You took the first step and signed up for the NKY Job Quality Challenge…What’s next?

Each day, you will receive an email first thing in the morning which explains the challenge for that day.

No worries if you are too busy to participate each day. As long as you are able to complete all of the challenge activities before April 23rd, you will be on your way to becoming a destination employer.

JOB QUALITY CHALLENGE PLEDGE

By participating in this 15-day challenge, I pledge to be accountable for my own actions and education about job quality. I will join the challenge with an open mind, be open to feedback and the points of view of others. I will do my part to interact with others as a part of the weekly wrap ups. I will take the knowledge that I have learned from this challenge and apply it to my every day thinking as well as to share what I have learned with others.

If you've missed the previous days' sessions , you can get caught up with the most recent challenge activities listed below.

Day 1 Activities: DEFINING JOB QUALITY

INTRO VIDEO – Recorded by Doug Goodwin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TE0QxsVX70&t=2s

Read and reflect on the National Fund for Workforce Solutions Designing a Good Job Framework

https://nationalfund.org/our-solutions/activate-employers-to-make-jobs-better/job-quality-resource-center/defining-job-quality

Watch the Aspen Institute Video “Defining Job Quality”

https://youtu.be/EwOLWlzatJU

Day 2 Activities: The Cost of Employee Turnover

Utilize the Cost of Turnover Tool

Download and read the publication and worksheets – The Cost of Turnover Tool, published by the Aspen Institute. Calculate the cost of turnover for your company.

https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/cost-of-turnover-tool/

Understand the Needs of Your Lower-Wage Workforce

Review the Women’s Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation’s Know Your Workforce Resource

https://toolkit.cincinnatiwomensfund.org/know-your-workforce/

Day 3 Activities: Why Job Quality Matters

Greetings! We are off to day 3 of the Challenge. Let’s dive in and explore why job quality matters and why it should matter to you and your company. Read below to learn more:

WHY JOB QUALITY MATTERS

Today, you will learn how job quality impacts our society. Innovative leaders will also share their vision and ideas for job quality through the Aspen Institute Fellowship.

Today’s Activities:

Watch Why Job Quality Matters - The Aspen Institute

https://youtu.be/rXuF8M3OYBw

Read & Comment: To Drive Change for Workers, Pull the Levers of Capitalism - Janice Urbanik

https://nationalfund.org/to-drive-change-for-workers-pull-the-levers-of-capitalism/

Visit the Aspen Institute link and learn more about the work of the Job Quality Fellowship funded by the Ford and Prudential Foundations

https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/economic-opportunities-program/job-quality-fellowship/

GROW NKY 15-Day Job Quality Challenge: Day 4

Good morning! Yesterday, we jumped in to learn why job quality matters. We hope you ‘ve made some notes as to why it is important to you and your organization. Today, we will be learning about what elements lead to greater job satisfaction from an employee perspective.

Day 4 Activities WHAT ELEMENTS LEAD TO JOB SATISFACTION & THE BUSINESS CASE FOR JOB QUALITY

Today you will seek the voice of employees, especially line worker employees, who are highly satisfied with their jobs. What are the elements that lead to their satisfaction?

Ask a Friend

Schedule a conversation with a personal friend who is a line worker at another firm that is highly satisfied with their company. Ask them about the most satisfying aspects of their work environment.

The Business Case for Job Quality

Watch this video from this year’s GROW NKY Employer Best Practices Symposium on The Business Case for Job Quality.

https://vimeo.com/521993707

FRIDAY, Day 5 Week #1 Wrap Up: Coffee & Collaboration. If you've missed the "wrap up" we will have a recording available by request.

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83921018354?pwd=bmdIU3JzSG51Q2M1Ni9OZE1yc0FGQT09#success

Day 6 Activities: GROW NKY Job Quality Challenge

You learned last week about how to create a job design framework, the cost of employee turnover, why job quality matters, and how to see the true voice of employees. And hopefully, you were able to join us for the wrap up call on Friday.

Day 6 kicks off by watching a panel discussion of local and state business leaders on The Importance of Embedding Inclusive Leadership in Your Organization from the NKY Chamber of Commerce Employer Best Practices Symposium. Turner Construction, St. Elizabeth Healthcare, and FMS share how they have embedded the foundational elements of diversity, equity, and inclusion in their organizations to create quality jobs.

Activity One

The Importance of Embedding Inclusive Leadership in Your Organizational Culture
https://vimeo.com/521987682

Activity Two

Race and the Work of the Future: Advancing Workforce Equity in the United States

https://nationalfund.org/learning-evaluation/publications/race-and-the-work-of-the-future/

Race and the Work of the Future is an invitation to policymakers, business leaders, philanthropy, and community organizations to come together to dismantle systemic barriers to opportunity for people of color, scale innovative training and credentialing models, invest in automation resilience strategies to ensure that working people can be uplifted rather than dislocated by technological advancements, and insist on high standards of job quality for all workers.

Looking ahead…mark your calendars for THIS FRIDAY, April 16th, at 9 a.m., for our Week #2 Wrap Up: Coffee & Collaboration Featuring Ethos Laboratories facilitated by Tara Johnson-Noem, Northern Kentucky Workforce Investment Board Director. The discussion will focus on how this employer has advanced job quality in their organization.
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/6665587598

Day 7 Why is Inclusive Capitalism important?

Welcome to Day 7 of the GROW NKY 15-Day Job Quality Challenge! Today's Challenge provides an opportunity to learn more about the importance of Inclusive Capitalism. Activities include a video on the potential effects of the growing income inequality from a plutocrat's view, a report from Brookings on the low wage workforce, access to a job quality tools library, and registration for an upcoming Inclusive Capitalism virtual event for our Cincinnati region.

Today’s activities include:

Activity #1

Watch & Comment on Ted Talk: Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming (20:14 min)

https://www.ted.com/talks/nick_hanauer_beware_fellow_plutocrats_the_pitchforks_are_coming/transcript?language=en

Activity #2

Review Aspen Institute's Job Quality Library

https://www.aspeninstitute.org/longform/job-quality-tools-library/

Activity #3

Learn about the Low-Wage Workforce with Brookings

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/201911_Brookings-Metro_low-wage-workforce_Ross-Bateman.pdf

Activity #4

Please register for Inclusive Capitalism in Action: The Cincinnati Region

Looking ahead…mark your calendars for THIS FRIDAY, April 16th, at 9 a.m. for our Week 2 Wrap Up: Coffee & Collaboration Featuring Ethos Laboratories and Wayfair facilitated by Tara Johnson-Noem, Northern Kentucky Workforce Investment Board Director. The discussion will highlight how this employer has advanced job quality in their organization.
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/6665587598

Day 8 Job Quality is a Racial Equity Issue

Congratulations on passing the halfway point of this journey! We hope you are seeing great value in the articles, videos, discussions, and tools shared so far.

Activities for today:

Activity #1

To introduce you to today’s discussion, we ask that you start by taking the next 90 seconds to listen to this YouTube by Cincinnati Spoken Word Artist, Camille Jones

Next, please take a minute to reflect on her closing comment “using compassion and collaboration, we can create communities, truly ‘Equitable by Design’”.

Would it surprise you to hear the U.S. is projected to be majority people of color by 2045, yet inequalities continue to grow amidst systems rooted in racism? For example, in the Greater Cincinnati region, life expectancy varies by up to two decades between white and black residents across neighboring zip codes, and health outcomes tell a story of inequity ranking among the worst in the nation. Black residents experience below standard outcomes across social determinants of health including: education, poverty and children in poverty, employment, income, access to healthy foods, transportation, and healthcare. And, while the region’s overall unemployment rate is lower than the national average, black workers face a rate of unemployment that is more than three times higher than that of white workers. Yet these unconscionable inequalities persist in a region that is ripe with resources. Greater Cincinnati has six major health systems ranking in the highest quartile in the nation, eight Fortune 500 companies, 18 colleges and universities, and more. And please understand, these challenges are not unique to Cincinnati.

You may be asking yourself what does this have to do with job quality? The answer is job quality is a racial equity issue.

Activity #2

To use a timely example, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed many racial disparities in our healthcare and workforce systems, especially for lower wage, minority workers. As most of our country shut down, essential workers, particularly low-wage, frontline, essential workers, a sector disproportionately comprised up of Black workers, continued to go to work. “Frontline essential workers report employers offering little preparation to increase safety at work, not encouraging employees to remain home if sick, and overall workers felt high levels of stress and fear for their own safety in the workplace” as shared in this article from the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Center for Employment Equity: How COVID Exposes Healthcare Deficits for Black Workers. Another stark disparity is seen in healthcare. Data shows that having a workforce not reflective of the community it serves leads to substandard health outcomes. And the reverse also holds true as demonstrated in this article on how mortality rates for black babies dramatically decrease when black doctors care for them after birth.

Activity #3

The Health Collaborative and its partners in Cincinnati are dedicated to creating a healthier, more vibrant community by addressing the unmet health-related social needs of the community. Gen-H, their long-term systems-change initiative is leading the way to make Cincinnati a region “Healthy by Design”; a place where health outcomes for all people reflect the region’s exceptional healthcare; a city whose workforce reflects the population it serves; and a region committed to caring about health for every person, regardless of zip code. To hear more about their great work, please check out this 2-minute video.

With the hope you want to learn more:

If you would like to learn more about how to measure job quality, equity and disparity, and how to assess job quality using the MIT Living Wage Calculator, please check out this Job Quality in Practice Webinar from Aspen Institute: Assessing Job Quality and Equity in Your Local Labor Market: A Closer Look at Race, Gender, and Place

Day 9 Being Open to New Ideas

Welcome to Day 9!

Today's challenge is to embrace "openness." Spend some time today being intentionally open to new ideas from outside sources. Schedule a conversation with your counterpart at an innovative company you admire. Challenge your own assumptions about the formerly incarcerated and people in recovery from substance abuse disorder. Dig into information about "Second Chance" hiring.

Activity #1

Ask your counterpart (HR director, CEO, etc.) at another successful company for a conversation about their job quality best practices. Reflect on what you learned.

Activity #2

The Employer Resource Guide, created by Kentucky Comeback, is intended to educate business leaders about substance use disorder (SUD) and mental health. The tools in this reference guide can help an employer create a recovery friendly culture and reduce stigma in the workplace.

Kentucky’s business community has become acutely aware in recent years that the state’s addiction epidemic is more than a public health issue; it has become a serious workforce issue. Employers are feeling the impact firsthand as they struggle to recruit and retain employees.

Each section of this guide will help business leaders better understand how SUD could be impacting their workforce and how to compare their current policies and practices to today’s emerging opportunities in the areas of workplace hiring, treatment, recovery and prevention. The resources will help leaders learn how to maintain a drug free workplace while supporting a recovery friendly environment. This change in culture can net positive results for the bottom line of an organization. This guide is a resource you can use to provide answers to your employees.

Activity #3

Take a look at the following article: Making Frontline Jobs Better: Putting the Evidence Base to Work

Looking ahead…mark your calendars for THIS FRIDAY, April 16th, at 9 a.m., for our Week #2 Wrap Up: Coffee & Collaboration Featuring Ethos Laboratories and Wayfair facilitated by Tara Johnson-Noem, Northern Kentucky Workforce Investment Board Director. The discussion will focus on how this employer has advanced job quality in their organization.
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/6665587598

Day 10 Week #2 Wrap Up: Coffee & Collaboration featuring Ethos Laboratories and Wayfair facilitated by Tara Johnson-Noem, Northern Kentucky Workforce Investment Board Director. The discussion will focus on how this employer has advanced job quality in their organization.
Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/6665587598

Day 11 Support that Strengthens your Workforce

Welcome to Day 11 and the final week of the Job Quality Challenge! Last week we focused on the voice of frontline workers, racial equity, and heard about best practices from local employers. This week, we will finish our Job Quality Challenge with tools to strengthen your workplace.

Activity #1

Large segments of the US population remain financially vulnerable, especially families led by lower-wage workers. Low- and moderate-income workers are occupied with several personal issues including managing debt and covering monthly expenses. Employees are bringing their financial concerns to work which is affecting their productivity. Employers are beginning to realize that financial stress is affecting worker health and productivity. In response, some employers are taking steps to help their employees better manage their personal finances and boost their financial wellness. Check out the National Fund for Workforce Solution's Guide to Employee Financial Wellness.

Activity #2

Watch Michael C Bush's TED Talk on Happy Employees

Activity #3

Listen to Committee for Economic Development's Podcast on Child Care

Day 12 The Voice of Great Leadership

Today's challenge can be accessed on-the-go. The Talent Magnet Institute Podcast has over 150 episodes with 50,000+ downloads in 80 countries. Today's challenge is to listen to 10 minutes of podcast Episode 10: The Voice of Great Leadership with guest, Crystal Kendrick starting at 29:45 through the end of the episode and complete the corresponding activities you will see on the page. It's time to level up your leadership and create a great customer experience. Access the challenge HERE .

Day 13

Wednesday 4/21

Through leadership, research and policy advocacy, the Women’s Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation works to identify and address employment barriers affecting working women and their families. Their latest research, Realizing the Potential of an Equitable Economy: Centering Black Women’s Upward Mobility in the Cincinnati Region, highlights the ways in which our economic system has been developed with intentional barriers meant to hinder the economic output of Black women. The key findings in this report illuminate the outcomes of these barriers in the Cincinnati region, and as the Women’s Fund stresses, it will take bold, intentional policy interventions to drive change.

Join the GROW NKY partner, Women’s Fund for Workforce Wednesday to hear the key findings of the report. Workforce Wednesday: Women's Fund of the Greater Cincinnati Foundation

Activity #2

WorkRise: Who Gets What Job? Taking a Racial Equity Approach to Improving Job Quality

Activity #3

Read the Women's Fund Report on Black Women's Economic Mobility in Cincinnati

Day 14

Thursday 4/22

Welcome to Day 14: Job Quality is Now More Important than Ever…Now What?

Activity #1

Today begins with a short but impactful article, “Job Quality Is More Important Than Ever” by Janice Urbanik -

Within the piece, Janice shares many resources including the cornerstone of the National Fund for Workforce Development’s strategy to make jobs better, the Job Design Framework. As you move forward, the menu of options within this framework will provide many ideas to consider as you find your best next step to job quality.

Across the globe, we want this region to be known as the best place to work. Becoming an Employer of Choice strengthens communities and supports employer talent attraction and retention efforts. The journey to successful job quality begins with YOU…the employer, the changemaker, the influencer, the leader. Arming you with the tools you need to create jobs that earn wages that support self-sufficiency, offer a safe work environment free from discrimination with predictable working hours, and provide a package of benefits that facilitate a healthy, stable life is our mission.

Activity #2

As we’re nearing the end of this challenge, we understand you may need additional resources and support to help you engage your organization to take action. We are providing the following connections to national, state, and regional thought leaders to help on your job quality journey.

Check out the below expert organizations and remember, it’s as easy as a click, follow, join and share:

Aspen Institute provides ongoing conversations, webinars and articles, as well as a suite of Job Quality Tools and Resources
Brookings conducts in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national and global level.
Canopy KY is working to make Kentucky first in good business. We are dedicated to supporting and growing businesses that improve the lives of people, our planet and the future.
McKinsey & Company helps organizations across the private, public, and social sectors create the Change that Matters most to them.
The Good Companies, Good Jobs Initiative at MIT Sloan focuses on making work work for everyone in the 21st century.
National Fund for Workforce Solutions invests in a dynamic national network of 30+ communities taking a demand-driven, evidence-based approach to workforce development.

Employer Resource Guide is a resource guide for employers to connect to local workforce solutions both efficiently and effectively.

Day 15

Friday 4/23

Congratulations! You accepted the Job Quality Challenge, and you successfully completed this 15-day journey. Looking forward to working together to make this region the BEST PLACE TO WORK!

Activity #1

Check out the Urban Institute's article "What Would It Take to Achieve Quality Jobs for All Workers?"

Activity #2

Check out Author, Zenep Ton, talk about her book The Good Jobs Strategy

Activity #3

Join us at 9:00 a.m. for the grand finale Job Quality Challenge Wrap Up Discussion!

Day 16

Saturday 4/24

Job Quality Challenge Next Steps

What’s Next for Job Quality?

Join us! If you are interested in elevating job quality in our community so employers have the ability to attract, retain, and advance employees, join the GROW NKY Pillar 5 Employer Policy & Practice Committee. Contact Leisa Mulcahy lmulcahy@nkychamber.com for more info.

Connect to job quality solutions through our workforce partner network! Visit the Northern Kentucky Employer Resource Guide

Share your feedback! How can we continue to elevate the topic of job quality in our community? Please take this 30-second survey

Leisa Spears Mulcahy

Vice President | Workforce | NKY Chamber of Commerce
859.578.6396p | 859.393.4538c | www.nkychamber.com

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