June 28, 2025 • 60 mins
Improving job quality doesn’t just benefit workers; it can also strengthen small businesses themselves and the broader communities they serve. Yet, many small business owners lack the resources and knowledge needed to improve the quality of their jobs. Trusted partners, like community development financial institutions (CDFIs), can make a meaningful difference.
Through its Shared Success demonstration, the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program has had the opportunity to learn about the range of strategies CDFI business advisors have employed to encourage job quality among their small business clients. EOP’s job quality advising guide, “Building Shared Success: A Guide to Small Business Job Quality Advising for CDFIs,” was developed in collaboration with business advisors based on this experience. Centered on business value, this guide provides tools, resources, and success stories that can help organizations working with small businesses coach clients on potential job quality improvements that can also enhance business resilience.
This webinar, which EOP hosted on June 26, 2025, features highlights from the guide, as well as insights from CDFI leaders about their approaches to building job quality advising into their work. It features opening remarks from the Aspen Institute’s Maureen Conway and Bryn Morgan, followed by a panel discussion with Amanda Blondeau (Northern Initiatives), Cynthia Murphy (Coastal Enterprises, Inc.), and Delphine Ntegeye (African Development Center).
For more information about this event, including a transcript, speaker bios, and additional resources, visit our event page.
For highlights from this discussion, subscribe to EOP’s YouTube channel.
Or subscribe to our podcast to listen on the go.
Join us on Zoom on Tuesday, July 22, at 2 p.m. Eastern time, for our next webinar, “Fixing Work: Recent Lessons from the Field.”
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Good afternoon and welcome. I'm Maureen Conway and I lead
the Economic Opportunities program at the Aspen Institute,
and it is my pleasure to welcomeyou to today's conversation
advising small businesses on jobquality lessons from CDFI.
(00:27):
This conversation is part of ourJob Quality and Practice series,
in which we highlight practical strategies organizations can use
to address the biggest economic opportunity challenge we have
today, which is fixing work so that all jobs are good jobs.
Before we start, let's do a quick review of our technology
for those joining via Zoom. All everybody joining us today
(00:51):
is muted. Please use the Q&A button at the
bottom of your screen to submit and upvote questions.
We love to get your questions, so please do that.
Throughout the the webinar. Please share your perspective,
ideas, examples, resources, and experience related to today's
conversation in the chat. We know many of you have a lot
of experience and we'd love to to hear what's going on in your
(01:14):
world. Also, please do take a moment to
respond to our quick feedback survey which will pop up when
you leave today's event. We'd love to get your feedback.
We also encourage you to post onyour social media platform of
choice. Our hashtag is job quality.
If you have any technical issuesduring the webinar, please say
(01:35):
something in the chat or you cansend us an e-mail at
eop.program@aspeninstitute.org. This event is being recorded and
will be posted on our website and shared via e-mail.
Also, closed captions are available.
Please use the CC button at the bottom of your screen if you
(01:55):
would like to activate them. Just before we start, I want to
say a couple words about how we how we came to this event.
In 2022, with the generous support of the Gates Foundation,
the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program launched
shared success financial intermediary strategies to
advance job quality, equity, andsmall business prosperity.
(02:17):
The demonstration supports 11 unique Community Development
Finance Institutions, or CDF, isto integrate job quality into
their services for small businesses.
The Shared Success CDFIS hail from across the country.
They work with small businesses in a variety of industries.
They operate in urban, suburban and rural settings.
(02:39):
And over the past three years, they've really pursued
strategies that are very tailored to the specific
businesses that they work with, the specific geographies and
institutional contexts in which they operate.
And they've but they've done different things.
But in pursuit of a common goal to improve the quality of jobs
for workers and build stronger, more resilient businesses.
(03:01):
We have been learning a lot overthese three years about
practice, about outcomes and a whole lot of things.
And you can learn more about theCDF is what they've been doing,
what we've been learning. If you go to our website, you
can find it at AS dot PN slash shared Success.
But the key thing I want to say today is that a key take away
(03:24):
from the work is that small businesses really can make
meaningful job quality improvements.
They really can make improvements in ways that
strengthen their businesses. And that CDF is can really play
a very powerful role in helping these businesses take steps to
build both good jobs and good businesses.
(03:48):
We believe a number of the lessons we've learned from the
Cdfis about how to do this work could be useful to a wide range
of organizations. So that's why we've developed
the toolkit that we'll be highlighting today.
And let me just say a little bithow we're going to, how we're
going to run this. So in a minute, I'm going to
turn everything over to my colleague Bryn Morgan.
(04:10):
Bryn is a senior research associate with the Economic
Opportunities Program, and she'sreally been the lead person in
pulling the tool kit together, in soliciting ideas and, and
insights from the from the CFIS and synthesizing them into the
tool kit that we have today. So really grateful for her
(04:31):
contributions and her work on this effort.
And so I'm going to turn it overto Bryn, and she's going to
provide a quick overview of the toolkit.
And then we're going to welcome 3 CDFI leaders, and she's going
to moderate a conversation with them.
And then as I mentioned those questions, we're going to have
some time for Q&A at the end of the webinar.
(04:53):
So before I turn things over to Bryn, though, we want to learn a
little bit about who's joining us today.
So we have a little poll, which I'm hoping is going to launch,
but I don't know how things are working with the poll.
So is the poll up? Because we are hoping people can
(05:17):
say what kind of organization you are and what you focus on.
(05:44):
OK, so while people are responding, I guess I can turn
things over to Bryn and we can share who's who's with us today.
Good morning and thank you all for responding to that poll.
My name is Bryn Morgan and I'm asenior research associate at the
(06:06):
Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities program.
I'm really excited to be able toshare with you all today the job
quality advising guide that we've been working on over the
last few years. It also moderated conversation
with leaders from three organizations that have been a
part of the shared Success demonstration.
Hoping to pull up some slides now before we dive into our
(06:29):
panel conversation, I just wanted to give a quick overview
of the guide itself. This is titled Building Shared
success, a guide to small business job quality Advising
for CDF is next slide. So this guide is meant to be a
tool for advisors to really integrate a job quality lens
(06:52):
into their existing conversations that they're
having with small business owners.
It's focus ultimately is on demonstrating how improving job
quality can help business ownersachieve their business goals.
Recognizing that many people will come to this work with
really different perspectives and understandings.
The guide begins with backgroundinformation on job quality.
(07:12):
It starts by making the case on why job quality is important,
especially for small businesses.It also details the role that
CDF is and other small business supporting organizations can
play given their existing services and mission
orientation. Well, the guide is meant to be
used by small business advisors or coaches.
It does really forefront the perspective of small business
(07:34):
owners in this work. Next slide.
Now I want to share a little bitmore about how this guide came
to be. As Maureen mentioned as part of
the Shared Success demonstration, this tool was
developed by our team in collaboration with the 11 CDFI
grantees involved in the demonstration.
(07:57):
After coming to recognize that job quality work really fits
within the small business advising that Cdfis were already
doing, we recognized the need for this tool to further support
advisors, especially for those that were a little less familiar
with job quality. So we designed an iterative and
really collaborative process with all 11 CDF is who
(08:17):
contribute to the guide in various different ways.
They offered feedback, insights,lessons learned, and even their
own tools to help build the guide out.
And for some organizations, especially those more
experienced with job quality, wethought of the tool as really a
great way to elevate their expertise and share it with
other organizations in the demonstration and beyond.
(08:40):
Next slide. So the tool itself is a step by
step guide on how to integrate job quality lens into
conversations with advisors, conversations advisors are
having with their clients. It's broken into 7 main steps
which you can see detailed on the slide here.
The tool suggests starting with identifying the business owners
(09:02):
motivation and goals. Our research has shown that many
small business owners want to have a sense of autonomy and
control in their business as well as a positive impact with
their communities. So by starting with these types
of motivations and goals you canreally build trust and buy on
with business owners. Job quality can then be
positioned to address these motivations as well as other
(09:24):
common challenges that small business owners may face such as
hiring and retention involved. Financials are of course always
important as we know. We also found that starting with
them can can be a bit alienating.
So in the guide we suggest that discussing finances should not
be the first part of the conversation on job quality and
(09:45):
really should be tailored to what the business owners level
of trust and approach to money. In Step 2 we suggest focusing in
on where poor job quality can serve us as a cost, such as in
lost sales, unplanned labor, or low productivity.
In step three we offer insights on how to begin to open the
business owners mindset to employee perspective and needs.
(10:09):
A business owner can really takea lot of different approaches to
learn more about their employeespriorities, but we know that the
success of job quality advising really does depend on
understanding employee perspectives and what they would
value. Then using the information from
the first three steps, Step 4 guides advisors in suggesting
(10:29):
which job quality improvements would be the most value and fit
for the specific business. As a part of this conversation,
the guide then emphasizes how tocontinue to demonstrate how job
quality changes align with the business owners goals in Step 5.
In Step 6, the guide offers waysto assess outcomes and
(10:51):
improvements in simple, timely and credible ways with
information the business owner already collects and values.
And then lastly, in Step 7, there's guidance on continuing
to have check insurance and conversations to build on
progress, to measure the value of improvements in the longer
term and to explore further job quality improvements.
This step really recognizes thatthere is not a significant end
(11:13):
goal, but job quality is a continuous process.
Next slide. So there are many different
elements in the guide as we wanted to make it as
comprehensive as possible throughout the steps.
The guide includes research on job quality, question banks the
advisors can use and customize for conversations with clients,
(11:35):
and an appendix with further resources as well.
Additionally, to help identify many of the various ways that
job quality can be addressed, the tool uses 6 areas for
potential job quality improvements.
For out these are hiring and onboarding, compensation,
benefits, workplace culture, employee development,
(11:57):
advancement and their operations.
Throughout the guide, there are also a few small business
clients success stories which have which we found have been
really powerful both for small business advisors and for
clients to help make the case and show that this work is both
possible and really good for business.
(12:17):
The guide also includes shared success grantees, resources
themselves such as Coastal Enterprises Cost of Turnover
calculator and ICA funds, Good Employer Matrix among others.
And of course, while the guide is meant to be comprehensive, it
is by no means A1 size fits all model.
The guide is meant to be adaptedand changed to the specific
(12:40):
style of the advisor as well as the clients they are working
with. Throughout the guide, there are
small tips on how this might be done and we are continuing to
build out that content that slide.
So on that note, we are considering this version of the
guide to be a beta version. We're still collecting insights
and feedback from folks on how to improve it through the end of
(13:03):
September 2025, and we invite you to take a look and review
and even try out using the guideafter the webinar today.
We will be following up with youall in the coming months and we
do really hope to hear any insights or stories that you may
have. So now to learn a little bit
(13:24):
more about the the Job Quality Advising guide and what job
quality advising can look like in practice.
I would like to begin our panel discussion as we transition.
We're hoping to do another quickpoll and Zoom as we'd love to
continue to hear from you. When we launched the shared
success demonstration, we recruited A diverse range of CDF
(13:46):
is. So I'm just beginning to learn
about or work on job quality andothers who had really defined
practices and were using the demonstration to refine or
expand these existing practices.So we're wondering where do you
think your organization is with its job quality work today?
(14:08):
So if you can take a moment and respond to the poll, that would
be great. Thank you for sharing those
(14:34):
responses with us. I hope that worked well for our
panel. I'm really happy to be here
today with three phenomenal speakers.
Cynthia Murphy, the senior program director of Workforce at
Coastal Enterprises, Inc, based in Maine.
Amanda Blondeau, Chief Strategy Officer at Northern Initiatives
(14:56):
located in Michigan, and Delphine Todaye, loan officer
and Business Advisor at African Development Center based in
Minnesota. Welcome.
Thank you all for being here today.
Thank you for having us. So each of you have been a part
of the Shared Success demonstration over the last
(15:18):
three years. When you all joined this
demonstration, you are in different places and
implementing and introducing jobquality into your small business
support. So I'd like to start the
conversation today by asking each of you to briefly introduce
yourselves and your organizationalong with your work on job
quality. Cynthia Coastal Enterprises
(15:42):
really has been a leader in the field in terms of job quality
for a while now. I'm wondering if you could get
us started and share a little bit more about CEI and how you
work to advance job quality. Yeah.
Thanks so much for hosting us today, Bryn.
I'm happy to be here. So as Bryn said, we tend to be
known as CEI and we are. We're based in Maine.
(16:03):
We're working to build a just vibrant and client resilient
future for people and communities in Maine.
And through our subsidiaries, wework in more rural regions
across the country. We do our work by integrating
finance, business expertise and policy solutions in ways that
make the economy work more equitably.
(16:26):
Our good jobs work as we refer to our job quality work has been
central to CE is mission since our first loan to a fish
processing plant on the coast ofMaine nearly 50 years ago.
About seven years ago we significantly enhanced our
program and we're continually refining our work as we'll be
(16:46):
able to talk about today. I think a few key points to know
about the CEI good jobs work is that our approach starts from
the business owners perspective and we only recommend ideas that
are mutually beneficial, ideas that are good for the business
that we think will improve the profit and ideas that will
(17:07):
improve job quality. As we'll talk around talk about
during the next few minutes, we've integrated job quality
throughout the experience of that our borrower has with us.
So starting with diligence, we're assessing the nature of
existing and planned jobs through pricing and to post
(17:28):
closing advising. In addition, our business
advisors who are located around the state work individually with
clients who have questions abouthow to attract employees, how to
retain employees and they're weaving that into their general
business advising. And then finally, investing in
(17:49):
quality jobs is at the core of the model for two of our
subsidiaries, our new market subsidiary and our our venture
subsidiary. Thank you, Amanda.
Sorry. Thank you, Cynthia.
Amanda, turning to you next. I know job quality has been on
your radar before you launched the demonstration, especially as
(18:13):
you were one of our job quality fellows in the past.
Could you share a little bit more about Northern Initiatives
and how you've been incorporating a focus on job
quality? Definitely, it's great to be
here. So Northern Initiatives is a
community development financial institution based in Michigan.
(18:34):
We focus on providing money and know how to small businesses
that are looking to start and grow that that they're creating
jobs and helping their communities to thrive.
So it's really in our mission and we've been tracking,
creating and retaining jobs thatwanted to think about what are
those jobs actually look like. And so when I got to be a part
of the job quality Aspen Fellowship in 2018 and 2019, I,
(18:59):
I got to delve in a lot more, got to hear from workforce
development. I got to hear from other types
of organizations on how they were thinking of this if it's
employee ownership and it really, it really sparked
something in me to dig a little bit deeper.
But I came back with all this knowledge and I was trying to
(19:20):
think about how do you bring that back into the organization
because they're also be like, oh, she came back with another
exciting thing, but wanted to actually be part of our
organization. So when this came around, the
job quality demonstration, you know, I already have this in the
back of my mind. We've been talking about it.
Our President had actually we had a newer president, Alyssa
(19:42):
Sangalli that joined us in 2020 and prior to Northern
initiatives she focused in on fee corps and really measuring
impact with which quality work is actually a component of that.
So this was this opportunity to kind of bring these.
Our two passions together and knowledge and think about how do
(20:03):
we actually make this part of our DNA at Northern Initiatives.
And so we focused more on our advising is we have one-on-one
and we use our initiate platform, we call it blended
learning. So it's a mix of one-on-one
classes and self-directed learning, online learning.
But we really focused in two areas.
(20:23):
First is awareness, just being both in our team and how do we
start to talk about this cause job quality.
A lot of times the first thoughtwas, well, it's benefits.
Well, we know that at some pointthat's you, you know, maybe you
can't start there and that's a great thing to be able to offer,
but it is also continuum. So what else is included?
(20:45):
Also being able to just lift up small businesses in the
community can say, oh, that coffee shop and we've shared
through our demonstration Cafe Rica, who's out of Battle Creek,
you know, they are coffee shop that are creating good jobs and
are investing in their people. It's not just really large
corporations. So wanting to bring that in so
(21:06):
people can also see themselves in that opportunity.
And then the other part was support.
So through our individual coaching, bringing in experts to
be able to help with HR specificquestions and as well as
developing additional tools thatour team can use and others can
(21:26):
use as well. Thank you so much.
Amanda Delphine, turning to you next, I know in some ways job
quality was newer to your organization and that it's been
a bit of a learning process to to build out staff knowledge on
job quality. Can you tell us a little bit
(21:47):
more about African Development Center and the work you've been
doing on job quality with your clients?
Absolutely for everyone. My name is Delphine Tagaye.
I'm a Lawn Officer, Business Advisor here at the African
Development Center in Minnesota,currently launch a branch in
Nevada as well. We have noticed an increase of
(22:08):
immigrant population in the state of Nevada that have faced
disparities when it comes to financial education, creating
good job quality as well. And we felt that it was a good
approach to advance to Nevada aswell.
I've been with the organization for the past 2 1/2 years.
(22:30):
I came in after the project had already launched.
My first approach was to dive deeper and understand the
purpose of the project, as well as to how it can be a useful
tool to our immigrant populationhere in Minnesota and the small
businesses that we serve. I quickly came to realize that
(22:54):
even though it's not structurally built for that
direct population, but there areways we can navigate the the the
provided information and fit it in within our community.
We had already started our Technical Support process.
(23:14):
We figured that by implementing good job quality questions
within our intake procedure, we'll be able to address the
good job quality elements withinthe entire process of the
lending procedure V financial education all the way to loan
servicing, even at the end of the long term.
(23:35):
The best way that we've been able to utilize good job quality
has been to inform every team member of what the importance of
it of this job quality is. And we don't directly use good
job quality directly to a client.
We put it in a way that is malleable to to their
(23:57):
understanding. It's not that they're stupid,
it's just that they come with different priorities that are
not necessarily related to good job quality.
We think that approach has been really helpful and we have seen
some tremendous change within our population.
Great. Thank you.
I really appreciate you talking about how you bring this to your
(24:20):
clients and make it really relevant to them.
I think each of your organizations does that and it's
it's own way. I want to start to dive in a
little bit more into how you allhave been contributing to
building out the Job Quality Advising Guide and also been
using it in unique ways in your organization.
(24:42):
I'd love to have you share more about what Job Quality Advising
really looks like in your organizations and how you've
been using the the guide as a tool to support that work.
Cynthia, as an organization withan existing robust practice on
job quality, want to to start with you.
(25:02):
Yeah, sure. Great question, Brynn.
I really love what Duffine was saying about starting from where
the business owner is. We think that that's such a, a
key to success. We also thought that it was
important that we established A framework that we could operate
within. And so seven years ago, we did
come up with a definition and a framework that we use to assess
(25:25):
the quality of jobs. And so that's our internal
jargon. And as Dalfine said, it's, it's
not the way that we we frame ourconversations necessarily when
when we're working with our clients.
So this good jobs framework we use to assess opportunities
during diligence, the outcome ofthat is our good job scorecard.
(25:47):
And you'll find some of these tools in the guide that Bryn has
has kindly given us an overview of and at the we should I should
also say that a key. Part of what we do.
Is at every loan closing we're measuring where is this
particular business, our good jobs framework and then annually
(26:10):
we do a formal check in to understand what progress we're
making across the entire portfolio.
So we're working at a very microlevel with individual businesses
on where we see opportunities and then measuring that at a
high level. I want to spend a little bit of
time talking about the guide because you know what, Rin, I
(26:32):
wish this had been around when Istarted at CEI and we really
bolstered our good jobs program seven years ago.
There are a few things that I think are just fantastic and I'd
love to highlight those here. First, even for an organization
like ours that has been working with the businesses that we
invest in on job quality, this is a fantastic onboarding tool
(26:57):
for new employees. It gives them a great overview
and so much of the methodology that you articulated is aligned
with what we do. I especially appreciate the
realistic point of view because I had to learn that I didn't
quite understand that when I started that not every business
(27:19):
would really be a fit for a goodjobs advising session.
And you acknowledge that right out there front.
They were very early on about exactly what Duffy was talking
about, not using jargon with theclients.
And it took me a while to get toget to that point.
So I was so, you know, grateful to see how you've taken care and
(27:41):
time to build that in. But hands down for me in the
guide, my absolute best feature,I call them conversation
starters. So Brynn calls them a question
bank. And if you're stuck on how to
think about addressing an issue or opening up a conversation,
boy, you cannot get better than that section of the guide.
(28:06):
And I would be really remiss if I didn't talk about all the
fantastic examples that are in there from colleagues all across
the country. I was so excited to be able to
see those and think about how wecan adapt those for our practice
in Maine. Thank you, Cynthia.
It's, it's really, really wonderful to hear how helpful
(28:27):
the guide has been and all the positive reactions.
Amanda, I'm I'm wondering if youcould share a little bit more
about your advising practice at Northern Initiatives and how
you've been using the guide withstaff members and other
stakeholders. Definitely previously I'd
mentioned Northern initiatives. We have this blended learning
(28:49):
approach and what we really liketo do is to pull together these
tools that are best practices that are the common questions
that entrepreneurs have. So when we, you know, we have an
online platform with that, that we have those, but we also
leverage others. And so when we started the, our
shared success, I, we actually started with the question bank,
(29:13):
which is one of Aspen's resources, which is reflected in
this. It's kind of funny that, you
know, Cynthia brought that up too, because I was like, oh, I
was going to talk about that because it is about starting the
conversation because otherwise it's like, well, how good is
your jobs or the like you want to open up, like tell me about
what it's like to work at your company, What would they say?
(29:34):
And so that's those kind of tools is what we started to
leverage with that though, we pair our advisors, our advisors,
I would say our guides, they sitdown with the entrepreneur.
We have a tool that we use, it'scalled a self-assessment tool
for that small businesses rates themselves around where are they
at and for understanding around Money Marketing and management.
(29:58):
And we've incorporated in questions that are tied to job
quality, not saying job quality either.
We're all using our own language.
What are the things we hear as the pain from entrepreneurs
finding good people, keeping good people.
So thinking about some of those key elements of where, you know,
they might have those challenges.
So we've we've adjusted that. And then our our advisors, our
(30:22):
business coaches, they work withthat entrepreneur to see where
are you at? What are the goals for your
business? And let's see how we work
through that because this is a continuum start where you can
right now. And then let's plan for the
future just like a cash flow plan, which part of this does
incorporate into your cash flow?Let's plan for the future with
(30:42):
the business advising guide. We've actually been a part of
that from the beginning, you know, giving feedback just like
the other others from the demonstration.
So we've been able to test this as we've gone along.
It's helped to shape some of theadditional resources we've been
creating in ways that we've had conversations and we're digging
even deeper in. So we've, we have this beta
(31:04):
version now, which has had many iterations.
In a most recent staff retreat, Israel, who is our director of
business services, he sat down with his whole team, the
business coaching team, and theywent through this advising
guide. And then they're actually going
to have follow up meetings kind of piercing this apart and
talking about how they're implementing, gathering
(31:25):
feedback, what's working, what'snot.
So we're excited to dig dig evendeeper.
Great. I mean, we definitely are too.
And wanted to just be sure to kind of highlight a little bit,
maybe have you talk a little bitmore about how you've been using
the guide as you built out your own resources on your platform
(31:47):
initiate, which you've already mentioned.
Maybe just giving folks a littlebit of flavor of kind of what
those resources are and what topics they might cover.
Definitely. Actually, when we started
working as a group on the advising guide, it really
focused on what are the key categories that we're hearing.
(32:07):
And so it's hiring and onboarding, compensation,
benefits and perks. We will add that into workplace
culture, employee development and advancement and operations.
So from that we developed a goodjobs inventory and this was in
partnership with the Aspen Institute and all of the the
(32:32):
demonstration partners as well have been giving us feedback
that look through each of those areas.
It's an area that you can use. It's a tool that can be utilized
with small businesses and they can take this whenever they
want. Where am I at today?
Where do I want to go? And continue to assess helped
also create a video because I know the other she was just
(32:54):
like, what is this? Why is it important for my
business? How can it help not starting
with the money part, even thoughwe, you know, as financial
institutions, we're always goingto be talking a bit about money,
but we really talk about why this is a good good for the
business, for their business, for their, for their employees
and for the community. And then had some other
(33:15):
resources around hiring, onboarding, building trust,
thinking about how you connect with workers.
And so that the advising guide and all of the analysis and
conversations and feedback have helped to develop tools that are
going to be available to everybody to be able to use with
(33:36):
small businesses and in your advising program.
Thanks, Amanda. Yeah, I definitely encourage
people to check out those tools as well.
I think as we look to review theguide, we are definitely going
to be really intentional about kind of how those tools fit
within this larger advising guide.
So really excited about that work.
(33:58):
Delphine turning back to you, I would love to hear a little bit
more about how ADC has been using the advising guide and
especially how you've been thinking about it to to train an
on board staff on your team. Absolutely, the tool has been
very crucial in just providing an overall understanding to all
(34:21):
the team members to be able to understand good job quality at
at its core, but also be able totailor it to each client
individually when they're working with them.
You know, the way we have implemented the process is, you
know, first time ever hearing about good job quality and we
(34:42):
give you the tool have a summary.
But we have also taken the job quality element and highlighted
areas that we want to we want tofocus on with within our
community and our clients. And we understand the whole
entire element may work for a specific organization as a
whole. But considering that we are
(35:03):
targeting different priorities at this time within the members
that we serve, we have zoned in into specific areas that we
think will be beneficial to all the business owners that that we
serve. So the toolkit is just has been
an internal tool to help us understand and further develop
skills to actually help the clients that we we are working
(35:26):
with. That's great.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
So as we all know, this work definitely can be challenging.
It's it's not linear and there are a lot of barriers that small
businesses can face when making changes to their business and
(35:48):
really addressing job quality. So I'm wondering if you all can
share about a challenge you havehad with your job quality work
and how the advising guide or other tools have helped you
overcome that challenge. Sophina, I want to turn it back
to you. Can you share more about some
some challenges or a challenge you've had and how tools and
(36:10):
resources have supported your team to be able to advise on job
quality? Yes, absolutely.
So the biggest challenge was to get our client to actually see
the importance of good job quality.
Again, remember we are now calling it good job quality.
They will come with a specific issue and our approach has been
to give them real life examples of a person they may know or may
(36:34):
have some connection with and try to drive what impact it
should it could cause to their business if they do not follow
these specific steps. For instance.
So it has been, you know, a learning curve for even us
internally. We have a large diverse group of
(36:55):
team with very large backgroundswith, you know, within different
parts of the world and having, you know, our clients be very
diverse demographic as well has been really challenging to try
and fit each approach differently.
If I'm speaking with an individual, for instance, from
(37:17):
Northern Africa, it will be a different approach.
If I'm speaking from someone from Central Africa, you know
that has been a challenge, trying to be malleable and adapt
to circumstances as they come. Yeah, definitely.
I this is something we continue to struggle with as we built out
the guide as well, right, is that there are certain things we
(37:39):
want to create common language and understanding for.
And at the same time, it really is really unique to each person
you're having a conversation with.
I would say you guys have done an overall overview of the whole
Intel program that it has given us.
You know, the individual that I've been in the country within
this work, the knowledge to be able to interpret it differently
(38:02):
to the people we are interactingwith.
So I would say the work is wonderful.
It's great for the professionals, not necessarily
for the clients. Yeah.
Thank you for that. Absolutely.
Amanda, turning to you, when when we spoke earlier, you
mentioned how you're working to build job quality really into
(38:25):
the DNA of Northern initiatives ideally so that if you or your
primary colleagues who work on job quality left the
organization, which of course wehope doesn't happen, the work
would still be able to continue.So I'm wondering if you can talk
a little bit about how you're going about that process and the
(38:46):
role that tools play, like the advising guide to do that kind
of work. Yeah, This has been our focus
especially for the last year. I mean, as we started the
demonstration, we wanted to think how do we build this in?
We brought more people to be champions into this program, but
(39:07):
wanted to be part of the DNA. And so that a big part is we're
building it into the tools we use with our entrepreneurs every
day that are part of our standard process.
So that's the first part. Let's start the conversation.
We actually had mentioned the self-assessment earlier that we
have entrepreneurs go through run Money Marketing and
(39:28):
management and we really built that first by these are the
things. Well, there are many of us as
advisors and I my background, I was an advisor and focus a lot
around IT. I'd ask a lot about their
technology, maybe not as much about the break even or their
marketing strategy. So this gave us all a common
(39:48):
language that we could have and make sure that we're touching
those key pieces. And so by adding that into the
job or into that that tool, it already starts at the beginning
when we connect with entrepreneurs, but then.
That's great. It's that now we know where
they're at, how do we actually move the needle?
How do we support small businesses?
(40:09):
And so that's where things like this, the job quality advising
guide comes in, you know, question banks, the good job
inventory, because we all need tools of like, how do I now
implement and how can I actuallyuse this with the entrepreneur?
And as you know, we've been lucky.
We don't, we haven't had any turnover with the coaches.
(40:31):
We've had a great coaching team that's been with us for some
time. But if we brought on new
coaches, I definitely would havethem go through that to
understand, to get the background to really know what
why are we doing this? I think is a really important
piece too, instead of, hey, we just do this.
Yes, it's part of our DNA, but also having that understanding
(40:52):
about how we do that or why we do this and and how we do
implement in our organization. So I'm feeling very excited
about this and that will this work will continue even if I'm
not there, but I'm not planning to go anywhere.
That's great. Thank you.
You're definitely really excitedto keep learning from and
(41:13):
alongside you all in this work. Cynthia, I'm wondering if you
can share more about how tools and resources like the Advising
Guide can address challenges with this work, and maybe how
that's evolved for you and your organization since you started
integrating job quality into your work many years ago.
(41:34):
Yeah, great question, Brendan. I think that to kick this off,
I'd really like to elevate what Delphine and Amanda were just
talking about. I heard Delphine use words like
malleable and adaptability. And I just heard Amanda talking
about how can we use the tools with entrepreneurs.
So how do we make a difference in in the way that and
(41:55):
entrepreneurs thinking or the way that they're investing money
that they have to improve the quality of jobs.
And I think that's really at theheart of the way that we look at
using tools as well. I would also say that the the
guide is packed with tools rightas as we've talked about and
we've highlighted some of those here today.
And if one of those tools doesn't exactly hit the mark for
(42:18):
you, that's OK. Know who your clients are, know
your market. Take those tools and adapt them
for what works in your communityand with your clients.
I'll give you a very quick example about that.
Back when I started this work seven years ago and one of the
very first clients who I was working with was I was trying to
(42:40):
convince them to to make some changes that I thought would
reduce their the number of of people who were quitting in
these entry level jobs. And I could tell this was an
owner who was very focused on the financials and I knew that
they were very good and detailedcost of turnover calculators
(43:01):
that were available. And when I looked at those,
there were so many cells to enter information in.
And I thought, this guy is superimpatient.
He wants to get back and run hisbusiness and he wants to reduce
the number of people who are quitting.
And so how can I talk to him about taking some of the money
that he is spending when he has to replace workers, both hard
(43:26):
costs and soft costs and how canI get him to reinvest that?
And so that's where I developed the cost of turnover calculator
that Bryn mentioned at the top of the call.
It is a back of the envelope looking for a high level number
that you can get to with a business owner just filling in
three data points and asking them what of that money that
(43:49):
they are spending today to to resolve their turnover issue.
What would they be willing to invest to reduce that number?
So I think the lesson is use theguide, find things you like, but
you don't have to love them because you can change them.
Thank you, Cynthia. I definitely want to elevate the
cost of turnover tool from CEI as well.
(44:10):
It's it's a really great tool and it's tailored to small
businesses. So super usable for folks, I
think will be LinkedIn the chat.So, but yeah, thank you all for
for sharing those insights. As I mentioned at the start,
this current version of the guide is a beta version, and we
are still collecting feedback onwhat works well, what might be
(44:34):
challenging, and what is missingin the guide.
So we'd love to hear feedback from you all.
In the chat, you'll be able to find links to both the guide
itself and to our feedback form.So far we've heard feedback, I
mean heard more today. So definitely we'll be
incorporating that into our our revisions.
(44:55):
But we've heard feedback on waysto make the guide more
accessible to business advisors that it might be helpful to add
additional links to further resources and tools, detail and
guidance on industry specific considerations.
We know different businesses anddifferent industries have really
different mindsets and priorities.
(45:15):
And then also adding more content about language that
really resonates a small business owners.
We know that's that continues tobe a challenge.
So as we look forward to continue to hear from you all in
the coming months, we really would love for you to review or
use the guide and encourage you to reach out with your thoughts.
(45:36):
Before I go into my next question, I also just want to
quickly remind folks that you can please submit any questions
you may have using the Q&A feature on Zoom.
We will be opening it up to audience questions shortly.
And now as as we think about using the advising guide to
(45:57):
support job quality practice, aswell as testing and revising it
for panelists, I would love to hear in a bit of a lightning
round to ensure we have enough time for audience Q&A.
First, what is one thing you want the audience to remember
about job quality work? And then what is one comment for
(46:17):
me, you would like me to keep inmind as I begin revisions on the
guide? Delphi, let's let's start with
you. I would say one thing to
remember, good job quality is not about checking, you know, a
check box. It's about truly understanding
(46:37):
the work and the impact it brings within your society or
community as a whole. As for one thing that I would
like you to think about, it's regardless on whether the job
quality might not fit within a demographic.
I would say it has great impact in terms of if it gets in the
(46:58):
hands of the right people that can easily interpret it to be
able to adopt it as a whole, even larger scale other than
just our community. I'll say.
So great job, Rin. Thank you Dolphin.
Appreciate it Amanda turning it to you now.
(47:19):
What is 1 take away you'd like the audience to leave with about
job quality work and one take away you want me to leave with
on the guide. One take away around job quality
work is start small. Just start.
I know sometimes I overthink. I looked at all the tools, I
won't tell you how many tools I download and my Co workers
(47:42):
around here, they would know andnot be surprised.
But start with something and I think the job quality advise,
the advising guide, other thingslike just start there, start
with a conversation and start that internally too.
Not only is it what we're doing with our small businesses that
we're supporting, but what do those jobs look like internally?
(48:03):
So I just say get started. It doesn't need to be perfect,
but let's have those conversations would be the first
take away. And I think for me, it's all
about tools. The more we can kind of break
out the the why and the what we can implement and take and edit.
That's that's always what I'm thinking about South Brenda's as
(48:23):
you kind of look through that, you know, I know there's there's
this balance we want to share the case studies.
We have a lot of really good information in there, but how do
we balance some of that too great.
Thank you, Amanda. I really, really like the start
small. I think that's something we
could all take to heart with everything.
(48:45):
Cynthia, I want to turn to you next.
Yeah, thanks. So springboarding from what
Amanda said about start small and get started, I would say
that CDF is are uniquely positioned to influence job
quality because we're lending money to businesses, we're
establishing strong relationships, and this is the
(49:06):
time for us to be sharing what we know will improve the
business performance and job quality.
And a tip for you, Bren, I love your open approach.
I love your collaboration. Like Amanda, I'm a bit of a of a
tool junkie and I think your challenge will be figuring out
(49:29):
the the balance as Amanda said. Thank you, Cynthia.
Thank you for for kind of makingthe case for CDF is we have a
lot of other content that we've created throughout this
demonstration on how CDF is can be doing this work.
So I just really invite you to check out our website and
explore what's out there. Great.
(49:50):
I now do you want to leave a little bit of time at the end
here for some audience Q&A. If you haven't already, please
submit your questions using the Q&A feature and Zoom really
welcome any question you may have.
I am seeing one here related to job quality designations.
(50:13):
It is how does job quality linked into certifications and
designations for small businesses and how do you
publicly start to recognize thatemployers in your communities
and the value they contribute? I know B Corp was mentioned
earlier. So I'm wondering, Amanda, if you
might want to start start us offwith this one.
(50:37):
Sure. Actually, yeah, B Corp and good
for Michigan. We we did some partnering with
them too and did some cohorts around.
It was a good jobs cohort in Michigan.
They that's a great organization.
What they're doing is they walk people through.
So you start with the SDGS. We were very focused or sorry,
(51:00):
sustainable development goals, Ilive in acronym world.
If you're in CDF is you do as well, but they start there and
we really focused in on the workforce development through
that. It was a, they went through a
cohort, created a plan and we were able to work with those
entrepreneurs afterwards. They also get the stamp of good
(51:21):
for Michigan. So it's a nice marketing as well
to show that this company reallycares.
They're going above and beyond because the B Corp
certification, it's a great a path, but it's not a path for
everybody. And maybe or just not right now.
So this is another thing that's very it's something that can be
(51:42):
leveraged at, you know, kind of any level for the entrepreneur.
And there are local first type of organizations throughout the
United States too. And so that was something that,
you know, we like to leverage and it I think it's a really
nice marketing opportunity too for small businesses.
(52:02):
Great. Thank you.
Amanda, Delphine or Cynthia, do you want to jump in here?
I think for us that's really thenext step.
I think that figuring out how torecognize businesses that
achieve maybe our full definition of job quality is
something that we're still talking about.
(52:24):
I think that if we can elevate the public narrative by showing
experts who are in businesses that are similar to someone
else's business can help, you know, build the field and and
and move the needle. We're early stage on that.
Yeah, it would definitely be great if there is more
(52:47):
opportunities for that. I know when I travel myself, I
always want to like patronize small businesses and if they had
like an extra stamp or somethingthat said it's a job quality
business, that would be even more incentive I think for
folks. I think the one thing that it's
just acknowledging that it is that continuum, right and not
(53:08):
and sometimes where we have thischallenge where we don't want to
say it's good or bad, there is acontinuum.
So I think that's also that, youknow, that balance that we
always need to be thinking aboutas well.
Thank you, Amanda. Yeah, that's a really important
point. You do have another question
here that I'm hoping to turn to you all.
(53:31):
It's something that's come up inI, I believe our last in person
convening actually. The question is, are there
things in the tool or the panelists experience that talk
about how to approach the topic of business succession and
transition with the owner? And if so, does it talk about
(53:54):
employee ownership as a great way to transition?
Just want to open up here your thoughts if you have any content
related to succession planning which definitely has come up
previously in our group. Yeah, it's a really important
topic and one that we have dabbled in a bit.
(54:17):
I think there's much more for usto do with that.
I think employee ownership for founders who are looking to sell
or retire is an option. We think cooperatives, worker
cooperatives is, is something that we've worked on in some
sectors. So I think there's there's much
more to do and learn here. And the Aspen Institute has had
a variety of workshops on transitioning business
(54:41):
ownership. I'd say we have some tools
around high level around succession planning, really
getting trying to get entrepreneurs to think about it
earlier instead of OK, now I'm done, what do I do?
I want to sell or does somebody want to take it over?
But really thinking about this as early as possible.
(55:02):
But it is something like Cynthiasaid, we'd like to think about
more around employee ownership and other other paths as well.
So it's something that we've been thinking about but do not
have a detailed program on rightnow.
Yes. Same with the African
Development Center. We, it's something that we
introduce initially within our business development classes,
(55:25):
curating an exit strategy aroundyour business, but hasn't
implemented. Again, as I stated earlier, we
have business owners coming in with different form of
priorities and that never seemedto be a concern for them.
Though I would say to the state of Minnesota, we have so many
free resources that we are able to redirect their question to
(55:49):
other free resources. Thank you for sharing those
thoughts. I know it's definitely an area
we are continuing to explore andwork on.
HAVE one last question I'm hoping to pose to you all, Maybe
another little right lightning round.
I know job polity advising looksvery different depending on the
(56:11):
client, but someone has asked what has been your most
receptive elevator pitch or introduction to job quality for
a small business? So hoping you all can share a
short story or just how you might approach this with one of
your clients. Sophine, do you want to get us
(56:31):
started? I said we really don't introduce
it as job quality, right. So initially we asked them
questions to understand what theneeds are and then we are just
using those job quality tools toassist them solve the problem.
So on that end, they really don't know they're involved
within job quality necessarily, but we are talking about it
(56:55):
within the process of them beingwith us.
So that's how we have navigated it.
We started, you know, by tellingso you'll be part of the job
quality. They're like, no, no, thank you,
without even knowing what it's all about.
But having to show them that, you know, retaining employees is
very important. Having trusted people that will
(57:17):
work with you in the long run todevelop and grow your business
is very important. Now, how do we maintain that
momentum going forward? Yeah.
I agree completely with Salfine.It's starting from what is the
business owners challenge and working from there.
And as I think I said at the beginning, always introducing
ideas that are mutually beneficial, something that's
(57:39):
going to improve business profitand be good for the employees.
Echo all of what they said because it usually comes from
that challenge and when I was anan advisor I just heard it's
really hard to keep good employees.
So, OK, tell me more, what's it like to work here?
(57:59):
And I wanted to share an exercise that Aspen actually did
with the demonstration group andwe've done it at Northern
Initiatives too, or have startedor lifted that up is tell us
about your first job. What was that like?
What if you that's your full time job, you know, and you're
doing that now and you're supporting a family, What would
(58:21):
that be like? What was good?
What would you change? And I think also just
reflecting, it's helping to likego, what is it like to work
here? How does that relate?
And I think it's more with the entrepreneur just trying to
coach. What we learned is the first
incentive is not financial. It really is.
The entrepreneurs went into business because they had a
(58:43):
passion. They care about their community.
They want to be a leader. And so just trying to be able to
pull that out and to have that conversation to say, well, what
really is this? What is it really like to to
work here? And so those are just some of
the things that just try to understand and to connect.
(59:05):
Thank you, Amanda. I think that's a perfect note to
to close on. I'm noting we're just about out
time. I just want to say thank you so
much to Cynthia, Amanda and Delphine for being here today
and sharing your perspectives and expertise.
Really enjoyed learning from youall over the last three years
and today learned even more. Also want to say thank you too
(59:30):
to all of the Shared Success grantees who have been integral
to this work and to building theJob Quality Advising Guide
itself. Also want to thank our audience
for your great questions and comments.
We definitely will be reaching out in the coming months to
continue to collect feedback on the guide and hear stories about
how you might be using it in your organizations.
(59:54):
Also want to just say please stay tuned for our next event,
Fixing Work. Recent lessons from the field on
job quality. Which will be on July 22nd,
where we will share a report on advancing bold solutions to fix
work to ensure every job in our economy is a good job.
And then lastly, but certainly not least, just want to thank
(01:00:17):
our team at the Economic Opportunities Program for
pulling together today's event, including my colleagues Matt
Homer, Tony Mastria, Nora Heffernan, Francis Algodovar,
Maya Smith and Maureen colleagueor Maureen Conway.
Apologies and our colleagues at Architects as well.
Thank you all so much.
Good afternoon and welcome. I'm Maureen Conway and I lead
the Economic Opportunities program at the Aspen Institute,
and it is my pleasure to welcomeyou to today's conversation
advising small businesses on jobquality lessons from CDFI.
(00:27):
This conversation is part of ourJob Quality and Practice series,
in which we highlight practical strategies organizations can use
to address the biggest economic opportunity challenge we have
today, which is fixing work so that all jobs are good jobs.
Before we start, let's do a quick review of our technology
for those joining via Zoom. All everybody joining us today
(00:51):
is muted. Please use the Q&A button at the
bottom of your screen to submit and upvote questions.
We love to get your questions, so please do that.
Throughout the the webinar. Please share your perspective,
ideas, examples, resources, and experience related to today's
conversation in the chat. We know many of you have a lot
of experience and we'd love to to hear what's going on in your
(01:14):
world. Also, please do take a moment to
respond to our quick feedback survey which will pop up when
you leave today's event. We'd love to get your feedback.
We also encourage you to post onyour social media platform of
choice. Our hashtag is job quality.
If you have any technical issuesduring the webinar, please say
(01:35):
something in the chat or you cansend us an e-mail at
eop.program@aspeninstitute.org. This event is being recorded and
will be posted on our website and shared via e-mail.
Also, closed captions are available.
Please use the CC button at the bottom of your screen if you
(01:55):
would like to activate them. Just before we start, I want to
say a couple words about how we how we came to this event.
In 2022, with the generous support of the Gates Foundation,
the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program launched
shared success financial intermediary strategies to
advance job quality, equity, andsmall business prosperity.
(02:17):
The demonstration supports 11 unique Community Development
Finance Institutions, or CDF, isto integrate job quality into
their services for small businesses.
The Shared Success CDFIS hail from across the country.
They work with small businesses in a variety of industries.
They operate in urban, suburban and rural settings.
(02:39):
And over the past three years, they've really pursued
strategies that are very tailored to the specific
businesses that they work with, the specific geographies and
institutional contexts in which they operate.
And they've but they've done different things.
But in pursuit of a common goal to improve the quality of jobs
for workers and build stronger, more resilient businesses.
(03:01):
We have been learning a lot overthese three years about
practice, about outcomes and a whole lot of things.
And you can learn more about theCDF is what they've been doing,
what we've been learning. If you go to our website, you
can find it at AS dot PN slash shared Success.
But the key thing I want to say today is that a key take away
(03:24):
from the work is that small businesses really can make
meaningful job quality improvements.
They really can make improvements in ways that
strengthen their businesses. And that CDF is can really play
a very powerful role in helping these businesses take steps to
build both good jobs and good businesses.
(03:48):
We believe a number of the lessons we've learned from the
Cdfis about how to do this work could be useful to a wide range
of organizations. So that's why we've developed
the toolkit that we'll be highlighting today.
And let me just say a little bithow we're going to, how we're
going to run this. So in a minute, I'm going to
turn everything over to my colleague Bryn Morgan.
(04:10):
Bryn is a senior research associate with the Economic
Opportunities Program, and she'sreally been the lead person in
pulling the tool kit together, in soliciting ideas and, and
insights from the from the CFIS and synthesizing them into the
tool kit that we have today. So really grateful for her
(04:31):
contributions and her work on this effort.
And so I'm going to turn it overto Bryn, and she's going to
provide a quick overview of the toolkit.
And then we're going to welcome 3 CDFI leaders, and she's going
to moderate a conversation with them.
And then as I mentioned those questions, we're going to have
some time for Q&A at the end of the webinar.
(04:53):
So before I turn things over to Bryn, though, we want to learn a
little bit about who's joining us today.
So we have a little poll, which I'm hoping is going to launch,
but I don't know how things are working with the poll.
So is the poll up? Because we are hoping people can
(05:17):
say what kind of organization you are and what you focus on.
(05:44):
OK, so while people are responding, I guess I can turn
things over to Bryn and we can share who's who's with us today.
Good morning and thank you all for responding to that poll.
My name is Bryn Morgan and I'm asenior research associate at the
(06:06):
Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities program.
I'm really excited to be able toshare with you all today the job
quality advising guide that we've been working on over the
last few years. It also moderated conversation
with leaders from three organizations that have been a
part of the shared Success demonstration.
Hoping to pull up some slides now before we dive into our
(06:29):
panel conversation, I just wanted to give a quick overview
of the guide itself. This is titled Building Shared
success, a guide to small business job quality Advising
for CDF is next slide. So this guide is meant to be a
tool for advisors to really integrate a job quality lens
(06:52):
into their existing conversations that they're
having with small business owners.
It's focus ultimately is on demonstrating how improving job
quality can help business ownersachieve their business goals.
Recognizing that many people will come to this work with
really different perspectives and understandings.
The guide begins with backgroundinformation on job quality.
(07:12):
It starts by making the case on why job quality is important,
especially for small businesses.It also details the role that
CDF is and other small business supporting organizations can
play given their existing services and mission
orientation. Well, the guide is meant to be
used by small business advisors or coaches.
It does really forefront the perspective of small business
(07:34):
owners in this work. Next slide.
Now I want to share a little bitmore about how this guide came
to be. As Maureen mentioned as part of
the Shared Success demonstration, this tool was
developed by our team in collaboration with the 11 CDFI
grantees involved in the demonstration.
(07:57):
After coming to recognize that job quality work really fits
within the small business advising that Cdfis were already
doing, we recognized the need for this tool to further support
advisors, especially for those that were a little less familiar
with job quality. So we designed an iterative and
really collaborative process with all 11 CDF is who
(08:17):
contribute to the guide in various different ways.
They offered feedback, insights,lessons learned, and even their
own tools to help build the guide out.
And for some organizations, especially those more
experienced with job quality, wethought of the tool as really a
great way to elevate their expertise and share it with
other organizations in the demonstration and beyond.
(08:40):
Next slide. So the tool itself is a step by
step guide on how to integrate job quality lens into
conversations with advisors, conversations advisors are
having with their clients. It's broken into 7 main steps
which you can see detailed on the slide here.
The tool suggests starting with identifying the business owners
(09:02):
motivation and goals. Our research has shown that many
small business owners want to have a sense of autonomy and
control in their business as well as a positive impact with
their communities. So by starting with these types
of motivations and goals you canreally build trust and buy on
with business owners. Job quality can then be
positioned to address these motivations as well as other
(09:24):
common challenges that small business owners may face such as
hiring and retention involved. Financials are of course always
important as we know. We also found that starting with
them can can be a bit alienating.
So in the guide we suggest that discussing finances should not
be the first part of the conversation on job quality and
(09:45):
really should be tailored to what the business owners level
of trust and approach to money. In Step 2 we suggest focusing in
on where poor job quality can serve us as a cost, such as in
lost sales, unplanned labor, or low productivity.
In step three we offer insights on how to begin to open the
business owners mindset to employee perspective and needs.
(10:09):
A business owner can really takea lot of different approaches to
learn more about their employeespriorities, but we know that the
success of job quality advising really does depend on
understanding employee perspectives and what they would
value. Then using the information from
the first three steps, Step 4 guides advisors in suggesting
(10:29):
which job quality improvements would be the most value and fit
for the specific business. As a part of this conversation,
the guide then emphasizes how tocontinue to demonstrate how job
quality changes align with the business owners goals in Step 5.
In Step 6, the guide offers waysto assess outcomes and
(10:51):
improvements in simple, timely and credible ways with
information the business owner already collects and values.
And then lastly, in Step 7, there's guidance on continuing
to have check insurance and conversations to build on
progress, to measure the value of improvements in the longer
term and to explore further job quality improvements.
This step really recognizes thatthere is not a significant end
(11:13):
goal, but job quality is a continuous process.
Next slide. So there are many different
elements in the guide as we wanted to make it as
comprehensive as possible throughout the steps.
The guide includes research on job quality, question banks the
advisors can use and customize for conversations with clients,
(11:35):
and an appendix with further resources as well.
Additionally, to help identify many of the various ways that
job quality can be addressed, the tool uses 6 areas for
potential job quality improvements.
For out these are hiring and onboarding, compensation,
benefits, workplace culture, employee development,
(11:57):
advancement and their operations.
Throughout the guide, there are also a few small business
clients success stories which have which we found have been
really powerful both for small business advisors and for
clients to help make the case and show that this work is both
possible and really good for business.
(12:17):
The guide also includes shared success grantees, resources
themselves such as Coastal Enterprises Cost of Turnover
calculator and ICA funds, Good Employer Matrix among others.
And of course, while the guide is meant to be comprehensive, it
is by no means A1 size fits all model.
The guide is meant to be adaptedand changed to the specific
(12:40):
style of the advisor as well as the clients they are working
with. Throughout the guide, there are
small tips on how this might be done and we are continuing to
build out that content that slide.
So on that note, we are considering this version of the
guide to be a beta version. We're still collecting insights
and feedback from folks on how to improve it through the end of
(13:03):
September 2025, and we invite you to take a look and review
and even try out using the guideafter the webinar today.
We will be following up with youall in the coming months and we
do really hope to hear any insights or stories that you may
have. So now to learn a little bit
(13:24):
more about the the Job Quality Advising guide and what job
quality advising can look like in practice.
I would like to begin our panel discussion as we transition.
We're hoping to do another quickpoll and Zoom as we'd love to
continue to hear from you. When we launched the shared
success demonstration, we recruited A diverse range of CDF
(13:46):
is. So I'm just beginning to learn
about or work on job quality andothers who had really defined
practices and were using the demonstration to refine or
expand these existing practices.So we're wondering where do you
think your organization is with its job quality work today?
(14:08):
So if you can take a moment and respond to the poll, that would
be great. Thank you for sharing those
(14:34):
responses with us. I hope that worked well for our
panel. I'm really happy to be here
today with three phenomenal speakers.
Cynthia Murphy, the senior program director of Workforce at
Coastal Enterprises, Inc, based in Maine.
Amanda Blondeau, Chief Strategy Officer at Northern Initiatives
(14:56):
located in Michigan, and Delphine Todaye, loan officer
and Business Advisor at African Development Center based in
Minnesota. Welcome.
Thank you all for being here today.
Thank you for having us. So each of you have been a part
of the Shared Success demonstration over the last
(15:18):
three years. When you all joined this
demonstration, you are in different places and
implementing and introducing jobquality into your small business
support. So I'd like to start the
conversation today by asking each of you to briefly introduce
yourselves and your organizationalong with your work on job
quality. Cynthia Coastal Enterprises
(15:42):
really has been a leader in the field in terms of job quality
for a while now. I'm wondering if you could get
us started and share a little bit more about CEI and how you
work to advance job quality. Yeah.
Thanks so much for hosting us today, Bryn.
I'm happy to be here. So as Bryn said, we tend to be
known as CEI and we are. We're based in Maine.
(16:03):
We're working to build a just vibrant and client resilient
future for people and communities in Maine.
And through our subsidiaries, wework in more rural regions
across the country. We do our work by integrating
finance, business expertise and policy solutions in ways that
make the economy work more equitably.
(16:26):
Our good jobs work as we refer to our job quality work has been
central to CE is mission since our first loan to a fish
processing plant on the coast ofMaine nearly 50 years ago.
About seven years ago we significantly enhanced our
program and we're continually refining our work as we'll be
(16:46):
able to talk about today. I think a few key points to know
about the CEI good jobs work is that our approach starts from
the business owners perspective and we only recommend ideas that
are mutually beneficial, ideas that are good for the business
that we think will improve the profit and ideas that will
(17:07):
improve job quality. As we'll talk around talk about
during the next few minutes, we've integrated job quality
throughout the experience of that our borrower has with us.
So starting with diligence, we're assessing the nature of
existing and planned jobs through pricing and to post
(17:28):
closing advising. In addition, our business
advisors who are located around the state work individually with
clients who have questions abouthow to attract employees, how to
retain employees and they're weaving that into their general
business advising. And then finally, investing in
(17:49):
quality jobs is at the core of the model for two of our
subsidiaries, our new market subsidiary and our our venture
subsidiary. Thank you, Amanda.
Sorry. Thank you, Cynthia.
Amanda, turning to you next. I know job quality has been on
your radar before you launched the demonstration, especially as
(18:13):
you were one of our job quality fellows in the past.
Could you share a little bit more about Northern Initiatives
and how you've been incorporating a focus on job
quality? Definitely, it's great to be
here. So Northern Initiatives is a
community development financial institution based in Michigan.
(18:34):
We focus on providing money and know how to small businesses
that are looking to start and grow that that they're creating
jobs and helping their communities to thrive.
So it's really in our mission and we've been tracking,
creating and retaining jobs thatwanted to think about what are
those jobs actually look like. And so when I got to be a part
of the job quality Aspen Fellowship in 2018 and 2019, I,
(18:59):
I got to delve in a lot more, got to hear from workforce
development. I got to hear from other types
of organizations on how they were thinking of this if it's
employee ownership and it really, it really sparked
something in me to dig a little bit deeper.
But I came back with all this knowledge and I was trying to
(19:20):
think about how do you bring that back into the organization
because they're also be like, oh, she came back with another
exciting thing, but wanted to actually be part of our
organization. So when this came around, the
job quality demonstration, you know, I already have this in the
back of my mind. We've been talking about it.
Our President had actually we had a newer president, Alyssa
(19:42):
Sangalli that joined us in 2020 and prior to Northern
initiatives she focused in on fee corps and really measuring
impact with which quality work is actually a component of that.
So this was this opportunity to kind of bring these.
Our two passions together and knowledge and think about how do
(20:03):
we actually make this part of our DNA at Northern Initiatives.
And so we focused more on our advising is we have one-on-one
and we use our initiate platform, we call it blended
learning. So it's a mix of one-on-one
classes and self-directed learning, online learning.
But we really focused in two areas.
(20:23):
First is awareness, just being both in our team and how do we
start to talk about this cause job quality.
A lot of times the first thoughtwas, well, it's benefits.
Well, we know that at some pointthat's you, you know, maybe you
can't start there and that's a great thing to be able to offer,
but it is also continuum. So what else is included?
(20:45):
Also being able to just lift up small businesses in the
community can say, oh, that coffee shop and we've shared
through our demonstration Cafe Rica, who's out of Battle Creek,
you know, they are coffee shop that are creating good jobs and
are investing in their people. It's not just really large
corporations. So wanting to bring that in so
(21:06):
people can also see themselves in that opportunity.
And then the other part was support.
So through our individual coaching, bringing in experts to
be able to help with HR specificquestions and as well as
developing additional tools thatour team can use and others can
(21:26):
use as well. Thank you so much.
Amanda Delphine, turning to you next, I know in some ways job
quality was newer to your organization and that it's been
a bit of a learning process to to build out staff knowledge on
job quality. Can you tell us a little bit
(21:47):
more about African Development Center and the work you've been
doing on job quality with your clients?
Absolutely for everyone. My name is Delphine Tagaye.
I'm a Lawn Officer, Business Advisor here at the African
Development Center in Minnesota,currently launch a branch in
Nevada as well. We have noticed an increase of
(22:08):
immigrant population in the state of Nevada that have faced
disparities when it comes to financial education, creating
good job quality as well. And we felt that it was a good
approach to advance to Nevada aswell.
I've been with the organization for the past 2 1/2 years.
(22:30):
I came in after the project had already launched.
My first approach was to dive deeper and understand the
purpose of the project, as well as to how it can be a useful
tool to our immigrant populationhere in Minnesota and the small
businesses that we serve. I quickly came to realize that
(22:54):
even though it's not structurally built for that
direct population, but there areways we can navigate the the the
provided information and fit it in within our community.
We had already started our Technical Support process.
(23:14):
We figured that by implementing good job quality questions
within our intake procedure, we'll be able to address the
good job quality elements withinthe entire process of the
lending procedure V financial education all the way to loan
servicing, even at the end of the long term.
(23:35):
The best way that we've been able to utilize good job quality
has been to inform every team member of what the importance of
it of this job quality is. And we don't directly use good
job quality directly to a client.
We put it in a way that is malleable to to their
(23:57):
understanding. It's not that they're stupid,
it's just that they come with different priorities that are
not necessarily related to good job quality.
We think that approach has been really helpful and we have seen
some tremendous change within our population.
Great. Thank you.
I really appreciate you talking about how you bring this to your
(24:20):
clients and make it really relevant to them.
I think each of your organizations does that and it's
it's own way. I want to start to dive in a
little bit more into how you allhave been contributing to
building out the Job Quality Advising Guide and also been
using it in unique ways in your organization.
(24:42):
I'd love to have you share more about what Job Quality Advising
really looks like in your organizations and how you've
been using the the guide as a tool to support that work.
Cynthia, as an organization withan existing robust practice on
job quality, want to to start with you.
(25:02):
Yeah, sure. Great question, Brynn.
I really love what Duffine was saying about starting from where
the business owner is. We think that that's such a, a
key to success. We also thought that it was
important that we established A framework that we could operate
within. And so seven years ago, we did
come up with a definition and a framework that we use to assess
(25:25):
the quality of jobs. And so that's our internal
jargon. And as Dalfine said, it's, it's
not the way that we we frame ourconversations necessarily when
when we're working with our clients.
So this good jobs framework we use to assess opportunities
during diligence, the outcome ofthat is our good job scorecard.
(25:47):
And you'll find some of these tools in the guide that Bryn has
has kindly given us an overview of and at the we should I should
also say that a key. Part of what we do.
Is at every loan closing we're measuring where is this
particular business, our good jobs framework and then annually
(26:10):
we do a formal check in to understand what progress we're
making across the entire portfolio.
So we're working at a very microlevel with individual businesses
on where we see opportunities and then measuring that at a
high level. I want to spend a little bit of
time talking about the guide because you know what, Rin, I
(26:32):
wish this had been around when Istarted at CEI and we really
bolstered our good jobs program seven years ago.
There are a few things that I think are just fantastic and I'd
love to highlight those here. First, even for an organization
like ours that has been working with the businesses that we
invest in on job quality, this is a fantastic onboarding tool
(26:57):
for new employees. It gives them a great overview
and so much of the methodology that you articulated is aligned
with what we do. I especially appreciate the
realistic point of view because I had to learn that I didn't
quite understand that when I started that not every business
(27:19):
would really be a fit for a goodjobs advising session.
And you acknowledge that right out there front.
They were very early on about exactly what Duffy was talking
about, not using jargon with theclients.
And it took me a while to get toget to that point.
So I was so, you know, grateful to see how you've taken care and
(27:41):
time to build that in. But hands down for me in the
guide, my absolute best feature,I call them conversation
starters. So Brynn calls them a question
bank. And if you're stuck on how to
think about addressing an issue or opening up a conversation,
boy, you cannot get better than that section of the guide.
(28:06):
And I would be really remiss if I didn't talk about all the
fantastic examples that are in there from colleagues all across
the country. I was so excited to be able to
see those and think about how wecan adapt those for our practice
in Maine. Thank you, Cynthia.
It's, it's really, really wonderful to hear how helpful
(28:27):
the guide has been and all the positive reactions.
Amanda, I'm I'm wondering if youcould share a little bit more
about your advising practice at Northern Initiatives and how
you've been using the guide withstaff members and other
stakeholders. Definitely previously I'd
mentioned Northern initiatives. We have this blended learning
(28:49):
approach and what we really liketo do is to pull together these
tools that are best practices that are the common questions
that entrepreneurs have. So when we, you know, we have an
online platform with that, that we have those, but we also
leverage others. And so when we started the, our
shared success, I, we actually started with the question bank,
(29:13):
which is one of Aspen's resources, which is reflected in
this. It's kind of funny that, you
know, Cynthia brought that up too, because I was like, oh, I
was going to talk about that because it is about starting the
conversation because otherwise it's like, well, how good is
your jobs or the like you want to open up, like tell me about
what it's like to work at your company, What would they say?
(29:34):
And so that's those kind of tools is what we started to
leverage with that though, we pair our advisors, our advisors,
I would say our guides, they sitdown with the entrepreneur.
We have a tool that we use, it'scalled a self-assessment tool
for that small businesses rates themselves around where are they
at and for understanding around Money Marketing and management.
(29:58):
And we've incorporated in questions that are tied to job
quality, not saying job quality either.
We're all using our own language.
What are the things we hear as the pain from entrepreneurs
finding good people, keeping good people.
So thinking about some of those key elements of where, you know,
they might have those challenges.
So we've we've adjusted that. And then our our advisors, our
(30:22):
business coaches, they work withthat entrepreneur to see where
are you at? What are the goals for your
business? And let's see how we work
through that because this is a continuum start where you can
right now. And then let's plan for the
future just like a cash flow plan, which part of this does
incorporate into your cash flow?Let's plan for the future with
(30:42):
the business advising guide. We've actually been a part of
that from the beginning, you know, giving feedback just like
the other others from the demonstration.
So we've been able to test this as we've gone along.
It's helped to shape some of theadditional resources we've been
creating in ways that we've had conversations and we're digging
even deeper in. So we've, we have this beta
(31:04):
version now, which has had many iterations.
In a most recent staff retreat, Israel, who is our director of
business services, he sat down with his whole team, the
business coaching team, and theywent through this advising
guide. And then they're actually going
to have follow up meetings kind of piercing this apart and
talking about how they're implementing, gathering
(31:25):
feedback, what's working, what'snot.
So we're excited to dig dig evendeeper.
Great. I mean, we definitely are too.
And wanted to just be sure to kind of highlight a little bit,
maybe have you talk a little bitmore about how you've been using
the guide as you built out your own resources on your platform
(31:47):
initiate, which you've already mentioned.
Maybe just giving folks a littlebit of flavor of kind of what
those resources are and what topics they might cover.
Definitely. Actually, when we started
working as a group on the advising guide, it really
focused on what are the key categories that we're hearing.
(32:07):
And so it's hiring and onboarding, compensation,
benefits and perks. We will add that into workplace
culture, employee development and advancement and operations.
So from that we developed a goodjobs inventory and this was in
partnership with the Aspen Institute and all of the the
(32:32):
demonstration partners as well have been giving us feedback
that look through each of those areas.
It's an area that you can use. It's a tool that can be utilized
with small businesses and they can take this whenever they
want. Where am I at today?
Where do I want to go? And continue to assess helped
also create a video because I know the other she was just
(32:54):
like, what is this? Why is it important for my
business? How can it help not starting
with the money part, even thoughwe, you know, as financial
institutions, we're always goingto be talking a bit about money,
but we really talk about why this is a good good for the
business, for their business, for their, for their employees
and for the community. And then had some other
(33:15):
resources around hiring, onboarding, building trust,
thinking about how you connect with workers.
And so that the advising guide and all of the analysis and
conversations and feedback have helped to develop tools that are
going to be available to everybody to be able to use with
(33:36):
small businesses and in your advising program.
Thanks, Amanda. Yeah, I definitely encourage
people to check out those tools as well.
I think as we look to review theguide, we are definitely going
to be really intentional about kind of how those tools fit
within this larger advising guide.
So really excited about that work.
(33:58):
Delphine turning back to you, I would love to hear a little bit
more about how ADC has been using the advising guide and
especially how you've been thinking about it to to train an
on board staff on your team. Absolutely, the tool has been
very crucial in just providing an overall understanding to all
(34:21):
the team members to be able to understand good job quality at
at its core, but also be able totailor it to each client
individually when they're working with them.
You know, the way we have implemented the process is, you
know, first time ever hearing about good job quality and we
(34:42):
give you the tool have a summary.
But we have also taken the job quality element and highlighted
areas that we want to we want tofocus on with within our
community and our clients. And we understand the whole
entire element may work for a specific organization as a
whole. But considering that we are
(35:03):
targeting different priorities at this time within the members
that we serve, we have zoned in into specific areas that we
think will be beneficial to all the business owners that that we
serve. So the toolkit is just has been
an internal tool to help us understand and further develop
skills to actually help the clients that we we are working
(35:26):
with. That's great.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
So as we all know, this work definitely can be challenging.
It's it's not linear and there are a lot of barriers that small
businesses can face when making changes to their business and
(35:48):
really addressing job quality. So I'm wondering if you all can
share about a challenge you havehad with your job quality work
and how the advising guide or other tools have helped you
overcome that challenge. Sophina, I want to turn it back
to you. Can you share more about some
some challenges or a challenge you've had and how tools and
(36:10):
resources have supported your team to be able to advise on job
quality? Yes, absolutely.
So the biggest challenge was to get our client to actually see
the importance of good job quality.
Again, remember we are now calling it good job quality.
They will come with a specific issue and our approach has been
to give them real life examples of a person they may know or may
(36:34):
have some connection with and try to drive what impact it
should it could cause to their business if they do not follow
these specific steps. For instance.
So it has been, you know, a learning curve for even us
internally. We have a large diverse group of
(36:55):
team with very large backgroundswith, you know, within different
parts of the world and having, you know, our clients be very
diverse demographic as well has been really challenging to try
and fit each approach differently.
If I'm speaking with an individual, for instance, from
(37:17):
Northern Africa, it will be a different approach.
If I'm speaking from someone from Central Africa, you know
that has been a challenge, trying to be malleable and adapt
to circumstances as they come. Yeah, definitely.
I this is something we continue to struggle with as we built out
the guide as well, right, is that there are certain things we
(37:39):
want to create common language and understanding for.
And at the same time, it really is really unique to each person
you're having a conversation with.
I would say you guys have done an overall overview of the whole
Intel program that it has given us.
You know, the individual that I've been in the country within
this work, the knowledge to be able to interpret it differently
(38:02):
to the people we are interactingwith.
So I would say the work is wonderful.
It's great for the professionals, not necessarily
for the clients. Yeah.
Thank you for that. Absolutely.
Amanda, turning to you, when when we spoke earlier, you
mentioned how you're working to build job quality really into
(38:25):
the DNA of Northern initiatives ideally so that if you or your
primary colleagues who work on job quality left the
organization, which of course wehope doesn't happen, the work
would still be able to continue.So I'm wondering if you can talk
a little bit about how you're going about that process and the
(38:46):
role that tools play, like the advising guide to do that kind
of work. Yeah, This has been our focus
especially for the last year. I mean, as we started the
demonstration, we wanted to think how do we build this in?
We brought more people to be champions into this program, but
(39:07):
wanted to be part of the DNA. And so that a big part is we're
building it into the tools we use with our entrepreneurs every
day that are part of our standard process.
So that's the first part. Let's start the conversation.
We actually had mentioned the self-assessment earlier that we
have entrepreneurs go through run Money Marketing and
(39:28):
management and we really built that first by these are the
things. Well, there are many of us as
advisors and I my background, I was an advisor and focus a lot
around IT. I'd ask a lot about their
technology, maybe not as much about the break even or their
marketing strategy. So this gave us all a common
(39:48):
language that we could have and make sure that we're touching
those key pieces. And so by adding that into the
job or into that that tool, it already starts at the beginning
when we connect with entrepreneurs, but then.
That's great. It's that now we know where
they're at, how do we actually move the needle?
How do we support small businesses?
(40:09):
And so that's where things like this, the job quality advising
guide comes in, you know, question banks, the good job
inventory, because we all need tools of like, how do I now
implement and how can I actuallyuse this with the entrepreneur?
And as you know, we've been lucky.
We don't, we haven't had any turnover with the coaches.
(40:31):
We've had a great coaching team that's been with us for some
time. But if we brought on new
coaches, I definitely would havethem go through that to
understand, to get the background to really know what
why are we doing this? I think is a really important
piece too, instead of, hey, we just do this.
Yes, it's part of our DNA, but also having that understanding
(40:52):
about how we do that or why we do this and and how we do
implement in our organization. So I'm feeling very excited
about this and that will this work will continue even if I'm
not there, but I'm not planning to go anywhere.
That's great. Thank you.
You're definitely really excitedto keep learning from and
(41:13):
alongside you all in this work. Cynthia, I'm wondering if you
can share more about how tools and resources like the Advising
Guide can address challenges with this work, and maybe how
that's evolved for you and your organization since you started
integrating job quality into your work many years ago.
(41:34):
Yeah, great question, Brendan. I think that to kick this off,
I'd really like to elevate what Delphine and Amanda were just
talking about. I heard Delphine use words like
malleable and adaptability. And I just heard Amanda talking
about how can we use the tools with entrepreneurs.
So how do we make a difference in in the way that and
(41:55):
entrepreneurs thinking or the way that they're investing money
that they have to improve the quality of jobs.
And I think that's really at theheart of the way that we look at
using tools as well. I would also say that the the
guide is packed with tools rightas as we've talked about and
we've highlighted some of those here today.
And if one of those tools doesn't exactly hit the mark for
(42:18):
you, that's OK. Know who your clients are, know
your market. Take those tools and adapt them
for what works in your communityand with your clients.
I'll give you a very quick example about that.
Back when I started this work seven years ago and one of the
very first clients who I was working with was I was trying to
(42:40):
convince them to to make some changes that I thought would
reduce their the number of of people who were quitting in
these entry level jobs. And I could tell this was an
owner who was very focused on the financials and I knew that
they were very good and detailedcost of turnover calculators
(43:01):
that were available. And when I looked at those,
there were so many cells to enter information in.
And I thought, this guy is superimpatient.
He wants to get back and run hisbusiness and he wants to reduce
the number of people who are quitting.
And so how can I talk to him about taking some of the money
that he is spending when he has to replace workers, both hard
(43:26):
costs and soft costs and how canI get him to reinvest that?
And so that's where I developed the cost of turnover calculator
that Bryn mentioned at the top of the call.
It is a back of the envelope looking for a high level number
that you can get to with a business owner just filling in
three data points and asking them what of that money that
(43:49):
they are spending today to to resolve their turnover issue.
What would they be willing to invest to reduce that number?
So I think the lesson is use theguide, find things you like, but
you don't have to love them because you can change them.
Thank you, Cynthia. I definitely want to elevate the
cost of turnover tool from CEI as well.
(44:10):
It's it's a really great tool and it's tailored to small
businesses. So super usable for folks, I
think will be LinkedIn the chat.So, but yeah, thank you all for
for sharing those insights. As I mentioned at the start,
this current version of the guide is a beta version, and we
are still collecting feedback onwhat works well, what might be
(44:34):
challenging, and what is missingin the guide.
So we'd love to hear feedback from you all.
In the chat, you'll be able to find links to both the guide
itself and to our feedback form.So far we've heard feedback, I
mean heard more today. So definitely we'll be
incorporating that into our our revisions.
(44:55):
But we've heard feedback on waysto make the guide more
accessible to business advisors that it might be helpful to add
additional links to further resources and tools, detail and
guidance on industry specific considerations.
We know different businesses anddifferent industries have really
different mindsets and priorities.
(45:15):
And then also adding more content about language that
really resonates a small business owners.
We know that's that continues tobe a challenge.
So as we look forward to continue to hear from you all in
the coming months, we really would love for you to review or
use the guide and encourage you to reach out with your thoughts.
(45:36):
Before I go into my next question, I also just want to
quickly remind folks that you can please submit any questions
you may have using the Q&A feature on Zoom.
We will be opening it up to audience questions shortly.
And now as as we think about using the advising guide to
(45:57):
support job quality practice, aswell as testing and revising it
for panelists, I would love to hear in a bit of a lightning
round to ensure we have enough time for audience Q&A.
First, what is one thing you want the audience to remember
about job quality work? And then what is one comment for
(46:17):
me, you would like me to keep inmind as I begin revisions on the
guide? Delphi, let's let's start with
you. I would say one thing to
remember, good job quality is not about checking, you know, a
check box. It's about truly understanding
(46:37):
the work and the impact it brings within your society or
community as a whole. As for one thing that I would
like you to think about, it's regardless on whether the job
quality might not fit within a demographic.
I would say it has great impact in terms of if it gets in the
(46:58):
hands of the right people that can easily interpret it to be
able to adopt it as a whole, even larger scale other than
just our community. I'll say.
So great job, Rin. Thank you Dolphin.
Appreciate it Amanda turning it to you now.
(47:19):
What is 1 take away you'd like the audience to leave with about
job quality work and one take away you want me to leave with
on the guide. One take away around job quality
work is start small. Just start.
I know sometimes I overthink. I looked at all the tools, I
won't tell you how many tools I download and my Co workers
(47:42):
around here, they would know andnot be surprised.
But start with something and I think the job quality advise,
the advising guide, other thingslike just start there, start
with a conversation and start that internally too.
Not only is it what we're doing with our small businesses that
we're supporting, but what do those jobs look like internally?
(48:03):
So I just say get started. It doesn't need to be perfect,
but let's have those conversations would be the first
take away. And I think for me, it's all
about tools. The more we can kind of break
out the the why and the what we can implement and take and edit.
That's that's always what I'm thinking about South Brenda's as
(48:23):
you kind of look through that, you know, I know there's there's
this balance we want to share the case studies.
We have a lot of really good information in there, but how do
we balance some of that too great.
Thank you, Amanda. I really, really like the start
small. I think that's something we
could all take to heart with everything.
(48:45):
Cynthia, I want to turn to you next.
Yeah, thanks. So springboarding from what
Amanda said about start small and get started, I would say
that CDF is are uniquely positioned to influence job
quality because we're lending money to businesses, we're
establishing strong relationships, and this is the
(49:06):
time for us to be sharing what we know will improve the
business performance and job quality.
And a tip for you, Bren, I love your open approach.
I love your collaboration. Like Amanda, I'm a bit of a of a
tool junkie and I think your challenge will be figuring out
(49:29):
the the balance as Amanda said. Thank you, Cynthia.
Thank you for for kind of makingthe case for CDF is we have a
lot of other content that we've created throughout this
demonstration on how CDF is can be doing this work.
So I just really invite you to check out our website and
explore what's out there. Great.
(49:50):
I now do you want to leave a little bit of time at the end
here for some audience Q&A. If you haven't already, please
submit your questions using the Q&A feature and Zoom really
welcome any question you may have.
I am seeing one here related to job quality designations.
(50:13):
It is how does job quality linked into certifications and
designations for small businesses and how do you
publicly start to recognize thatemployers in your communities
and the value they contribute? I know B Corp was mentioned
earlier. So I'm wondering, Amanda, if you
might want to start start us offwith this one.
(50:37):
Sure. Actually, yeah, B Corp and good
for Michigan. We we did some partnering with
them too and did some cohorts around.
It was a good jobs cohort in Michigan.
They that's a great organization.
What they're doing is they walk people through.
So you start with the SDGS. We were very focused or sorry,
(51:00):
sustainable development goals, Ilive in acronym world.
If you're in CDF is you do as well, but they start there and
we really focused in on the workforce development through
that. It was a, they went through a
cohort, created a plan and we were able to work with those
entrepreneurs afterwards. They also get the stamp of good
(51:21):
for Michigan. So it's a nice marketing as well
to show that this company reallycares.
They're going above and beyond because the B Corp
certification, it's a great a path, but it's not a path for
everybody. And maybe or just not right now.
So this is another thing that's very it's something that can be
(51:42):
leveraged at, you know, kind of any level for the entrepreneur.
And there are local first type of organizations throughout the
United States too. And so that was something that,
you know, we like to leverage and it I think it's a really
nice marketing opportunity too for small businesses.
(52:02):
Great. Thank you.
Amanda, Delphine or Cynthia, do you want to jump in here?
I think for us that's really thenext step.
I think that figuring out how torecognize businesses that
achieve maybe our full definition of job quality is
something that we're still talking about.
(52:24):
I think that if we can elevate the public narrative by showing
experts who are in businesses that are similar to someone
else's business can help, you know, build the field and and
and move the needle. We're early stage on that.
Yeah, it would definitely be great if there is more
(52:47):
opportunities for that. I know when I travel myself, I
always want to like patronize small businesses and if they had
like an extra stamp or somethingthat said it's a job quality
business, that would be even more incentive I think for
folks. I think the one thing that it's
just acknowledging that it is that continuum, right and not
(53:08):
and sometimes where we have thischallenge where we don't want to
say it's good or bad, there is acontinuum.
So I think that's also that, youknow, that balance that we
always need to be thinking aboutas well.
Thank you, Amanda. Yeah, that's a really important
point. You do have another question
here that I'm hoping to turn to you all.
(53:31):
It's something that's come up inI, I believe our last in person
convening actually. The question is, are there
things in the tool or the panelists experience that talk
about how to approach the topic of business succession and
transition with the owner? And if so, does it talk about
(53:54):
employee ownership as a great way to transition?
Just want to open up here your thoughts if you have any content
related to succession planning which definitely has come up
previously in our group. Yeah, it's a really important
topic and one that we have dabbled in a bit.
(54:17):
I think there's much more for usto do with that.
I think employee ownership for founders who are looking to sell
or retire is an option. We think cooperatives, worker
cooperatives is, is something that we've worked on in some
sectors. So I think there's there's much
more to do and learn here. And the Aspen Institute has had
a variety of workshops on transitioning business
(54:41):
ownership. I'd say we have some tools
around high level around succession planning, really
getting trying to get entrepreneurs to think about it
earlier instead of OK, now I'm done, what do I do?
I want to sell or does somebody want to take it over?
But really thinking about this as early as possible.
(55:02):
But it is something like Cynthiasaid, we'd like to think about
more around employee ownership and other other paths as well.
So it's something that we've been thinking about but do not
have a detailed program on rightnow.
Yes. Same with the African
Development Center. We, it's something that we
introduce initially within our business development classes,
(55:25):
curating an exit strategy aroundyour business, but hasn't
implemented. Again, as I stated earlier, we
have business owners coming in with different form of
priorities and that never seemedto be a concern for them.
Though I would say to the state of Minnesota, we have so many
free resources that we are able to redirect their question to
(55:49):
other free resources. Thank you for sharing those
thoughts. I know it's definitely an area
we are continuing to explore andwork on.
HAVE one last question I'm hoping to pose to you all, Maybe
another little right lightning round.
I know job polity advising looksvery different depending on the
(56:11):
client, but someone has asked what has been your most
receptive elevator pitch or introduction to job quality for
a small business? So hoping you all can share a
short story or just how you might approach this with one of
your clients. Sophine, do you want to get us
(56:31):
started? I said we really don't introduce
it as job quality, right. So initially we asked them
questions to understand what theneeds are and then we are just
using those job quality tools toassist them solve the problem.
So on that end, they really don't know they're involved
within job quality necessarily, but we are talking about it
(56:55):
within the process of them beingwith us.
So that's how we have navigated it.
We started, you know, by tellingso you'll be part of the job
quality. They're like, no, no, thank you,
without even knowing what it's all about.
But having to show them that, you know, retaining employees is
very important. Having trusted people that will
(57:17):
work with you in the long run todevelop and grow your business
is very important. Now, how do we maintain that
momentum going forward? Yeah.
I agree completely with Salfine.It's starting from what is the
business owners challenge and working from there.
And as I think I said at the beginning, always introducing
ideas that are mutually beneficial, something that's
(57:39):
going to improve business profitand be good for the employees.
Echo all of what they said because it usually comes from
that challenge and when I was anan advisor I just heard it's
really hard to keep good employees.
So, OK, tell me more, what's it like to work here?
(57:59):
And I wanted to share an exercise that Aspen actually did
with the demonstration group andwe've done it at Northern
Initiatives too, or have startedor lifted that up is tell us
about your first job. What was that like?
What if you that's your full time job, you know, and you're
doing that now and you're supporting a family, What would
(58:21):
that be like? What was good?
What would you change? And I think also just
reflecting, it's helping to likego, what is it like to work
here? How does that relate?
And I think it's more with the entrepreneur just trying to
coach. What we learned is the first
incentive is not financial. It really is.
The entrepreneurs went into business because they had a
(58:43):
passion. They care about their community.
They want to be a leader. And so just trying to be able to
pull that out and to have that conversation to say, well, what
really is this? What is it really like to to
work here? And so those are just some of
the things that just try to understand and to connect.
(59:05):
Thank you, Amanda. I think that's a perfect note to
to close on. I'm noting we're just about out
time. I just want to say thank you so
much to Cynthia, Amanda and Delphine for being here today
and sharing your perspectives and expertise.
Really enjoyed learning from youall over the last three years
and today learned even more. Also want to say thank you too
(59:30):
to all of the Shared Success grantees who have been integral
to this work and to building theJob Quality Advising Guide
itself. Also want to thank our audience
for your great questions and comments.
We definitely will be reaching out in the coming months to
continue to collect feedback on the guide and hear stories about
how you might be using it in your organizations.
(59:54):
Also want to just say please stay tuned for our next event,
Fixing Work. Recent lessons from the field on
job quality. Which will be on July 22nd,
where we will share a report on advancing bold solutions to fix
work to ensure every job in our economy is a good job.
And then lastly, but certainly not least, just want to thank
(01:00:17):
our team at the Economic Opportunities Program for
pulling together today's event, including my colleagues Matt
Homer, Tony Mastria, Nora Heffernan, Francis Algodovar,
Maya Smith and Maureen colleagueor Maureen Conway.
Apologies and our colleagues at Architects as well.
Thank you all so much.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.