Engaging Businesses in Worker Voice

Workforce intermediaries collaborating with employees and workers to improve job quality

Mechanism is piloting a process and tool that will foster collaboration between workers and small- to medium-sized manufacturing businesses to enhance workplaces, job quality, and business outcomes. We are working in two places with key workforce intermediaries who are supporting businesses and workers in their communities, based on the guiding principle that trust building and culture change are necessary conditions to designing effective tools and strategies that improve outcomes.

About

Background

Massive public and private investments in the clean manufacturing sector are flowing into communities, particularly in the South. However, left unattended, jobs that stem from these investments will not reach workers they could benefit most, nor are they likely to attract much-needed new talent to the sector. Further, in the South, labor unions are scarce, particularly in small- and medium-sized manufacturing companies, often leading to lower job quality. Finally, current struggles with worker attraction and retention stem from decades of structural changes that eroded job quality, and many businesses also still adhere to traditional approaches to benefits, leaving a lot of opportunity on the table.

Goals & Objectives

This project will engage workers in job quality improvement ideas, help businesses develop tangible methods to increase job quality and uptake of proven solutions, and demonstrate how public and private investments can be leveraged to increase job quality, all helping to improve the reputation of manufacturing.

This project aims to:

engage workers directly in job quality improvement ideas

help businesses looking for tangible methods to increase job quality and uptake of proven solutions

improve workplace conditions where labor unions are not available

Process

Our strategy is to work with our two key local workforce intermediaries to design a process and a tool to support collaboration between workers and manufacturing businesses to enhance workplaces, job quality, and business outcomes.

Phase 1

Trust building and culture change are necessary conditions to designing effective tools that improve these outcomes. To that end, each key workforce intermediary has invested time early on to engage local manufacturers and their workers in facilitated discussions, deepening understanding of their unique perspectives and experiences.

Phase 2

Each group is co-designing and implementing a tool that is transparent, easily utilized, and designed to capture the categories of worker input and that can be readily used to inform job quality and workplace redesign strategies.

Phase 3

In the final phase, the workforce intermediaries will engage participating businesses to use the tool, to identify actionable changes based on data collected, and incorporate worker input to refine them. We’ll also be identifying the supports that are needed to implement these successfully, through other ecosystem partners.

Meet the Participants

Texas

Capital IDEA Houston, Key Workforce Intermediary

Bryant Black, Black Arrow Consulting, Local Facilitator

Oklahoma

Oklahoma Manufacturing Alliance, Key Workforce Intermediary

Harrison Consulting Group, Local Facilitator

Related Resources

Resources from other organizations

Good Jobs Toolkit

by Pacific Community Ventures helps organizations assess and enhance their workplace culture and employee satisfaction through tailored surveys and actionable insights.

Centering Worker Voice in Employer Engagement and Program Design

is a guide from the Aspen Institute that offers a framework for integrating employee perspectives into program development to enhance job quality and foster a more inclusive workplace.

Working Metrics

showcases a variety of case studies demonstrating how organizations leverage data-driven insights to enhance employee engagement, performance, and overall workplace culture.

Engaging Employee Frontline Voice

by Talent Rewire emphasizes the importance of actively listening to and incorporating feedback from frontline employees to enhance workplace culture and improve overall organizational performance.

Designing a Human-Centered Workplace

by National Fund for Workforce Solutions is a guide for executives, human resources specialists, operational leaders, and frontline leaders. It also has useful information for almost any organization that wants to center worker voices to enhance the quality of frontline jobs and improve outcomes.