Working Metrics

Post-pandemic, there’s a mandate to improve opportunities for disenfranchised Black, Latino and women workers who are unemployed or trapped in low quality jobs.  It’s imperative that we provide a better ecosystem that emphasizes equitable, quality jobs for workers. But you can’t improve what you don’t measure. WM enables employers to measure, benchmark and score their job quality and equity, and disaggregate those results across racial and gender cohorts. Similar to how large companies incentivized suppliers to adopt improved environmental practices, Stakeholder organizations, like public and private procurement, investors and workforce development, use WM’s results to select, work with and encourage companies to provide higher quality and equitable job opportunities. We’ve established a replicable adoption model, which drives change at scale via the numbers of participating stakeholders, and companies that they work with, the number of employees positively impacted, and the amount of data generated which can help the overall ecosystem.

Disenfranchised workers from underserved areas face significant gaps in the labor market regarding hiring, promotion, pay and opportunity. They are overrepresented in low-wage entry-level jobs and underrepresented in senior leader and executive roles. For example, in the U.S. private sector, Black workers make up 12% of the entry-level workforce and just 7% of the managerial workforce. Black men earn 71% of what white men earn; for black women it’s only 63%. It’s similar for other racial groups and women as a whole; e.g., Latinas earn 55% of what white, non-Hispanic men are paid, and women on average earn 82% of what white men earn. These gaps persist across regions and across industries. These inequities keep families and communities in poverty and cost the economy trillions. 

Business is recognizing these issues, and that customers, investors and future employees increasingly want to buy from, invest in and work for companies that provide quality, equitable jobs. These growing market forces can be leveraged to incentivize and encourage companies to improve their hiring, compensation, benefits, etc. practices. However, we can’t improve what we don’t measure. Measuring job equity and quality will help lead to better jobs, and a more resilient workforce and economy.

WM provides a workforce analytics platform enabling organizations to measure, benchmark and score job quality, diversity, job equity and other workforce factors. We provide a secure, cloud-based employment data platform, enabling insights into various elements of employment and providing value to multiple user groups, including employers, stakeholders (e.g., procurement, finance, and workforce development agencies), that they can use to inform business decisions, improve operations, and better assess and select more reliable suppliers, investments, lenders, etc. Because all companies have limited resources and time, the WM platform makes it simple for employers to collect and report quarterly employee data that nearly all companies have, is easy to access, and is reliable and verifiable. Employer results are benchmarked against industry and regional peers. Example reports show: employer job quality results for its front-line workers, workers across various wage bands, and workers by race, gender and intersectional cohorts. It also shows the distribution of race and gender cohorts across the company, compared to the average distributions of its industry and regional peers. 

WM provides a clearinghouse of this information to other organizations involved in promoting and tracking increasing job opportunities and economic mobility.

WM provides valuable insights and promotes positive economic, social and business  improvements for multiple constituencies, including: workers, employers, and their stakeholders, such as customers/procurement organizations, investors and workforce development agencies.  

Workers: As noted above, our principle mission is to drive positive economic opportunity and social impact for disenfranchised workers. This results from employers who measure their performance on job equity and quality as compared to peers, and use those results to improve employee hiring practices, wages, benefits and other factors. 

Employers: WM enables employers to measure the job quality and equity they provide their own employees, and how they compare to their industry and regional peers. The first step in this process is to engage with the data on their current practices and outcomes that can illuminate where there are gaps and areas for growth. They can use these results to assess their performance and adopt practices to improve operations. Ultimately they find that good jobs is good business.

Stakeholders: Most employers need incentives and support to develop high quality jobs and to recruit and retain employees in an equitable manner. Stakeholder organizations, like public, private and anchor organization procurement, investors, lenders, workforce and economic development agencies, and others, have several leverage points to promote increased diversity, job equity and quality with the employers that they work with. They use WM in multiple ways to promote increased job equity and quality:

• As employers themselves, they can measure and examine and improve their own HR practices;
  
• Public and private procurement organizations use WM results in evaluating, selecting and tracking suppliers that are or want to be higher road employers;
  
• Investors and lenders use WM results as part of their assessment and selection process, to gain workforce insights into who might be a more reliable investment or creditor. 
  
• Workforce and Economic Development organizations make job quality and equity part of contract and grant award processes, as well as to ensure that worker placements are made to quality and equitable employers.
  
• Each of these organizations can measure their portfolio of companies over time to gauge their aggregate impact across the portfolio, driving increased economic equity and mobility for workers and the communities in which they live and work. 
  

WM aligns with the Anti-Racist Technology Challenge. Our vision falls squarely within the challenge to: “Provide tools and opportunities for equitable access to jobs, credit, and generational wealth creation in communities of color.”  WM’s mission is to use technology to measure workforce outcomes, in order to advance racial and gender equity at work. By including data-driven workforce insights in the business decision-making process, we can help stakeholders incentivize – and employers to provide - more inclusive hiring, better, more equitable jobs, increased economic opportunity, mobility, wealth and health, and use business and market forces to create positive impact at scale.

Working Metrics is between the Pilot and Growth phases. The platform is fully tested and in production, being used by well-over 50 reporting employers, of different sizes, industries and different regions. We also have been working with different kinds of Stakeholders: a public sector regional workforce development agency (San Diego Workforce Partnership), a regional mayor’s office and local chamber of commerce (Cincinnati Workforce Innovation Center), the procurement organization of a regional hospital health network (TriHealth Hospital), each of which has invited in multiple employers. A large western state workforce development agency is in the process of beginning to work with WM, measuring its internal 1300 person labor department workforce, and 24 3rd party employers. Over 10 workforce agencies have expressed executive-level interest in working with WM. We have partnered with the Aspen Institute (Good Companies/Good Jobs Initiative) and Results for America and other leading non-profits to introduce WM to users.

WM's innovations include:

Creating a technology to use a limited amount of easily reportable employer workforce data to measure job equity and job quality;

Using technology and open source data to benchmark and compare employer results to their industry and regional peers;

Providing a platform that provides direct business value and positive social impact to various types of users/constituencies - workers, employers, stakeholders, communities;

Creating a business and technology model that leverages market forces to incentive, encourage and promote increased job equity and quality.

Generating a adoption model that can drive to scale in terms of the numbers of participating stakeholders, the companies they work with, the employees impacted, the effect on the communities in which they live and work, and the amount of data generated that can be used for the benefit of the workforce ecosystem.

Well over 50 companies/organizations; reporting on well over 1000-2500 employees.

We currently are focused on measuring and increasing the number of:

Participating stakeholder organizations

Interested stakeholder organizations

Employers that are invited to report on and use WM

Employees measured

Communities in which we are working

The amount of data we generate

2 Partners /Employees - Larry Schlang & Lara Nasser Langley

A software development consulting team (approximately 5 people)

2 marketing consultants

A team of business, workforce and technology advisors

We have developed a strong team of partners and advisors to enable us to make great progress in a short time - in what is a very new market. For example, the Aspen Institute is a knowledge leader in all aspects of workforce, including job equity, diversity and job quality, etc. It also has a broad network of workforce agencies that it works with closely. Similarly, Results for America has a long-standing and broad network of state and local government workforce (and other) agencies that works with. Together these organizations have unparalleled expertise and reach in this field, including especially equity. We also are developing partnerships with other non-profit and research organizations that focus on diversity and workplace equity. 

internally, one of our 2 partners is a woman and of Middle Eastern origin. We have already been planning, as we gain resources, how we augment our internal team with additional employees, board members and advisors who are people of color and from underserved communities.

We understand that WM must reflect the people that we aim to positively impact - and that it means everything to walk the walk. This is part of our background and a core part of our business plan.

We're excited about the prospect of being associated with MIT Solve. We've had a relationship with the Good Companies/Good Jobs Initiative and would love to build on that. Getting recognition and possible funding from being considered and/or being a winner would be a bonus! 

We'd like to spend more time researching this to come up with a more thoughtful list of people/institutions that could be most interested in what we're doing and be most impactful on our work/progress

We believe and research indicates that the quality, pay, benefits, and opportunity provided by one's job has a direct impact on the long term health of that worker and their family/dependents. Our focus to improve job quality for all workers, including especially those that have been underrepresented and from under-served communities. Providing better jobs to more people can have direct and positive impact on these people and those they live with and among.

A large part of the work done by workforce agencies is skills and other kinds of training. WF has a hard time measuring the outcomes of the training that it funds. We can help with this - which, over time will help to provide more and better training for current and future workers, interns and apprentices.

WM can track "refugees" as a particular cohort, and measure how firms recruit and hire, train and retain these employees, and potentially track this cohort as they progress up the career ladder.

Again, we can track different cohorts of employees - and see how they progress in terms of digital training and job level.

WM is focused on improving inclusive work and equity for women and tracking their progress within companies. See above.

See above.