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All In: Student Pathways Forward
This podcast focuses on elevating community college student voices to shape inclusive higher education and workforce development policies, practice and partnerships that create economic mobility.
All In: Student Pathways Forward
Season Two - An Introduction to Job Quality, Maureen Conway, VP and Executive Director of the Aspen Institute's Economic Opportunities Program
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The All In: Student Pathways Forward season two launches with an introductory episode featuring a conversation with Maureen Conway, the Executive Director of the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program. This season will continue to elevate Oregon community college student voices to shape inclusive policies, practice and partnerships, but shifts the discussion to job quality and equity from season one’s focus on student basic needs insecurity. Job quality was a common issue raised by community college students during the first season, and a key motivator for students in returning to college and pursuing postsecondary credentials.
Maureen sets the stage for this season by offering an expansive definition of job quality that is guided by workers and shares more information on the Aspen Institute’s Job Quality Tool Library. She discusses the connections between basic needs insecurity and the lack of quality jobs for students while sharing opportunities community colleges and workforce development agencies have to influence job quality with their employer partners.
The All In: Student Pathways Forward podcast is a part of Oregon’s participation in the National Skills Coalition SkillSPAN network. It can also be found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other podcast sites.
Welcome to the All in Student Halfway Score podcast in which we set up working college students in graduate students. I have a great conversation with Maureen Conway, the Vice President of the Aspen Institute, and Executive Director of the Institute's Economic Opportunities Program, to frame this season's focus on job quality and the role community colleges play in this work. Thanks for listening in. I'd like to welcome my featured guest to the podcast today, Maureen Conway from the Aspen Institute. Maureen is the vice president and also the executive director of Economic Opportunities Programs at the Aspen Institute. Welcome, Maureen, to the All-In Student Pathways Forward podcast today.
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much for having me, Mark.
SPEAKER_01It's really an honor to have you on to set the stage for this season two with a focus on job quality. And I truly can't think of a better individual with the expertise and insights that you have to set the stage in this area.
SPEAKER_00Thanks. Well, it certainly is something that I've been thinking about for many years. So I'm delighted to be here to talk with you about it and hopefully I'll let you get a word in edge-wise.
SPEAKER_01Sounds great. Well, I figured we could start, and I wanted to ask you if you could share a bit more about the Aspen Institute's economic opportunities programs and the work Aspen has led on job quality and equity.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program is one of the longest standing and largest programs at the Aspen Institute, and has always taken a look at the two main ways people access economic opportunity in the United States. And one is through work and one is through business ownership. And so we have two big initiatives that look at that. We have a business ownership initiative and we have a variety of initiatives, the Workforce Strategies Initiative, Upscale America, the Future of Work Initiative, and Good Companies to Good Jobs that are all looking at issues related to work. And recently we've pulled them together into our job quality center of excellence. Because really the goal of all of these things is job quality, right? Is to connect people to good jobs. The ways in which we work at the Economic Opportunities Program, we do a variety of applied research to really see what is happening in different communities to connect people to opportunity, what's working. We've always been very attentive to the issues of race, gender, and place, trying to understand what are those barriers that disproportionately affect certain populations and play an outsized role in who has access to opportunity and who often is shut out of opportunity and how do we diminish those barriers so we have more equitable access to opportunity. So our research has always been attentive to that. We also do a variety of things around leadership development and capacity building and trying to lift up people who are exemplars of strategies. And then we do a variety of public and private dialogue to bring together different perspectives around critical issues relating to economic opportunity and try to see where there's energy to move positive ideas forward. So that's in a nutshell of what we've been doing for many years and looking forward to digging in on questions around job quality.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I appreciate that summary. And it is interesting to hear how all of those programs have been rolled up together, tied to job quality and how important that is for both workers and employers. Thank you for sharing all of that. And I think just as it relates back to this podcast, this introductory episode will really kick off season two of the All in Student Pathways Forward podcast. And the focus will continue to center community college student voices as we did in season one, but whereas season one concentrated on student financial and basic needs and security, season two will concentrate on job quality and equity. And I wanted to ask you if you see a connection between these two important topics within the fields of higher education and workforce development, and how do they both advance racial, gender, and economic equity?
SPEAKER_00Last big question. So the connection of financial and basic needs and security and job quality, in some sense, that's obvious, right? Because we know that many students are workers. We know that there's many jobs that don't pay enough for people to live on. And that's going to result in people having needs and financial insecurity, right? So there's sort of this surface connection that's fairly straightforward, right? So if students had better jobs, they would have less financial insecurity and be better able to support basic needs, right? And obviously, students also package other kinds of support, student loans and grants and so on, right? But the fact that a part-time job for a student, that the minimum wage is about 70% of what it was at its high watermark, and that the jobs that students have really pay less in real terms than they used to, that is actually a problem. So that makes that whole package harder. So I think there is that basic connection of job quality. But I think if you think about job quality in the context of community college students and why community college students are at community college, they're also trying to get somewhere in the labor market. And there's two things we think about regularly with the issues of job quality. One is that it's a barrier in and of itself to advancement, right? Low job quality is a barrier to advancement. You see that all the time in a community college because people leave because they need to work, right? Because the part-time work isn't enough. They need to work full-time, they need to focus on work. And there's also other things about work. They can't manage their hours and their schedules and all of those kinds of things in the class schedule. And because they don't have enough agency and voiceovers how work is structured, they can't manage college and work at the same time. So there's all of these things around low-quality work that can drive people out of college and drive them off advancement pathways, right? That's a problem. And then there's that they're in college trying to get to higher job quality. And if you look at the labor market, it's just been a story of stagnant wages for the most part for a long time. We're in now a moment when maybe wages are going up a bit, but really there's a lot of ground to make up over the past 40 years of wages not really keeping up with economic growth. So I think that improving job quality outside of a college is also making it easier for colleges. If you can expand the target range of jobs that would be things people want to get to, I think that really also makes the work easier. And so one example would be something like in the care industry, right? And we see a lot of care occupations that colleges provide training for in childcare and frontline health care and so on. And many of these jobs are not high-quality jobs. They're important jobs, they're skilled jobs. They do need some advanced training, but they just don't compensate for that. So if we don't address some of these job quality issues, then it makes it harder for colleges to really accomplish what they're trying to do for their students. And then I guess the last thing I would say to connect some of this just for the purposes of thinking about higher education, and I say this to all kinds of actors and workforce development and social service, that all of us need to look more internally at our own operations. You know, often we think, well, we're a public serving institution or we're a nonprofit and we have a mission and we don't really need to think about the quality of jobs within our own organizations. But many of us, if we look a little more closely, we'll find there's work we could do internally to be doing the things we ask companies that we work with to do, to listen to their frontline workers, to understand their experience of work and to think creatively about how they can make that experience better in a way that also makes the organization run better, right? And there's lots and lots of ways organizations can do that, but they have to look for them and want to do them. And then lots of things open up.
SPEAKER_01That's a really good point. I want to stay there and then work backwards, but recognizing that community colleges are large employers in their regions and have a variety of jobs. And those jobs that may be low wage within the community college setting, I would imagine may also struggle with retention for those workers for the same reasons that other employers do in terms of wages, schedule. And then just thinking about some of the best practices we may get into is that desire for employees to have upward mobility that will improve their wages and promotional opportunities. And so colleges within their whole ecosystem of employees have a number of different potential pathways from those entry-level jobs or frontline jobs into other occupations within their colleges. And so I think that's a really good point and consideration as any other workforce development higher education entity concentrating on job quality as we prepare students for those better jobs.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I'll just give you an example. So Walt Tobin, who's the president of Orange Berg Calhoun Technical College in South Carolina. So he's one of our job quality fellows, and he basically started looking at, well, hey, what am I doing within the context of my institution, right? I'm trying to connect my students to good jobs in the community, but what am I doing as a major employer in this community, just like you said. So he looked at some of their janitorial maintenance jobs and looked at the cost of living in the area and said, Yeah, I should just raise the wages for these jobs, right? My starting wage is too low, but also I'm doing all this work to give people apprenticeship pathways outside of the college. What about giving them apprenticeship pathways too? Right. So he did what I like to call the raise the floor and build ladders internally. And I guess where that brings me is when I say job quality, what do I actually mean? So what is job quality, right? And this is a question I get asked a lot because it is somewhat of a complicated question, right? You think, well, it's about wages, but it's not only wages, it's benefits, it's some opportunities to learn and grow. And it's all of those things. And the way I think about it is it's a quality of your job. And in what ways does your job help or hinder you to live the life that you want to live? And that's gonna tell you something about job quality because ultimately that's what it's about. We spend a lot of our lives at our jobs, and our earnings and our experience of work influences all the rest of our life. And so thinking about in what ways does a job make people's lives better, and in what ways does a job maybe diminish people's lives and trying to get rid of the diminishers and expand on the things that make people's lives better, I think is the way to think about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I appreciate you offering up that perspective of how we define job quality in an expansive way. And I was just reflecting on what you were talking about before, as far as the connection between students' basic needs insecurity or financial insecurity with job quality, and that being a reason why students may go back to school, but also a challenge that students may face when they do go back to school because they're working and their schedule may not be set. So one of those help or hinder maybe if you don't have an established set schedule, it's really hard then to sign up for classes that are certain times during the week that prevents someone from building their skills for a better job. And I also am just reflecting back on students I've had the chance to interview in our first season. And for example, one who was in a field where they were working 80 hours a week, it wasn't safe. So thinking about worker conditions and they wanted a new career and they were burning out and it was physically difficult, they decided to go back to school and now they're stepping into a new career in electrical engineering from construction. And another student who was in a field that you touched on early childhood ed, we know in that field traditionally doesn't have the same wages, but their employer was actually paying for them to take classes to build their skills to advance within their company. So creative ways that an employer that may not have the wages can support their employees to still create advancement opportunities. So just seeing all these connections to job quality from students that I've had the chance to interview, really focused on resources that the colleges have offered related to basic needs and security, but seeing that connection to job quality directly.
SPEAKER_00That's a great example. Because I think if you start to think about where am I constrained, but also where do I have resources, then that helps you think, what do I have to offer to make the lives of the people who are making my organization run? How can I make their lives better? Right. And one of the things I always say is the first thing to do is listen to them. Listen to them and find out what it is that they think would make their lives better.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's back to the agency of really understanding what employees' motivation is, what they're interested in, and what helps their life, as you said, versus hindering the life they want to live. And want to reference a report that came out from uh the Harvard Business School called Building from the Bottom Up. And it was Joseph Fuller and Manjari Rahman. Then they interviewed, I think, over a thousand low-wage US workers, 21 and older, with at least three years of continuous work experience. And one of the things they heard was when asked what would induce them to stay at their company, 62% of those workers indicated the prospect of upward mobility, which related then to job security, stable and predictable pay, and stable and predictable hours as important attributes. And that was very different than what the employers thought would be most important to their employees. So to that point of ask your employees because they're going to tell you what's most important to them in terms of staying in their job and continuing to be motivated.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And it's also interesting because it's not a transactional thing that they're looking for, right? It's not a dollar an hour more. It's more of a am I in a place where I'm valued and I can build my value, right? And back to are they interested in the bigger picture of the organization? I think sometimes people are there for a variety of perfectly fine reasons to do their job, pick up the paycheck, go home, whatever else happens in the organization isn't their business. But a lot of times, you know, they're looking to understand the bigger picture of the organization, or at least to understand why their work and the work of their coworkers gets harder or easier at times. So sharing more, not less, in terms of information about what's happening in an organization, I think can be a really good idea in terms of setting the table for a conversation. That also reminds me, employers often think that they know and are surprised when they actually hear. We did a study with the Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center's approach to working with small manufacturers in Chicago around issues related to job quality, job design, competitiveness for those companies, and so on. And one of the things they worked with companies on was to understand what the experience of work is for their workers and to do a survey or focus groups or something to hear from them. And companies often were afraid to do this because, and I've run into this many times over the years, they think workers are going to ask for a raise. We're really struggling right now as a company. We can't afford to give them a raise. So why survey people and ask them questions that we can't act on, right? Which is, you know, understandable, but it wasn't what they heard back. So, first of all, those workers could see that this company is struggling and doesn't have the money to give me a raise. They've noticed, right? So they're a little nervous about it, but not in why aren't you giving me a raise? More in how are we doing things? And it was really interesting them hearing from workers things like what would really be helpful to me is if you would decide, does your brother tell me what to do, or does this guy who's supposed to be my supervisor tell me what to do? Or these kinds of things, or the way we've organized this particular process makes it so that I have to spend too much time taking this from here to there all the time. Could we re-flow this? You know, they have really good ideas that would make their job better and make the work better and make the company more efficient. And just opening that conversation was really helpful to them in ways that surprised them. I remember one company, I felt like it was a good company, but they really didn't have the resources to give their workers away. And the workers knew it. They wanted to help the family figure out how do we make this company survive. So it was a really interesting thing, and that's why I start with the listen because we assume things and we're not always right.
SPEAKER_01Well, with that example, I would imagine that input then improved productivity, it improved the safety of worker conditions or the work environment, it enhanced the culture and employees feeling like they belonged and they were valued. And so just stepping back and listening to all that you've offered on job quality, what I'm hearing too is there's not one formula. There's a lot of variables in job quality, and for different employers and even for different jobs, it may be a different approach or different attributes to job quality. So for employers, it's not check all these boxes, but consider all these things and that for workers, help or hinder the life that they want to live, which can include wage, it can include benefits, input, it can include upward mobility, can include an understanding of the culture, the mission, the vision, the values of the organization. And so appreciate you defining job quality from all the work that Aspen has done, and also offering up some examples from a college back to what workforce and community college higher ed institutions can consider internally in South Carolina, but then also the small business in Chicago and manufacturing. I want to move us to just some work in Oregon that we've done. Our Pathways to Opportunity initiative has brought together community colleges, the Oregon Department of Human Services, community-based organizations, and other workforce partners to advance racial equity and economic mobility. And thinking about job quality again, I am curious to hear from you. Are there any examples of how and where you've seen workforce training partners come together to advance job quality and equity for workers? And in that, who's been part of that coalition work? And then who's potentially been missing at the table and really should be there in these collaborative efforts?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what we're really talking about when we're trying to address job quality is what we've often euphemistically called systems change, right? So you're trying to change business practices so that they design jobs differently, so that the jobs are better. And businesses can do this with different kinds of supports and workforce can play a role. But it's asking people to change how they do business, which is scary for somebody to change how they do business, right? It's scary for a college to change how it manages people and does business, right? So how do you do this? But also how do you understand the power dynamics there and navigate that, right? Because employers are often the more powerful players in a community and workforce organizations have important relationships with companies, and they have to think about how are they stewarding those relationships? And so, how are they cognizant of those power dynamics and finding ways to communicate with companies, maybe sometimes through other partners or sometimes in quiet conversations and ways that they can hear this is a challenge that I see, and here's ways we can work on it together. And I've definitely seen organizations over the years establish a tiered strategy. An employer maybe is looking to hire certain kinds of people and they'll look at the jobs and the quality of the jobs, and they'll say, you know, you don't meet our wage rate or you don't offer benefits or these kinds of things. For various reasons, your job doesn't really meet the standard that we're trying to get people to. But that doesn't mean we're not going to work with you. It means we're going to work with you differently, right? And we're going to try to help you connect to some resources and maybe think about how do you find a low-cost insurance plan or this kind of thing and help you think about how you can do this in a way that it does meet the plan. And then we help you find the people that you need to make your business thrive. So I have definitely seen a variety of organizations do this over the years. JVS Boston, working in healthcare, has been doing really interesting work, understanding the quality of jobs with companies and talking to them about it and helping them think about where they can improve and thinking about how they match their services in accordance with where a company is on some of their standards. I've seen a variety of organizations do that over the years, but often that's work that's better done a little one on one or something, because sometimes those conversations aren't that comfortable. Another thing I'll mention that we've been doing, and we should have some tools. Coming out for this that could be useful to folks. We've done some work funded by the Walmart Foundation within our reimagined retail work. We did some focus groups with companies to really understand why is turnover so high, why is engagement low. And it's not always happy news. And you wonder how is a company going to respond to this? But we worked with a company where we did some of that kind of work to share with them in a very confidential way. They found it so valuable, right? Because they think they're communicating one thing to their workers and they don't have the systems for feedback because the power dynamics at work, even if you say, Oh, we have a suggestion box, people don't always feel comfortable being honest about it. But they really went to work to say, okay, how do we address these problems? And their retention went up and productivity went up. So I think there's a lot of scope for this work. And I think workforce organizations can play a role because they can be this trusted, quiet partner. It's a little scary for a workforce partner to do this, right? Because you're not really sure how to have this conversation. So back to the tools we're going to be putting out there. Some of them are about how to have this conversation and how to think about doing focus groups with workers to understand some of the dynamic and how to use some of that. So stay tuned for that.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for sharing that. And it's just processing your example before of an employer that may not fit whatever the criteria is for a quality job. As I know colleges are thinking about being considerate of which employers they're collaborating with that lead to good jobs for students coming out of their programs. It's not shutting the door on certain employers that are local, that are interested, that may not be there. It's an opportunity to engage with them. And I think that example that you gave of JVS Boston would be a good one to explore further. And want to come back to other examples in a bit, but would love to just zero in again on community colleges and ask from your experience, what role specifically do you see colleges playing in shaping and supporting job quality and equity? And you've talked some about that, but would love to hear more if you have additional thoughts.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Yeah. So I think community colleges are big players in the communities, right? And they are major employers. So one I think is taking seriously your almost obligation to try to be a model employer. And I think it really helps to enter into those conversations if you've really thought about how does this apply to me, right? Because then you can approach it more in a peer way. You can say, you know, I have this problem too. I have budget constraints, I have people who maybe don't know how to do their job very well, all of the things, right? So I have to manage them. And this is how I've tried to think about how I can put some resources over here to stabilize these jobs and how do I build a different kind of relationship with my workforce where they see the bigger picture of what we're trying to accomplish at the college and are more engaged and invested in the work. So that's one. I think that's a big one, right? To really take that seriously and think about how am I listening to the wide variety of people who work in a college. And then I guess the other thing I would say, think about what's the conversation you have with employers. What are the questions you're asking and what are the questions you're not asking? Because I think we compartmentalize things. Colleges say, okay, my job is to make sure people have education and training, right? And that they have skills to do the jobs. And so we ask about what skills are required, but we don't ask things about other things about working conditions. We sometimes don't ask about compensation. We sometimes don't ask about hiring processes. We don't ask about how many you're going to hire or when your hiring process works or this kind of thing. There's lots of things that don't get asked that influence whether somebody can get into the job, whether there actually will be a job there for them, and whether they're fully equipped to succeed on that job. So a different one that I'm thinking about, we did some work with Chicago Community Colleges and a company on their apprenticeship model. So a company Aon. And really they developed an interesting model for building an apprenticeship in partnership with the community colleges to provide some training, but also there was a mentorship component. There was an effort to reach communities that they typically didn't reach into to hire. And so they had this mentoring so that people could see somebody like them in the workplace and have somebody who can help them think about how to be in this space and what's expected of me and just to learn the organizational culture a little better. So I think colleges need to think about their role and then think about how do I partner with other organizations who know some of those things. So they also partnered with external organizations in the community and building some programs who knew more about how to ask those questions. And I'd go back to this project we did a number of years ago, the community courses to employment, where we looked at nonprofit workforce partners working with community colleges. And really, the nonprofit workforce partners were asking a lot of the questions that the community college wasn't asking. The community college had a lot of things to offer in terms of a longer skill pathway and clearer systems and those things. So bringing those strengths together was really valuable. But what are these things that we really need to know about employment? I think is critical.
SPEAKER_01Yes, you were touching on the types of questions that colleges may not naturally be thinking about as you offered working conditions, hiring processes, I would imagine onboarding as well, that mentoring you touched on. We know that there's all sorts of implicit biases baked into those systems. So really getting at that, and to your point, having a community-based organization at times that can complement the questions that colleges would naturally ask related to skills.
SPEAKER_00Right, absolutely. And again, similarly with the power dynamics, students sometimes don't feel comfortable expressing what's going right and not going right to the college either in terms of work. So thinking about what are your sources of information, I think is important, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So you touched on a tool that's coming out soon with Aspen's Reimagine Retail. And I wanted to ask what are some helpful resources for listeners that are interested in diving in deeper on this topic of job quality.
SPEAKER_00So glad you asked. So we have a whole job quality tools libraries, and it's got a variety of sections to it, but it's got a number of frameworks. If you're confused about what are the elements of job quality, how should I think about this? There's some resources like that. There's a variety of tools that address who's doing things on wages, hours, scheduling, this kind of thing, health and safety at work, obviously, it's gotten to be much more of an issue. So I would definitely encourage people to check out the job quality tools library and take a look at that. I mentioned we have our job quality center of excellence. So in addition to the job quality tools library, the center of excellence includes profiles and exemplars. So I mentioned the profile of Walt Tobin at Orangeburg Calhoun Technical College. That's within our job quality center of excellence. So there's various individual leaders, organizations that are profiled. We have an Opportunity in America speaker series and a number of those conversations focus on job quality. So there's a lot of resources within the Job Quality Center of Excellence beyond just the tools library. And I'd encourage people to check that out and take a look at it. There's a lot there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you. And both of those would be tremendous resources. And I know I've spent some time looking at the Job Quality Tools Library, and there's a wealth of information there. So I wanted to come back to a topic that you touched on earlier and really the sense of agency and listening to workers. You've talked about the role workers and students can play in advancing job quality and equity and organizations focusing on listening to workers and students. Just wondered if you could share more examples of how Aspen or other workforce development partners have effectively centered worker and student voices in these efforts, especially considering the power dynamics we've talked about and how that's been done well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. We are explicitly focusing on the intersection of workforce development and worker organizing and worker advocacy. Because I think that there are examples of workforce organizations that have centered listening to the experience of work, but there's more to do for the field. And I think back to the mind shift that needs to happen, how we think about work and job quality needs to shift a little bit. We've been in workforce development for a long time thinking about economic mobility and thinking about career pathways, right? And so we're not thinking about how do I influence the quality of job? We're thinking more about jobs are as jobs are, there's nothing I can do with it. I don't have a role here. I just try to move somebody out of this job and into the next job, right? As our labor market has shifted so much and as our economy shifted out of production and into service kinds of jobs, and also just a variety of ways that we've seen institutional shifts and sectoral shifts, that's never going to be sufficient, right? We can't put 80% of the people in 20% of the jobs. It's just not going to work. So we really need to think a little bit more about how to influence job quality of existing jobs, right? And that is, I think, a mind shift for a lot of people in workforce development. And it's also daunting. And I know that it's daunting because years ago I interviewed many people about what's your system change strategy. And it's kind of like, oh no, I'm not doing systems change. I'm helping people get a job, and that's what I do. Because it's daunting to say that you're going to do something like influence job quality and you feel like, who am I to be able to do that? But you can. And I'm not saying you're going to improve everything overnight, but you can give a push in the right direction. And then you can bring in your colleagues. So I was really interested in this question of how do we bring people in workforce development who've really been thinking about how do I understand more the content of work and how are people's learning needs matching up with that, with workforce organizers and advocates who've been thinking more about the power dynamics and the institutional influences that have been shaping work, and how do I bring these two conversations together? And I'm just excited about the possibility of them finding fruitful new strategies to really improve job quality and improve organizational well-being as well as individual well-being. So I'm excited about that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've been fascinated by that JVS Boston model. I don't know if this was exclusively healthcare, but just the way that they were able to take inventory of job quality for specific occupations with a survey to a number of employers, and then sit down with those employers and say, sort of, here's how you're ranking, or here's some strengths of your organization, its worker conditions, its wages, and here are some areas where you could really grow if you put energy into X, Y, and Z, and how that's a supportive conversation with employers with a little bit of, I don't know if it's competition, but just comparison to other entities that are hiring the same workers.
SPEAKER_00Right. And now's a great time to do that work with companies struggling to find enough workers and various things. Now's a good time to say, here's your strengths and honestly, here's your weaknesses. And it's very hard a lot of times. I think we forget that it's hard for companies to see how they rank in some of these things because they're running their own business. They're within their organization. They're not necessarily out there saying, How do my jobs compare to everybody else's jobs all the time? I mean, bigger companies obviously have more resources to think about that, but particularly for your small and medium-sized companies, they're within their own institution and they have the depth of knowledge of their own organization and maybe their industry, but they're not necessarily experts in things that workforce organizations are experts in. And sometimes I just want to remind people that they have an expertise to bring to this. They're not only trying to find out what companies want, but they have knowledge that would be useful to companies about their workforce. And even if you're having to deliver some what might feel like in the moment, bad news about how a company stacks up against its competition, you know, it's information that's probably going to help them in the long run.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So, Maureen, I wanted to come back to this season of the All in Student Pathways Forward and focus on job quality. And in doing so, wondered what questions you think would be most interesting to ask community college graduates who are now working in quality jobs. What would be great questions to ask them for this season? And then also, how about college leaders and even leaders from those employers that have hired students into quality jobs for future episodes?
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's a good question. I would ask all of them what they think makes for a quality job. And I would probably ask colleges and company leaders what they think makes for a quality job for themselves first before asking them to think about a quality job for students or for frontline workers. And the reason I say that is because I think sometimes we unintentionally distance ourselves from people that we're thinking about how can they get to a quality job, right? We all want to be in quality jobs. Nobody wants a boss who treats them badly or doesn't respect what they do, or nobody wants to get to the end of the month and not be able to cover their rent. But some of us have had the good fortune to not have these things for a while, right? And not really remember what that might be like if we ever had that experience. So thinking about that a little bit in terms of trying to feel a little closer to their experience to the degree possible, I think helps us open our hearts to it a little bit, honestly. I wrote this piece with Mary Alice McCarthy of the New America Foundation and Alex Kimmerdell at the Joint Policy Center for Spotlight on Poverty, where we were talking about how workforce development needs a new narrative. And one of our first recommendations was just approach it with a solidarity mindset, in that I think we need to think of students and frontline workers as people first, right? And as people like us. If we start from there, then I think that helps us think about how would I feel in that job? Is that a job I would want for my children? So thinking about it more in that way, I think then starts to help us think through where do we see challenges and also opportunities for that to be a better experience for both the company and for the worker.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate that. And it comes back to where you started with the definition of job quality of what will help or hinder the life you want to live, right? And not just to the worker, but to the leader that's being interviewed. And so we'll definitely weave that into the questions that I ask employers and college leaders with the internal work that colleges have as well that you've touched on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you could ask them, how would your workers thinking their jobs are better than they think they are today? How would that make your life easier? Because I've definitely heard business leaders say, basically, it's great if people are clear on what the jobs are, clear on the progression pathways, and also just feel like it's all fair because my life is so much easier, right? There's a lot that just goes away and you don't have to worry about.
SPEAKER_01That's a really good point and a follow-up question that I would like to ask as well. So the last thing I wanted to ask is as we begin to interview students, workers, college leaders, employers, and then some national experts in the field like you. And who else do you think would be helpful to have on in future episodes this season following student workers to share important perspectives on job quality?
SPEAKER_00There's lots of people I'm thinking about. Within our Opportunity in America series, we're running a mini-series on looking at elements of labor law and how that matches up with key components of job quality, right? So looking at the National Labor Relations Act and people's right to organize and how that's even part of the International Convention on Human Rights, that people should have the right to join a labor union. So we're looking at the fair wage and hour laws, health and safety laws, looking at EEOC, because those were all important things, right? Like your worker voice, your compensation, the equitable access to opportunity and equitable employment practices, and you know, health and safety on the job. Those are all critical components of job quality and they've all been profoundly influenced by social movements that culminated in changing laws, right? But that history, I think, is often lost on us. And so I think reflecting on that history and what that means for the current moment, that's what we're trying to do in this series a little bit.
SPEAKER_01So it sounds like if folks are interested in tracking that, they can go to Aspen's Economic Opportunities website. Is it there?
SPEAKER_00Yep, it'll be there. They can go to our Opportunity in America webpage and find all of the links to both upcoming as well as past events.
SPEAKER_01Great. Well, thanks for sharing that. And it does sound like a really informative resource and series to follow for listeners. And just wanted to ask if there's anything else that you'd like to share before we wrap up here.
SPEAKER_00I guess I would just say I'm thrilled that you're looking at job quality. I think job quality is really fundamental to the purpose for community colleges and for all of us in workforce development. We really want to be helping people get to good jobs. And I think we have more power and agency than we imagine ourselves to play a role in shaping the quality of jobs. And I'm excited about the work to come and working with a lot of people in the field who are interested in this topic and interested in expanding their role and improving the quality of jobs for people all across the country. So delighted to talk to you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, thank you again for taking the time. And I learned a tremendous amount from our conversation. And one of the things that's a big takeaway is just again that importance of centering worker voices and that agency because they have the most insights in job quality as they define it. And I think that really ties in with the hopes and goal of this podcast series. Thank you again for sharing so much and look forward to diving in deeper with colleges, with workers, and with employers across our state on this critical issue.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Mark.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for listening in to the intro episode of the All-In Hot. Hope you'll tune in again.