CEO Martin Whittaker spoke out on the importance workforce policies in a Fortune OpEd, outlining the “sobering picture” revealed by our recent analysis, the Win-Win of JUST Jobs:
“It’s still the wild west of workforce policy disclosure with little direction on how to best measure issues like pay equity, paid time off, paid parental leave, flexible work, diversity and inclusion policies and targets, provision of day care services, worker training policies, and tuition reimbursement. The lack of standards on this also means investors are unsure of how to evaluate the information once it is disclosed.”
Read more on the takeaways from this analysis in this Fortune editor’s pick.
On the road to a more just marketplace, America can only get so far without the bold efforts of its corporate leaders. And tech companies, which have contributed to some of our nation’s most pressing challenges – from data privacy to income inequality – may currently stand at the forefront of solving them.
Microsoft, this year’s top company in JUST Capital’s Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies, announced yesterday that it would invest $500 million in affordable housing in the Seattle area – a move that signals a long-term commitment to the company’s local community.
Arriving on the heels of fellow tech giant Amazon’s announcement that it would build new campuses in Long Island City and Richmond, Microsoft’s announcement also reflects an ambitious effort to tackle the impacts – including growing income and housing inequality – that it has had on the local communities where its industry is concentrated, not unlike Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff’s initiatives to support San Francisco’s homeless population.
And this is not the first time that Microsoft has done so – its efforts to address data privacy issues and expand paid parental leave policieshave positioned the company head and shoulders above the competition. And not only with regard to ethical concerns – Microsoft has outperformed its peers in recent quarters, and its latest commitment is just another example of the company’s proactive efforts to address issues before external factors, including the market, force its hand.
In our Rankings, Microsoft ranks not only first overall, but is also tied for third for the work it does to maintain strong relationships with communities. A few other key metrics that drive Microsoft’s high performance in the 2018 list of America’s Most JUST Companies include:
As more and more U.S. companies seek to align their business practices with the priorities of the American public, Microsoft’s efforts to address its societal impacts can and should serve as an example to companies across all industries – not just in the tech sector – of how they can support a form of capitalism that works for all the people it serves.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com.
The opioid epidemic is being called the worst public health crisis in American history. Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death among Americans under 50. And Opioid addiction has developed such a powerful grip on Americans that some scientists have blamed it for lowering our life expectancy.
How to reflect this important and alarming issue in our rankings has been a matter of intense discussion. Our rankings are based on the voices of the American people – with 10,000 contributing to this year’s survey and 72,000 over the last three years. Throughout this work, it has become clear that the harmful effects of a company’s products, and the actions of corporate leaders on matters of social concern, are integral to just corporate behavior. And in our polling on the opioid issue in particular, almost a third of Americans noted concerns with companies linked to the opioid industry.
In our rankings universe, three of the nation’s largest drug distributors – Cardinal Health, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen – as well as three of the nation’s largest retailers – CVS Health, Rite Aid, and Walgreens – are heavily implicated in the crisis. Accordingly, we’ve been following news reports, litigation, and related fines throughout the year, and have already factored into the scoring model a range of inputs related to the opioid crisis to penalize these companies where appropriate and necessary. The issue gained greater urgency in mid-October when The Washington Post and 60 Minutes brought to light new whistleblower accounts from a former DEA deputy assistant administrator.
The reports’ criticism of the three major drug distributors – who control 85-90 percent of drug distribution in the U.S. – centers on them “turning a blind eye to pain pills being diverted to illicit use.” The reports cite as an example one pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, a town of just 392 people, which ordered and was supplied with nine million hydrocodone pills over two years.
All of the drug distributors and retailers in our ranking universe have made sizeable settlements to resolve allegations related to the distribution of opioids in recent years. Specifically, they’ve paid fines totalling more than $341 million over the last seven years. This has already been factored into this year’s rankings.
However, until we are confident we can fully and accurately reflect corporate behavior on this issue, and until the industry-wide actions being taken to help address this national crisis have had the chance to take effect, the Food & Drug Retail sector, specifically the six drug distributors and retailers, will remain “Under Review.” Furthermore, no Seal will be awarded to an Industry Leader in this industry.
As we move into 2018, we’ll continue to track ongoing developments, including:
We will update our rankings to reflect these developments, and prior to granting any company the JUST Seal, we will be seeking assurances from companies in the sector that they are working together to shape industry-wide and individual company-led actions to help stop this growing crisis in the U.S.
To say this year has been one of tumult, upheaval and breathless change is an understatement. Corporate America has not been immune, as they seek to respond to the relentlessly shifting political, social and economic landscape. No longer can business take a pass on matters of morality. They are becoming powerful social organizing forces. They must choose a path.
Today, JUST Capital, in partnership with Forbes, has released the 2017 list of America’s Most JUST Companies, our annual ranking of the largest publicly-traded U.S. corporations. This is more than just a ranking. It is a venue for those who would build a more just marketplace. It is a resource for anyone seeking information on how the companies they work for, buy from, invest in, or care about are doing on the issues that matter most to them. It’s also a guide, or roadmap, for companies seeking to regain the trust of the American People – for the companies ranked by JUST Capital are evaluated not against some expert notion of good citizenry, but against the values and priorities of the American people themselves.
The rankings are based on some of the most comprehensive surveys ever conducted on public attitudes towards corporate behavior, involving 10,000 American respondents in 2017, which we produced in partnership with one of the nation’s foremost data science organizations, NORC at the University of Chicago, using its powerful survey tool AmeriSpeak.
Ultimately, our goal is to harness the power of the private sector to drive positive change on the issues Americans care about most – worker compensation and well-being, customer treatment, product impacts, environmental pollution, strong communities, job generation, ethical sourcing and supply chains, transparency and more. Providing the rankings is the start. Driving their usage, so that markets incentivize and then reward just corporate behavior, is the key.
By having the public define this new business performance benchmark, we believe we can help to build trust in big corporations as a force for good, breathing new life into the idea that capitalism and markets can indeed serve the broader best interests of society. In other words, it doesn’t have to be a win-lose binary battle between shareholders and society. When compared to the overall universe of the 1,000 largest public corporations, our JUST 100 top performers across all industries:
America is a country that thrives on change, diversity and free market enterprise – precisely the conditions required to redefine the meaning of business success. JUST Capital’s rankings help provide a new moral compass for this inevitability, with the JUST Seal, awarded to the top performing companies, proudly displayed to light the way.
Check out the 2017 list of America’s Most JUST Companies, which includes the JUST 100 list of the top companies across all industries in absolute rank order, as well as the Industry Leader list, featuring the 33 top performers by sector. The companies will also be featured in the December 26, 2017 print issue of Forbes magazine, with additional feature stories online.
