Best Places to Work, most "just" companies in the US ... it's time for data

?It′s the beginning of the year – this is the time for reports and statistics across many areas. So, this newsletter focusses on the latest from Deloitte, JUST Capital, Glassdoor and Great Place To Work. All the essentials in just one newsletter. Let′s go!

Deloitte Recognizes Unchartered Territories when it comes Human Capital Trends for 2023

For many people in the services industries and in other office jobs, the workplace has been undergoing fundamental change throughout the past years. But what′s next? That′s the focus of 德勤 ’s 2023 Global Human Capital Trends.

Their survey polled 10,000 business and HR leaders across every industry, with 105 countries participating. In summary, Deloitte thinks that there are “new fundamentals for a boundaryless world” in place. As they say: “In a boundaryless world, work isn’t defined by jobs, the workplace isn’t a specific place, and many workers aren’t traditional employees. Those who partner with workers and experiment with what’s possible will create sustainable work models and elevated outcomes.”

Their study has three chapters:

1. Framing the challenge: Think like a researcher: Organizations and workers should activate their curiosity, looking at each decision as an experiment that will expedite impact and generate new insights.
2. Charting a new path: Co-create the relationship: Organizations and workers will need to learn to navigate this new world together—cocreating new rules, new boundaries, and a new relationship.
3. Designing for impact: Prioritize human outcomes: Organizations should create impact not only for their business, their workers, or their shareholders but for the broader society as well.

Find out more here.

Google and Salesforce excel at 2023 Glassdoor Best Places To Work Ranking Globally

谷歌 and Salesforce are the only companies that appear in four of the five 2023 Top 10 rankings that Glassdoor just revealed. For a few years already, they rank the best companies in the US, Canada, France, Germany and the UK based on the scores that users have confirmed during the course of the past year.

While Google ranks #1 in Canada and France (and 7 in the UK and 8 in the US), Salesforce is #2 in Germany and 9 in the UK and Canada and 10 in France. The other #1 companies are Gainsight in the US, 贝恩公司 in the UK and 麦肯锡 & Co. in Germany.

Consultancies score big this time again:

贝恩公司 : #3 in US, #1 in UK

麦肯锡 : #1 in Germany, #3 in US

波士顿谘询公司 :#7 in US, #3 in UK

Tech companies though continue to earn the lion′s share of top 10 rankings:

谷歌 : #1 in CDN, #1 in F, # 7 in UK and #8 in US

ServiceNow : #9 in US, #2 in UK

Salesforce : #2 in D, # 9 in UK, #9 in CDN and #10 in F

Quite a few companies with at least one mention in a Top 10 ranking.

For both the UK and the US, Glassdoor has summarized the results.?Re the UK, they state: “Workers kept employers on their toes this year, empowered by a job market that was still in their favour. Companies responded by stepping up their game, offering better pay and benefits, increased flexibility, a welcoming culture, and more.”

Re the US, it sounds slightly different: “What a difference a year makes! A white-hot job market lost some of its heat, but hiring remained tight despite economic uncertainty — and employers dug deep to win over top talent. According to employees, these companies outshined the rest, providing a positive culture, strong pay and benefits, flexibility, and much more.”

In the next newsletter, we′ll take a look at the movements at the CEO rankings in each of the five countries. Stay tuned.?Here are all the details beyond the top 10.

The JUST Capital ranking is out – another year of outperformance of “just” companies vis-à-vis their peers

JUST Capital co-founder and chairman Paul Tudor Jones summarized it this way: “If you do what the vast majority of Americans want, your company is going to be rewarded in its stock performance.” As of December 30, 2022, the JUST 100 Index (JUONE) that tracks the top 100 companies outperformed the Russell 1000 by 13.3% since inception.

This year’s rankings are led by? 美国银行 , the first bank to ever top the list,?because they’ve been a trailblazer on worker issues (1st in industry and 1st overall). Bank of America raised its minimum wage to $22 an hour and committed to $25 an hour by 2025.

JUST Capital summarizes: "Bank of America invested millions in career development and tuition assistance, offers 16 weeks of paid parental leave for both primary and secondary caregivers, and provides flexible work scheduling and backup dependent care. It is one of 14% of companies to conduct and release the results of its pay equity analysis, and also discloses detailed workforce demographic data by race and gender. The bank is also a strong environmental performer (1st in its industry and 6th overall) and has committed to reaching Net-Zero across its financing activities, operations, and supply chain by 2050, a goal that just 19% of companies in the Banks industry, and 32% of Russell 1000 companies overall, are committed to.

As an industry,?Banks made significant gains this year because they categorically outperformed on worker issues,especially in transparency over wage data, pay equity, and commitments to larger national minimum wages than peers. Banks also saw an average Ranking increase of 134 in the “Creates jobs in the U.S.” Issue, the second-highest-weighted of the model (11.1%). Banks are consistently in the top third of our Rankings when it comes to U.S. job numbers and they also have the highest number of companies with second chance/reentry policies, four of which are in the JUST 100.

Overall, transparency continues to improve in key areas. Year over year we saw increases in disclosure of 10 percentage points or more in diversity metrics (e.g. pay analysis by race and gender, and board disclosure race and gender), as well as environmental metrics (e.g., emissions, renewable energy use, total energy use).

One of the key triggers is to understand what matters most to workers. JUST Capital asked a representative sample of 3,002 Americans to prioritize which issues matter most. The following chart, pulled from their 2022 Issues Report, shows the probability that an individual would choose an Issue as most important to defining a just company, and serves as the weighting for this year’s Rankings."

Here′s the conclusion: “Over the last seven years, Worker Issues have consistently commanded the highest share of priority among the 20 stakeholder-related issues we measure, and this year is no different. As you can see, four of the five Worker Issues – including paying a fair, living wage, supporting workforce training, protecting worker health and safety, and providing benefits and work-life balance – are among the top six priorities of the public, and the collective prioritization of all five worker issues comprise 44% of a company’s score this year.”

Interestingly, there is more unity in the views of Americans about the subject compared to the noise in the media. This is the JUST Capital analysis: “Despite the ongoing political polarization in the U.S., Americans are united when it comes to just business behavior. Among every demographic group – liberal, conservative, high-income, low-income, men, women, young generations, older generations, and white, Black, and Hispanic Americans – the Workers stakeholder is the top priority. And for each of these demographic groups, the most important Issue is “Pays workers fairly and offers a living wage that covers the cost of basic needs at the local level,” which comprises a significant 21.2% of companies’ scores in this year’s Rankings. As more industries implement layoffs and fears of a 2023 recession loom, it’s also important to note that the second most important issue that powered significant shifts in the rankings model is “creating jobs in the U.S. and providing employment opportunities for communities that need them.”

Also, this graphic provides an overview how "just" companies are doing vis-a-vis their peers:

How to Measure the ‘S’ in ESG

There is so much noise around ESG – and especially the social side of it. As many studies show, getting this right is essential. All companies in the Great Place To Work or JUST Capital or Glassdoor rankings have understood that this is as much an area to focus on as is Environmental consciousness and action as well good Governance. Fortune magazine interviewed Shamina Singh, founder and president of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth . At the World Economic Forum 2022, she shared a helpful framework with other business leaders for thinking about the ‘S’. Here are excerpts of the interview:

What's the connection between ESG efforts and workplace challenges that organizations are dealing with?

The entry point of the conversation is that all of us are thinking about how to recruit and retain our talent. It is such an enormous priority area for all of us. If you're thinking about that, then you have to be also thinking about purpose-driven work and the role of purpose and connection to work.?

Those things connect with the ESG conversation that's happening. The thread that runs through all of this is that if you are thinking about the workplace, if you're thinking about the role of companies in society, then it makes sense that you would try to understand how environmental, social, and governance impact purpose, recruiting and retention, people practices—how they all fit together.

The social pillar of ESG is really expansive and varied, which is part of what makes standardized measurement difficult and important. Generally speaking, that ‘S’ category covers how a company is engaging with its employees and communities and society at large. But the thing that gets measured—at least in the context of ESG right now—is a very limited set of characteristics of a company that really revolves around the worker component. So the starting point for the ‘S’ in ESG is really around workplaces and what are the things that are uniform across companies that relate to work and workers.

What you're proposing is a more expansive assessment of the ‘S’ in ESG and measuring of it. Can you explain that?

The ‘S’ doesn't stop there—certainly not for us, but I don't think for many companies who are actually thinking about how to recruit and retain quality talent and compete for quality talent in this competitive environment. Also for companies who are in a place to bring a positive difference in the world. For us—and for companies like that—the conversation is a more expansive view of the ‘S’ in terms of, how are we using our assets as a company for impact? That's the shortest way to think about it. As Mastercard, we look at our assets like our network, our people, philanthropic capital, R&D, products, technology, things like that. Thinking about how you use those things in service of people on the planet, one way of doing it is through the ‘E.’ And we've constructed that framework and followed that framework. And what we're doing is expanding the ‘S’ to capture all of the work that we're doing.

For the environmental side of things, there's this concept of Scope One, Scope Two, and Scope Three impact. Scope One is directly controlled, and then Two and Three are less directly controlled, but they're influenced by the company. What could a similar framework for the ‘S’ side of things look like?

Right now, Scope One would look like what many of us measure with ‘S’, which is things like representation of different ethnic minorities across the organization, gender parity, human rights. If you added a Scope Two to that, it might look like your investments in ‘S’. It could be your philanthropic investments, it could be your research investments, it could be how you invest in products and services that also have an impact on society. At Mastercard, part of Scope Two might be what are the things that we're doing as a business that impact and expand financial inclusion and inclusive growth across not only the philanthropic side but also the business side.?

And then Scope Three would be, at least in our case, what's the impact of those investments? For us, that might mean how many people have benefited from being financially included or what has been the benefit of being financially included, or what has been the impact of our work around constructing data science principles or AI responsibility principles, and what have been the impact of those investments and that perspective on our products and services. So Scope One is what you can control, Scope Two would be what your investments might be both from a philanthropic perspective and from a business perspective. And then Scope Three might be the impact of those investments on humanity or on the world.

Even while we are capturing all of these things in our sustainability reports and our corporate responsibility papers and our ratings and rankings and things like that, this approach gives us a way to talk about it and think about it.?

For the ‘E’ in ESG, companies have made “net zero” emissions commitments. Is the idea that you could do something similar with this?

Exactly. So for us, it might be our financial inclusion commitment. We made a commitment pre-Covid to bring 500 million people into the financial system. At the height of Covid, we doubled down and said we want to bring a billion people into the digital economy. We also have a set of metrics around gender that we're looking at. We also have a metric around racial equity that we're looking at. Those, combined with our net zero commitment and the other work we're doing in our environmental initiatives, help us actually create a framework that allows us to link this to compensation for everybody across the company. We started out with the executive vice presidents in year one, and then in the next year expanded that to include everybody at the company. We have worked pretty hard to try to get some standardized metrics that we could actually talk about and measure and link to compensation.

Read a full transcript of Fortune′s conversation , including Singh’s response to the criticism of ESG as “woke capitalism.”

Great Place To Work Purpose Study is out, too:?Purpose at Work Predicts Employees Will Stay or Quit Their Jobs

Loyal and engaged employees are the dream of most leaders. But when they wake up, they often don′t find that desired level of engagement, loyalty or even pride. While looking at fringe benefits like extra vacation days or raising salaries as solutions, they should look into the essence of their business first. As Great Place To Work US ? put it: “They should prioritize giving workers what they need and want — a sense of purpose at work.

When employees understand that their work matters and their purpose is aligned with that of their company, good things happen. They’re loyal, engaged, and proud of their company — all signs of a great workplace. If you want to know your employees’ commitment to their jobs, don’t ask them if their salaries are fair. Ask about purpose and connection.”

Alignment of purpose is often discussed and I am not a big fan of the idea that the personal purpose and the corporate purpose need to be the same. But I strongly believe that a) companies need to express their purpose and b) employees need to agree with it. If the personal purpose is centered around a “happy family life”, there is no way there could be alignment with the corporate purpose. But the workplace could still be a “family-friendly” workplace and the company could produce services or products that meet the aspirations of the individual.

The research from Great Place To Work indicates the following three questions will predict workplace turnover, regardless of generation or job type:

1. Are you proud of where you work?
2. Do you find meaning in your work?
3. Do you have fun at work?

As they found out, “If an employee answers “no” to any of those questions, they’re probably going to leave their company. Why? People want to spend their time in meaningful ways. Purpose is the wayyou make a difference in the world. It’s why you matter. All humans seek purpose, and employees are emboldened more than ever to go find it.”

Michael C. Bush , CEO of Great Place To Work, puts it like this: “For me, purpose transcends P&L’s, balance sheets and EBITDA calculations. It’s the reason why we spend so much time away from our families to do this thing called ‘work.’ It’s the reason why we are late for soccer games, family dinners, birthday parties, parental visits, daycare pick-ups, vet appointments, and so on. Purpose is also the reason why we sometimes question our priorities and life choices.”

Oh yes.?You can download the study here.

Gosh, January is already nearly over! Let's continue to make soulless companies a thing of the past. The next edition of the Building Corporate Soul newsletter will be in your mailbox in two weeks on February 4