June 2, 2025 • 24 mins
Maureen Conway, executive director of the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program, recently sat down with two Shared Success grantees that are integrating job quality into their portfolios as investors: Viola Mai, development director at ICA Fund, and Robert Anderson, business navigation director at Colorado Enterprise Fund.
As investors, ICA and Colorado Enterprise Fund have both incorporated job quality assessments as part of their lending and investment process. This conversation explores the various tools capital allocators possess to help and incentivize small businesses to create quality jobs for their employees.
About Shared Success
Shared Success, a project of the Economic Opportunities Program, works with community lenders to integrate job quality programming into their small business support services, demonstrating that improved job quality can support the needs of employees while helping small businesses succeed.
About the Economic Opportunities Program
The Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program hosts a variety of discussions to advance strategies, policies, and ideas to help low- and moderate-income people thrive in a changing economy. To learn about upcoming events and webinars, join our mailing list and follow us on social media.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome to Elevating Job Quality, a podcast from the
Aspen Institute's Economic Opportunities program.
Today we're taking you inside a dialogue from the Shared Success
Project, exploring how CDF is orcommunity development financial
institutions can help their small business clients create
good jobs so that workers, business owners, and local
(00:25):
economies all thrive. Coming up, a conversation about
job quality and capital. Maureen Conway, executive
director of the Aspen Institute's Economic
Opportunities Program, speaks with Viola Mai, development
director of the ICA Fund, and Robert Anderson, business
navigation director with the Colorado Enterprise Fund.
(00:50):
So welcome, Viola and Robert, it's great to see you and glad
that you could join us for our discussion on small business and
job quality. And in particular, we're talking
today about the connection between job quality and
investing in lending and your experience doing that.
And Viola, I'm just going to going to jump right in and start
(01:12):
with you. Why do you think lenders and
investors should care about job quality?
So it's really important, I think to think about job quality
because anyone, when you're doing an investment, you're
thinking about the success of the investment, right?
And, and with ICA Fund, we're, we're specifically a venture
(01:33):
capital and equity lender, but this really applies to all
investors. When you are thinking about
doing an investment in a project, specifically a small
business, you want that to succeed.
And what does that look like? It looks like the the project is
doing what it needs to do. It's not getting stuck by, you
know, roadblocks, different things like people leaving the
(01:55):
project. So that's why job quality and
like having good jobs, having well paying jobs helps the
project succeed in the long run.So the business succeed in the
long run. And so for an investor like us,
it means that the business is growing, that we're getting more
jobs created in a community and for a lender, it means getting
repaid, right? Like there's income coming into
(02:17):
the business, so that going to get back your principal.
Great Violet, how do you think about that in the work to Angel
and Cal? Very similar to what Violet
said. Yet Colorado, you know, we
served the whole state. And similarly, the success of
(02:38):
businesses matters. Paramount.
That's because we, we number one, have a mission to help
businesses succeed. And #2 we wanted to pay back.
But it turns out that when businesses pay their employees a
living wage and give them benefits, the business is
(03:00):
stronger. And the program has helped us to
understand how to help our customers see that this is an
investment in their people, not just a cost.
And so stronger businesses is what it's about, and so quality
jobs helps. Yeah.
So that's great and I really appreciate how you both frame
(03:21):
that's an investment and strengthening.
And yet I think that many peoplethink that it's just a cost,
right? Too often we sort of frame
payroll as a cost to an expense that you're trying to manage,
right? And, and particularly for
smaller businesses, right, I think people think, oh, small
businesses, they just can't afford to do that.
(03:43):
So how do you respond, you know,to other sort of lenders and
Capital Advisors who may be thinking, you know, I don't know
if you want to encourage people to invest in this way because
like maybe they won't be that respond to that.
Well, working with loan officersat Colorado Enterprise, this
(04:06):
topic comes up and, and so I've been proselytizing them whenever
I can, you know, on the topics so that they see that it's, it's
not just a cost. You know, in Business School,
they, they teach that people costs are cost like rent.
And the idea is to negotiate, minimize the cost.
(04:28):
But that's absolutely the wrong way to to look at and Destiny
people. So I'm going to get a little bit
theoretical for a minute. And I I really think about costs
benefit analysis and how that's,that's still a model to try and
fit the real world into some easy buckets.
And so when we're thinking aboutcost, that's just the way for us
(04:50):
to fit a lot of different variables into an easy model.
But really by doing this model, we're not thinking about all the
other factors. So for instance, the cost of
wages is not also considering the additional benefit of that
house would have a, you know, higher wage means that household
has more income they can spend into the local economy and just
(05:11):
keep that cycle going. We don't capture that when we're
just looking at cost benefit analysis.
So I think it really is important for all of us, not
just capital providers, but justlike all of us trying to work on
our local economies and society to think about, well, what are
the other additional impacts andbenefits that are tied to this
(05:31):
cost? Because it's not just this one
type cost. There's also all these other
unspoken benefits that come with, you know, providing
employees with health insurance or providing childcare or a
living wage. So I really encourage folks to
think about, you know, especially if you are trying to
(05:52):
improve your local economy, our national economy, like what are
all the other outsized benefits that aren't getting captured by
the simple line on the accounting Ledger seeing salary?
Yeah. I love that you both sort of
talk about how this is a benefitto your regional economy as well
as, you know, a stabilizer for the business, right?
(06:12):
If they don't have people to do the jobs, then the jobs don't
get done. That's not very good business,
right? So, and I'm wondering if you
have an example of a business that you've worked with that you
can just sort of describe a little how, you know, sort of
retaining their workers and investing in them and engaging
them have been good for their business and sort of built.
(06:35):
But my sort of friend saying that Khan will describe this
like the virtual circle, you know, investing in job quality
and and improving the 50 successin dummy.
I can talk about one in NorthernColorado, there's a business
called Top Notch Plumbing that could have been a an example in
(06:55):
Miss Tom's book, the the owner when I first met him said when I
started adding employees, I wantto treat them far better than I
was there the treaty and he he very quickly understood that
paying a living wage and benefits when he was able to
grow into dividing those. That is the first step.
(07:18):
But then also he has to run the business to take advantage of
good people so that he doesn't have to make all the decisions
about, you know, this is a plumbing contractor.
They can push those decisions down into the staff and then
that they can make decisions to save costs, to help the cost of
(07:40):
sales on projects stay low enough so that the business
makes enough money to be successful.
He kind of got got that already,but the program helped him see
it more deeply. And here.
Yeah. And I'm also thinking about
ICAS. So ICA Fund, we're AVCCDFI, but
(08:02):
we also operate a really intensive business accelerator
program, which is how we providethe technical assistance to get
companies ready to take equity investment.
And actually, when you look at the spectrum of the clients that
we work with, the vast majority of companies aren't ready yet
to, you know, have a health benefits plan, have a retirement
plan. But what we, we try and do is
(08:24):
really get, try and get those entrepreneurs to see the benefit
of it. So an example of 1 entrepreneur
who went through our acceleratorand was just like, not into the
job quality stuff at all. Well, he, he operates a gluten
free baking company. And it wasn't until months after
doing the programming where he was like, Oh my God, like this
(08:46):
is so important because retention, because I get people
who can stay on and help me become thought collaborators.
I don't have the sole operator and owner and strategist supply
organization if I have quality jobs that get people to stay
with me. So that's the kind of thinking
we're trying to incubate at ICA to help people, you know, really
(09:07):
have quality jobs that support the local economy.
And beyond that, like our hope is that these companies grow,
you know, coast to coast, that they're thinking about the
legacy that they're creating andreally trying to create
something that'll be lasting andeffective or the gulps they want
to be. Yeah, great.
And that is the perfect answer to segue to kind of the next
(09:28):
thing we talked about the, the why of this, but I wanted to
start talking a little bit aboutthe how and how you implement
this and how you think about jobquality in your organization.
So Bill, maybe I'll stick with you for a little bit.
Maybe you could talk about what are the dimensions of job
quality that you that you look at, at ICA when you're, when
(09:50):
you're working with a bit that have you, how do you think about
that? And and maybe you could also
mention some of the tools that you use in in trying to assess
problem. Absolutely.
And since ICA was started in 1996, we've all been about how
do you help companies, small businesses that are just,
they're just so concerned about like making payroll.
(10:12):
Do I have enough inventory to last the end of the week?
How do you go from thinking likethat to thinking, how do I
scale? How do I franchise?
How do I, you know, create a lasting legacy?
And over the years, we've built 2 tools.
One is called the Gem, the Good Employer Matrix.
And that really is just a scorecard to help companies kind
(10:34):
of see where they are on the spectrum of offering a quality
job and what steps they could take to move along that path.
And right now, we have 3 primarycategories. 1 is health and
wealth. So what are you paying?
How does that compare to minimumwage?
How does that compare to living wage?
Are you offering health insurance plans?
Do you have retirement savings plans?
(10:56):
So versus health and wealth. The second is equity ownership.
So we are a venture capital institution.
So we are really thinking about,you know how does this move on?
We're not just thinking about getting repaid, but how does
this grow and really create value not just for us, the
investor, but also for the community and entrepreneur.
(11:17):
So in that we really value equity ownership and that means
how is the business owner passing on profits to their
employees? So do they have a profit sharing
plan? Do they have, and this is
actually something a little bit new, but employee ownership,
like is there a path to passing on ownership to a different
model? And then lastly, we think a lot
(11:38):
about company culture. So we, we don't necessarily say
like you have to have diverse management, but it's more is
your management team representative of your
community. If you are serving primary
primarily Latino community, how many of the folks making
decisions in your organization are Latino?
(11:58):
So is there, you know, that commensurate representation.
So that's the gem. And then we also have the ICA
impact note, which is a tool forinvesting.
So what it does is it just incorporates those 3 categories
into the vehicle investment note.
And we actually have a thing where if the company meets some
(12:19):
of those metrics, we pay back equity ownership.
So it's a way to incentivize investors and align their
incentives with small business owners to make sure that we're
all contributing to quality job,quality job creation.
Now, big thing. Thank you.
Robert, you have a little bit ofa different kind of an
(12:40):
organization. So maybe you can talk about what
job quality, you know, elements you all focus on and, and, and
the kinds of tools and and things that you do to.
Example, you know, the definition of small business
covers a big spectrum and I think the customers that we work
with are earlier in their, theirtrajectory, many so-called mom
(13:04):
and pops with a family, maybe just the husband and wife in the
business, maybe they're hiring their first employee, but the
second employee. And so earlier in their
progress. The concerns are difficult.
The approach we take is we have a quality jobs assessment
similar to what you all have andwe we put our participant one O
(13:29):
1 with a member around navigatorteam.
So just think about where that business is on that, that
quality jobs assessment and. And can you characterize the
assessment a little like with what is on you?
Well, it's kind of similar I think to what we just heard.
I think pay, benefits, schedule inclusion in decision making or
(13:56):
in post, some of the big topics.And of course many of the, the
people realize working with their navigator that they have
not accomplished much toward theideal of providing ideal quality
jobs. And we, we, we let them just be.
We, we help them understand thatwherever they are in the
(14:17):
trajectory toward quality jobs is fine where it is, as long as
they are making some, some decisions to change.
And we help them set their goalsabout the change they want to
make in the upcoming year. And these are modest changes,
but they're, they're not modest to them.
(14:38):
They're very important to them. And sometimes it's, it's, it's a
regards pay, sometimes it regards benefits.
All these business owners want to provide good pay and
benefits, and they have to do that slowly because they have to
make operational changes using good people to kind of, you
(14:58):
know, pave the way through profits.
It's a circular thing. So they might begin with
schedule equity. Wherever they begin, we help
them make progress. You reward them, then we help
them make the next step. Yeah, great.
I'm cheery. I have a couple questions, but
(15:19):
one I'm curious like if you use any kinds of incentives to help
help the business owners sort ofmake changes towards job quality
and what kinds of strategies youyou've tried out and and and
what's worked? For you.
We've been using the funds that came through our our grant with
Aspen used to to provide incentives and these are modest
(15:42):
incentives, two $3000 and it doesn't really help them sign
whatever changes they're making.It's more the stuff up here and
we would like to provide more. But that's what we're able to do
right now. And it does work because as soon
(16:03):
as I mean this is the third yearof our program and as soon as
businesses start making changes towards the quality jobs goal,
they continue to make more and they, they tend to be able to
fund more because of operationalexcellence that they're engaging
in. So that that's the way we
(16:23):
incentivize. Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah. And I just want to kind of loop
back to some bigger offset that I think is really important in
that everyone is starting from adifferent place.
Like we when ICA fund, we look at our companies, We're not
saying you have to make it to this place.
Like you're paying living wage to all your workers by three
(16:44):
years. You know, that's not realistic.
Like the economy keeps changing.Small business owners are under
more pressure than ever. And I think like what Rob said
is so important, like we are giving grace and helping people
make, you know, steps that make sense out of time.
And also, like Rob said, sometimes these kind of flow
together, like, you know, an employer starts offering a
(17:06):
healthcare plan, it's easy to add on the vision of the dental,
the child care. So I just want to make sure that
we honor that, that we're not having copies move immediately
to you're going to have, you know, retirement savings plan
for all of your employees, but like how do you make those
incremental steps to get there? And also that that's a lot about
(17:28):
what we think about with our incentive funding.
So we also received an amazing pass through grant from ask them
to help do some of this work to help entrepreneurs kind of look
at, you know, if I want to offera retirement savings plan to all
of my employees, what does that actually cost?
What does that cost in the long run?
But we're really looking at other plans like professional
(17:50):
development right now. So for instance, we have a
company, old construction, they do building retrofits and
construction in the Bay Area. And they were looking at their
staff and realizing there's so much potential to make a more
high quality job if we do some more tailored professional
development, specifically with workplace safety.
(18:12):
And so they wanted to do it, butthey really didn't have the cash
on hand to implement that kind of plan.
You know, at the time that we were talking to them about a
year and a half ago, that so actually we were able to give
them startup funding of 10,000 through the pass through funds,
funds to help them build that curriculum.
(18:32):
And now they, they've made it and they're helping upskill
their, their employees who then,you know, are able to really
contribute to better workplaces,more safe workplaces, especially
construction, which is a high risk job.
And we really think that's so incredible.
Like here's the start of cost, you know, that we're helping
(18:53):
advance. They would have taken them you
know a year maybe more to find that extra income to fund that
program and yet they were able to do it a little bit earlier
and start upscaling their will use earlier.
So I'm curious, you know, this work, I really appreciate the
work that you do. It's great.
And I know that sometimes hard and there's lots of challenges
(19:17):
you run into. So I'm wondering what advice
would you give to other organizations that want to try
to build this kind of work into their lending or investing?
What advice would you give as they are sort of starting out?
And finally, you're nodding, so I'll let you start.
(19:38):
Well, Rob and I, Robert and I, Ithink about our organizations
and the reason why we exist. And we we are community
development financial institutions.
So we were created to fill a certain gap to help our, you
know, local economies grow and pay.
And really I think about that, you know, investors are may not
(19:59):
have an explicit, you know, social impact goal at mine.
But. They're kind of helping that by
deploying cash, deploying investment to different projects
that need to be done. So I do encourage folks to think
about that like it is important for us to think about job
quality and to start that job quality work because we want to
build a better future overall. The other thing I would really,
(20:23):
really recommend and this this is ICA funds ethos.
Really all of our programming programming was created because
we exercise this a lot. But we listen to our clients, we
listen to them and we, you know,respond to what they're asking
for and what they want. So to start building a job
quality program, I think just start by listening to what your,
(20:46):
you know, local constituents areasking for because not all
things are equal. Like in our geography here in
the Bay for ICA Fund, which is based in the San Francisco Bay
Area, specifically Oakland, a lot of clients are struggling
with hiring. So how did we get that part time
hiring? So, you know, when we listen to
that and we hear that, we respond to that.
(21:08):
So we really think about, you know, OK, when we're thinking
about our job quality program, let's focus on coaching
entrepreneurs on how to source, how to hire, how to hire long
run. So my advice is really listen to
the folks that you're trying to work with.
Michael. I agree with everything.
(21:28):
I want to speak a little more philosophically that there's a
recognition that in the United States we have a shrinking
middle class and there's a reason people who go to Business
School, run larger businesses, are taught, like I said before,
that treat all costs as something we manage and minimize
(21:49):
include putting personnel costs more, more enlighten a business
owner support see it just somebody.
But small business owners, even though they, they often don't
even go to college, they are influenced by the opinions of
bigger businesses because they read and they get the idea also
that they they're going to pay the least they can minimum wage
(22:12):
and that that's the right way torun their business.
But we it's so important for other lenders to to understand
that when you're working with their customers, they have this
opportunity to change our economy.
Erux, our economy depends on a strong middle class and a strong
(22:33):
middle class depends on people who work at a a little wage and
who can provide good leadership for their business, not just be
a cost, but help the leaders of that business have better
products, better services. And the cycle becomes a positive
(22:53):
cycle when the right investment is made and when the leaders see
the vision of using people to have a stronger business because
the the people are strong. So a little philosophical, but
we have to think about this in order to succeed with quality
jobs. And thank you so much, Robert.
(23:13):
I appreciate that. And I think that philosophical
ending is the it's a perfect place to end.
Thank you, Robert, thank you forall for for joining us today.
Really grateful for the work that you both do in the
community. That was Viola, my development
director of the ICA Fund, and Robert Anderson, business
navigation director with the Colorado Enterprise Fund, in
(23:36):
conversation with Maureen Conway, executive Director of
the Aspen Institute's Economic Opportunities Program.
If you enjoyed this episode of Elevating Job Quality, please
subscribe or share this conversation.
The Shared Success demonstrationis managed by the Aspen
Institute's Economic Opportunities Program and
(23:56):
supported by a four year investment from the Gates
Foundation. CAS dot PN back slash Shared
Success to learn more. Views expressed here are those
of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or
policies of the Foundation.
Welcome to Elevating Job Quality, a podcast from the
Aspen Institute's Economic Opportunities program.
Today we're taking you inside a dialogue from the Shared Success
Project, exploring how CDF is orcommunity development financial
institutions can help their small business clients create
good jobs so that workers, business owners, and local
(00:25):
economies all thrive. Coming up, a conversation about
job quality and capital. Maureen Conway, executive
director of the Aspen Institute's Economic
Opportunities Program, speaks with Viola Mai, development
director of the ICA Fund, and Robert Anderson, business
navigation director with the Colorado Enterprise Fund.
(00:50):
So welcome, Viola and Robert, it's great to see you and glad
that you could join us for our discussion on small business and
job quality. And in particular, we're talking
today about the connection between job quality and
investing in lending and your experience doing that.
And Viola, I'm just going to going to jump right in and start
(01:12):
with you. Why do you think lenders and
investors should care about job quality?
So it's really important, I think to think about job quality
because anyone, when you're doing an investment, you're
thinking about the success of the investment, right?
And, and with ICA Fund, we're, we're specifically a venture
(01:33):
capital and equity lender, but this really applies to all
investors. When you are thinking about
doing an investment in a project, specifically a small
business, you want that to succeed.
And what does that look like? It looks like the the project is
doing what it needs to do. It's not getting stuck by, you
know, roadblocks, different things like people leaving the
(01:55):
project. So that's why job quality and
like having good jobs, having well paying jobs helps the
project succeed in the long run.So the business succeed in the
long run. And so for an investor like us,
it means that the business is growing, that we're getting more
jobs created in a community and for a lender, it means getting
repaid, right? Like there's income coming into
(02:17):
the business, so that going to get back your principal.
Great Violet, how do you think about that in the work to Angel
and Cal? Very similar to what Violet
said. Yet Colorado, you know, we
served the whole state. And similarly, the success of
(02:38):
businesses matters. Paramount.
That's because we, we number one, have a mission to help
businesses succeed. And #2 we wanted to pay back.
But it turns out that when businesses pay their employees a
living wage and give them benefits, the business is
(03:00):
stronger. And the program has helped us to
understand how to help our customers see that this is an
investment in their people, not just a cost.
And so stronger businesses is what it's about, and so quality
jobs helps. Yeah.
So that's great and I really appreciate how you both frame
(03:21):
that's an investment and strengthening.
And yet I think that many peoplethink that it's just a cost,
right? Too often we sort of frame
payroll as a cost to an expense that you're trying to manage,
right? And, and particularly for
smaller businesses, right, I think people think, oh, small
businesses, they just can't afford to do that.
(03:43):
So how do you respond, you know,to other sort of lenders and
Capital Advisors who may be thinking, you know, I don't know
if you want to encourage people to invest in this way because
like maybe they won't be that respond to that.
Well, working with loan officersat Colorado Enterprise, this
(04:06):
topic comes up and, and so I've been proselytizing them whenever
I can, you know, on the topics so that they see that it's, it's
not just a cost. You know, in Business School,
they, they teach that people costs are cost like rent.
And the idea is to negotiate, minimize the cost.
(04:28):
But that's absolutely the wrong way to to look at and Destiny
people. So I'm going to get a little bit
theoretical for a minute. And I I really think about costs
benefit analysis and how that's,that's still a model to try and
fit the real world into some easy buckets.
And so when we're thinking aboutcost, that's just the way for us
(04:50):
to fit a lot of different variables into an easy model.
But really by doing this model, we're not thinking about all the
other factors. So for instance, the cost of
wages is not also considering the additional benefit of that
house would have a, you know, higher wage means that household
has more income they can spend into the local economy and just
(05:11):
keep that cycle going. We don't capture that when we're
just looking at cost benefit analysis.
So I think it really is important for all of us, not
just capital providers, but justlike all of us trying to work on
our local economies and society to think about, well, what are
the other additional impacts andbenefits that are tied to this
(05:31):
cost? Because it's not just this one
type cost. There's also all these other
unspoken benefits that come with, you know, providing
employees with health insurance or providing childcare or a
living wage. So I really encourage folks to
think about, you know, especially if you are trying to
(05:52):
improve your local economy, our national economy, like what are
all the other outsized benefits that aren't getting captured by
the simple line on the accounting Ledger seeing salary?
Yeah. I love that you both sort of
talk about how this is a benefitto your regional economy as well
as, you know, a stabilizer for the business, right?
(06:12):
If they don't have people to do the jobs, then the jobs don't
get done. That's not very good business,
right? So, and I'm wondering if you
have an example of a business that you've worked with that you
can just sort of describe a little how, you know, sort of
retaining their workers and investing in them and engaging
them have been good for their business and sort of built.
(06:35):
But my sort of friend saying that Khan will describe this
like the virtual circle, you know, investing in job quality
and and improving the 50 successin dummy.
I can talk about one in NorthernColorado, there's a business
called Top Notch Plumbing that could have been a an example in
(06:55):
Miss Tom's book, the the owner when I first met him said when I
started adding employees, I wantto treat them far better than I
was there the treaty and he he very quickly understood that
paying a living wage and benefits when he was able to
grow into dividing those. That is the first step.
(07:18):
But then also he has to run the business to take advantage of
good people so that he doesn't have to make all the decisions
about, you know, this is a plumbing contractor.
They can push those decisions down into the staff and then
that they can make decisions to save costs, to help the cost of
(07:40):
sales on projects stay low enough so that the business
makes enough money to be successful.
He kind of got got that already,but the program helped him see
it more deeply. And here.
Yeah. And I'm also thinking about
ICAS. So ICA Fund, we're AVCCDFI, but
(08:02):
we also operate a really intensive business accelerator
program, which is how we providethe technical assistance to get
companies ready to take equity investment.
And actually, when you look at the spectrum of the clients that
we work with, the vast majority of companies aren't ready yet
to, you know, have a health benefits plan, have a retirement
plan. But what we, we try and do is
(08:24):
really get, try and get those entrepreneurs to see the benefit
of it. So an example of 1 entrepreneur
who went through our acceleratorand was just like, not into the
job quality stuff at all. Well, he, he operates a gluten
free baking company. And it wasn't until months after
doing the programming where he was like, Oh my God, like this
(08:46):
is so important because retention, because I get people
who can stay on and help me become thought collaborators.
I don't have the sole operator and owner and strategist supply
organization if I have quality jobs that get people to stay
with me. So that's the kind of thinking
we're trying to incubate at ICA to help people, you know, really
(09:07):
have quality jobs that support the local economy.
And beyond that, like our hope is that these companies grow,
you know, coast to coast, that they're thinking about the
legacy that they're creating andreally trying to create
something that'll be lasting andeffective or the gulps they want
to be. Yeah, great.
And that is the perfect answer to segue to kind of the next
(09:28):
thing we talked about the, the why of this, but I wanted to
start talking a little bit aboutthe how and how you implement
this and how you think about jobquality in your organization.
So Bill, maybe I'll stick with you for a little bit.
Maybe you could talk about what are the dimensions of job
quality that you that you look at, at ICA when you're, when
(09:50):
you're working with a bit that have you, how do you think about
that? And and maybe you could also
mention some of the tools that you use in in trying to assess
problem. Absolutely.
And since ICA was started in 1996, we've all been about how
do you help companies, small businesses that are just,
they're just so concerned about like making payroll.
(10:12):
Do I have enough inventory to last the end of the week?
How do you go from thinking likethat to thinking, how do I
scale? How do I franchise?
How do I, you know, create a lasting legacy?
And over the years, we've built 2 tools.
One is called the Gem, the Good Employer Matrix.
And that really is just a scorecard to help companies kind
(10:34):
of see where they are on the spectrum of offering a quality
job and what steps they could take to move along that path.
And right now, we have 3 primarycategories. 1 is health and
wealth. So what are you paying?
How does that compare to minimumwage?
How does that compare to living wage?
Are you offering health insurance plans?
Do you have retirement savings plans?
(10:56):
So versus health and wealth. The second is equity ownership.
So we are a venture capital institution.
So we are really thinking about,you know how does this move on?
We're not just thinking about getting repaid, but how does
this grow and really create value not just for us, the
investor, but also for the community and entrepreneur.
(11:17):
So in that we really value equity ownership and that means
how is the business owner passing on profits to their
employees? So do they have a profit sharing
plan? Do they have, and this is
actually something a little bit new, but employee ownership,
like is there a path to passing on ownership to a different
model? And then lastly, we think a lot
(11:38):
about company culture. So we, we don't necessarily say
like you have to have diverse management, but it's more is
your management team representative of your
community. If you are serving primary
primarily Latino community, how many of the folks making
decisions in your organization are Latino?
(11:58):
So is there, you know, that commensurate representation.
So that's the gem. And then we also have the ICA
impact note, which is a tool forinvesting.
So what it does is it just incorporates those 3 categories
into the vehicle investment note.
And we actually have a thing where if the company meets some
(12:19):
of those metrics, we pay back equity ownership.
So it's a way to incentivize investors and align their
incentives with small business owners to make sure that we're
all contributing to quality job,quality job creation.
Now, big thing. Thank you.
Robert, you have a little bit ofa different kind of an
(12:40):
organization. So maybe you can talk about what
job quality, you know, elements you all focus on and, and, and
the kinds of tools and and things that you do to.
Example, you know, the definition of small business
covers a big spectrum and I think the customers that we work
with are earlier in their, theirtrajectory, many so-called mom
(13:04):
and pops with a family, maybe just the husband and wife in the
business, maybe they're hiring their first employee, but the
second employee. And so earlier in their
progress. The concerns are difficult.
The approach we take is we have a quality jobs assessment
similar to what you all have andwe we put our participant one O
(13:29):
1 with a member around navigatorteam.
So just think about where that business is on that, that
quality jobs assessment and. And can you characterize the
assessment a little like with what is on you?
Well, it's kind of similar I think to what we just heard.
I think pay, benefits, schedule inclusion in decision making or
(13:56):
in post, some of the big topics.And of course many of the, the
people realize working with their navigator that they have
not accomplished much toward theideal of providing ideal quality
jobs. And we, we, we let them just be.
We, we help them understand thatwherever they are in the
(14:17):
trajectory toward quality jobs is fine where it is, as long as
they are making some, some decisions to change.
And we help them set their goalsabout the change they want to
make in the upcoming year. And these are modest changes,
but they're, they're not modest to them.
(14:38):
They're very important to them. And sometimes it's, it's, it's a
regards pay, sometimes it regards benefits.
All these business owners want to provide good pay and
benefits, and they have to do that slowly because they have to
make operational changes using good people to kind of, you
(14:58):
know, pave the way through profits.
It's a circular thing. So they might begin with
schedule equity. Wherever they begin, we help
them make progress. You reward them, then we help
them make the next step. Yeah, great.
I'm cheery. I have a couple questions, but
(15:19):
one I'm curious like if you use any kinds of incentives to help
help the business owners sort ofmake changes towards job quality
and what kinds of strategies youyou've tried out and and and
what's worked? For you.
We've been using the funds that came through our our grant with
Aspen used to to provide incentives and these are modest
(15:42):
incentives, two $3000 and it doesn't really help them sign
whatever changes they're making.It's more the stuff up here and
we would like to provide more. But that's what we're able to do
right now. And it does work because as soon
(16:03):
as I mean this is the third yearof our program and as soon as
businesses start making changes towards the quality jobs goal,
they continue to make more and they, they tend to be able to
fund more because of operationalexcellence that they're engaging
in. So that that's the way we
(16:23):
incentivize. Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah. And I just want to kind of loop
back to some bigger offset that I think is really important in
that everyone is starting from adifferent place.
Like we when ICA fund, we look at our companies, We're not
saying you have to make it to this place.
Like you're paying living wage to all your workers by three
(16:44):
years. You know, that's not realistic.
Like the economy keeps changing.Small business owners are under
more pressure than ever. And I think like what Rob said
is so important, like we are giving grace and helping people
make, you know, steps that make sense out of time.
And also, like Rob said, sometimes these kind of flow
together, like, you know, an employer starts offering a
(17:06):
healthcare plan, it's easy to add on the vision of the dental,
the child care. So I just want to make sure that
we honor that, that we're not having copies move immediately
to you're going to have, you know, retirement savings plan
for all of your employees, but like how do you make those
incremental steps to get there? And also that that's a lot about
(17:28):
what we think about with our incentive funding.
So we also received an amazing pass through grant from ask them
to help do some of this work to help entrepreneurs kind of look
at, you know, if I want to offera retirement savings plan to all
of my employees, what does that actually cost?
What does that cost in the long run?
But we're really looking at other plans like professional
(17:50):
development right now. So for instance, we have a
company, old construction, they do building retrofits and
construction in the Bay Area. And they were looking at their
staff and realizing there's so much potential to make a more
high quality job if we do some more tailored professional
development, specifically with workplace safety.
(18:12):
And so they wanted to do it, butthey really didn't have the cash
on hand to implement that kind of plan.
You know, at the time that we were talking to them about a
year and a half ago, that so actually we were able to give
them startup funding of 10,000 through the pass through funds,
funds to help them build that curriculum.
(18:32):
And now they, they've made it and they're helping upskill
their, their employees who then,you know, are able to really
contribute to better workplaces,more safe workplaces, especially
construction, which is a high risk job.
And we really think that's so incredible.
Like here's the start of cost, you know, that we're helping
(18:53):
advance. They would have taken them you
know a year maybe more to find that extra income to fund that
program and yet they were able to do it a little bit earlier
and start upscaling their will use earlier.
So I'm curious, you know, this work, I really appreciate the
work that you do. It's great.
And I know that sometimes hard and there's lots of challenges
(19:17):
you run into. So I'm wondering what advice
would you give to other organizations that want to try
to build this kind of work into their lending or investing?
What advice would you give as they are sort of starting out?
And finally, you're nodding, so I'll let you start.
(19:38):
Well, Rob and I, Robert and I, Ithink about our organizations
and the reason why we exist. And we we are community
development financial institutions.
So we were created to fill a certain gap to help our, you
know, local economies grow and pay.
And really I think about that, you know, investors are may not
(19:59):
have an explicit, you know, social impact goal at mine.
But. They're kind of helping that by
deploying cash, deploying investment to different projects
that need to be done. So I do encourage folks to think
about that like it is important for us to think about job
quality and to start that job quality work because we want to
build a better future overall. The other thing I would really,
(20:23):
really recommend and this this is ICA funds ethos.
Really all of our programming programming was created because
we exercise this a lot. But we listen to our clients, we
listen to them and we, you know,respond to what they're asking
for and what they want. So to start building a job
quality program, I think just start by listening to what your,
(20:46):
you know, local constituents areasking for because not all
things are equal. Like in our geography here in
the Bay for ICA Fund, which is based in the San Francisco Bay
Area, specifically Oakland, a lot of clients are struggling
with hiring. So how did we get that part time
hiring? So, you know, when we listen to
that and we hear that, we respond to that.
(21:08):
So we really think about, you know, OK, when we're thinking
about our job quality program, let's focus on coaching
entrepreneurs on how to source, how to hire, how to hire long
run. So my advice is really listen to
the folks that you're trying to work with.
Michael. I agree with everything.
(21:28):
I want to speak a little more philosophically that there's a
recognition that in the United States we have a shrinking
middle class and there's a reason people who go to Business
School, run larger businesses, are taught, like I said before,
that treat all costs as something we manage and minimize
(21:49):
include putting personnel costs more, more enlighten a business
owner support see it just somebody.
But small business owners, even though they, they often don't
even go to college, they are influenced by the opinions of
bigger businesses because they read and they get the idea also
that they they're going to pay the least they can minimum wage
(22:12):
and that that's the right way torun their business.
But we it's so important for other lenders to to understand
that when you're working with their customers, they have this
opportunity to change our economy.
Erux, our economy depends on a strong middle class and a strong
(22:33):
middle class depends on people who work at a a little wage and
who can provide good leadership for their business, not just be
a cost, but help the leaders of that business have better
products, better services. And the cycle becomes a positive
(22:53):
cycle when the right investment is made and when the leaders see
the vision of using people to have a stronger business because
the the people are strong. So a little philosophical, but
we have to think about this in order to succeed with quality
jobs. And thank you so much, Robert.
(23:13):
I appreciate that. And I think that philosophical
ending is the it's a perfect place to end.
Thank you, Robert, thank you forall for for joining us today.
Really grateful for the work that you both do in the
community. That was Viola, my development
director of the ICA Fund, and Robert Anderson, business
navigation director with the Colorado Enterprise Fund, in
(23:36):
conversation with Maureen Conway, executive Director of
the Aspen Institute's Economic Opportunities Program.
If you enjoyed this episode of Elevating Job Quality, please
subscribe or share this conversation.
The Shared Success demonstrationis managed by the Aspen
Institute's Economic Opportunities Program and
(23:56):
supported by a four year investment from the Gates
Foundation. CAS dot PN back slash Shared
Success to learn more. Views expressed here are those
of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or
policies of the Foundation.
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