having an undue childcare burden, that’s right, because when we think about in making surveys accessible and getting the best possible response rates, you know, we know from research and from experiences, we got to have five minutes, and we can’t ask every question, and that’s why it’s so important to pair them, to pair those findings, and also, as you were saying, to have those regular check ins to provide support. That’s part of what we do with our diagnostics, is once we have identified the results and work with the company you know, to create a roadmap we meet quarterly, both as an accountability buddy, but also to understand how are things going and where are more resources needed. And when we talk about surveys being actionable, there are a couple of ways to look at this, you know. The first one is, you know, are we asking questions that point to direct things that can that we can do? So, for example, we under worthwhile jobs index, we asked the question, you know, my company wants to get worker views on important things. So that’s an actionable question. If your folks are saying, Nope, they don’t want to get our views. Well, the action is very clear. You need to, you need to get their views, and you need to make it clear that you are actually getting views. So making that communication that Scotty was talking about, not just that we gathered the data, but we come back with those results, and we come back now. An A plus is, we see these results. We want your feedback on how we can address that. A B plus is, we see these results. And here are the things we’re going to do to try to improve, and these are things we can’t do. So again, the worker voice on the solution is just as important as the worker voice on the diagnostic. When we talk about, you know, are there good surveys and bad surveys? I would say many surveys are mixed. So a very large organization has a very well known engagement survey, and one of those questions is, I have a best friend at work? Now I can tell you why they’re asking this question, because we know from decades of research that what we call perceived co worker support is a strong predictor of lower turnover, higher engagement, all of the things we care about. The problem with that question is that if I don’t have a best friend at work, my employer really can’t do anything about that. And if I’m trying to keep a survey incredibly short so that it’s accessible to my workforce and that my supervisors are going to support people taking the time to answer that survey, I don’t want to waste a question on something that my company can’t do anything with in terms of accessibility, as I was talking about. Time. You know, some people think that’s a 10 minute survey. 10 minutes is a long time. Think about a YouTube video. You see a YouTube video that’s 10 minutes long, you’re going to put it off till later, and that’s often why we get low response rates. We need to be mindful of the accessibility in terms of how folks can actually respond to a survey. So we worked with a large company that had multiple warehouse locations, and in talking to managers at each of them, we tried to understand, how do you distribute these surveys to get your folks to respond? And they said, Oh, we send emails to everybody. Now, this is a warehouse, right? Folks are up on Cranes this high. They are on lines breaking down boxes of pencils and putting them into separate boxes. They’re not on email. And even worse, they don’t even have emails. And when we ask that question, like, so how do you address it when your folks in the people who aren’t at computers all day or may not even have email addresses? And there’s this pause, and this goes to, I think, what, what you all were saying what Cindy and Scotty were saying about, what is our where do we sit? How do we understand the world did not occur, that folks weren’t on email, that they didn’t have an email address, and that allowed them to say, what do we need to do to make this accessible? Language is another important one, right? When we have bilingual workforces, it’s really important to do that. And the other thing I will say about, you know, the right tool for the right job, the right questions matter, not just in terms of what we ask, but how we’re asking and what our goal is. So, for example, you know, on our worthwhile job survey, where we’re trying to understand what we call perceived supervisor support, which is strongly correlated with turnover and engagement and burnout, we asked the question, I can count on my supervisor to help me when I have a problem? So that’s certainly actionable, right? If people are saying no to that, you need to get to your supervisors and understand why aren’t they forming that connection that allows people to then feel psychologically safe, as Kathy was saying, to come to them to say, I have a problem and I need help. Okay? So that is the right question that is fit for purpose, when, when that’s our goal is to understand and improve perceived supervisor support. Now, Matt, we were talking about employee ownership a moment ago, okay, whether or not my supervisor has my back is actually not at all related to whether or not I will think and act like an owner. So the question we ask on our ownership impact index is my supervisor talks to me about the best ways to do the work. So this again, is, Do I want a hammer or do I want a paintbrush? It depends on what I’m trying to do. If I’m trying to increase supervisor support, because I’m focused on turnover and engagement, etc. That’s the answer that I want. So I can take action. If I’m trying to get my folks to think and act like owners, then I need to measure the things that are known to generate that Ownership mindset, to ignite that Ownership mindset, and whether or not my supervisor collaborates with me to get that input on the best ways to do the work. And of course, if I’m talking about the best ways to do the work, it suggests I have autonomy. That’s the right way to use those data. And then, of course, when you get a survey response and people are saying no, and I can’t count on my supervisor to help me, the first thing you can do is try to understand why, what’s going on. Where is that happening? But if you want to understand what people need in order to feel that they could ask their supervisor for help when they have a problem, that’s where we bring in the qualitative methods to talk to people and get their views.

Matt Helmer 58:33

Thanks, Ellen, so we’re rounding the corner here a little bit, and so if you have some questions, please get those in the question box as soon as possible. Cindy, I want to come back to you for a second. I think for many people, you know, working with a large company or even a corporation, it’s like, Where do I even begin? How do I get my foot in the door? Where do I Where do I start the conversation? How do I get in a place where I can even start the conversation? So what are some of the things you suggest people think about in their approach to kind of engaging an employ, a large employer at the initial stages, recognizing that there’s probably no one size fits all to this question.

Cindy Williams 59:20

Yeah, if I had cracked the code, Matt, you know, I think that would be amazing. So I’m not, you’re right. There’s no one size fits all, and I think there’s a lot of variables, including how you get introduced to a company. And, you know, when you get introduced to your come to the company. Ellen talked about timing earlier. I think that’s really, really a critical factor when you’re thinking about how you start that conversation. But you know, I think there’s three pieces of advice that I would put forward an answer to that question, and I’ll frame this by saying whether you’re selling something to the business, like work life, we are a social enterprise. We sell. Our services to businesses, or you’re approaching a business with a practice change that may not be something that has dollars associated with it. Let’s say you were stand behind skills based hiring. You want to help that employer set up skills based hiring. There isn’t necessarily a financial investment there, but there is a time investment and so when I when I talk about sort of this business development or engagement process. I’m thinking about all the ways that we might engage a large business in a practice change, whether it’s, you know, there’s money changing hands or not. I think the first thing that’s relevant to this particular conversation is define what big business means to you. There is an enormous difference between an enterprise business with 300,000 employees in the US and a 10,000 person hospital system. They are very, very different beasts, and they need to be tackled differently. And so when you are thinking about the initiative that you’re putting forward and you’re trying to get a large business to engage with, think about who, what the size of those businesses that you really want to target is, and craft your approach to that. So make sure you’re thinking about what will engage the business of the size that you’re targeting most effectively. So rather than say, all businesses, all big businesses created equally, understand the differences among the different sizes and types of businesses. Also, there’s huge differences across sector too. So I mean, that’s another whole factor. The second piece, I would say, is to know your target business partner. So one of the activities that work life has spent a lot of time is really understanding what works with our business partners. And so we have a scorecard, a proprietary scorecard that we developed a couple of years ago that enables us to evaluate the health of the relationship, which is great for forecasting and planning, but also for us to define what is our if you will, look alike business. Who are the people that we know lead and run businesses who are going to be successful in not only launching work life services, which is great, but also thinking about the other practice change that they may pursue. So really, I think sitting down and looking at where you’ve been successful, what kind of business partners you’ve seen the most impact with, and been able to move the furthest with, that’s where you should be spending your time. And even if you see a big business that you think would benefit from the thing you’re putting forward. I think check yourself and really think hard about whether they really are the best target for you. So I think, I mean, that’s a pretty true component of all business development strategy is, you know, look for your look alike business, and that’s where you spend your time. And the last piece, which I think is the trickier piece, but is really, really important is do your research. I think we’ve talked a lot about making sure that there is a business like alignment with the business case and alignment with the organization’s priorities in this conversation. And if you can go into that initial conversation understanding that, then you you’re going in with a huge advantage. You know exactly where your talking points should be landing. If you don’t know going into the conversation, make that your first set of questions, because honestly, you’re going to waste a lot less time if you actually get that information from that business early on in the conversation. Understand if this is a priority for 2026 or 2030 because if it’s 2030 Guess what? You don’t need to spend time on it. And I think do really good listening when you’re in the call. This was not yesterday, but within the last few months, I was on the call, a call with CHRO who said, My people have the same problems as me. So I’m not really sure work life is the right solution for us. And I thought you are correct. Work Life is not the right solution for you, because you’re you probably don’t understand that the issues that your employees have are different than yours. Not to say you don’t have issues we all do, but that your folks are experiencing probably different types of things. So know when to kind of qualify a business out and just know it’s not the right fit. So I’d say those are kind of things we think about when we think about how we spend our valuable time, when we’re talking to businesses, really, of all sizes, but big businesses can probably consume a disproportionate amount of your time too. So yeah, I’ll leave it there.

Matt Helmer 1:04:17

Great, thanks Cindy. Scotty, you know, we’ve, we’ve talked a lot about big businesses today, and I think it begs the question of, like, you know, what’s the difference between approach and approach when you’re working with a small or medium sized business? And we talked a little bit about proximity, you know, kind of being one of those, those different contextual differences between companies of different size. So talk a little bit about what you see as the difference in terms of working with large companies versus small in business, and what advice or suggestions you would have for people that are maybe aiming for engagement with small or medium sized businesses?

Scotland Nash 1:04:57

Yeah, I was going to use exactly the same phrasing, Matt, leverage your proximity. Cindy talked about it. It’s super important, you know, get close and ask curious questions and listen. So think of your proximity to your employees as a real asset. And then I think we also have heard this idea of bring employees into the process. So don’t just ask them. Don’t just like sit there and observe, but actually ask for their input and their ideas. Don’t make assumptions about what employees need based on what they told you. You know, we worked with a company not too long ago, a smaller company, and what they ended up doing, because we have this pilot model. And in the first part of the pilot, it’s about creating an employee, a way to listen to your employees. And the second part is to say, once you hear what your employees are asking for, you know, go ahead and pilot. What that ask is, well, this company found that that employee focus group was so worthwhile that that is actually the pilot that they implemented. And it wasn’t just about big things like benefits, it was about small things. So what they learned from working with their and holding their frontline conversation was that they had replaced these screwdrivers and because they were expensive, and they bought a cheaper model. Well, the employee said the cheaper model is actually costing you more money, because we have to replace them all the time. So again, they turned to the experts. They built that proximity, and they rectified the situation so the employees were heard in something as simple as, you know, buying the right tool, but also in building an experience of trust, so that when something bigger came up, they were able to have a conversation about that as well. Embrace nimbleness. So small companies have the opportunity to shift a little bit right. It’s like the Titanic versus a smaller boat. You’re going to move a little bit faster. So embrace the nimbleness that your team may have, the flexibility and strength that you have in being small, and that a lot of people hold multiple roles. So how does one role and responsibility connect to another? I think is something that can be really thought provoking. Think broadly about skills as you’re looking if you’re having a problem with retention because there’s not enough advancement or you’re having trouble attracting people, think about how you’re looking for employees to come to the table. Don’t rely on old methods. But really think about what are the skills that are essential for an employee to be successful in that role? Accept help. You’re not alone. So we, the three of us here, are here to help you. Matt’s got tons of ideas as well. You know, companies don’t need to work alone. Ask for help, reach to reach out across your network. And the final thing I would say is start small. If you’re a big company or your small company, your small step is a small or medium sized business is going to actually get you moving in progress, and that you don’t have to be perfect. So really think about what is that immediate next step you can see and in a smaller or medium sized business, you’re going to be able to see that impact pretty quickly and know if you need to shift again. And that goes back to that nimbleness piece. So those are some things I would recommend.

Matt Helmer 1:08:12

Thanks Scotty. I want to stay on this question of impact and progress in kind of two different ways as we start to round this out a little bit more. Ellen and Cindy, you’ve mentioned you have your own scorecard, but Ellen, I know you’ve done a lot of work on like job quality outcomes maps, and you know how that can be a way to kind of measure progress and impact. So I’d like you to speak a little bit to that. And then Cindy, I want to pivot to you next after that, because we got a question from the audience around, how do you think about assessing the health of your relationship with a company? So Helen, maybe you can go first on the job quality outcomes maps, and then Cindy, I’ll pivot to you a little bit on the health of the relationship.

Ellen Frank-Miller 1:08:53

This is one of the most fun things that I have ever done in my academic career, and it’s all because of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, which involved us in a project that was funded by the Gates Foundation to really understand small to mid sized businesses and job quality and how those kinds of companies can make jobs better. And my team did a very extensive review of the academic evidence base and really looked at the research to understand those human capital KPIs that we care about that cost us money or make us money, like turnover, intentions, engagement, burnout, et cetera. What do we know with high confidence is strongly correlated with those in terms of job characteristics? So we looked at all of the research that used those human capital KPIs as an outcome. So what are the different characteristics of jobs, and did they have an impact on turnover, engagement, burnout, et cetera. And what we were able to do is to isolate where are there strong correlations, and which of those particular outcomes do they. Connect with, right? So I have a wonderful friend who works for a very large financial institution. They have a seasonal business. Things get crazy at particular time of year. People work incredibly hard, and burnout is a real risk. And my friend had said to me, you know, they work so hard, we’re giving them all bonuses. Now, this is terrific, right? Because compensation is a high predictor of turnover, engagement, burnout, etc. But bad news, when you Sorry, it’s turnover and engagement. Bad news, it is not a predictor of reduced burnout. So giving people money to reduce burnout is actually not putting your resources where they are most needed. So the job quality outcome maps are available. You can go to the National Fund for Workforce Solutions website. It’s also linked on our website, and it’s a tool for companies to say, where is our priority today, and sometimes it is turnover, but sometimes it’s engagement or burnout. Look at what that outcome is, that human capital KPI is, and you can use the job quality maps to identify where are our best levers to address that and try to make progress on those things, so we’re using the right tool to solve the right problem and not wasting time with things that are terrific to do but aren’t actually going to get us the most important results that we’re seeking.

Matt Helmer 1:11:18

These job quality outcome maps are an amazing resource. I recommend everyone check that out. Cindy, how do you think about metrics and evaluating the health of your relationship with the companies you’re working with?

Cindy Williams 1:11:28

So we did. We worked, actually with a consultant. About 18 months ago, we started that project to establish basically an employer trust matrix. And trust may not be the right word, but we’re using that as a way to really think about how, how healthy is this relationship, and really how we measure it is pretty simple, and it is really the level of responsiveness, the level of engagement with that employer. Does that employer regularly schedule their quarterly business reviews with us? Do they regularly share information about our services with their employees so the employees know it’s available when and if they need it? Do they ask questions about the data that we share with them? Are they responding to emails when we ask to clarify something about an employee benefit because we asked for employee benefit information so we can help employees access those benefits. When employers are kind of checking the boxes on a good chunk of those different activities, then we know they’re actively engaged in the success of the relationship, and they they’re actively engaged in getting the right outcomes from their partnership with us, which is to, again, make sure their employees can come to work stable and engaged, not burdened by all the things that can happen in life. And so that’s really it’s got to be customized to whatever it is you’re doing with an employer or business partner. But at the end of the day, I think figuring out what those critical touch points are really is essential in understanding the health of the relationship. If you if your client isn’t ever responding to your emails, then I would put them on a I would probably take them out of your forecast for next year.

Matt Helmer 1:13:18

Thanks. So what we’re up on, like, one or two minutes left here. So this will have to be quick, maybe 30 or 45 seconds each. But I do want to end on this note. I want to get your final thoughts on. You know, we’ve talked a lot about how to make change at big companies today, a little bit on small and medium sized company companies, but sometimes, you know, change begins at home and as leaders at each of your organizations. I’d like you to all maybe talk about and offer a quick reflection or two about how you think about job quality internally at your own organizations, and how that’s been instructive or helpful in your work with your external partners, and what advice you can give people to get started on that kind of internal reflection process and looking in the mirror a little bit. So we don’t have much, much time here, but maybe 3045, seconds each. And Scotty, maybe I’ll start with you.

Scotland Nash 1:14:11

Yeah, I can identify two things. One is, we’ve really been working on creating a culture of inclusion and belonging. We didn’t say we are an inclusive company. We belong. Let’s set it on the shelf, but it’s something we continue to think about, talk about, engage in conversation about, and the second piece I’ll add to that is professional development. It has to do with building job quality. That’s usually what people want. They want to be able to grow in their position. They want to think about flexibility. And I think professional development is a huge piece of that. So those are the two things I’d say.

Matt Helmer 1:14:41

Thanks Scotty. Ellen?

Ellen Frank-Miller 1:14:46

So I think that when we look at job quality within our own organizations, it allows us to go to our clients with experience of those challenges firsthand, and what we did about it. One thing in particular I’ll talk about is, you know. When we talk about having voice and autonomy, doing that in our organizations, we have to practice what we preach, right? One of the things that we do is we spend a lot of energy on coaching, particularly with early stage managers. What I have seen 100 times in my career is that when folks are new managers, there are two things going on, right? So on, the first piece is they’re accountable for outcomes in a way they probably weren’t before. And also they now feel responsible for people, right? So when a problem comes up, I’m accountable for the solution of the problem, and I have to have the answers. So they often will come with a solution, instead of going to, as we’re all talking about the, you know, the folks on the ground who know the answer. So we think about, how do, how do we encourage people to not feel like they have to have all the solutions, but that they have to have the right questions to get the team engaged in those answers. So, you know, again, I think the coaching piece is part of what creates really high quality jobs, and really engaging with these challenges is what allows us to have additional credibility with our companies that we work with to say, you know, I it’s a different scale, but I’ve been in your shoes. Here’s some of the things that we tried.

Matt Helmer 1:16:16

Thanks Ellen. Wise words. Cindy, I’ll end with you.

Cindy Williams 1:16:21

Yeah, as a small nonprofit, we are perennially challenged to have competitive benefits, but it’s something we prioritize. However, the one word that really came to mind when you ask question that is recognition. And I think it’s really, really important that your employees feel like the work that they’re doing on behalf of your organization, your mission, your customers, your clients, whatever, however you quantify that it matters. And so we’ve worked really, really hard to improve the level of recognition that we provide to our employees so they know that what they do every single day makes a huge difference in our success.

Matt Helmer 1:17:02

Thanks, Cindy, that’s a great note to end on. Thank you, Cindy. Thank you, Ellen. Thank you, Scotty. I feel like we could spend another hour here. I just appreciate your all’s work and expertise and perspective and thoughts on this work so much. You’ve all been just incredible leaders in this space, and I think a lot of people draw on your expertise and wisdom to help guide them. So I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you to our audience for being here. Thank you, as always, to my colleagues Tony, Nora, and Frances for their support and work on this event, as well as our colleagues at Architex. Our next event is going to be in November. It’s on November 19, and we’re going to explore another heavy topic, which is the resurgence of child labor in our country, and what we should do about that. So hope you’ll be able to join us. Thank you again. Make sure to take the survey that’s going to pop up in your window here shortly, and have a good rest of your week and weekend. Take care.

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