The JUST Report: How To Win the Battle for Talent

The importance of talent has been a recurring theme in the last few weeks.  Antonio Neri, CEO of HPE, highlighted it in his recent CNBC interview celebrating his company’s top spot in the 2025 JUST Capital Rankings. Surveying over 1,200 global business leaders for its new 2025 Risk Report, global consulting firm Protiviti identified the ability to attract, develop, and retain top talent, and talent and labor availability, as the #3 and #4 issues. And in the discussions I’ve had with CEOs since our Rankings launched earlier this month, it’s come up time and again.

Hiring the best talent is only the start of the journey. As Goethe noted, great talent finds its happiness in execution. This means investing in people, providing the right incentives, creating conditions for workers to flourish, nurturing a sense of purpose – all things JUST Capital’s benchmarking and scorecards help companies measure. The business case isn’t just intuitive. As of February 18, companies that perform well on our Workers stakeholder have outperformed their Russell 1000 equal-weighted benchmark by 17.03% since inception in January 2022. 

The talent area is also one ripe with opportunities for innovation. Indeed, our current rankings highlight many creative approaches companies are pursuing. Constellation Energy Corp offers an impressive 94 hours of training or career development per employee. By investing in a growth-driven culture, aerospace company RTX boasts of a turnover rate of just 5%. CoStar Group Inc, which leads their industry in the Workers category, has committed that no full-time U.S. based employee will make less than $60k per year. There are myriad other examples. 

If you’re interested to learn more about our services for companies in this area, please reach out.

Be well, 

Martin 

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“This is a massive change in America, and there are other major changes also happening in other countries around the world. We have a choice: Do we want to take a pessimistic, dark view and think that it’s all going to be horrible? Do we want to be optimists and say, in change is opportunity?”

• Sally Susman, Pfizer chief corporate affairs officer speaking with Axios on the changes ushered in by the new administration.

JUST AI

Cisco takes a survey of how CEOs are implementing AI at their companies, and the obstacles that are getting in their way. Explore the whole study here. 

MUST READS

CNBC reports that Southwest Airlines is planning to eliminate nearly 1,750 jobs in an unprecedented move to cut costs, and the New York Times reports that Chevron is planning to eliminate nearly 9,000 jobs worldwide. 

One bright spot? Chipotle plans to hire an additional 20,000 workers from March – May, which the company dubs “burrito season”. Reuters has the story. 

Proctor & Gamble and Kroger join companies like Costco in pushing back against the attacks on their DEI programs, while at the same time, the Wall Street Journal reports on how big banks are trying to scrub public mentions of their DEI efforts. 

Speaking of big banks, JP Morgan Chase is officially starting a round of layoffs. Yahoo Finance has the story. 

CHART OF THE WEEK

Axios reports that the amount of in-person work doubled this year as many employers start to enforce return-to-office mandates. Explore the data here.