Is our economy strong if the stock market soars and corporate profits hit new highs, while working people’s earnings stay flat and their jobs are unstable? A critical issue in this discussion is that we lack good measures of economic progress that include the share of good companies offering good jobs — jobs with good wages, benefits, stability, and opportunities for advancement. And it’s important not only for workers but also for businesses; employees who have good jobs are more engaged, more productive and more likely to stay.
Running a company with job quality in mind is good business, and a metric for quality jobs could improve decisions about where to invest, whom to lend to, and which companies to do business with. However, until now, there was no easy and consistent way to measure a businesses’ “people outcomes” and benchmark to industry peers.
The Economic Opportunities Program’s Good Companies/Good Jobs Initiative, in partnership with Working Metrics, is proud to unveil a new tool that assesses businesses’ job quality performance for frontline workers and benchmarks them against others. This tool is part of a unique nonprofit-for profit collaboration with Working Metrics to get this tool into the hands of investors and businesses’ procurement systems to help them include firms’ treatment of workers in their decision making – thereby creating strong incentives for business change. This event includes a presentation on this innovative new tool and discussion with businesses who contributed to it and used it to improve their practices.
This event features Maureen Conway (Vice President for Policy Programs, The Aspen Institute; Executive Director, Economic Opportunities Program), Pat Gross (Chairman, The Lovell Group; Trustee, The Aspen Institute), Arlene Koth (Vice President of Administration and Human Resources, TriVersity Construction), Ken Macon (Director of Strategic Sourcing, TriHealth), Mark Popovich (Director, Good Companies/Good Jobs, Economic Opportunities Program, The Aspen Institute), Larry Schlang (CEO, Working Metrics), and Janice Urbanik (Senior Director for Innovation and Strategy, National Fund for Workforce Solutions).
This event is part of the Working in America series, an ongoing discussion series hosted by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program that highlights an array of critical issues affecting low- and moderate-income workers in the United States and ideas for improving and expanding economic opportunities for working people. For more information, visit as.pn/workinginamerica.
The Economic Opportunities Program advances strategies, policies, and ideas to help low- and moderate-income people thrive in a changing economy. We recognize that race, gender, and place intersect with and intensify the challenge of economic inequality and we address these dynamics by advancing an inclusive vision of economic justice. For over 25 years, EOP has focused on expanding individuals’ opportunities to connect to quality work, start businesses, and build economic stability that provides the freedom to pursue opportunity. Learn more at as.pn/eop.

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