Creating a vibrant local economy
Businesses perform better when people like their jobs because employees who feel they’re being compensated fairly and treated with respect are more productive and stay longer.
Building trust with your community
Job quality is an issue that can bring many stakeholders to the table to engage, learn from each other, and create lasting change.
Attracting financial resources to support your important work
The federal government and many states and philanthropic organizations are including requirements and criteria related to job quality in their grant opportunities.
Keeping up with and staying relevant within a quickly changing economy
Job quality has an important role in a number of issues that are high priorities in today’s economy, whether it’s workers demanding higher wages and better benefits, employers seeking new strategies to improve retention rates, or new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) changing people’s relationships with work.
Using powerful data to inform decision-making and influence stakeholders
An emphasis on job quality, not just quantity, can help workforce and education leaders move beyond historical metrics of success, think deeper, and find more effective ways to support workers and learners.
Why JFF?
We have embraced an ambitious goal as our North Star: By 2033, 75 million people facing systemic barriers to advancement will work in quality jobs. We can’t do it alone. We need your help to reach this goal, together.
Our Approach: Community Co-Design of Quality Jobs
As workforce leaders ourselves, we’re learning how to identify and confront the inequities baked into longstanding policies, procedures, and practices. As part of this shift, we recognize that the ongoing evolution of the labor market has left current models of training people and connecting them to jobs incapable of meeting the needs of workers and learners in the communities we serve. For that reason, JFF is collaborating with community leaders to develop and implement new approaches grounded in human-centered design and worker voice.
Community-Informed Research
We believe that it’s imperative to partner with workers to explore and identify what job quality means to them. In the same way that worker voice encourages practitioners to involve people most impacted by decisions to be involved in the research and development process, JFF is committed to engaging community members—the people closest to the problems—to define job quality in a clear and impactful way and identify concrete, tangible approaches for improving it in ways that reflect the needs of specific communities.
Community-Wide Strategic Alignment
Advancing job quality in your community requires an engaged, empowered, and diverse coalition of leaders and other stakeholders. It’s not a task that one organization can take on alone. JFF can unite partners around a shared definition, common goals, and a preliminary strategy to gain community-wide traction, build effective partnerships, advance policy, and secure the funding required to take action on key job quality priorities.
Iteration and Prototyping
There’s no one-size-fits-all model for implementing job quality initiatives. Iteration is a critical principle in this work. Rapid prototyping not only helps reduce costs but also allows leaders to fail fast and pivot to test better solutions quickly.
JFF recommends an approach similar to the one illustrated in this graphic, which is based on the Nielsen Norman Group’s Double Diamond model:
Source: Nielsen Norman Group. For more information, see “The Discovery Phase in UX Projects” at NNGroup.com.
Defining Quality Job Components
In 2023, JFF developed a framework providing a comprehensive definition of a quality job that highlights what all workers deserve in addition to good pay and benefits—the flexibility, autonomy, stability, and advancement opportunities that are essential for people to thrive.
One thing is clear: Employers must provide for their employees’ most basic needs, and that starts with offering fair and equitable compensation, which means paying all workers a living wage that enables them to comfortably support themselves and their dependents at the local cost of living in their communities.
In addition to compensation, the JFF Quality Jobs Framework identifies three other elements that are essential components of a quality job and a quality workplace: advancement, structure, and agency and culture.
Compensation
Advancement
Agency & Culture
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Upon entering the Job Quality Academy, EmployIndy—which provides workforce services to residents of Indiana’s Marion County—initially focused on expanding career pathways in the local construction industry. With an emphasis on advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in the industry and a goal of promoting quality job principles and creating new skill-building and career advancement opportunities, the organization prioritized programs for 18-to-30-year-olds who are members of populations that are underrepresented in the construction workforce. |
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Through collaboration with partners, team members realized that four critical subsectors of the industry—HVAC, carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work—presented their own unique challenges and required tailored solutions. The consensus was that alignment among regional leaders would be required to effectively address sector-specific disparities. For their next steps, the EmployIndy team will undertake a thorough review of existing adult education models to determine whether local enhancements are necessary. They will also assess whether additional resources will be required to expand programs and identify new partners that should be involved to help advance these objectives. EmployIndy’s work illustrates that regional alignment, ongoing evaluation, and an iterative approach are crucial for addressing the industry’s evolving needs for education and training and catalyzing creation of quality jobs in the region. |
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The Kentucky Workforce Innovation Board undertook participatory research efforts to reach out to and engage stakeholders from across the learn and work ecosystem. This included organizing a statewide listening tour to gather insights from a wide range of partners, including employers, public officials, and workers. |
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Through this collaborative approach, the team was able to identify essential themes to address in strategic state plans, and they’ve effectively incorporated a variety of perspectives into their work. To further broaden community engagement, the team invites stakeholders to “Job Quality Champions” meetings, which have featured vibrant discussions on topics like employer recognition of credentials employees have earned. By thoroughly preparing for and welcoming a breadth of contributions, the team has made significant strides in efforts to promote job quality and fostered a collective sense of ownership of job quality principles among many interested partners. The Kentucky Workforce Innovation Board ultimately identified small and midsize manufacturers as the primary market to focus on, and it will be exploring ways to develop tools that can help educate employers about the elements of quality jobs. |
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The Pennsylvania State Workforce Board integrated principles from the JFF Quality Jobs Framework into its state-level request for proposals (RFP) from organizations interested in securing industry partnership grants to support efforts to promote quality jobs. |
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Many members of the Job Quality Academy team, who also influence state policy, played key roles in promoting the framework’s four core tenets: compensation, advancement, agency and culture, and structure. Proposals that incorporated those elements received additional points, reinforcing the state’s commitment to embedding the importance of job quality into the public-sector procurement process to ensure that potential contractors are committed to offering their workers quality jobs. |
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Two teams from the Pacific Northwest—Washington’s Workforce Snohomish and the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission—joined forces because they discovered that had both decided to focus on the same industries—construction, manufacturing, information technology, and health care—and were working with many of the same regional stakeholders. |
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A leader at Workforce Southwest Washington—a Vancouver, Washington-based workforce development office that serves stakeholders in both states—emerged as a crucial liaison between the two teams, effectively uniting organizations from across the state line with similar goals and ecosystems. With a broad network of cross-state partners, Workforce Southwest Washington helped to foster a collaborative and impactful coalition of organizations and agencies. What’s more, the key focus of this cross-state alliance is now to jointly promote job quality work, with plans to use the levers of policy and empowerment to achieve their aims. |
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