We appreciate that many of you eagerly await the arrival of our newsletter every Friday morning and so are grateful for your patience and flexibility to let us bring you CNBC’s latest coverage of our newly released report – in honor of Mother’s Day – on how companies are really stepping up to support working moms (and parents overall).
Our Top Companies for Parents report (NBC coverage inside) spotlights some of the leaders, including S&P Global, American Express, Deckers Outdoor Corp., Goldman Sachs, and Splunk Inc. All offer flexible scheduling, as well as benefits such as fully remote or hybrid working arrangements to help parents and working moms in particular navigate work-life balance., They also provide 20 or more weeks of paid parental leave for both primary and secondary caregivers, parental leave parity for all caregivers, backup and subsidized dependent care, and more.
Beyond this, many companies are also doing more to explicitly accelerate progress for women within their workplaces. Deckers, for example, sets quantifiable and time-bound targets to achieve gender parity in leadership positions and its Board of Directors. Goldman Sachs sets hiring goals for women in both entry level positions and senior management. And S&P and AmEx disclose conducting pay equity analyses to ensure fair compensation regardless of gender.
At a time when many forces seek to divide us, this feels like something we can all join together to celebrate. Explore the list here.
Be well,
Martin
(Bright Horizons)
“This is really a wake up call to all employers that they need to move both quickly and substantively to offer these kinds of benefits. The pandemic afforded working parents some flexibility, that in many ways, has started to dissipate or has fully dissipated in this return to a more traditional [work] environment. Employers leaned in during the pandemic, and are now leaning back out, but are not placing supports to compensate for that change.”
The New York Times takes a look at the impact generative A.I. is having on the climate, now that the implications of the technology are becoming clearer.
Nasdaq examines the ways that Artificial Intelligence could be used to improve ESG assessments and keep appetite strong for new funds.
According to Fortune, Millennials need to boost their AI skills to avoid having their jobs swallowed up by Gen-Z.
Harvard Business Review releases a fascinating bit of research that shows that when employees identify with their company, they are far less likely to recognize gender discrimination at their office, or forms of disrespectful conduct that have an underlying bias. Learn more here.
The Washington Post chronicles how corporations are scuttling their DEI language, as many are starting to view it as more of a risk than a benefit, at the same time that McKinsey’s initial research on the benefits of DEI has come under scrutiny for having results that cannot be replicated. Meanwhile, Fortune takes a look at how diversity chiefs at some of America’s largest companies are preparing for an incredibly divisive election season among their staff.
Yahoo reports that Apple’s latest stock buyback plan is the largest made by any U.S. corporation ever, approving $110 billion in repurchases.
This chart comes from a collaboration between The Harris Poll and Bright Horizons examining the state of childcare across the U.S. for working parents. The research was featured in Fortune and includes an interview that you can read here.
The business case to support parents is overwhelming. Policies supporting parents are critical to recruiting new – and retaining existing – workers, especially in a tight labor market, not to mention boosted worker productivity. A recent report from Moms First and BCG suggests that companies that strategically allocate resources to childcare benefits are seeing a return on investment of 90% to 425%.
Year after year the Just Capital polling highlights that the American public wants companies to prioritize their workers, specifically by providing benefits and work-life balance among the top five issues. In fact, a survey of working mothers further connects the dots between receiving more parental leave and being more satisfied at their workplace.
As a result, we see leading business executives prioritize these policies. In a Just Capital interview with Morgan Stanley Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Stark, he said paid parental leave “has low direct costs” and “a significant impact in terms of improving productivity, retention, and employee morale.”
We are also seeing companies realize the benefit of more publicly offering benefits geared towards families and caregivers. From 2023 to 2024, disclosure of paid parental leave for both primary and secondary caregivers increased by seven and eight percentage points, respectively.
So what employers lead the pack with their policies in 2024? Just Capital analyzed the policies and practices of the Russell 1000 and five came to the forefront.
You can find more information about corporate practices and policies like those elevated here in the latest version of our Just Jobs Scorecard, a data-driven interactive tool companies can use to assess their performance and transparency on key job quality practices and worker policies.
In the meantime, check out the full list, as well as NBC News’ coverage of it, below.
If you’re a corporate leader, we invite you to unpack your company’s performance in the 2024 Rankings and/or the Just Jobs Scorecard, gain insights into how to improve on the issues that matter most to the American public, and/or learn how to engage with Just to take action to support worker well-being though the Corporate Impact Lab. Please reach out to corpengage@justcapital.com.
Ranked 2nd in the Commercial Support Services industry in the annual Rankings of America’s Most Just Companies
The Benefits:
Ranked 1st in the Transaction Processing industry in the annual Rankings of America’s Most Just Companies
Ranked 2nd in the Clothing & Accessories industry in the annual Rankings of America’s Most Just Companies
The Benefits:
Ranked 5th in the Capital Markets industry in the annual Rankings of America’s Most Just Companies
The Benefits:
Ranked 14th in the Software industry in the annual Rankings of America’s Most Just Companies
The Benefits:
Methodology note: All of these companies exemplify leading practice by offering inclusive paid parental leave for 20 or more weeks to both primary and secondary caregivers, in addition to offering emergency backup and subsidized routine dependent care policies.
Fortune published their 2024 100 Best Places to Work list recently. It’s highly regarded by major employers and obviously reflects a theme we know to be a top priority for the public, so we thought it’d be fun to compare and contrast against our own JUST Jobs Scorecard, which we released last week.
Although the methodologies and purpose of the two products are very different – JUST’s scorecard is an interactive toolkit designed to help companies track and improve performance and transparency, not a list per se – the results are interesting.
In total, JUST covers 43 of the companies on the Fortune BPW list (the remainder are private or outside our Russell 1000 universe). Of these, 22 are topic or industry leaders in at least one of the six topic areas on the JUST Jobs Scorecard. And yet, only one company earned top marks for its industry on the Wages & Compensation topic, a key priority for the American public. Top companies in the Employee Wellness category in the scorecard tend to be more represented in the Fortune list compared to leaders on other topics. Half of the Top 10 on the Fortune list are represented among the companies that earned the 100 highest overall performance scores in the JUST Scorecard.
This list also marks the last time Alan Murray – their much-admired CEO who is stepping down at the end of the month – will be at the helm. Always a good friend to JUST, Alan’s thoughtful, fearless and often provocative leadership on values-led business and stakeholder capitalism is but one facet of his lengthy career. The success Fortune enjoyed under his tenure is a testament to his business acumen, too. We wish him all the best! His successor, Anastasia Nyrkovskaya, is the first woman to lead the iconic 95-year-old publication.
Be well,
Martin
“I am intimately familiar with what we offer, what’s available to employees. The extra dimension that the JUST Jobs Scorecard gave, in addition to comparability across other companies, was really looking at those programs through an external lens, because you didn’t score things based on what I told you, you scored things based on what you were able to cull out of public information. One use case for the JUST Jobs Scorecard is identifying areas of opportunity where we are doing something but not talking about it outside of our organization.”
JUST Advisor Ursula Burns joins Board Member Dan Hesse’s podcast to discuss her career, her time as the first black woman CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and life lessons–most importantly, “where you are is not who you are.” Listen here.
Fortune reveals that startling stat that nearly nearly 3 out of 4 insurers, representing $13 trillion in assets, say they’re turning to AI to help reduce operating costs.
Must Reads
Fortune releases its 2024 “Best Places to Work” list, and highlights how the nature of the list has changed thanks to changing expectations from Gen Z workers. In their words, “Gen Z doesn’t live to work. They work to live.”
MIT releases a fascinating study showing that the majority of work today occurs in jobs and categories that were all created post-1940, and explores how professions are really created and lost over time.
The New York Times explores new data that shows that, despite the promises made by big Banks, voluntary commitment to reduce climate emissions have been ineffective so far. More inside.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Norfolk Southern has agreed to pay $600 million to settle lawsuits in connection with a toxic train derailment in Ohio early last year.
The chart comes from our deep-dive into the insights from our JUST Jobs Scorecard, particularly around stock performance. We examined the market performance of the highest-scoring companies within the top quintile, and discovered that, compared to the benchmark, we found that Scorecard leaders demonstrated substantially superior performance across nearly every Scorecard category, with the difference especially striking for companies that excelled in the Benefits and Wages & Compensation categories. Explore all the insights here.
Investing in human capital is one of the essential elements of business leadership today.
Business Insider’s look at how childcare benefits boost retention – some companies saw positive returns on investment of up to 425% – and a report by Investment News on how companies like DoorDash are experimenting with new financial wellness benefits for gig workers are two recent examples of this in action.
However, without a comprehensive set of metrics and a clear definition of what good actually looks like, it’s very difficult to measure performance on a consistent basis let alone know where to invest in order to improve. Enter JUST Capital’s newest offering – the JUST Jobs Scorecard.
The new tool, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides a unique view into how companies are performing and what they can do to improve on 31 distinct data points across six job quality topics, scoring companies on a scale of 0-4, with 4 being the highest. The final score is determined against research-backed thresholds, which range from “no disclosure” to “leading practice” on the issues that JUST tracks. Topics cover the key worker priorities as identified by the public:
Top performers include JPMorgan Chase & Co, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dayforce, Starbucks, Union Pacific, and American Electric Power Company.
We offer these scorecards as a resource to anyone interested in improving human capital performance in business. To use the Scorecard visit the tool or get involved by contacting corpengage@justcapital.com.
Be well,
Martin
(Photo courtesy of Dayforce)
“We are collectively redefining how we work – including virtual, hybrid, and the gig economy – resulting in a boundless workforce that is fluid, always-on, and borderless. To keep pace with this rate of change, organizations need to prioritize investments in their people to create an agile and skills-based culture that fosters an engaged and thriving workforce.”
Rob Marsh, our AI Advisor, took to LinkedIn to discuss the future impact of “virtual robots”, AI-powered entities capable of performing a wide range of tasks and even operating autonomously in certain contexts. Read the whole post here.
An artificial intelligence-powered chatbot created by New York City to help small business owners is under scrutiny for sharing bizarre advice that misstates local policies and advises companies to violate the law, the AP reports.
A New York Times article dives into the debate economists are having around how much more efficient AI will make companies in the short term.
A new report by The Financial Times explores new financial products that could incentivize countries to preserve biodiversity and natural resources.
Axios reports on a new study that shows for most employers, childcare benefits pay for themselves through reduced absenteeism and lower rates of attrition. Check out the study here, and then learn more about our own Corporate Care Network initiative.
The EPA releases new, strict emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks in a bid to curb carbon emissions. The Associated Press has the story.
The Wall Street Journal takes a look at how Gen-Z is eschewing colleges and white collar jobs for trade schools and working with their hands, seeing it as a safer, more fulfilling path in a world where the value of a degree is plummeting and AI seems poised to make sweeping job changes across many industries.
Google will delete billions of Chrome browser records in the wake of a lawsuit saying the company was being deceiving by still tracking user activity while in Incognito mode. The New York Times explains.
A new study by Deloitte and Tufts University finds that the large majority of professional investors globally have put in place ESG investment policies over the past several years. These firms cite factors including regulatory requirements, improved performance and talent attraction. ESG Today has the story.
A Wall Street Journal article takes a close look at just how far $100 goes at your local grocery store today after five years of persistent food inflation, a top concern for consumers. Take a look here.
This week’s chart comes from our newly released JUST Jobs Scorecard. While America’s largest companies have more work to do to improve transparency around some key job quality data points, overall performance on the 2024 JUST Jobs Scorecard speaks to noticeable improvement since the 2023 pilot version of this tool. More than one fourth of companies (256 companies, or 27.3% of all scored companies) have moved from the Beginner category (taking early steps towards transparency, overall scores between 0 and 0.99) into the Explorer category. Explore deeper insights here.
NEW YORK – Today, JUST Capital released the second edition of the JUST Jobs Scorecard, a data-driven interactive tool for companies to measure performance and gauge transparency on key job quality practices and worker policies.
The new tool, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides a unique view into how companies are approaching one of their most critical stakeholders – their workers – and helps demonstrate how investing in their people can benefit both companies and workers alike. Overall, the Scorecard suggests that actual performance, as well as disclosure and transparency, are all on the rise, and that there is much room for future improvement.
Top performing companies include JPMorgan Chase & Co, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dayforce, Starbucks, Union Pacific, and American Electric Power Company. To use the interactive tool and dive into these leading companies’ scorecards, visit https://justcapital.com/the-just-jobs-scorecard/.
“The JUST Jobs Scorecard shows that companies are making steady progress on investing in the American worker,” said JUST Capital CEO Martin Whittaker. “We know from our polling that across demographics and political affiliations, this is what the public wants. And we look forward to continuing our work with companies to help them do this as effectively as possible.”
The Scorecard assesses 31 distinct data points across six job quality topics, scoring companies on a scale of 0-4, with 4 being the highest. The final score is determined against research-backed thresholds, which range from “no disclosure” to “leading practice” on the issues that JUST tracks. Topics include:
After assessing performance and disclosure across all data points, JUST calculates each company’s overall average score in order to categorize their overall performance. Overall performance categories provide a quick snapshot of how far along a given company is on the journey toward transparency on job quality metrics. The following table outlines how companies are increasingly disclosing information related to job quality, but also have room to improve across the board.
The JUST Jobs Scorecard follows the release of the JUST 100. It is important to note the key ways in which this resource differs from the annual JUST Rankings, both in approach and intended use case. Unlike our annual Rankings, which assess a company’s performance relative to other companies, the Scorecard provides an individual measure of a company’s current standing on job quality disclosure and performance relative to minimum, common, and leading practice standards.
JUST Capital’s 2024 Rankings spotlight the corporations who are performing best on the business issues most valued by the American people. These rankings are determined by scoring performance across the full range of criteria and comparing companies head to head. For the annual Rankings, JUST Capital collects and analyzes corporate data to objectively evaluate the 1,000 largest public U.S. companies across 20 Issues identified through comprehensive, ongoing public opinion research on Americans’ attitudes toward responsible corporate behavior. JUST Capital has engaged more than 170,000 participants, on a fully representative basis, since 2015.
JUST Capital is an independent nonprofit that demonstrates how just business – defined by the priorities of the public – is better business. JUST’s process is objective, data driven and non-political. Its rankings consistently demonstrate that the companies that score best on the Issues Americans care about most also outperform their peers financially.
For more information, please reach out to marketing@justcapital.com
In his widely-read annual letter to investors, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink focused on the world’s aging population and their severe economic woes. He outlined a retirement crisis, noting that people are living longer, that the system set up to support elderly adults is not robust enough, and that 4 in 10 Americans don’t have $400 in emergency savings. According to the Aspen Institute and Morningstar, there are even more significant disparities across gender and race lines, even controlling for salary and tenure.
Helping workers prepare for their financial futures is a major JUST issue. And it’s not only a problem for older working Americans. Indeed many Gen X and Millennial adults in the workforce today worry about the costs associated with both caring for their parents as well as their children.
Investing more in workers during their careers – through better financial planning, stock ownership and profit sharing, higher wages, training and better care options, for example – is now becoming a defining aspect of corporate leadership today. The benefits are clear. Companies participating in our Worker Financial Wellness Initiative (WFWI) – Chipotle, PayPal, Prudential, and others – have helped employees go from living paycheck to paycheck to owning a house and more; and as of 1/31/2024, our worker-focused index has outperformed the Russell 1000 Equal Weighted Index by 103.75% since 1/1/2018. A new study from BCG and Moms First underscores the clear business value in supporting childcare benefits.
Lastly, I see that an initiative we featured back in January – InvestAmerica – is also gaining momentum across corporate America (including among many high-ranked JUST companies) for the idea of creating an investment account at birth for children of employees that is seeded by the government and matched by corporations. Call me an optimist, but perhaps the gears of capitalism are beginning to shift in favor of American workers at every stage of life.
Be well,
Martin
Photo: Courtesy of Intel
“Solving climate change is becoming way more important. It’s becoming increasingly important. Maybe the only more exciting thing than solving climate change is AI, but it’s right up there on the list, it’s about how we’re leaving the world a better place for the next generation. As semiconductors become more important, what we do for sustainability in the semiconductor industry will become more important … We’re seeing energy consumption levels rise to power our big data centers to power AI. It really does matter at the end of the day.”
JUST Capital highlights the Top Companies for Women in 2024 in a new report.
Board Member Dan Hesse chats with David Rubenstein, co-founder of The Carlyle Group, on what he’s learned about leadership from interviewing many of the world’s greatest leaders.
The International Business Times talks to Carol Cone about how businesses can bring greater success by aligning purpose with employee well-being.
The Biden administration rolls out new rules around the Federal government’s use of artificial intelligence, USA Today reports.
Vox weighs the claim of some economists that an AI explosion could cause unheard-of economic growth – 20-30% a year – or if that idea is a pipe dream.
Morningstar reports that, over the past 4 years, the lowest earners have actually seen the highest wage growth of any workers, with a 12.1% wage increase, adjusted for inflation.
Per the Washington Post, Boeing’s CEO and several other top executives will step down by the end of the year amidst the company’s current airplane quality control crisis. In the meantime, other companies are stepping up to try and revive supersonic planes for commercial travel.
The Securities and Exchange Commission now faces a deluge of lawsuits after issuing its climate disclosure rule earlier this month. Experts argue the proposed disclosure laws are consistent with global trends in disclosure, ESG Dive reports.
The Department of Justice is suing Apple over its “iPhone monopoly,” claiming that to keep consumers buying iPhones, Apple moved to block cross-platform messaging apps, limited third-party wallet and smartwatch compatibility, and disrupted non-App Store programs and cloud streaming services. CNBC has more of the story.
The New York Times highlights an FTC report showing that large grocery chains took advantage of the pandemic, using supply chain shortages and pricing distortion to get suppliers to favor them over the competition.
This chart comes from Axios, and explains what many pundits have been struggling to grasp why many Americans think the economy is bad. The chart shows how the cost for basic items often not accounted for in CPI reports – like rent and grocery items – skyrocketed over the past several years. More inside.
