Job Quality and Cultural Context
Lauren Starks, Director of Good Companies/Good Jobs at the Economic Opportunities Program, recently sat down with two Shared Success grantees—Felicia Ravelomanantsoa, Chief Operating Officer/Chief Financial Officer at African Development Center (ADC), and Elaine Neigel, Business Loan Officer at Four Bands Community Fund—to discuss how job quality work needs to be connected to the unique challenges, assets, and strategies of the local community.
ADC, based in Minneapolis where there is a large Somali community, has many clients considering job quality improvements that are aligned with workers’ cultural and religious identities. Four Bands, which works with Native American business owners off and on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation, has found that workers on the Reservations prioritize benefits such as affordable housing and flexible schedules for caretaking more than employer-sponsored healthcare plans because of the availability of healthcare through Indian Health Services.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full podcast interview here.
Lauren Starks: Elaine and Felicia, welcome to our series on elevating job quality among small businesses. Today, we’ll be discussing how cultural context shapes the approach to job quality. Each of your organizations operates in a unique cultural context, expanding opportunity and implementing innovative practices that are rooted in the needs of workers, businesses, and the communities they serve. Felicia, let’s start with you and your work at the African Development Center.
Felicia Ravelomanantsoa: Thank you for having us. The African Development Center was started in 2004, by and for African immigrants and refugees. Our mission is to build businesses and create wealth in the African community in Minnesota, and then reinvest it for all. ADC is a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), a U.S. Small Business Association (SBA) lender, and also an SBA microlender. We offer a comprehensive set of services in financial literacy, homeownership classes, business development technical assistance, and a business lending product.
How does cultural or religious context shape ADC’s understanding of and approach to job quality?
FR: Absolutely. We provide best practices for our clients, but we have also asked employees their definition of good job quality and how to improve job quality. What the community we serve lists as elements of good job quality are slightly different from the results of many research studies done with other communities. Cultural and religious identity plays a big role in shaping what a good job should look like for workers in our community. For example, accommodations for Friday prayers, longer time away from work to be able to travel abroad and visit family, or just having a prayer room – those are parts of job quality and creating a good job environment. Businesses, because they have listened to their employees, were able to customize their good job quality program to meet the needs of their employees, and therefore increase loyalty and retention. Being heard is a very powerful way to make employees feel included and motivated to produce for the company and stay with the employer.
That really resonates and we often hear this theme of “meeting workers where they are,” recognizing and valuing what’s important to them as initiatives around job quality are designed, so those examples are so helpful. Elaine, how does the Four Bands Community Fund integrate cultural competency into your work?
Elaine Neigel: Four Bands is located in South Dakota on the Cheyenne River Reservation. We are a Native CDFI, and we were formed because there was nowhere for Native people to go to get help growing businesses. Our job is to build trust with clients. Family is really important to our clients. Most of them start a business because they want to give back to their people; it’s not about their personal wealth. We teach a class on how to open a business, and we also have programs to train and upskill people, including a grant-funded internship program.
In working directly with businesses and developing curriculum and technical assistance, what practices have helped you best implement this model?
EN: Family and community is so important. Everybody that works at Four Bands is a part of this small community and we all know each other and try to help each other. What people need the most are things like childcare and affordable housing. We have seen that somebody can work really hard, do well at their job, and get raises, but if their rent and childcare keep increasing faster than their wages, they may have to quit their job in order to be eligible for government assistance that can cover these expenses. We have done a lot of work with home mortgages, helping people at a certain wage level access affordable housing, which is vital because if you don’t have housing, you can’t stick with the job very long. We’ve also been helping daycares become stronger, so people have a place to take their kids so they can go to work. We’re all working together as a community to help everybody to be stronger, be better employees, and have a healthier life.
Hearing how you have identified barriers and come up with tailored solutions for your clients is such a great example. To close, what leadership lessons have you learned along the way? What advice would you give to other practitioners who are working to integrate cultural competencies into their work to advance quality jobs?
EN: We have to listen to what people need. In our community and our area, people aren’t looking for the monetary benefits packages, they’re looking more for help with days off to take care of their family, daycare, and sick time. Sometimes it’s really hard on a small business to be able to do that, but that’s what they look for.
FR: The path to good job quality can be different from one entity to another, but the expected outcome is the same. As a practitioner. I would say our duty is to provide assistance to our business clients to identify the options that are viable for them to make a long-lasting change when it comes to job quality. Ultimately for employees, the ideal environment is one where they have the security to be authentically themselves.
That is an impactful, valuable insight to end on. Thank you both for this important conversation.
About Shared Success
Shared Success is a project of the Economic Opportunities Program, works with community lenders to integrate job quality programming into their small business support services, demonstrating that improved job quality can support the needs of employees while helping small businesses succeed.
The Shared Success Demonstration is managed by the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program and supported by a four-year investment from the Gates Foundation. See as.pn/sharedsuccess to learn more. Views expressed here are based on the implementation, experience, and findings of the Shared Success demonstration, and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the foundation.
About the Economic Opportunities Program
The Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program hosts a variety of discussions to advance strategies, policies, and ideas to help low- and moderate-income people thrive in a changing economy. To learn about upcoming events and webinars, join our mailing list and follow us on social media.