Transcript — Advising Small Businesses on Job Quality: Lessons from CDFIs

The following transcript comes from our webinar, “Advising Small Businesses on Job Quality: Lessons from CDFIs.” For more information, including video, audio, speaker bios, and additional resources, click here.

Maureen Conway 0:05

Good afternoon and welcome. I’m Maureen Conway, and I lead the Economic Opportunities Program at the Aspen Institute, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to today’s conversation, Advising Small Businesses on Job Quality: Lessons from CDFI. This conversation is part of our Job Quality in Practice series, in which we highlight practical strategies organizations can use to address the biggest economic opportunity challenge we have today, which is fixing work so that all jobs are good jobs. Before we start, let’s do a quick review of our technology for those joining via Zoom. All everybody joining us today is muted. Please use the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen to submit and upvote questions. We’d love to get your questions so please do that throughout the webinar. Please share your perspective, ideas, examples, resources and experience related to today’s conversation in the chat, we know many of you have a lot of experience, and we’d love to hear what’s going on in your world. Also, please do take a moment to respond to our quick feedback survey, which will pop up when you leave today’s event, we’d love to get your feedback. We also encourage you to post on your social media platform of choice. Our hashtag is job quality. If you have any technical issues during the webinar, please say something in the chat, or you can send us an email at [email protected] This event is being recorded and will be posted on our website and shared via email. Also. Closed Captions are available. Please use the CC button at the bottom of your screen if you would like to activate them. Just before we start, I want to say a couple words about how we how we came to this event. In 2022 with the generous support of the Gates Foundation, the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program launched shared success financial intermediary strategies to advance job quality, equity and small business prosperity. The demonstration supports 11 unique community development finance institutions, or CDFIs, to integrate job quality into their services for small businesses. The shared success CDFIs hail from across the country. They work with small businesses in a variety of industries. They operate in urban, suburban and rural settings, and over the past three years, they’ve really pursued strategies that are very tailored to the specific businesses that they work with, the specific geographies and institutional context in which they operate. And they’ve but they’ve done different things, but in pursuit of a common goal to improve the quality of jobs for workers and build stronger, more resilient businesses. We have been learning a lot over these three years about practice, about outcomes, and a whole lot of things. And you can learn more about the CDFIs, what they’ve been doing, what we’ve been learning. If you go to our website, you can find it at as.pn/sharedsuccess. But the key thing I want to say today is that a key takeaway from the work is that small businesses really can make meaningful job quality improvements. They really can make improvements in ways that strengthen their businesses, and that CDFIs can really play a very powerful role in helping these businesses take steps to build both good jobs and good businesses. We believe a number of the lessons we’ve learned from the CDFIs about how to do this work could be useful to a wide range of organizations. So that’s why we’ve developed the toolkit that we’ll be highlighting today and let me just say a little bit how we’re going to how we’re going to run this. So in a minute, I’m going to turn everything over to my colleague, Bryn Morgan. Brynn is a senior research associate with the Economic Opportunities Program, and she’s really been the lead person in pulling the toolkit together, in soliciting ideas and and insights from the from the CDFIs, and synthesizing them into the toolkit that we have today. So really grateful for her contributions and her work on this effort. And so I’m going to turn it over to Bryn, and she’s going to provide a quick overview of the toolkit, and then we’re going to welcome three CDFI leaders, and she’s going to moderate a conversation with them. And then, as I mentioned, those questions, we’re going to have some time for Q and A at the end of the webinar. So before I turn things over to Bryn, though, we want to learn a little bit about who’s joining us today. Okay, so we have a little poll, which I’m hoping it’s going to launch, but I don’t know how things are working with the poll. So it’s the poll up, because we are hoping people can say what kind of organization you are and what you focus on. Okay, so while people are responding, I guess I can turn things over to Bryn and we can share who’s who’s with us today.

Bryn Morgan 5:53

Thank you Maureen and thank you all for responding to that poll. My name is Bryn Morgan, and I am a Senior Research Associate at the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program. I’m really excited to be able to share with you all today the Job Quality Advising Guide that we’ve been working on over the last few years, and also moderate a conversation with leaders from three organizations that have been a part of the shared success demonstration. Hoping to pull up some slides now. Before we dive into our panel conversation, I just wanted to give a quick overview of the guide itself. This is titled, building shared success, a guide to small business job quality advising for CDFIs. Next slide. So this guide is meant to be a tool for advisors to really integrate a job quality lens into their existing conversations that they’re having with small business owners. Its focus ultimately is on demonstrating how improving job quality can help business owners achieve their business goals, recognizing that many people come to this work with really different perspectives and understandings, the guide begins with background information on job quality. It starts by making the case on why job quality is important, especially for small businesses. It also details the role that CDFIs and other small business supporting organizations can play given their existing services and mission orientation. While the guide is meant to be used by small business advisors or coaches, it does really forefront the perspective of small business owners in this work. Next slide. So and now to share a little bit more about how this guide came to be, as Maureen mentioned as part of the shared success demonstration, this tool was developed by our team in collaboration with the 11 CDFI grantees involved in the demonstration. After coming to recognize that job quality work really fits within the small business advising that CDFIs were already doing, we recognized the need for this tool to further support advisors, especially for those that were a little less familiar with job quality. So we designed an iterative and really collaborative process with all 11 CDFIs who contribute to the guide in various different ways. They offered feedback, insights, lessons learned, and even their own tools to help build this guide out. For some organizations, especially those more experienced with job quality, we thought of the tool as really a great way to elevate their expertise and share it with other organizations in the demonstration and beyond. Next slide. So the tool itself is a step by step guide on how to integrate job quality lens into conversations with advisors, conversations advisors are having with their clients. It’s broken into seven main steps, which you can see detailed on the slide here. The tool suggests starting with identifying the business owners motivation and goals. Our research has shown that many small business owners want to have a sense of autonomy and control in their business as well as a positive impact with their communities. So by starting with these types of motivations and goals, you can really build trust and buy in with business owners. Job quality can then be positioned to address these motivations, as well as other common challenges that small business owners may face, such as hiring and retention. And while financials are, of course, always important, as we know, we also found that starting with them can can be a bit alienating. So in the guide, we suggest that discussing finances should not be the first part of the conversation on job quality, and really should be tailored to what the business owner’s level of trust and approach to money. In step two, we suggest focusing in on where poor job quality could surface as a cost, such as in lost sales, unplanned labor or low productivity. In step three, we offer insights on how to begin to open the business owner’s mindset to employee perspectives and needs. A business owner can really take a lot of different approaches to learn more about their employees priorities, but we know that the success of job quality advising really does depend on understanding employee perspectives and what they would value. Then, using the information from the first three steps, step four guides, advisors in suggesting which job quality improvements would be the most value and fit for this specific business. As a part of this conversation, the guide then emphasizes how to continue to demonstrate how job quality changes align with the business owner’s goals. In step five. In step six, the guide offers ways to assess outcomes and improvements in simple, timely and credible ways, with information the business owner already collects and values. And then lastly, in step seven, there’s guidance on continuing to have check ins and conversations, to build on progress, to measure the value of improvements in the longer term and to explore further job quality improvements. This step really recognizes that there is not a significant end goal, but job quality is a continuous process. Next slide. So there are many different elements in the guide, as we wanted to make it as comprehensive as possible. Throughout the step, the guide includes research on job quality, question banks that advisors can use and customize for conversations with clients, and an appendix with further resources as well. Additionally, to help identify many of the various ways that job quality can be addressed, the tool uses six areas for potential job quality improvements throughout. These are hiring and onboarding, compensation benefits, workplace culture, employee development, advancement and operations. Throughout the guide, there are also a few small business client success stories which have which we found have been really powerful, both for small business advisors and for clients to help make the case and show that this work is both possible and really good for business. The guide also includes shared success grantees, resources themselves, such as Coastal Enterprises, cost of turnover calculator and ICA funds, good employer matrix, among others. And of course, while the guide is meant to be comprehensive, it is by no means a one size fits all model. The guide is meant to be adapted and changed to the specific style of the advisor as well as the clients they are working with. Throughout the guide, there are small tips on how this might be done, and we’re continuing to build out that content. Next slide. So on that note, we are considering this version of the guide to be a beta version. We’re still collecting insights and feedback from folks on how to improve it through the end of September 2025 and we invite you to take a look and review and even try out using the guide. After the webinar today, we will be following up with you all in the coming months, and we do really hope to hear any insights or stories that you may have. So now to learn a little bit more about the Job Quality Advising Guide and what job quality advising can look like in practice, I would like to begin our panel discussion. As we transition, we’re hoping to do another quick poll in zoom as we’d love to continue to hear from you. When we want launched the shared success demonstration, we recruited a diverse range of CDFIs, so I’m just beginning to learn about or work on job quality and others who had really defined practices and were using the demonstration to refine or expand these existing practices. So we’re wondering, where do you think your organization is with its job quality work today? So if you can take a moment and respond to the poll, that would be great. Thank you for sharing those responses with us. I hope that worked well.

Bryn Morgan 14:12

For our panel, I’m really happy to be here today with three phenomenal speakers. Cynthia Murphy, the Senior Program Director of Workforce at Coastal Enterprises Inc, based in Maine. Amanda Blondeau, Chief Strategy Officer at Northern Initiatives, located in Michigan and Delphine Ntegeye, a loan officer and business advisor at African Development Center based in Minnesota. Welcome. Thank you all for being here today.

Cynthia Murphy 14:17

Thank you for having us

Bryn Morgan 14:18

So each of you have been a part of this shared success demonstration over the last three years. When you all joined this demonstration, you are in different places in implementing and integrating job quality into your small business support. So I’d like to start the conversation today by asking each of you to briefly introduce yourselves and your organization along with your work on job quality. Cynthia, Coastal Enterprises really has been a leader in the field in terms of job quality for a while. Now, I’m wondering if you could get us started and share a little bit more about CEI and how you work to advance job quality.

Cynthia Murphy 14:27

Yeah, thanks so much for hosting us today. Bryn, I’m happy to be here. So as Bryn said, we tend to be known as CEI and we are, we’re based in Maine. We’re working to build a just, vibrant and climate resilient future for people and communities in Maine, and through our subsidiaries, we work in more rural regions across the country. We do our work by integrating finance, business expertise and policy solutions in ways that make the economy work more equitably. Our good jobs work as as we refer to our job quality. Work has been central to CEI mission since our first loan to a fish processing plant on the coast of Maine, nearly 50 years ago, about seven years ago, we significantly enhanced our program, and we’re continually refining our work, as we’ll be able to talk about today. I think a few key points to know about the CEI Good Jobs work is that our approach starts from the business owner’s perspective, and we only recommend ideas that are mutually beneficial, ideas that are good for the business, that we think will improve the profit, and ideas that will improve job quality. As we’ll talk around talk about during the next few minutes, we’ve integrated job quality throughout the experience of that our borrower has with us. So starting with diligence, we’re assessing the nature of existing and plan jobs through pricing and to post closing advising. In addition, our business advisors, who are located around the state, work individually with clients who have questions about how to attract employees, how to retain employees, and they’re weaving that into their general business, advising and then finally, investing in quality jobs is at the core of the model for two of our subsidiaries, our new markets subsidiary and our venture subsidiary.

Bryn Morgan 18:02

Thank you, Amanda, or sorry, thank you. Cynthia, Amanda, turning to you next, I know job quality has been on your radar before you launched the demonstration, especially if you were one of our job quality fellows in the past. Could you share a little bit more about Northern Initiatives and how you’ve been incorporating a focus on job quality?

Amanda Blondeau 18:24

Definitely it’s great to be here. So Northern Initiatives is a community development financial institution based in Michigan. We focus on providing money and know how to small businesses that are looking to start and grow, that they’re creating jobs and helping their communities to thrive. So it’s really in our mission, and we’ve been tracking creating and retaining jobs that wanted to think about. But what are those jobs actually look like? And so when I got to be a part of the job quality Aspen fellowship in 2018 and 2019 I got to delve in a lot more. Got to hear from Workforce Development. I got to hear from other types of organizations on how they were thinking of this, if it’s employee ownership, and it really, it really sparked something in me to dig a little bit deeper. But I came back with all this knowledge, and was trying to think about, how do you bring that back into the organization? Because they’re also be like, Oh, she came back with another exciting thing, but wanted to actually be part of our organization. So when this came around, the job quality demonstration, I already have this in the back of my mind. We’ve been talking about it. Our President had, actually, we had a newer president, Alyssa Sangalli, that joined us in 2020 and prior to Northern Initiatives, she focused in on B Corps and really measuring impact with which quality work is actually a component of that. So this was this opportunity to kind of bring these two, our two passions together and knowledge. And think about, how do we actually make this part of our DNA at Northern Initiatives? And so we focused more on our advising is we have one on one and we use our initiate platform. We call it blended learning. So it’s a mix of one on one classes and self directed learning, online learning, but we really focused in two areas. First is awareness, just being both in our team, and how do we start to talk about this? Because job quality a lot of times, the first thought was, well, it’s benefits. Well, we know that at some point that’s you, you know, maybe you can’t start there. That’s a great thing to be able to offer, but it is also continuum. So what else is included? Also being able to just lift up small businesses in the community. Can say, oh, that coffee shop, and we’ve shared through our demonstration Cafe Rica, who’s out of Battle Creek. They are coffee shop that are creating good jobs and are investing in our people. It’s not just really large corporations, so wanting to bring that in so people can also see themselves in that opportunity. And then the other part was support. Through our individual coaching, bringing in experts to be able to help with HR specific questions, and as well as developing additional tools that our team can use and others can use as well.

Bryn Morgan 21:30

Thank you so much. Amanda Delphine, turning to you next, I know in some ways, job quality was newer to your organization and that it’s been a bit of a learning process to build out staff knowledge on job quality. Can you tell us a little bit more about African Development Center and the work you’ve been doing on job quality with your clients?

Delphine Ntegeye 21:53

Absolutely, for everyone, my name is Delphine Ntegeye. I am a loan officer business advisor here at the African Development Center in Minnesota. Currently launch a branch in Nevada as well. We have noticed an increase of immigrant population in the state of Nevada that have faced disparities when it comes to financial education, creating good job quality as well, and we felt that it was a good approach to advance to Nevada as well. I’ve been with the organization for the past two and a half years. I came in after the project had already launched. My first approach was to dive deeper and understand the purpose of the project as well as to how it can be a useful tool to our immigrant population here in Minnesota and the small businesses that we serve. I quickly came to realize that even though it’s not structurally built for that direct population, but there are ways we can navigate the provided information and fit it in within our community. We had already started our technical support process. We figured that by implementing good job quality questions within our intake procedure, we will be able to address the good job quality elements within the entire process of the lending procedure, be financial education all the way to loan servicing, even at the end of the long term. The best way that we’ve been able to utilize good job quality has been to inform every team member of what the importance of it, of this job quality is. And we don’t directly use good job quality directly to a client. We put it in a way that is malleable to to their understanding. It’s not that they’re stupid, it’s just that they come with different priorities that are not necessarily related to good job quality. We think that approach has been really helpful, and we have seen some tremendous change within our population.

Bryn Morgan 24:16

Great. Thank you. I really appreciate you talking about how you bring this to your clients and make it really relevant to them. I think each of your organizations does that in its own way. I want to start to dive in a little bit more into how you all have been contributing to building out the job quality Advising Guide, and also been using it in unique ways in your organization, I’d love to have you share more about what job quality advising really looks like in your organizations, and how you’ve been using the guide as a tool to support that work. Cynthia as an organization with an existing robust practice on job quality I want to start with you.

Cynthia Murphy 25:02

Yeah, sure. Great question. Bryn, I really love what Delphine was saying about starting from where the business owner is. We think that that’s such a key to success. We also thought that it was important that we established a framework that we could operate within. And so seven years ago, we did come up with a definition and a framework that we use to assess the quality of jobs. And so that’s our internal jargon. And as Delphine said, it’s not the way that we we frame our conversations, necessarily, when when we’re working with our clients. So this good jobs framework we use to assess opportunities during diligence. The outcome of that is our good job scorecard. And you’ll find some of these tools in the guide that Bryn has has kindly given us an overview of. And at the we should I should also say that a key part of what we do is, at every loan closing, we’re measuring where is this particular business on our good jobs framework, and then annually, we do a formal check in to understand what progress we’re making across the entire portfolio. So we’re working at a very micro level with individual businesses on where we see opportunities, and then measuring that at a high level. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the guide, because you know what, Bryn, I wish this had been around when I started at CEI and we really bolstered our good jobs program seven years ago. There are a few things that I think are just fantastic, and I’d love to highlight those here. First, even for an organization like ours that has been working with businesses that we invest in on job quality, this is a fantastic onboarding tool for new employees. It gives them a great overview, and so much of the methodology that you articulated is aligned with with what we do. I especially appreciate the realistic point of view, because I had to learn that. I didn’t quite understand that when I started, that not every business would really be a fit for a good jobs advising session, and you acknowledge that right out there, front or very early on, about exactly what Delphine was talking about, not using jargon with the clients. And it took me a while to get to get to that point. So I was so, you know, grateful to see how you’ve taken care and time to build that in. But hands down, for me, in the guide, my absolute best feature, I call them conversation starters. So Bryn calls them a question bank. And if you’re stuck on how to think about addressing an issue or opening up a conversation, boy, you cannot get better than that section of the guide. And I would be really remiss if I didn’t talk about all the fantastic examples that are in there from colleagues all across the country. I was so excited to be able to see those and think about how we can adapt those for our practice in Maine,

Bryn Morgan 28:23

Thank you, Cynthia, it’s really, really wonderful to hear how helpful the guide has been and all the positive reactions. Amanda, I’m wondering if you could share a little bit more about your advising practice at Northern Initiatives and how you’ve been using the guide with staff members and other stakeholders.

Amanda Blondeau 28:44

Definitely, previously I’d mentioned at other initiatives, we have this blended learning approach, and what we really like to do is to pull together these tools that are best practices, that are the common questions that entrepreneurs have. So when we, you know, we have an online platform that we have those we also leverage others. And so when we started the our shared success, I we actually started with a question bank, which is one of Aspen’s resources, which is reflected in this. It’s kind of funny that, you know, Cynthia brought that up too, because I was like, Oh, I was going to talk about that! Because it is about starting the conversation, because otherwise it’s like, well, how good is your job? Or like, you want to open up, like, tell me about what it’s like to work at your company. What would they say? And so that’s those kind of tools, is what we started to leverage with that, though, we pair our advisors, our advisors, I would say our guides. They sit down with the entrepreneur. We have a tool that we use. It’s called a self assessment tool, where that small businesses rate themselves around, where are they at for understanding around money, marketing and management, and we’ve incorporated in. Questions that are tied to job quality, not saying job quality either. We’re all using our own language. What are the things we hear as the pain from entrepreneurs, finding good people, keeping good people, so thinking about some of those key elements of where you know they might have those challenges. So we’ve, we’ve adjusted that. And then our our advisors, our business coaches, they work with that entrepreneur to see where are you at? What are the goals for your business? And let’s see how we work through that, because this is a continuum, start, where you can right now and then let’s plan for the future. Just like a cash flow plan which part of this does incorporate into your cash flow. Let’s plan for the future with the Business Advising Guide. We’ve actually been a part of that from the beginning, you know, giving feedback, just like the other others from the demonstration. So we’ve been able to test this as we’ve gone along. It’s helped to shape some of the additional resources we’ve been creating in ways that we’ve had conversations and we’re digging even deeper in. So we’ve we have this beta version now, which has had many iterations. In a most recent staff retreat Israel, who is our Director of Business Services, he sat down with his whole team, the business coaching team, and they went through this Advising Guide, and then they’re actually going to have follow up meetings, kind of piecing this apart and talking about how they’re implementing, gathering feedback, what’s working, what’s not. So we’re excited to dig, dig even deeper.

Bryn Morgan 31:34

Great Amanda, we definitely are too, and wanted to just be sure to kind of highlight a little bit maybe have you talk a little bit more about how you’ve been using the guide as you built out your own resources on your platform initiate, which you’ve already mentioned, maybe just giving folks a little bit of flavor of kind of what those resources are and what topics they might cover,

Amanda Blondeau 31:57

Definitely, actually, when we started working as a group on the Advising Guide, it really focused on what are the key categories that we’re hearing and so it’s hiring and onboarding, compensation, benefits and perks. We will add that in too. Workplace culture, employee development and advancement and operations. So from that, we developed a good jobs inventory, and this was in partnership with the Aspen Institute. And all of the demonstration partners as well have been giving us feedback that look through each of those areas, it’s an area that you can use. It’s a tool that can be utilized with small businesses, and they can take this whenever they want. Where am I at today? Where do I want to go and continue to assess helps also create a video, because I know the other she was just like, What is this? Why is it important for my business? How can it help, not starting with the money part. Even though we, you know, as financial institutions, we’re always going to be talking a bit about money, but we really talk about why this is a good, good for the business, for their business, for the for their employees and for the community. And then had some other resources around hiring, onboarding, building trust, thinking about how you connect with workers and so that the Advising Guide and all of the analysis and conversations and feedback have helped to develop tools that are going to be available to everybody, to be able to use with small businesses in your advising program.

Bryn Morgan 33:41

Thanks. Amanda, yeah, definitely encourage people to check out those tools as well. I think as we look to review the guide, we are definitely going to be really intentional about kind of how those tools sit within this larger Advising Guide. So really excited about that work. Delphine, turning back to you, would love to hear a little bit more about how ADC has been using the Advising Guide, and especially how you’ve been thinking about it to train an onboard staff on your team.

Delphine Ntegeye 34:13

Absolutely, the tool has been very crucial in just providing an overall understanding to all the team members to be able to understand good job quality at its core, but also be able to tailor it to each client individually when they’re working with them. You know, the way we have implemented the process is, you know, first time ever hearing about good job quality. We give you the tool. Have a summary, but we have also taken the job quality elements and highlighted areas that we want to we want to focus on with within our community and our clients. And we understand the whole entire element may work for a specific organization as a whole, but considering that we are targeting different priorities at this time within the members that we serve, we have zoned it into specific areas that we think will be beneficial to all the business owners that that we serve. So the toolkit is just has been an internal tool to help us understand and further develop skills to actually help the clients that we are working with.

Bryn Morgan 35:29

That’s great. Thank you so much for sharing that. So as we all know, this work definitely can be challenging. It’s it’s not linear, and there are a lot of barriers that small businesses can face when making changes to their business and really addressing job quality. So I’m wondering if you all can share about a challenge you have had with your job quality work, and how the Advising Guide or other tools have helped you overcome that challenge. Delphine, I want to turn it back to you. Can you share more about some some challenges or a challenge you’ve had, and how tools and resources have supported your team to be able to advise on job quality?

Delphine Ntegeye 36:15

Yes, absolutely. So the biggest challenge was to get our client to actually see the importance of good job quality. Again, remember, we are now calling it good job quality. They will come with a specific issue, and our approach has been to give them real life examples of a person they may know or may have some connection with, and try to drive what impact it should it could cause to their business if they do not follow these specific steps, for instance. So it has been, you know, a learning curve for even us. Internally, we have a large diverse group of team with very large backgrounds, you know, within different parts of the world, and having you know our clients be a very diverse demographic as well, has been really challenging to try and fit each approach differently. If I’m speaking with an individual, for instance, from Northern Africa, it will be a different approach. If I’m speaking from someone from Central Africa, you know that has been a challenge, trying to be malleable and adapt to circumstances as they come.

Bryn Morgan 37:31

Yeah, definitely, this is something we continue to struggle with as we built out the guide as well. Right? Is that there are certain things we want to create common language and understanding for and at the same time, it really is really unique to each person you’re you’re having a conversation with.

Delphine Ntegeye 37:48

I would say you guys have done an overall overview of the whole entire program that it has given us, you know, the individual that I’ve been in the country within this work, the knowledge to be able to interpret it differently to the people we are interacting with. So I would say the work is wonderful. It’s great for the professionals, not necessarily for the clients.

Bryn Morgan 38:12

Yeah, thank you for that. Amanda, turning to you when, when we spoke earlier, you mentioned how you’re working to build job quality really into the DNA of Northern Initiatives. Ideally, so that if you, or your primary colleagues who work on job quality left the organization, which, of course, we hope doesn’t happen, the work would still be able to continue. So I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you’re going about that process and the role that tools play, like the Advising Guide to do that kind of work.

Amanda Blondeau 38:53

Yeah, this has been our focus, especially for the last year. I mean, as we started the demonstration, wanted to think, how do we build this in? We brought more people to be champions into this program, but wanted to be part of the DNA, and so that a big part is we’re building it into the tools we use with our entrepreneurs every day that are part of our standard process. So that’s the first part. Let’s start the conversation. We actually had mentioned the self assessment earlier that we have entrepreneurs go through around money, marketing and management, and we really built that first by these are the things that many of us as advisors, and I, my background, I was an advisor, and focus a lot around IT. I’d ask a lot about their technology, maybe not as much about the break even or their marketing strategy. So this gave us all a common language that we could have and make sure that we’re touching those key pieces. And so by adding that into the job or into that that tool, it already starts at the beginning when we connect with entrepreneurs. But then that’s great that now we know where they’re at. How do we actually move the needle? How do we support small businesses? And so that’s where things like the job quality Advising Guide comes in. You know, question banks, the good job inventory, because we all need tools of like, how do I now implement and how can I actually use this with the entrepreneur? And as you know, we’ve been lucky. We don’t we haven’t had any turnover with the coaches. We’ve had a great coaching team that’s been with us for some time. But if we brought on new coaches, I definitely would have them go through that to understand, to get the background, to really know what, why are we doing this? I think is a really important piece, too. Instead of, hey, we just do this. Yes, it’s part of our DNA, but also having that understanding about how we do that, or why we do this, and how we do implement in our organization. So I’m feeling very excited about this, and that will this work will continue even if I’m not there, but I’m not planning to go anywhere.

Bryn Morgan 41:09

That’s great. Thank you. You’re definitely really excited to keep learning from and alongside you all in this work. Cynthia, I’m wondering if you can share more about how tools and resources like the Advising Guide can address challenges with this work, and maybe how that’s evolved for you and your organization since you started integrating job quality into your work many years ago.

Cynthia Murphy 41:33

Yeah, great question, Bryn and I think that to kick this off, I’d really like to elevate what Delphine and Amanda were just talking about. I heard Delphine use words like malleable and adaptability. And I just heard Amanda talking about, how can we use the tools with entrepreneurs? So how do we make a difference in in the way that an entrepreneur is thinking, or the way that they’re investing money that they have to improve the quality of jobs? And I think that’s really at the heart of the way that we look at using tools as well. I would also say that the guide is packed with tools, right, as we’ve talked about, and we’ve highlighted some of those here today. And if one of those tools doesn’t exactly hit the mark for you, that’s okay. Know who your clients are, know your market, take those tools and adapt them for what works in your community and with your clients. I’ll give you a very quick example about that back when I started this work, seven years ago, and one of the very first clients who I was working with was trying to convince them to make some changes that I thought would reduce their number of people who were quitting in these entry level jobs. And I could tell this was an owner who was very focused on the financials, and I knew that there were very good and detailed cost of turnover calculators that were available, and when I looked at those, there were so many cells to enter information in. And I thought, this guy is super impatient. He wants to get back and run his business, and he wants to reduce the number of people who are quitting. And so how can I talk to him about taking some of the money that he is spending when he has to replace workers, both hard costs and soft costs, and how can I get him to reinvest that? And so that’s where I developed the cost of turnover calculator that Bryn mentioned at the top of the call. It is a back of the envelope looking for a high level number that you can get to with a business owner just filling in three data points and asking them, what of that money that they are spending today to to resolve their turnover issue, what would they be willing to invest to reduce that number? So I think the lesson is, use the guide. Find things you like, but you don’t have to love them, because you can change them.

Bryn Morgan 44:05

Thank you, Cynthia. I definitely want to elevate the toss of turnover tool from CEI as well. It’s, it’s a really great tool, and it’s tailored to small businesses, so super usable for folks, I think, will be linked in the chat. But yeah. Thank you all for sharing those insights. As I mentioned at the start, this current version of the guide is a beta version, and we are still collecting feedback on what works well, what might be challenging, and what is missing in the guide. So we’d love to hear feedback from you all. In the chat, you’ll be able to find links to both the guide itself and to our feedback form. So far, we’ve heard feedback. I mean, heard more today, so definitely will be incorporating that into our revisions, but we’ve heard feedback on ways to make the guide more accessible to business advisors. That it might be helpful to add additional links to further resources and tools, detailing guidance on industry specific considerations. We know different businesses and different industries have really different mindsets and priorities, and then also adding more content about language that really resonates with small business owners. We know that’s continues to be a challenge. So as we look forward to continue to hear from you all in the coming months, we really would love for you to review or use the guide and encourage you to reach out with your thoughts. Before I go into my next question, I also just want to quickly remind folks that you can please submit any questions you may have using the Q and A feature on Zoom. We will be opening it up to audience questions shortly. And now, as we think about using the Advising Guide to support job quality practice, as well as testing and revising it for panelists, I would love to hear in a bit of a lightning round to ensure we have enough time for audience Q and A. First, what is one thing you want the audience to remember about job quality work? And then, what is one comment for me you would like me to keep in mind as I begin revisions on the guide. Delphine? Let’s, let’s start with you.

Delphine Ntegeye 46:26

I would say one thing to remember, good job quality is not about checking, you know, a check box. It’s about truly understanding the work and the impact it brings within your society or community as a whole. As for one thing that I would like you to think about. It’s regardless on whether the job quality might not fit within a demographic, I would say it has great impact in terms of if it gets in the hands of the right people that can easily interpret it to be able to adopt it as a whole, even to a larger scale, other than just our community, I would say, so. Great job. Bryn.

Bryn Morgan 47:11

Thank you, Delphine. Appreciate it. Amanda, turning it to you now, what is one takeaway you’d like the audience to leave with about job quality work, and one takeaway you want me to leave with on the guide.

Amanda Blondeau 47:29

One takeaway around job quality work is, start small, just start. I know sometimes I overthink. I looked at all the tools. I won’t tell you how many tools I download and my coworkers are on here, they would know and not be surprised. But start with something. And I think the job quality advice, the Advising Guide, other things like just start there. Start with a conversation, and start that internally too. Not only is it what we’re doing with our small businesses that we’re supporting, but what do those jobs look like internally? So I just say, get started. It doesn’t need to be perfect, so let’s have those conversations would be the first takeaway. And I think for me, it’s all about tools. The more we can kind of break out the why and what we can implement and take and edit, that’s that’s always what I’m thinking about. So Bryn, as you kind of look through that, you know, I know there’s, there’s this balance. We want to share the case studies. We have a lot of really good information in there, but how do we balance some of that too.

Bryn Morgan 48:36

Great. Thank you. Amanda, I really, really like the start small. I think that’s something we could all take to heart with everything. Cynthia, I want to turn to you next.

Cynthia Murphy 48:47

Yeah, thanks. So spring boarding from what Amanda said about start small and get started, I would say that CDFIs are uniquely positioned to influence job quality because we’re lending money to businesses, we’re establishing strong relationships, and this is the time for us to be sharing what we know will improve the business performance and job quality. And a tip for you, Bryn, I love your open approach. I love your collaboration. Like Amanda, I’m a bit of a tool junkie, and I think your challenge will be figuring out the balance as Amanda said.

Bryn Morgan 49:32

Thank you, Cynthia, thank you for kind of making the case for CDFIs. We have a lot of other content that we’ve created throughout this demonstration on how CDFIs can be doing this work. So I just really invite you to check out our website and explore what’s out there. Great. I know I do you want to leave a little bit of time at the end here for some audience Q and A. ,If you haven’t already, please submit your questions using the Q and A feature in zoom. We really welcome any question you may have. I am seeing one here related to job quality designations. It is, how does job quality link into certifications and designations for small businesses? And how do you publicly start to recognize that employers in your communities and the value they contribute? I know B Corp was mentioned earlier, so I’m wondering, Amanda, if you might want to start, start us off with this one.

Amanda Blondeau 50:37

Sure, actually, yeah, B Corp, and good for Michigan. We did some partnering with them too, and did some cohorts around it. Was a good jobs cohort in Michigan. They that’s a great organization. What they’re doing is they walk people through, so you start with the SDGs. We were very focused, or, sorry, sustainable development goals. I live in acronym world. If you’re in CDFIs, you do as well. But they start there, and we really focused in on the workforce development through that, it was they went through a cohort, created a plan, and we were able to work with those entrepreneurs afterwards. They also get the stamp of good for Michigan. So it’s a nice marketing as well to show that this company really cares. They’re going above and beyond. Because the B Corp certification, it’s a great path, but it’s not a path for everybody, and maybe or just not right now. So this is another thing that’s very it’s something that can be leveraged at, you know, kind of any level for the entrepreneur. And there are local first type of organizations throughout the United States too. And so that was something, um, that, you know, we like to leverage. And it, I think it’s a really nice marketing opportunity too for small businesses.

Bryn Morgan 52:02

Great. Thank you. Amanda, Delphine or Cynthia. Do you want to jump in here?

Cynthia Murphy 52:08

I think for us, that’s really the next step. I think that figuring out how to recognize businesses that achieve maybe our full definition of job quality is something that we’re still talking about. I think that if we can elevate the public narrative by showing experts who are in businesses that are similar to someone else’s business, can help build the field and move the needle. We’re early stage on that.

Bryn Morgan 52:43

Yeah, it would definitely be great if there is more opportunities for that. I know when I travel myself, I always want to, like, patronize small businesses, and if they had, like, an extra stamp or something that said it’s a job quality business, that would be even more incentive. I think for folks.

Amanda Blondeau 53:02

I think the one thing that it’s just acknowledging that it is that continuum, right and not and sometimes where we have this challenge, where we don’t want to say it’s good or bad, there is a continuum. So I think that’s also that, you know, that balance that we always need to be thinking about as well.

Bryn Morgan 53:21

Thank you, Amanda, yeah, that’s a really important point. We do have another question here that I’m hoping to turn to you all. It’s something that’s come up in, I believe our last in person convening, actually. The question is, are there things in the tool or the panelists experience that talk about how to approach the topic of business, succession and transition with the owner? And if so, does it talk about employee ownership as a great way to transition. Just want to open up here your thoughts, if you have any content related to succession planning, which definitely has come up previously in our group.

Cynthia Murphy 54:12

Yeah, it’s a really important topic, and one that we have dabbled in a bit. I think there’s much more for us to do with that. I think employee ownership for founders who are looking to sell or retire as an option, we think cooperatives, worker cooperatives, is something that we’ve worked on in some sectors. So I think there’s, there’s much more to do and learn here. And the Aspen Institute has had a variety of workshops on transitioning business ownership.

Amanda Blondeau 54:44

I would say we have some tools around. high level, around succession planning, really getting, trying to get entrepreneurs to think about it earlier, instead of okay, now I’m done. What do I do? I want to sell, or does somebody want to take it over? But really thinking about this as early as possible, but it is something like Cynthia said, we’d like to think about more around employee ownership and other other paths as well. So it’s something that we’ve been thinking about, but do not have a detailed program on right now.

Delphine Ntegeye 55:16

Yes, Bryn, with the African Development Center, we it’s something that we introduced initially within our business development classes, curating an exit strategy around your business, but hasn’t implemented. Again, as I stated earlier, we have business owners coming in with different form of priorities, and that never seem to be a concern for them, though. I will say to the state of Minnesota, we have so many free resources that we are able to redirect their question to other free resources.

Bryn Morgan 55:54

Great. Thank you for sharing those thoughts. I know it’s definitely an area we are continuing to explore and work on. Have one last question I’m hoping to pose to you all, maybe another little lightning round. I know job quality advising looks very different depending on the client, but someone has asked what has been your most receptive elevator pitch or introduction to job quality for a small business? So hoping you all can share a short story or just how you might approach this with one of your clients, Delphine. Do you want to get us started?

Delphine Ntegeye 56:31

I said we really don’t introduce it as job quality, right? So initially, we ask them questions to understand what the needs are, and then we are just using those job quality tools to assist them solve the problem. So on their end, they really don’t know they’re involved within job quality, necessarily, but we are talking about it within the process of them being with us. So that’s how we have navigated it. We started, you know, by telling Oh, you’ll be part of the job quality. They’re like, No, no, thank you, without even knowing what’s all about. But having to show them that, you know, retaining employees is very important. Having trusted people that will work with you in the long run to develop and grow your business is very important. Now how do we maintain that momentum going forward?

Cynthia Murphy 57:18

Yeah, I agree completely with Delphine. It’s starting from what is the business owners challenge, and working from there. And as I think I said at the beginning, always introducing ideas that are mutually beneficial, something that’s going to improve business profit and be good for the employees.

Amanda Blondeau 57:46

Echo all of what they said, because it usually comes from that challenge. And when I was an advisor, I just heard it’s really hard to keep good employees. So okay, tell me more. What’s it like to work here? And I wanted to share an exercise that Aspen actually did with the demonstration group, and we’ve done it at Northern Initiatives too, or have started or lifted that up, is tell us about your first job? What was that like? What if you that’s your full time job, you know, and you’re doing that now, and you’re supporting a family. What would that be like? What was good? What would you change? And I think also just reflecting, it’s helping to like, go, what is it like to work here? How does that relate? And I think more with the entrepreneur, just trying to coach. What we learned is the first incentive is not financial. It really is the entrepreneurs went into business because they had a passion. They care about their community. They want to be a leader. And so just trying to be able to pull that out and to have that conversation, to say, well, what really is this? What is it really like to work here? And so those are just some of the things that just try to understand and to connect.

Bryn Morgan 59:05

Thank you, Amanda. I think that’s a perfect note to close on. I know we’re just about at time. Just want to say thank you so much to Cynthia, Amanda and Delphine for being here today and sharing your perspectives and expertise. Really enjoyed learning from you all over the last three years and today, learned even more. Also want to say thank you too to all the shared success grantees who have been integral to this work and building the job quality Advising Guide itself. Also want to thank our audience for your great questions and comments. We definitely will be reaching out in the coming months to continue to collect feedback on the guide and hear stories about how you might be using it in your organizations. Also want to just say, please stay tuned for our next event, Fixing Work: Recent Lessons from the Field on Job Quality, which will be on July 22 where we will share a report on advancing bold solutions to fix work, to ensure every job in our economy is a good job. And then lastly, but certainly not least, just want to thank our team at the Economic Opportunities Program for pulling together today’s event, including my colleagues, Matt Helmer, Tony Mastria, Nora Heffernan, Francis Almodovar, Maya Smith and Maureen Conway or Maureen Conway, apologies and our colleagues at Architex as well. Thank you all so much.