The business case for investing in workers is surely watertight at this point. Strengthening career pathways, training, wages, work schedules, health benefits and all-round workforce culture is associated with greater employee engagement, higher productivity, increased retention and other advantages, all of which contribute to superior competitive performance, higher shareholder returns and more. As an aside, our worker-focused index outperformed the Russell 1000 Equal Weighted Index by a massive 103.75% from 1/1/2018 through the end of January this year.
Worker issues also present opportunities for corporations to demonstrate their own unique brands of leadership. As an example, we’re excited to report that the energy company Avangrid (NYSE:AG) – a 2024 JUST 100 member ranking 12th overall and #1 in the utilities industry – announced this week it is joining our Worker Financial Wellness Initiative. Co-founded in partnership with PayPal, the Financial Health Network and Good Jobs Institute, the Initiative supports companies in advancing worker economic wellbeing and is a key part of our Corporate Impact Lab, where we help companies collaborate to take concrete actions in key stakeholder areas.
Looking down the list of companies that top their industry on worker issues in our 2024 Annual Rankings you might see some names that surprise you: Zillow, Amazon, Peloton, Cummins, Disney, Nike, Trane, Keysight Technologies, eBay, RTX, Hasbro, and QuantumScape (Automobiles and Parts in case you were wondering). Each leads in its own way. And their policies, ranging from industry-leading wages to flexible working schedules and sick leave, are exactly the kind of thing the public wants to see. Interestingly, in a survey of 600 C-Suite and HR leaders released this week, improving child care benefits was voted the most important major work benefit priority in 2024. Happily, we track that too.
Be well,
Martin
“Modern consumers want to do good. They don’t just want to buy a product – they want their product to have a story and create a positive impact. But how do they know if a company is truly aligned with their values or just greenwashing?
The Karma Wallet Card, launching spring 2024, will directly integrate JUST Capital’s ratings into every transaction – alongside 40+ other data sources, allowing cardholders to see the ethical score of the companies they purchase from in real-time … Knowledge is power – and when consumers are provided with actionable knowledge, they can make better choices.”
– Jayant Khadilkar, CEO and Co-Founder of Karma Wallet.
Avangrid joins JUST Capital and PayPal’s Worker Financial Wellness Initiative. Check out the company press release here.
Karma Wallet announces a partnership with JUST Capital, using our data to help consumers align their spending with their values.
The corporate rush for A.I. dominance is causing a major increase in many company’s carbon footprints as data farms balloon and more energy is needed for processing power. The New York Times has the full story.
CNBC speaks to an engineer who is worried that Microsoft’s Copilot Designer app is not safe for its “E for everyone” rating, saying that the app can create incredibly violent images with the right prompts.
The Securities and Exchange Commission this week adopted rules to enhance and standardize climate-related disclosures by public companies. As The Wall Street Journal explains, the disclosures are slightly watered down from what was proposed by not including Scope 3 requirements, but many companies could find themselves facing pressure from investors and other countries to track them anyway.
The Washington Post reports that the JetBlue and Spirit Airlines merger has been killed in the wake of antitrust objections to the deal. The merger would’ve created the 5th largest airline company in the world.
Bloomberg reveals that 56% of America’s largest companies are boosting childcare perks in 2024, with the rising cost of childcare becoming a consistent pain point for their employees. In a similar vein, JUST 100 company AT&T recently highlighted their investment into fertility and family planning support, another area companies are putting resources in.
A number of investors in Apple issued a joint statement raising concern over the company’s approach to unions after retail employees accused the company of “intimidation tactics to deter organizing”, claims denied by Apple. Apple has agreed to commission a third-party report on its union-related activity, The Financial Times reports.
Bloomberg dives deep into recent Harris Poll data on how Americans’ views of remote work are changing. Interestingly, while a majority of Americans believe remote work has become unnecessarily politicized, they also believe that employees need to stop complaining about having to go back to in-person work. Look at all the data here.
For Justin Lagasse, CFO of leading sustainable energy company Avangrid, using a stakeholder model for decision making is just as much about driving business outcomes as it is about doing what’s right for customers, workers, the environment, and shareholders.
Despite pushback against Environmental Social and Governance frameworks, or ESG, Lagasse said that applying a broader stakeholder model, where decisions prioritize sustainable business practices, is not purely about compliance, but about driving long-term value.
“What’s really happened on the ESG front is it’s become about disclosures and compliance and I think because of that, it’s dissociated the value attribution that it provides,” Lagasse said at JUST Capital’s 2024 Annual Leadership Summit earlier this month. “We use ESG to drive business and financial outcomes.”
Avangrid ranked highly in JUST Capital’s 2024 Annual Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies at No. 12 overall and No. 1 in its industry. It earned these designations through a variety of investments, including supporting the career development of its workforce and demonstrating a clear commitment to climate leadership, such as pursuing an aggressive 1.5-degree net zero climate target.
Speaking with JUST Capital President Alison Omens, Lagasse noted that in today’s economic climate, a company’s investment in its workers not only serves as a catalyst for individual prosperity and job satisfaction but also contributes significantly to a business’ resilience and sustainable growth.
On Wednesday, Avangrid announced it was joining The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative, a part of JUST Capital’s corporate leadership network implemented in partnership with PayPal, Financial Health Network, and Good Jobs Institute. Joining the initiative will help Avangrid continue supporting employees’ financial security and health.
Since Avangrid was formed in 2015 by joining multiple utility companies together, its leaders have placed a concerted emphasis on creating a unified corporate culture, where employee well-being is a core tenet. Leveraging data for a more personalized approach to employee benefits is central to their strategy, as they continue to work alongside a cohort of companies dedicated to improving the financial health of workers nationwide.
And while Avangrid continues to invest in improved employee financial well-being, it has already taken substantial steps to drive its employees’ overall well-being, implementing initiatives that focus on work-life balance, career development, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
By joining the Worker Financial Wellness Initiative, Avangrid looks forward to building upon its investments in its workforce, which will underscore and build on solutions for customers and continue to create value for shareholders.
As Lagasse said at JUST’s Leadership Summit, he’s focused on investments that will build on the company’s success “not only tomorrow, but for the long term.”
March 6, 2024 — Avangrid, Inc. (NYSE: AGR), a leading sustainable energy company and member of the Iberdrola Group, is continuing to prioritize their employees’ financial security and health by joining The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative by JUST Capital and PayPal. The Initiative, established in collaboration with the Financial Health Network and Good Jobs Institute, offers resources to help companies assess and improve workers’ financial health.
“We want to be a company that attracts top talent to build long-term careers,” said Pedro Azagra, Avangrid CEO. “We do this by not only helping our employees grow professionally, but also supporting their well-being. The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative will cement us as a benefits leader and help us continue to enhance our programs and resources.”
The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative was launched in 2020 and engages directly with corporate leaders to promote the business value of financial health investment and empower them to perform worker financial health evaluations. Today, the initiative includes companies such as Chipotle, Chobani, Even, Prudential Financial, Synchrony, and Verizon, representing one million American workers. Since joining the initiative, participating companies have expanded and enhanced benefits, increased wages, created new ownership opportunities, and more.
Joining this initiative builds upon Avangrid’s commitment to caring for its people by providing diverse, equitable, and inclusive benefits that focus on their total health—physical, emotional, mental, and financial. This includes providing a leading 401(k) employer match, paid parental leave, comprehensive employee assistance program (EAP), and fertility and family forming benefits. Avangrid has also continued to expand its holistic benefits package by recently launching new programs such as a student loan debt repayment benefit, an emergency savings program, and mandatory financial training.
“Now is the right time to take our benefits to the next level by focusing on individual wellness,” said Kyra Patterson, chief human resources officer at Avangrid. “By leveraging data, we can take a more granular and personalized approach to the benefits we offer to take care of our employees. The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative will help us take this next step by leveraging research, tools, and a diverse network of subject matter experts dedicated to optimizing employee health and well-being outcomes.”
Tolu Lawrence, Chief Impact Officer at JUST Capital, an independent nonprofit dedicated to demonstrating how just business – defined by the priorities of the American public – is better business, noted that Avangrid’s participation in this insightful network of executives is monumental.
“Our polling of the nation’s public shows time and again that Americans of all backgrounds want CEOs to prioritize investing in workers,” said Lawrence. “And our research shows that companies that prioritize the well-being of their workers out-perform those that don’t. Avangrid is on a journey that will not only deeply impact the lives of its workers, but also has the potential to inform the trajectory of the energy industry at large. We look forward to welcoming them into the network and collaborating with our partners to drive impact with Avangrid and for its workers.”
Sarah Kalloch, executive director of The Good Jobs Institute echoed the sentiment, saying, “Research has shown how meaningful investment in employees can create productive, engaged, and motivated workforces that not only create better lives for workers, but also deliver real, sustained value for customers and shareholders. We are excited to support Avangrid on this journey.”
Media Contacts:
Sarah Warren, Avangrid
sarah.warren@avangrid.com
585-794-9253
Marguerite Ward, JUST Capital
mward@justcapital.com
Twice this week, JUST friend and Fortune Media CEO Alan Murray wrote about how challenging it is for CEOs to navigate today’s highly politicized world. JUST Board member Alan Fleischmann was quoted as saying “The CEO has to be able to articulate how he or she leads in this environment.” A hat tip to Alan, and to take it one step further: CEOs also need to be able to convincingly articulate how their strategy fits into their overall business strategy.
This is where our work comes in. Our Annual Rankings show which companies are making meaningful investments in their stakeholder leadership. And the platform we’ve created, as well as the stakeholder framework that underpins it – backed by 9 years of polling, 8 years of corporate performance data and over 1.3 million individual data points – cover many of the critical stakeholder issues that matter to CEOs today. It serves as a dynamic roadmap that can help any corporate leader navigate today’s political waters and take action on the things that matter most.
Throughout it all, the connection to financial performance remains pivotal. According to a piece released this week by Mona Patni, our quantitative financial analysis lead, “JUST Capital found that two of the five stakeholders we track delivered positive performance in Q4 2023. Over the longer term from January 2018 to December 2023, the leaders in corporate stakeholder performance across all five stakeholders have outperformed the laggards by 66.6% as measured by JUST Overall Score.”
With the pushback on ESG and ‘woke’ companies now maturing, we think there is room in America today for a more objective, data-driven framework that supports values-led business leadership, drives positive societal change and connects directly to business strategy. In other words, we think JUST’s time has come.
Be well,
Martin
“Media headlines about the creation and then elimination of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) positions at Big Tech companies have generated plenty of buzz. This kind of coverage can raise doubts about whether companies are committed to DEI in the long term. But these headlines aren’t telling the whole story […] In fact, our recent ‘Expanding Equity retrospective report’ suggests the opposite. Companies are doubling down on DEI as an essential part of their business strategy.”
CNBC Correspondent Sharon Epperson highlights our latest corporate data around diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in two on-air spots as part of the network’s ongoing coverage of the JUST Rankings.
On the podcast “Purpose 360,” hosted by business and nonprofit consultant and former Global Practice Chair of Edelman Business Carol Cone, JUST CEO Martin Whittaker explores JUST’s recently released 2024 Top 100 Rankings.
In his podcast, “The Mentor’s Radio,” JUST Capital Board Member Dan Hesse – former CEO of Sprint and current chairman of Akamai Technologies – discusses employee ownership and its contribution to economic justice and American competitiveness.
JUST Capital re-promotes its analysis on companies supporting diverse pipelines through investments in Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Separately, JUST Quantitative Research and Analytics Lead Mona Pati pens our latest review of quarterly stakeholder performance.
NVIDIA skyrocketed to a near $2 trillion-dollar market cap this week, riding the success of its expanding AI-focused chip production. Meanwhile, Google is working to fix its Gemini AI technology after it produced historically inaccurate images, which CEO Sundar Pichai has called “unacceptable.”
There’s pushback against the ESG pushback. This week Axios reports that a major climate advocacy group is launching a campaign to push back on the growing anti-ESG rhetoric, starting first in Arizona, which has become a hotbed of anti-ESG investing bills.
With companies fearing headlines about layoffs, more and more employers are turning to “quiet firing” – actively making employee jobs worse to encourage them to leave. Business Insider runs down the ways companies are trying to force employees out without having to explicitly lay them off in this recent piece.
It’s not just you – CNBC reports that Americans are spending the biggest share of their income on food in three decades due to grocery prices that just won’t fall. Data For Progress confirms that when voters say they are worried about the economy, their concern is almost entirely concentrated on the price of groceries. And while consumers wait for falling prices, many companies are actually fearing the drop.
Axios takes a close look at a major cybersecurity attack that affected the ability for millions of Americans to get their prescription medicine, revealing a major technology weakness in the healthcare industry that major companies are struggling to deal with.
Sony Playstation is laying off 8% of its workforce this week, joining a sweeping wave of layoffs affecting the video game industry. As of now, the first two months of 2024 have nearly matched the entirety of 2023 in layoffs.
This chart comes from our latest review of quarterly stakeholder performance. In Q4 2023, two of the five stakeholders we track delivered positive performance, and the Customers stakeholder delivered the strongest performance with a long-short spread of 3.01%. Dive deeper here.
Consumer issues comprise some of the biggest conversations on what it means to be a just company right now. Take Meta, Snapchat, and other social media CEOs appearing before the Senate on their impact on child safety. Or consider the effect that stubbornly high prices for groceries and other consumer staples have had on working families. AT&T’s cellular service outage this week also springs to mind.
These issues have a real impact on millions of Americans. And with the rapid growth and deployment of generative AI, the consumer component of our stakeholder model – particularly in areas like data privacy, product benefit and harm, and customer treatment – is only going to grow in importance in the future.
In a recent CNBC interview, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet spoke about ranking No.3 overall on JUST’s 2024 Rankings (and No. 1 in its industry). She underscored her strategy of prioritizing not only worker issues but customer issues as well. Focusing on key consumer issues like data privacy helped propel the company’s recent success, she said.
Accenture’s ISO 27001 certification makes it one of the first global companies to be externally verified against the information security standard and one of only 20% of companies in the Russell 1000 to do so. They are also one of 74% of companies that maintains both board-level oversight on privacy and cybersecurity issues along with an internal team to mitigate and resolve privacy-related issues.
“The fact that we have a responsible AI program, that we have very strong programs around data privacy – these are essential to our business. Over the past four years, we’ve added $120 billion in market cap. It reflects that being just is really good. You create value and you stand for values,” Sweet said.
Be well,
Martin
We’ll be highlighting some of the best policies across the JUST 100 in our next few newsletters, but for this week, we’re picking one policy each from the companies that landed 9 and 10 on the list.
9. Advanced Micro Devices returns to the JUST 100 and enters the top 10 for the first time. One area where they standout is in prioritizing the health and safety of its workforce, with an OSHA total recordable incident rate of 0.04, much lower than the semiconductors industry average of 0.4 and the overall Russell 1000 average of 1.1. In addition, they provide a generous benefits package which includes 12 weeks of paid parental leave for both primary and secondary caregivers, 20 days of designated sick leave, and a minimum of 15 days of paid time off.
10. Micron Technology enters the top 10 for the first time, excelling at career development opportunities and support for individuals re-entering the workforce or at early stages of their careers, offering career development opportunities such as tuition reimbursement and 62 hours, on average, of employee career development training, which contributes to a retention rate of 92%, while also supporting employees’ work-life balance with 17 days of paid vacation, 12 weeks of paid parental leave for all caregivers, and opportunities for flexible scheduling.
“Our people, our 47,000 people, are in a very good place because they know that what we do, what they do, has a major impact on our customers, on the environment and at the end of the day, on our performance. Doing what’s right the right way is what’s been driving us for the past 100 years and will propel us for the next 100 years.”
– Christophe Beck, CEO and chair of Ecolab, speaking about ranking No. 7 on JUST Capital’s 2024 Annual Rankings of America’s Most Just Companies on CNBC’s “The Exchange”.
A new Axios poll shows that Gen Z is far more excited by the prospect of generative AI than older generations, though most Americans remain wary of the new technology’s power. Meanwhile, Quartz reports that Google had to pull its generative AI tool this week after its inability to replicate historical figures with racial accuracy.
The Guardian dives into a significant report that says major plastic-producing companies knew as far back as the 80’s that recycling would not be a sustainable solution for waste management but promoted it anyway.
The Wall Street Journal takes a look at a problem currently hitting high-shipping industries – while consumers might love next-day delivery, they remain vehemently opposed to living near shipping warehouses, stifling where companies are allowed to build new shipping centers and routes.
Capital One is buying Discover – or trying to. The New York Times weighs in on the legal hurdles the massive 35 billion dollar deal may face. Meanwhile Walmart will buyTV-maker Vizio for 2.3 billion, signaling their plans to move beyond just selling goods.
The Washington Post reports that the head of Boeing’s 737 Max program is exiting the company in a wave of leadership changes due to the ongoing controversy around the aircraft’s safety.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Nike is planning to cut over 1,600 jobs in a bid to cut costs.
The New York Times looks at a common trend squeezing workers wages – more and more companies replacing full-time workers with multiple part-time workers to drive down labor and benefit costs, and how unstable schedules are hurting these workers’ ability to find other jobs.
The Harris Poll’s recently published fifth annual Parent Confidence Index with KinderCare finds that 57% of parents would take a pay cut to work for a company that provided childcare benefits. This chart from the report lays out the types of benefits working parents are looking for from employers, from flexible hours to on-site childcare.
When just business leadership is implemented effectively it can transform local economies and communities. It’s why this article in Hartford Business (“These Connecticut companies were named the most ‘just’ in the nation”) caught my eye this week.
For the record, California is home to the greatest number of JUST 100 companies, taking up 24 spots including the No.1 company, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. New York is next with 16, followed by Ohio (6) and Illinois (5).
Beyond that, there are five states each with four companies (WA, TX, NC, NJ and CT); four with three companies (MI, MN, MA, VA); two with two companies (AZ and MD) and finally nine states each with a single representative (IA, GA, NE, IA, PA, OR, ID, RI and OK). So 24 states represented in total.
Of course, there is more to this kind of analysis than meets the eye. Some states simply have more large publicly-traded companies headquartered there than others. Certain types of companies that tend to do well in the rankings – banks, technology and software firms – may be clustered in certain regions. Perhaps most importantly, the location of a company’s headquarters isn’t necessarily where its workers, facilities, and major operations are located.
Still, the geographic footprint of a corporation is no doubt a crucial factor in its impact on the ground. And it begs a larger question – whether and how corporate justness can align with local and state social, economic, environmental and political goals.
Should state legislatures, city officials and governors be working harder to support just companies that do better at creating good jobs, investing in workers and their families, supporting their local communities, and protecting the environment? Can regional industry groups and chambers of commerce do more to lift up and promote just business behavior to help build the financial, human, and social capital of cities across America?
Earlier this year, JUST hosted a fantastic conversation with business and community leaders in Atlanta on that very question. We aim to build on that this year, so if you’d like to get involved, please reach out.
Be well,
Martin
Photo by Elena Oliva / Sight & Sound
“I don’t get into debates about DEI. I think the pushback is based on a myth of what it is. If you have a conversation with someone who is rational and intelligent, and you say, ‘Do you believe that different perspectives lead to better discussions?’ the answer will be yes. ‘Do you believe in a work environment where people feel like they can come to work and they can be their best selves because they are part of a team and valued?’ Absolutely. ‘Do you believe we should pay people fairly and the same for the same work?’ Oh, absolutely. Okay, well that’s DEI.”
We’ll be highlighting some of the best policies across the JUST 100 in our next few newsletters, but for this week, we’re picking one policy each from the companies that landed 6-8 on the list.
6. The Cigna Group came in 1st in its industry and 1st overall when it came to supporting Customers thanks to their strong commitment to customer data protection, not selling users’ data or sharing users’ personal information with advertising or marketing companies, leading the Health Care Providers industry on Privacy Policy Transparency, and disclosing no data security breaches within the last reporting year, in addition to receiving no controversies or fines across the entire Customers stakeholder.
7. Ecolab greatly improved its performance in JUST Capital’s Rankings, moving up from #325 in 2020’s Ranking to breaking into the top 10 for the first time this year, driven by its robust benefits including 12 weeks of paid maternity and 6 weeks of paid paternity leave, emergency backup dependent care, routine subsidized dependent care, a flexible working hours policy, and providing an average 27 hours of career development per employee and a tuition reimbursement policy.
8. Elevance Health excelled at supporting their local communities, offering a rotational information technology apprenticeship for early career professionals, committing $160 million to affordable housing projects in 2022, and investing in the placement of 78 licensed social workers in schools across the state of Indiana in 2022 in support of mental health services and accessibility.
Google reports that it has been working with airline companies and using its AI to reduce the climate impact on contrails, which account for 35% of the aviation industry’s global warming impact.
Seeing lots of large pay raises in your industry? It might be a harbinger of layoffs to come. Fortune reveals that many jobs at risk of being replaced by AI are seeing salary booms as the worker pool shrinks but companies still need humans to work these jobs until AI is able to replace them.
Despite sustained pushback against diversity, equity, and inclusion from political figures, a new national survey finds a majority of senior business executives — across the political spectrum — say diversity initiatives are important for positive business performance, Marketplace reports. In addition Google’s Chief Diversity Officer speaks to the BBC about how the company remains committed to its diversity goals.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the financial industry’s ESG hiring boom is starting to cool amid cost cutting and initiatives to get faster returns on investment.
Fortune highlights the cringe-inducing new trend of companies using euphemisms for “layoffs” in order to avoid social media backlash, especially amidst the trend of workers recording their final meetings with HR.
Cryptocurrency companies must now report their energy use to the government due to a new initiative by the Biden administration, which many are calling a big win due to the heavy energy costs associated with the industry.
Fortune reports that right now, there are 8 Black CEOS of Fortune 500 companies, a near-record high outside of 2022.
Yahoo Finance counts down the 12 highest paid female CEOS in 2024.
This week’s chart is a high level summary of what separates the JUST 100 from the rest of the Russell 1000 that was featured in our Rankings launch announcement here. On average, companies in the JUST 100 outperform their competitors on a variety of metrics, including offering 2 more weeks on parental leave, having a 4% higher profit margin, paying more of their employees a family sustaining wage, and more. Dig into the details here.
