When Work Isn’t Enough: Improving Job Quality for ALICE Households

[00:00:08] Matt Helmer: Welcome, everybody. My name’s Matt Helmer. I’m the director of Job Quality and Worker Well-Being at the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program. It’s a great pleasure to welcome you to today’s conversation, When Work Isn’t Enough: Improving Job Quality for ALICE Households. This is an event that we’re co-hosting with our partners at United for ALICE, and just super appreciative of the time and the work they do and for being with us today to host this important conversation.

As you all know, this conversation is part of our Job Quality and Practice series, in which we take a close look at the growing crisis around job quality, where our economy essentially doesn’t have enough good jobs to provide people with a decent standard of living. We examine strategies, ideas, and policies for how we can course-correct for that in this moment.

Before we get started, just a quick review of our technology. Everyone’s muted as always. Please use that Q&A button at the bottom of your screen to submit and upvote questions. I’m going to try to weave those questions in as we go today, so don’t hesitate to start popping them in from the get-go. We’ll try to get to as many of those as possible, and hopefully we cover a good amount of ground with them.

There’s also a chat, so you can share your perspective, your resources, your ideas, examples, your ideas there. We hope you engage in the conversation. Should you want to post on social media about this, you can choose the platform of your choice. Our hashtag is #TalkOpportunity. If you run into any technical issues during the webinar today, please just message us in the chat or email us at [email protected]. We are recording this event. You will get a copy of that recording, and we will post it on our website. Finally, closed captions are available for this discussion, so just click that CC button at the bottom of your screen today.

Turning to today’s event, ALICE, Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. It’s an acronym, and we’re going to unpack more of that today. Behind it are tens of millions of people, tens of millions of workers who, by all measures, are doing everything right. They’re doing everything we ask them to do conventionally, which is they show up, they go to work, they work hard, they put in their blood, sweat, and tears. Still, at the end of the month, it’s not enough. The math doesn’t work.

Many are a car repair away or a medical bill away or a childcare gap away from having the floor completely disappear from underneath them. Many of them are already homeless. Today, with the growing crisis around affordability, that floor is even more precarious. We just have too many workers today in our economy who are barely scraping by, and some of them aren’t, honestly.

That’s really the paradox of where we’re at with today’s conversation and really the paradox of where our economy is today. We’ve spent decades telling people to work hard, and that’s the path to stability. That’s the path to the good life. Just work hard, and you’ll be fine. It’s the story of the American dream.

That story and dream, though, they’ve always been aspirational, I think we all recognize. There’s always been a sizable number of people left behind by our economy and a sizable number of people for who work hasn’t delivered upon its promise. I think, today, it’s an increasing number of Americans who are falling into that story. That story, that American dream, it’s just become, honestly, a fable for many people, and a mirage.

I was recently at this research briefing, and they were talking about some focus groups they were doing with people talking about the American dream. They said a lot of people actually got angered by the thought of the American dream and it being promoted because, for them, it was just something that really did come out of a storybook and was insulting, honestly. That’s the state of play of where we are.

Over half of Americans, according to research by the American Metropolitan Group, say that our current economic system does not allow most families to prosper. Only 23% believe our economic system should be preserved, and the other 3 and 4 say we need to refine it or reform it or outright replace it. Clearly, people have lost confidence in our economic system and our politics and what we’re doing to support their well-being.

Our central challenge, I think, at least right now from our perspective, is not whether we have enough jobs. That can always change. That is whether the jobs we have allow people to lead dignified, secure, and healthy lives. At the Aspen Economic Opportunities Program, that question really animates a lot of what we’re doing.

It’s not really an abstract policy question. There’s questions and choices that we make about dignity, about agency, about what it means to participate fully in life. Work is really central to a lot of that. We face questions about work and its relationship to how we thrive as a country. Clearly, there’s a lot of struggles going on in our country right now. I think a lot of them tie back to this question of work in our economic systems.

The consequences are far and wide. They stretch from whether we send our kids to school hungry, clothed, and happy. They stretch from whether people can retire with dignity or retire at all. Part of the questions are whether we accept that many working people are homeless, living in their cars, or living in the street. I think, again, part of the question we faced here, too, is ultimately whether this current economic system and how we reward and structure work will allow us to sustain our democracy.

We’re not here today just to drown our sorrows and lament in the problem. We’re fortunate, as I said, to be joined by our colleagues at United for ALICE that is doing something about it. Lots of great research coming out of this United for ALICE movement, great tools, great conversations, all kinds of helpful metrics. It’s really shining a spotlight on this job quality challenge and the unkept promises we’ve made to workers. They’re making visible what we often ignore. They’ve been a welcome and much needed, I think, voice in this job quality conversation. I’m so glad to be partnering with them here today on this conversation.

We’ll have a specific focus today as part of the conversation on one of their applied programs called ALICE at Work that takes a lot of the data and the research and really applies it in the real world and takes it to employers and really helps open their eyes about what’s going on with their workforce and opens their eyes to where they can change to better support their workers. That’s a little bit of what we’re going to spend our time on today, unpacking this job quality practice from the United for ALICE and the ALICE at Work perspective and how they work with businesses and employers and communities to really shift how we design and reward work.

We’re going to have three acts today. We’re going to have an opening speaker who I’m going to introduce in just a minute, and then we’re going to have two different panel conversations. Like I said, please share your questions as we go, and I’ll try to weave them in as best as possible as we move through this conversation today.

It’s my pleasure to introduce our first speaker, Dr. Stephanie Hoopes. Stephanie’s the national director of United for ALICE. She leads the national United for ALICE movement, having shepherded the growth and success of United for ALICE from a local pilot study in Morris County, New Jersey, to really this nationwide initiative, with data for all 3,000 US counties and partners in more than 30 states. Stephanie’s going to set the stage for us today. Stephanie, I’ll turn it over to you. Thanks for being here today.

[00:08:33] Stephanie Hoopes: Oh, thanks, Matt. It’s great to be partnering with Aspen. We’ve been rowing in the same direction for quite a while, so it’s really exciting to be here together. I want to thank you for posting some of our links on your resource page on your website. I think that we’re both thrilled that our partner, Sherra Bennett, is one of your fellows and is here today. A lot of overlap and looking forward to the conversation.

Let’s dig into the data that sets the groundwork for this, and then we’re going to be talking about some of the action that’s happening to make a difference for ALICE workers. Asset limited, income constrained, employed are workers and families struggling to afford household basics. Think about the workers who help keep our economy running smoothly and actually help keep our lives running smoothly.

You’ve probably run into several ALICE workers today, perhaps getting a coffee, dropping your child off at childcare, traveling on public transportation, stopping in at the bank. So many people that are performing important jobs in our economy yet struggling to support their own families. As we talk about the data, think about these people. Actually, many of them are closer to home, friends, family. Certainly, for me, I have two young adults starting off in the work world, and they’re having a really tough time finding a rental apartment that they can afford near their job. Many of us have parents who are trying to retire and don’t have those savings and may be challenged in an ALICE where their Social Security isn’t enough to support those household basics. Next slide.

Let’s dig into the data. Here, you can see a breakdown of all households in the US by income. The dark blue are households in poverty, and that’s our official measure. With that, 13% of households are struggling. Yet, when you look at what it actually costs to live and work in every county in the country, we find another 29% of households are struggling. Our official measures are not telling the full story. In fact, 42% of households are struggling. With those kinds of numbers, of course, we all know ALICE. It gives us a sense of the magnitude of what we’re trying to address here today.

Just a little bit behind our work, we are a national research organization. We do innovation around ALICE and measures and financial hardship. One of the unique things about us is we’re housed at United Way of Northern New Jersey. It’s very important to us that our work is useful on a local level. You’ll see that as I go through some of the measures. Next slide.

We see ALICE lives in every community across the country. There’s a big range by state. The lowest percent of ALICE households is 33% in North Dakota. The highest is 50% in Louisiana. ALICE is in every county and every local community as well. Our data is available at the county level, ZIP code, county subdivision. You can really find out more about your local community as well as this big picture across the country.

ALICE also comes in all shapes and sizes. We have all ages, all race, ethnicities, all household types. There’s no one ALICE picture. I think that’s important to recognize when we’re looking at solutions. There’s no one problem, and there’s no one solution. It’s going to take a lot to change the trajectory of 42% of households. Next slide.

This is, I think, the epitome of our work. It’s a example, but I think it shows the crux of the challenge. The dark blue column is the ALICE household survival budget. It’s what we calculate for every county in the country. Just the bare minimum for housing, childcare, food, transportation, healthcare, and then ALICE pays taxes.

This example is a family of four with two children in childcare in the median income county in the country, Duval County in Florida. We compare that with the yellow column is two of the most common occupations. This family, four people, two adults. They’re both working full-time, year-round. One is a personal care aide and the other as a stockworker order filler. Super common jobs that we all know, they don’t earn enough to support just that basic household survival budget for a four-person family. It’s that gap is why we have so many ALICE households. You can see this compared to the federal poverty level, which is the gray box, and how woefully short that is of what it actually costs. Next slide.

I just want to point out, we have that budget everywhere. As we’re talking today, the cost might be slightly different in DC or Arkansas or Tennessee or New York, but so are wages. It’s comparing the two in that location that makes such a difference. What we’re seeing across the country is over the last decade and a half, the number of households in poverty has remained flat, while the number of ALICE households has continued to tick up.

That, again, is worrying for our whole economy. At what point can economies support so many households that aren’t purchasing beyond their household basics, that are struggling with their daily existence beyond what it takes to make an economy grow? I think that we are concerned about ALICE families as individuals, but we also need to be concerned about the bigger economic picture. Next slide.

We’ve been talking about ALICE household overall, and shifting here to really dig into ALICE workers, which is the focus for this. In this example, we see that some of the most common occupations, we pull these out for each state. You can see the number of employment, but then what percent of those workers are below the ALICE threshold. You get a sense of why when you’re looking at their hourly median wage. Next slide.

We currently have those for occupations. In our next data that’s going to be released, we’ll show them by industry sector, which I think will also help us understand where ALICE is working. Not to steal our punch, but ALICE does work in all sectors. More to dig into. With our next slide, I wanted to leave you with a few things to check out after the webinar. We have a great website where you can dig into more data on your state. You can get demographics, data over time, more on the workforce. Next slide.

We also have some terrific tools. Things like our ALICE income status tool is very handy for looking at eligibility for programs. We have a legislative district tool. I know many of you do advocacy, so that is useful to drill down that ALICE lives in all voting districts, state and federal level, so you can dig in more there. Next slide. With your interest on– oh, I’m talking faster than my slides. There’s the income status tool and the legislative district tracker. Then on the next slide, we have the economic viability dashboard.

One of the features on that is a deep dive into ALICE data for workers. I invite you to check that out. One of the features of the tool is not only the ALICE data, but pairing it with promising practices. We know that that’s so important as we’re defining the problem, what can we be doing for next steps? Today is where we’re really focusing on those promising practices with ALICE at Work.

This has been a dream of mine for a while, so it’s amazing to see it coming to life because employers are one group that can make the biggest difference for ALICE, and they can make it so immediately. They don’t have to wait for it to be passed by the legislature. They don’t have to wait for it to go through a committee.

It’s things that sometimes it’s increasing income for ALICE households, but sometimes it’s changing practices that just help decrease costs. It can be as simple as changing scheduling so that a worker doesn’t have to pay for extra time at childcare or can use public transportation. This is just to get you thinking of all the different creative ways that employers can make a difference for ALICE after recognizing that they’re in the workforce. Thanks, Matt.

[00:18:51] Matt: Thanks so much, Dr. Hoopes. That was great. I really do encourage you to go to their website and check out their resources. There is just a wealth of useful data in there, and it’s just an incredible repository of information that is just wonderful to have as a field of practice to draw on. Thanks for your leadership, Dr. Hoopes, and thanks for all you’ve done to advance this conversation on job quality in ALICE households.

I’m going to introduce our next panel, but before I do, I did see a question come in about the MIT self-sufficiency wage and just where we’re at compared to that in terms of the jobs we’re providing. I’ll say, my understanding the last time I looked was that about half of full-time workers earn the MIT self-sufficiency wage. Quite a big gap there, obviously.

As Dr. Hoopes was noting, job quality is not just about wages. Wages are obviously very important. There’s also other things around benefits, workplace safety, stable scheduling, having a voice at work. There’s a relatively new survey out that’s come out within the last year, year and a half, called the American Job Quality Survey. I encourage you all to check that out as well. That shows that only about 40% of Americans believe that they have a good job right now. I think aligns with a lot of the other numbers we see in terms of the gap that we’re trying to address in terms of trying to transform all jobs, really, into good jobs that allow people to thrive. Dr. Hoopes, were you going to jump in real quick?

[00:20:20] Stephanie: Yes. Just for a comparison, we get this question a lot. How does the ALICE household survival budget compare? Ours is the lowest-cost budget out there. MIT has a couple more categories, and it’s a little bit more stable over time. There’s a few other great tools out there. We need these different tools to understand things.

The ALICE measures are just that bare minimum. If we have 42% of households that are struggling at that level, of course, when you add more in these other budgets that are stable and more aspirational, and actually what we all want over time, and we need those measures. When we say 42%, it is at least that struggling, and that is a conservative budget. Thank you for that clarification.

[00:21:13] Matt: Thanks for that context. That’s helpful. Let’s take a deep dive with our next panel and starting to explore ALICE at Work. Let me introduce our next three speakers. We have Allison Pepin, who’s the human resources consultant for United for ALICE, Jessica Pilcher, director of United for Working Families at United Way of Greater Chattanooga, and Sherra Bennett, senior program officer at Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, who’s one of our job quality fellows, and who just spoke at an event we had two weeks ago. I think she is setting the record at this point for the frequency of appearances on our webinars, and we’re just delighted to have her back as well.

Let’s jump in just with some quick intros and a little bit of starting to look at what the ALICE at Work initiative in particular does and some of the results we’re starting to see. Allison, let me start with you first. Tell us a bit about yourself, and talk about this ALICE at Work initiative and its design and what it looks like.

[00:22:13] Allison Pepin: All right. Well, thank you, Matt. I’ve been in the human resources profession for over 25 years, and I’ve worked in Fortune 500 companies that specialize in retail, hospitality, and healthcare, and all of them employ ALICE. My experience with ALICE before I was aware of what ALICE meant has been in supporting the needs of that population at work.

In my consulting practice, Diversified Transformations, I work with organizations to help guide them through human capital and talent management needs. I was contacted by Michelle Roers and Dr. Stephanie Hoopes, who just spoke, to help them and their team at United Way of Northern New Jersey to develop a curriculum that educates employers about ALICE and workplace strategies to support ALICE and organization needs. Now, this is in response to their getting questions and things from their corporate partners that actually wanted to better understand how they could support ALICE that was part of their own workforce.

ALICE at Work is a program that is designed to provide knowledge about the workforce through the data that Stephanie Hoopes just discussed about their employees. It also includes strategies and focuses around benefits and compensation, financial wellness, scheduling and flexibility, professional development, and workplace resources. This is delivered by United Way Networks, and what they do is facilitate 12 hours of training to cohort participants. The employers that are challenged with attracting talent, fostering employee engagement, and retaining talent can utilize ALICE at Work to take action and basically impact positive changes for their workforce and for their organizations.

[00:24:27] Matt: Great. Thanks, Allison, for that overview. Jessica, let’s turn to you next. Please tell us a little bit about yourself, United Way of Greater Chattanooga, and a little bit about how you came to the ALICE at Work initiative.

[00:24:41] Jessica Pilcher: Of course. Thank you, Matt. I’m Jessica Pilcher. I am the director of United for Working Families at the United Way of Greater Chattanooga. Our mission is to unite people and resources to create a stronger and healthier community. One way we do that is through the initiative that I so proudly get to lead, United for Working Families.

All I do all day every day is work with our corporate partners and employers in rethinking benefits to be better for both our working caregivers and our ALICE households, because we know, as Stephanie already shared and Alison a little bit, ALICE households employers are facing a lot of challenges when going to work every day. When we start to think about that, if you couple that with the fact that if you have a caregiving responsibility, whether taking care of a little one or an ageing adult, you’re going to have even more barriers.

What I get to do is I get to sit with our employers and say, “What can we do? How can we be creative about rethinking those policies, benefits, practices, structures, communication leadership strategies?” One way that we get to do that is through ALICE at Work. ALICE at Work is something that I am a local trainer of, and we have done that for a few years now. It has been incredibly successful in working with our local partners. I’ll share a lot more about that in just a moment.

[00:25:59] Matt: Yes, I’m looking forward to diving into that with you with a few examples of what that’s looked like in your work. Sherra, great to see you again. Tell us a bit about Winthrop Rockefeller and what brought you into this ALICE network.

[00:26:13] Sherra Bennett: Thank you, Matt, happy to. Again, Sherra Bennett. At the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, we are focused on investing in Arkansas where everyone can thrive. What I would say that’s important to know, we still operate under Governor Rockefeller’s vision. In his vision, he really worked to modernize Arkansas’ economy. He successfully passed the first minimum wage for the state. Our work has always been connected to shifting systems for economic mobility.

At the foundation, all of our strategies are underlaid by the ALICE framework. I believe that we were the first private foundation to formally bring and overlay all of our strategies with ALICE. I hope we are not the last foundation to do that. Our work is really connected to ensuring that the Arkansans who are half of the Arkansans in our ALICE can thrive, and that looks like 1 in every 2.3 households across Arkansas. In 2020, it really helped us connect our work to what we were hearing in the community, that the basic or typical poverty statistics were not painting the entire story around who is thriving and who is struggling in Arkansas. That’s what brought us to the United for ALICE movement.

[00:27:27] Matt: Great. Well, Jess, that was quick. Let’s come back to you for some more examples of what this has looked like in practice in Chattanooga. Tell us about the type of businesses and employers you’re working with, what that process looks like. Just tell us a little bit about that and business engagement work that you’re doing on this, and what some of the results have been.

[00:27:50] Jessica: Yes, absolutely. When United for ALICE first developed the curriculum, oh, I think we were one of the first in line. We said that this is something that there was huge appetite for in Chattanooga. We had laid the groundwork for about a year. Underneath our United for Working Families Initiative, we’ve already been having active conversations about changing policies and benefits, and being more mindful of how organizations are structured and how they can be either supportive or not so supportive of our ALICE households.

There was an appetite for it, so we signed up for it. We were one of the first trainers invited locally. To-date, we’re just coming at two years since my very first cohort. We have trained 21 companies of all sizes, and that touches base with just under 22,000 employees in the southeast. That’s a fairly large number. I’m looking to Carrie here that you’ll meet later. I’ve got four other cohorts that we have set before the end of the year. We’re looking to hit just under 40 employers.

This ranges from all types of industries. We’ve seen tons of manufacturing companies. We have a healthcare-only cohort coming up in just a month. There’s appetite. There’s interest, and we’re seeing some really big changes from every single industry. I love that all industries have a different approach. We’re seeing different individuals from the companies join. Of course, this is semi an HR training. You get SHRM credits, HRCI credits.

What I find most valuable is those who are people leaders, maybe some line leaders that are joining that don’t have the human resources background being able to say that, “This is the real challenges that I’m seeing from my people. This is what I know is being communicated from the human resources perspective, and this is not what is being carried down across the line.” Coming at it from an open-minded perspective from our individuals has been incredible.

I most appreciate with the ALICE at Work curriculum is that it’s building a sense of empathy throughout our community that has not been there before. Because ALICE is focused on the human aspect of what daily living and impossible choices look like, that is a consistent thread in every single module that when you step back at the very end of the last module, in Chattanooga, we have seen every industry say, “Okay, maybe there is something more. Maybe there is something different we can do for our people,” and now they’re starting to act on it. Two years later, we’re starting to see some really big changes that I’ll share in just a little while, but this movement is working, specifically in Chattanooga.

[00:30:31] Matt: Could you say a little bit more about what’s bringing employers and businesses to the table and to the conversation? To your point around empathy and people and businesses wanting to do more on that front, I think we, as a field, often, and I’m talking about the job quality field, talk about when we’re approaching conversations with businesses around job quality that it has to start with the ROI. It has to mean something to the business in terms of their bottom line. I’m not sure that’s always the case. I think it depends on the context. It depends on the business. I’m just curious, in Chattanooga, what’s driving businesses and employers to engage and participate in this work?

[00:31:11] Jessica: Oh, certainly. There’s two conversations that can be had. You can talk the business perspective or the human perspective. Most of the time, we’re having the business perspective. I know that ALICE at Work, it trains you up really well that, specifically, if you pour into financial wellness programs, there’s a three-to-one rate of return for the dollar that you’re putting in. There is a huge uplift of the bottom line when you start to pour into ALICE employees.

As to go before, we pour in the conversation of pouring into working caregivers. If you start to put in dollars to support, let’s say, family leave, you will see a higher rate of return if you pour it into some different benefit. There is a very large financial return if you can start to develop the policies and procedures that allow employees to feel seen and heard. We back into the conversation with that. Of course, if you have the humanistic supports and the empathy that are driving your decisions, those decisions will lead to a higher financial outcome.

[00:32:12] Matt: That’s great. Thanks, Jessica. Sherra, turning back to you, tell us more about how this is playing out on the ground in Arkansas and what you’re learning about ALICE at Work there.

[00:32:23] Sherra: Happy to, Matt. One of the most powerful things that we’ve learned in Arkansas is that employers genuinely want to do better when they have the tools, the language, and the support to understand what workers are experiencing and how many of them just really want practical advice. It has been especially encouraging in terms of the diversity of employers that have been engaging in ALICE at Work in Arkansas.

We have a sector-based model here. We’ve worked with the financial institutions, the city of Little Rock, nonprofits, different cohorts of sectors that have worked and come together in collaboration to help think about how they can work differently with their ALICE workers. We have learned that changes don’t often start with massive overhauls. They really start with just listening.

For example, Habitat for Humanity surveyed their employees about what would materially improve their lives. There were some small requests in terms of lighting, but then there were more meaningful requests about equitable PTO. They implemented a practice where instead of time off accruing, they offered a 40-hour bank that folks could use. Who doesn’t want to be able to take time off to take care of a sick child or to take care of your own health needs that arise?

We have seen that those changes communicate dignity, and they help workers feel seen. That gets into the earlier question about wages for ALICE, but also job quality, autonomy, dignity, sense of self and agency. We’ve learned a lot around what this work looks like for small versus large organizations. Small organizations can typically be a bit more nimble, move more quickly. With our larger organizations, it takes a little bit more time and intentionality, but that’s okay, too.

Another really important lesson for us is that narrative matters. The more employers understand that ALICE workers are a large part of their workforce, but also their community in Arkansas as well, it helps to humanize the work, to humanize ALICE. That makes all the difference and changes things. I would say one of our biggest wins in terms of ALICE at Work in Arkansas was seeing Arkansas Children’s Hospital actually reach out to the United Way to become a part. They recently completed ALICE at Work with their organization. We’ve seen a lot of positive shifts with ALICE at Work in Arkansas.

[00:35:00] Matt: That’s great. Sherra, you brought up working with businesses and employers to better understand the perspectives of the workers. I’m curious, maybe this is a question for Jessica and Allison. What does the curriculum look like as far as supporting businesses to be able to help them better obtain and understand what’s going on in workers’ lives? Do you offer them support in designing surveys and conducting focus groups? Obviously, you’re bringing a lot of data to them, but I’m just curious in terms of support to the business itself to make it more sustainable in the future. What are you teaching them about how to really listen and respond?

[00:35:43] Jessica: I’m happy to jump in. Allison can speak maybe to the development of the curriculum. In application, of course, there’s 12 hours that have different modules. Allison spoke to that. You go through scheduling flexibility, you go through financial wellness, professional development, all sorts of things. It states fairly high level. It gives you examples, and it shows this is how you can set up a professional development plan for your individuals. These are examples of financial wellness.

Those are important takeaways because it’s building an action plan for the participants. Somebody that is going through the training is saying, “Oh, this is what I think we can do. This is what an actual practice that we company think this is going to be an outcome on the outset.” Then as the trainer, it is my job to make sure that they do the things they said they wanted to do in the action plan, that they provide that information to me and I provide it to the United for ALICE team.

We get to walk with them for however long it takes to get to the end of their action plan, that the things that they committed to happen, whether that is providing specific resources, to your earlier point, Matt, to provide an executive report. If we need to help with defense, if we need to pull data and resources, I am their go-to person that I get to help walk with them throughout that action plan. There are other resources that are provided throughout the follow-ups, but it really is in the relationship from the trainer to the participant perspective. Allison, anything to add?

[00:37:11] Allison: Yes. No, I agree. I think the other thing that happens is through those cohorts, the participants depend on each other and they network with each other. How they work collaboratively with each other and really utilize one strategy at one organization may work at another that they have not thought about before. I think that that’s the piece of it that has also been a resource that we did not anticipate would happen, but it happily has.

[00:37:43] Matt: Allison, just sticking with you then, zoom in out a bit. Tell us a little bit more about what you’re observing nationally around the impact that ALICE at Work is having. There was a question that came through around, are you actually seeing employers increase wages in response to this? I’m sure the answer is yes. I don’t know if you have a sense of how often that happens. Just at a national level, what are some of the trends and impacts you’re seeing and some of the common changes you’re seeing businesses make in response to this work?

[00:38:13] Allison: What both Jessica and Sherra shared, what is happening in their respective areas, we’re seeing at a more broad level nationwide with the ALICE at Work participants. I think the main thing that we’re getting feedback on when we meet with them after they’ve gone through the ALICE at Work curriculum is the basic awareness about the ALICE demographic and the ALICE population that is in their workforce, that they may have not thought about, been exposed to, but that ALICE data report that they get when they participate in ALICE at Work if they choose to do so, really gives them a different vantage point about their employee population.

That’s the one thing that most of them tell us, that almost all of them tell us, that from ALICE at Work, that exposure to the data population about their workforce. What percent of their workforce population is ALICE? The other component that Jessica just spoke about is focus action planning. Once they’ve completed the ALICE at Work sessions, most of the participants talk to us about the focus action planning they’re doing in their organizations.

They’re addressing ALICE challenges by ALICE putting together some strategies, some planning. Really, the cohort participants have expressed to us that they are utilizing the information that they’ve gotten from the training from their other participants to work in their companies to develop more strategic practices that overall benefit the entire organization. They’re elevating the conversation about what the workforce needs with the strategic partners in the organization. That’s the thing that they talk about.

Then the third thing that we’re seeing is that, really, they consider the ALICE data when they are looking at something you just brought up, compensation and benefits. They’re looking at that data. It’s another point for them to consider when they’re doing a compensation analysis, when it’s time for open enrollment and they’re speaking with their brokers or their benefits partners. Those are things that they had not possibly done before, but because they have this other data point from ALICE at Work, they’re utilizing that information to make more informed decisions about how they’re impacting their workforce.

Things like financial empowerment training, how they communicate benefits to their workforce. Once again, like I said, when they’re looking at compensation analysis, using that information. Those are the things that they talk about with us when we circle back with them during action planning sessions. We are definitely seeing a link between the content at ALICE at Work and how organizations are moving forward with their workforce planning, because they’re telling us this when we meet with them.

[00:41:26] Matt: Great. Thanks, Allison. Sherra, back to you from a perspective of someone who sits in philanthropy. Investing in strategies aimed at job quality, I think as we discussed even during our last webinar, are still pretty new amongst philanthropic foundations. What would you say to people in philanthropy and in foundations on the webinar today about investing in work like this and how you think about impacts and outcomes related to the investments you’re making?

[00:42:02] Sherra: Absolutely. I would say it’s important for philanthropy to note that job quality is not separate from any of the issues philanthropy already cares about. It actually sits underneath nearly all of them. If families cannot afford housing, childcare, transportation, despite working, we will continue to see challenges across education outcomes, health outcomes, civic participation, economic mobility. Earlier, Matt, when you framed our conversation, you talked about the connection to democracy. I think that it’s critical that we see this as an issue that is impacting all of our work and critical foundational infrastructure for thriving communities as well.

Then I would say in terms of impact and outcomes, philanthropy can uniquely play a role as a convener and risk-taker to help spread the narrative, to invest in organizations, to talk to employers, to bring groups of folks together, to organize and create the outside infrastructure that’s really needed to pilot and take bold risks.

Sometimes in philanthropy, it’s not about being able to write the biggest check, but being the boldest or the bravest and willing to invest in something unique and different because you’re able to see how this connects to everything else. At our foundation, we have truly seen the throughlines between us investing in the ALICE framework and the report, being able to socialize this language across other philanthropic entities, across other sectors. Now it’s not uncommon to hear legislative, we have the ALICE Day at the Hill, we have the ALICE Youth Leadership Coalition.

For us, this work is really moving upstream in a very large way. It took WRF being willing to say, “Hey, this connects to our work. It’s important that we bring this in, and this will help change the conversation, and that’s what we’re seeing.” I would encourage philanthropy to just note that you will see increased outputs in all of the areas you’re looking to move the needle on if you are investing in job quality as a central framework to your strategies.

[00:44:10] Matt: Thanks, Sherra. Appreciate that. Jessica, as we close out this segment of the event, maybe leave us with a story of one of the businesses or employers you’ve worked with and the changes that you saw. Then if you have any final pieces of advice to others that are doing this kind of work in their communities about engaging businesses on the job quality conversation, we’d love to hear those as well.

[00:44:37] Jessica: Of course. I love that Sherra already spoke on this, but working with different-sized businesses is really fascinating. My smaller businesses, the nonprofits that I have joining, are making much faster and larger changes than I have seen of their peers, those larger-sized companies. It has been fascinating to watch on the outset, we’re two years in, now being able to see the big changes of the big companies, those larger types of investments. Some examples that I can share our very first cohort that we did, a small nonprofit poured in about $15,000 into their building infrastructure. Their part-time workers had access to the building outside of work hours, so they had more scheduling flexibility. That was something that they hadn’t considered before.

They said, “Oh, the majority of our workforce are part-time. The majority of our workforce are also ALICE workers. How can we increase their scheduling and flexibility?” They re-outfitted their building. Other ones that we’ve seen, lots of family leave added. We have seen financial wellness programs being added. One you’ll hear later on from our partners at Hamilton County Schools. We’re seeing tons and tons of leadership changes. Allison spoke a little bit earlier, but different communication strategies of benefits because benefits are oftentimes the most confusing part of onboarding.

If we can create more simplicity in discussing what benefits, what access they have within the workplace, it can create a big welcome change. When I say what advice do I have, I say that, and I’ll tie this with the story of my most recent cohort right now. I have one of our largest employers in town sitting in it. It has taken me a full two years to get them to sit in the seat and listen to ALICE at Work.

It is so successful, not because they’re going to walk away with a big sweeping change, but because after my last session with them, we were talking about scheduling and flexibility. They came to me and said, “Hey, we work a call center. We’re not going to be able to offer flexibility. We have to have staff on the phones. We’re XX, we’re 24 hours. We can’t do that. We heard you, and we heard you that people matter more than the policy reads.”

I kept thinking about this one individual that called me three weeks ago and said they couldn’t make the schedule work. I just told them plainly, “No, sorry, that’s not how the process works.” I kept thinking about that woman because the story was that she couldn’t make it work because she had to pick up her kid from childcare. I’m going to call her after this and see what we can do, see if there’s a different department she can move toward, because now I see that she’s not asking because she’s just trying to be picky or needy; she’s trying to better support her family and the needs that they have.

My advice to anyone working with employers is to lean into that. Your employers have needs, and they have a whole bunch of people that work for them that also have needs. If you can pull back the veil to show that ALICE is going to work every day, and we can meet on that common ground, you’ll see the biggest changes. Then, two, there is no fancy algorithm with working with a company. You can’t go in with this playbook of things and say, “This is exactly what’s going to work for you,” because let’s be honest, that will not work with any of your employers.

We are four years into this work, and that has never once worked. You have to come with a posture of “I don’t know best, you do, but let me slip off into some best practices that might work for you. Let’s start with the data. Let’s start with a common ground that there are humans that work for you that have needs and challenges. Let’s not pretend that you know best. As the professional coming in, let’s start to work together and see. Sometimes the smallest changes make the biggest impact. If you start there, you’ll see a long-term impact. It’s working for us, and I believe it’ll work for you all.”

[00:48:12] Matt: Thanks, Jess. Yes, I think what you’re hitting on there is important, right? Awareness is the first step, and shifting the mindset is also an outcome, and an important one because that opens the door to further change. Sometimes we want to pretend like we can skip over that piece of shifting mindsets and perspective, right? It’s an important one that I think your work is shining a light on.

Allison, as we close out this segment, what comes to mind for you when you think about other organizations that are doing job quality advising and job quality coaching about what they can learn from the ALICE at Work model? I’ll tee you up. I’m particularly interested in maybe you talking a little bit about the cohort model and how that can be impactful in facilitating change, because I think a lot of the job quality advising and coaching strategies we see are more one-on-one and individual with business and employer partners, but this cohort model seems to be something a little bit more unique. I wonder if you could talk about the positive aspects of that.

[00:49:12] Allison: I think the first part is for those in that job quality realm to really look at the ALICE data and understand it, understand it from the perspective of where they are geographically, so they know how ALICE is being impacted where they are, and then those who they’re supporting. If they’re supporting organizations to make sure they understand what’s happening in their geographic area as it relates to ALICE.

Starting to understand and know about the data, I think that’s the first thing that helps. Then, as far as the ALICE at Work model, what we found from the different cohorts from the various industries and sectors, it really generated, and we’ve spoken about this before, this collaborative environment. When you bring individuals in childcare, in hospitality, in healthcare, in nonprofit, manufacturing, transportation together, I think those leaders all come with their various perspectives and their views about what’s happening in their organization and what works. It’s what Jessica was just speaking about.

I think when they get together in this cohort model and they share what’s going on in their environment, the challenges they may be experience with regard to attracting the talent, engaging the population, and retaining the talent, and then they speak about what they’re all doing, I think that cohort model lends itself to just a natural collaboration and generating of ideas and solutions to address the workforce challenges they’re being confronted with.

That’s what we’re seeing when we get together with the different action plan groups and the groups to do the action plan process, rather. A lot of them tell us, “We are still talking to the individuals in our cohort. We’ve continued the dialogue now that we’ve finished the training, the networking that has been started with that, and the sharing of resources has been most beneficial,” and that’s what we’ve seen with this cohort model.

[00:51:23] Matt: Great. That’s great. Before we go to the next segment, we still have about 40 minutes left today, so I want to go into a couple of audience questions for the three of you. Allison, I think this first one is for you. We just talked about the cohort model, and there’s some curiosity around what it takes to run that and how people might become involved in exploring that as an opportunity.

One person noted that they’ve heard it’s expensive to do that, which I imagine it could be. I’m curious how you all are thinking about bringing this to more communities and maybe addressing some of the cost barriers that comes with putting together such an intense cohort model like this.

[00:52:05] Allison: Jessica, you probably can share some of the insight at this because being a local United Way and Jessica’s team facilitating this training, it’s very important to understand, “What actually is the benefit from it?” I think that the different United Ways and the different individuals who facilitate the training speak about the resources they’ve used in their communities to help them bring these cohorts to fruition.

Sherra, in her organization, clearly is one that recognizes in the community they’re in how important it is. I think it is beneficial for the different United Ways or the different entities who want to participate or facilitate a cohort to really understand what their resources are, what their needs are, and explore those different ways that they can fund this ALICE at Work initiative. Jessica, would you like to share what you did in order to be able to do that?

[00:53:06] Jessica: Sure, yes. It is an investment to be a local United Way to bring on ALICE at Work. It is an investment, but it is an investment worth making. Because we have seen a tremendous amount of positive change for ALICE households in our community, we would do it over and over again. It’s non-negotiable for us to know that the learnings, the outset outcomes, have been something that has completely changed how we approach corporate partners in our community.

I’ll say that, yes, it is an investment as a local United Way. As a company, if you are wanting to get involved, I think Kara’s going to share a lot more about that. The actual going through the curriculum is a time investment, but it is something, again, that with the proper support of your trainer, whether it is through the local United Way or through United for ALICE’s trainer, you’ll see lots of engagement throughout it.

Allison’s point, yes, this is a big-time work for whether you are the host or you are going through it as a participant. It is our hope, either as a trainer or as a participant, to ensure that you are finding it very valuable toward the end.

[00:54:19] Allison: Matt, one thing I will add is when we look at it, Jessica talked about HR professionals participating in this and business leaders. There are many other professional development sessions or trainings that are out there to help elevate what’s happening in organizations. ALICE at Work is one such program that is a professional development program that can help develop those individuals participating and their contribution to the organization that they work with and they work for.

[00:54:56] Matt: Right. Well, Jessica, Sherra, Allison, thank you all so much for being here today. There were a lot of audience questions. A lot of them we didn’t get to. I encourage the audience, if you have a question for a specific individual, put it in the chat, and we’ll make sure they see it and can follow up with you through email or through another channel. I know these folks are all generous with their time and willing to share their expertise.

Let me bring on our next set of speakers here and introduce them. We have Cary Esperanza Dawson, who’s the Director of Strategic Partnerships at United for ALICE and ALICE at Work, Beth McDowell, who’s an HR professional with Hamilton County Schools, and Lynn White Sohn, Engagement and Retention Specialist at UR Medicine Thompson Health. Beth and Lynn represent our employers who’ve been through the ALICE at Work initiative and then participating on it.

We thought it was important to bring them into the conversation to hear about their experience and what’s worked for them. Let’s start just with some introductions. Beth and Lynn, maybe each introduce yourself and talk a little bit about how and why you got involved with ALICE at Work and a little bit about the program experience, what it’s been like for you.

[00:56:15] Beth McDowell: Sure. Like said, I’m Beth McDowell. I’m with Hamilton County Schools in Chattanooga. Jessica approached us and invited us to come down and learn more about ALICE at Work and the ALICE population. Because we are such a large employer, we were very eager to learn more about what they had to offer. I found the workshops to be a very explorative process. We learned so much about our community and the data surrounding the Chattanooga area, the weight and the stressors that the ALICE population is carrying into work throughout the day, and then back home again.

We had the opportunity to meet with other public entities like the City of Chattanooga and really just explore what options we could do to relieve those burdens, also to develop a collective empathy and sit in the shoes for just a moment of the people making those decisions about whether or not to buy groceries or fix their car, right? Those are really hard options. Then, what we as an employer can do to show a compassionate and empathetic response to support them, and because we’re a public entity, also support our community as a whole, so it was a very explorative, collaborative, and productive experience to do the ALICE program training.

[00:57:38] Matt: Beth, I didn’t hear. How big was your school district? How many employees do you have?

[00:57:43] Beth: We have 6,000 employees.

[00:57:46] Matt: Great. Across how many schools did you say?

[00:57:51] Beth: Current count is 81, but I think next week it will be 82. We have a lot of schools. We cover the entire county.

[00:58:00] Matt: Great. Thanks, Beth. Just wanted that for additional context. Lynn, the same question to you, tell us a bit about yourself, the organization you work for, and how you got involved with ALICE at Work.

[00:58:12] Lynn White Sohn: Great. My name is Lynn White Sohn. I’m the Engagement and Retention Specialist at the University of Rochester Thompson Health. We’re a healthcare organization in the Finger Lakes region of New York. The role that I have supports workplace culture initiatives and ways to strengthen engagement, support retention, and those things. We were thrilled. We were one of the inaugural cohorts in the ALICE at Work, organized by our United Way of Greater Rochester in the Finger Lakes. We did that in the fall of 2024.

Thompson Health is the largest employer in Ontario County. We were thrilled not only to participate, but really felt like it was an obligation to be part of that group. We’re a healthcare organization, so employees at Thompson play a critical role in the life of our community as well as their families. It was great to get together with other employers. We didn’t really know what to expect, but were thrilled to be part of the training.

It really gave us an opportunity to look at our organization from every angle, what we currently do, what we could do better, and also some of the things that we could easily do that would make a big difference for our employees. I think many people have talked about the opportunity to get together with a cohort. That was so great to get together with other organizations in our community, other employers, leaders in our community, to talk about ideas and strategies. We know that none of our organizations can be successful without our employees, right?

The chance to view our policies, our benefits through a different lens, and ways to better support our employees to come to work, be great employees, take care of their families, it was just a really great opportunity for us. We learned a lot from that process. It was a great opportunity for us, and I’m really glad that we participated in that.

[01:00:31] Matt: All right. We’re going to take a deeper dive into all that in just a second, but I want to let, Cary, you introduce yourself, and if you have any reflections on the conversation so far and anything you want to add at this point, go ahead and chime in. What jumps out to me so far in this conversation that I think is fresh is that ALICE at Work is really a job quality strategy that is a community strategy, right?

It’s not going employer by employer, but it’s really trying to engage a wider community and ecosystem and thinking about, “Who are the struggling workers?” and what we can do together to foster change. I think that’s just really innovative and exciting to see. I asked for your reflection, and I shared mine. Let me let you introduce yourself, and you jump in here.

[01:01:18] Cary Esperanza Dawson: Not surprising we’re aligned, Matt. [laughter] My name is Cary Dawson, and I have, really, the honor to be the Director of Strategic Partnerships at the ALICE at Work program. Sitting here for the last little bit and listening to our funders, our experts, our participants, and our practitioners, the job has been done for me because there’s no better voice for what this program is all about than those who are a part of it, so I just thank all of you so much for sharing.

I’m really responsible for a couple of different levels of how the program is being built and expanded nationally. We are currently in 10 states. We’ll be in 13 probably by the end of the month. We have this wonderful network of the United Way, where we have established partnerships in understanding and engagement in the ALICE data, and also existing relationships with the stakeholders, the corporate stakeholders, the government stakeholders, the nonprofit stakeholders, and our communities.

It is no surprise that the program has started growing in a way where our United Way partners, who are locally providing this content to individuals, are going to their first phone call, right? Who will really understand this work and be able to engage and then help in a waterfall to bring in others? I think the community element of this also is highlighted in our sixth module. We talk about support and resources, but it’s an opportunity to localize. We are really able to offer local support and resources through our local trainers and also through our United Way network.

There are many programs throughout. Dr. Hoopes isn’t on the square, but it’s I think 42, almost 43 states, plus the District of Columbia, who we have created ALICE Data for, thus far, who are already engaged in this work. They’re already providing resources to the ALICE community. We’re able to right there at the end, right? We’re asking, I heard a lot of talk about investment, too. This investment of 12 hours from busy professionals, we know what that means. That’s the big investment here.

Spend this time with us. As we leave, there’s a true bridge to what your community can provide, what our movement, the ALICE movement, is providing, and also what that continued collaboration can provide. Just seeing the collaboration prove positive here today is amazing. Thank you, Matt. Thank you for the question.

[01:03:59] Matt: Thanks, Cary. Lynn and Beth, let’s just talk a little bit about what you learned through this process. Obviously, data and looking at the data is a big part of some of the initial stages of this work and trying to figure out what’s going on with your employees. Lynn, let’s start with you. What did you, and you are at Thompson Health, learn about your employees through this process, and what did you end up doing with that data?

[01:04:30] Lynn: Great. In my job, I spend a lot of time talking with our employees. My position is engagement or retention. That’s a lot of what I do in my work. I see them throughout their career at Thompson. I hear those things that are difficult for them: childcare, transportation, rising costs, family responsibilities, caregiving. What is great about the ALICE at Work is, the data takes the guesswork out of it. We know that we have those associates that fall into that ALICE category, but what the data provided for us was the numbers.

We all know that that critical data helps us to examine our organization, compensation, benefits, resources, to continue to develop a supportive culture so that our employees can be successful. We have taken that data that was provided. Our organization has participated in two cohorts of ALICE at Work. We had our local United Way partner come and present the information and data to our executive leadership team.

We put together an evolving action plan to continue looking at the different areas that we learned about, and they talked earlier about it, the different areas like benefits and compensation, and scheduling, and flexibility, and professional development, all of those things. We have an action plan that looks at those different things and “What can we do?” Everybody knows that that data-driven information is critical, and so it provides justification for when we go to allocate our resources.

To me, a workplace participating in ALICE at Work is a no-brainer. If you want to move outside the status quo and you want to do better for your employees, this is a program that can help you do that. That’s what the encouragement is, the working with other cohorts, other businesses, other employers to try to make things better for our employees. It provides the framework to do that. It’s been really helpful to us.

[01:06:55] Matt: Was there a specific data point or two that really surprised you or grabbed your attention or that of leadership that were like light bulbs went off, like “We had no idea this was going on; maybe we had a sense of it, but this clarifies it”?

[01:07:09] Lynn: Yes, I think because most sectors have, we know where our entry-level positions, we assume that’s the group that’s ALICE, but I think for us, we’re in healthcare, so registered nurses and positions that we would not consider necessarily an entry-level position, but were falling into that ALICE category, was really interesting to see, “Oh my gosh, this is not–” We have some assumptions about who those people are, but it just provided a wider picture and a more clear picture of who those people were in our organizations, and got us really thinking about “How are we going to be able to address things for that wide group of people?”

[01:08:06] Matt: Thanks, Lynn.

[01:08:07] Lynn: Yes.

[01:08:08] Matt: Beth, what’s been some of the key things that the school district has learned from your participation? What are some of those data points that I asked Lynn about that have jumped out to you?

[01:08:18] Beth: Yes, sure. When we looked at the data, we looked at a lot of community data. The reason for that is because we’re such a large employer. Like we said earlier, 6,000 employees. Additionally to that, we support 45,000 students in our county. That is a large part of our community, and because we’re public, we want to build our community. One of the things that we saw is that there are resources that are relatively available for how to get to a point, like how to get into an apartment, how to get to a car, how to remove those initial barriers, but sustainability became a real factor.

What do you do when that car breaks down or when it needs brakes? What do you do when the house you finally were able to purchase for your family, you get in, and there’s a leak in the roof? What do you do when those student loans come knocking, right? What we’ve put together as one of our initial steps is 25 different classes on financial well-being that started those basic sustainability levels, how to budget, how to manage student loans, how to be renter-ready because the rental market has become brittle, how to budget for home repairs, all of those things that become sustainability barriers.

We want to see our employees in our community be able to move forward from the achievements that they make and continue with that trajectory in improving the stability for their families. In addition to that, we have used those classes. We’ve partnered with some nonprofits and opened the doors. Those classes are going to be held at schools and at public community centers, where not only are our employees coming, but these nonprofits can invite other employees that maybe their workplace can’t hold enough for one or two. They can’t hold a whole class for one or two people. Come on over. Join us. We are, at the core, an education organization. We want to bring those sustainability education points and benefits to our employees, but also to our communities.

[01:10:33] Matt: Great. One of you is part of a school system. One of you is part of a healthcare system. One of the questions that came in through the chat was, “Do labor unions show up as a stakeholder in any of this work?” I’m curious, Lynn and Beth, if that’s the case for either of you, and how they might have engaged with the data or participated on that front. If not, that’s okay. I did want to bring that question into the mix.

[01:10:57] Lynn: Yes. We don’t have a union at Thompson. I know some other of our affiliates do, and so that’s a consideration, but we don’t at our organization.

[01:11:11] Beth: We also don’t have unions. We do have an educators’ association, and we do collaborative agreements with them, and they have been interested. Part of that collaborative discussion is talking about benefits, how they are facilitated, administered, communicated, and brought to our employees, for our teachers, all the way to our school nutrition. They have been a part of it through their collaborative agreement.

[01:11:40] Matt: Got you. Cary, maybe I’ll ask you as Director of Strategic Partnerships, maybe globally, nationally, where has labor been showing up in the ALICE at Work and United for ALICE movement?

[01:11:53] Cary: Absolutely. We have had employer partners throughout the tenure of the program who are, in some way, affiliated with labor unions. We really have not found it to have an impact on participation or what you are able to get out of the program. Specifically, I think the way that we look at it or the way that we speak to it is that professional development, if I were talking to you about a professional development program for communication or for a specific soft skill, you would never ask me about your labor union or your relationship to your labor union.

With respect to how this curriculum is really to guide employers on their professional development, how they’re addressing their talent, how they’re managing decision-making vis-a-vis their workforce, it hasn’t really come up. In terms of the data reporting, there are some opportunities there, actually, because we would be able to suss out some other data points specific to union versus non-union. That’s our experience thus far.

[01:13:01] Matt: Got you. Got you. That makes sense. Sounds like more to come on that front, but there’s some opportunity there, right?

[01:13:06] Cary: Yes, for sure.

[01:13:08] Matt: Lynn, as we move towards the finish line, we would love to hear more about some of the changes you’ve seen happen as a result of participating in ALICE at Work and really what’s on the horizon as well for Thompson Health that builds on some of what you’ve been doing through this initiative.

[01:13:28] Lynn: Great. There’s a couple of things. One is that our local United Way has done a really great job about keeping the cohorts in touch with each other. We get together to update and share what we’ve been working on, which has been really nice to hear, “What are the things some of the organizations have played off each other?” Like, “Oh, we’d like to try that here. Here’s where we’ve gotten with this. What have you used?”

One of those examples is we have just put into play, we’re rolling out earned wage access, so daily pay, which was something that was of interest to our employers, but we’ve worked really hard to find a partner where there’s no fees, there’s no costs to our employees, and working with that, and that came from another organization that we worked with, somebody else in the cohort, just like, “This is how we did it.” Those things have come forward, and that’s been really successful for us.

We’ve worked with the United Way to set up a compassion fund for our associates here that people can tap into if they have a sudden emergency or a financial hardship that they need assistance with. That’s happened as a result of that. Here at Thompson, we have what we call success coaches that are resource navigators that assist with lots of different things outside EAP with childcare, back rent, transportation.

Another one of our cohorts has adopted that and tried to figure out how they can use it in their organization. Those are the things that we’ve been working on. One of the things that’s come forward that we’re going to be looking at is career paths. We’ve been doing some things internally to educate people on what some possible career paths are and how we can help with providing funding for additional education, and those things, programs that are flexible for people who have families and can’t go to a traditional route of education, how can we help fund that?

Some of those things are the things that we’re working on. We are constantly just going back to that action plan and saying, “Have we hit some of those things, and what’s next? What can we do next?” I think the relationship with the other cohorts actually helps us to continue to move forward and challenge each other. “What are you doing, and how can we continue to move forward with those things for our employees?”

[01:16:18] Matt: Great. Thanks, Lynn. Beth, same question to you. Talk a little bit about what’s changed as a result, the impacts you’ve seen. I think when we were talking a couple of months ago, as we were getting ready for this session, it seemed like the local government had really gotten involved in this work and thought about how they could play a role in helping address some of the issues you were all seeing as a community, so I’d love for you to talk about that as well.

[01:16:43] Beth: Sure. We’ve begun discussions with the county government to see how we can join forces in numbers to seek out partnerships for increased benefits that would be beneficial to both in a shared RFP scenario or RFQ scenario, so that we can utilize the buying power that we have to bring benefits that are a greater financial resource, but also at a lower price point for our employees.

Then another thing that we’ve done is we’ve increased our Grow Your Own program and made it more robust, where we have an educator preparedness program. Any of our employees, they can work their way up and become teachers and educators through Hamilton County Schools. As well as our general staff, we have that for our clerical staff in different roles that we have an internal education process where they can increase their role and increase their income potential and education as they move up. It’s a twofold thing where we’re looking outside of those partnerships, but we’re also looking to improve and grow from within.

[01:17:54] Matt: That’s great, Beth. Where do you think your work’s headed next? We did get a question. I imagine it might be a little bit too early to tell, but someone was asking, “Are you starting to see any ripple effects in terms of student outcomes from this type of work?” I imagine that’s probably a little bit further down the line in terms of looking at it, given where you are. I’m curious where you think the work’s headed and how looking at student outcomes might fit into some of the work you’re doing.

[01:18:24] Beth: Yes, sure. Of course, a lot of that is more to come in the future as the programs grow and build, but one of the really cool experiences I had was I went to a school where I was teaching resume building to students, juniors, and seniors. I was talking with this young lady through her resume. She said, “I want to be a teacher.” I said, “Well, that’s great. How did you get there?” It was because she had watched an educational assistant go through the Grow Your Own and become a teacher, and she said she bought a house.

“I remember when she was my assistant, she lived in an apartment, and now she bought a house, and I want to buy a house, and I want to help kids.” There really is a ripple effect, and it’s really beautiful to see and so encouraging.

[01:19:12] Matt: That’s great. Thanks, Beth. We’ll circle back to a couple of audience questions in here in just a second. Cary, I want to invite you to share some reflections again and give us a little bit of sense of, if people want to learn more about ALICE at Work, what should they do, where should they go? How can they get engaged in it?

[01:19:30] Cary: Absolutely. I think there will be a link in the chat, which all roads lead to me in the end. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but that link is for our general interest form, which is really to set up a time to get an overview, learn about how we can connect you to your partners in your local community who are already practitioners, potentially use that as an impetus to create a cohort in your local community, or participate with us via United Way of Northern New Jersey. There are a lot of different avenues of entry for the program.

I did actually have a reflection, Matt, about something that you said earlier about investment and participation in the cohort model. I wanted to share that there’s one element, obviously, 65% of our participants come from the HR space. Over half of our participants are real decision-makers, executive-level, director-level, and above. What I think is important is that we also invite ALICE to this table, and I want to share that as a highlight, we always bring nonprofits into the opportunity.

Sherra, you, I think, alluded to it. We’ve had nonprofit-focused cohorts here in New Jersey and in Arkansas specifically, and I think Jessica has had one too. I think the idea that, first of all, we all are very good at doing a lot with a little, and so we have a creative mindset that, from the pure learning perspective, is invaluable. Also, I think Dr. Hoopes opened with “This can happen quickly while we’re waiting for other things that can take a very long time to happen to happen.”

Module 1 is “Meet ALICE,” right? You go through, and I love to hear Lynn and Beth, you both talking about learning, how do you make a change, the car or the rent? We go through that real first-person scenario of understanding what it means to be ALICE and what these impossible choices are. I don’t think we’ve yet had feedback from one of those Module 1s in any of our cohorts where someone didn’t say, “Oh, that was me. That was me the first four years of my career. Before I was the senior VP of HR, I lived in my car. I understand this. I just didn’t have the tools and language.”

I think when you’re talking about access and the size and why we have a cohort, our cohorts, by the way, are 5 companies and 20 participants, so they’re the right size for adult learning, and they’re right-sized specifically for being able to retain, reflect, and impact the idea that we also want our nonprofit partners at the table, and we want our ALICE voices at the table, and we’ve done very well at making sure that that is a piece of the mix of the formula. That was one reflection that I had to the conversation. I have four other pages of notes of reflections, but let’s see what the questions are.

[laughter]

[01:22:32] Matt: I think there is one question around, “Where has there been resistance?” Where have you run into roadblocks in the midst of a cohort or in engaging leadership in thinking about this? Because we all know change is not easy, right? Part of what we’re asking people to change is their mindsets and their awareness. Curious if anyone here, Cary, Beth, or Lynn, could speak to moments where that resistance popped up and how the program navigates that.

[01:23:03] Beth: We did have a little bit of resistance in our cohort during discussion. It was interesting. The city brought someone who does the tree maintenance and that kind of thing, and then they also had their head of HR. They were sitting across the room, and so the head of HR said something, and the young lady that did the rec services was like, “That’s not how that works.” I was like, “Oh, this is great.”

To see that conversation happen was incredibly valuable, and then to see them come to a solution. They met after class and sat and talked about it. “Why does that not work? How can we make that work better? How can you communicate this to the other people around you in your role?” There was pushback where she was just, “That’s not how that works,” but it was really good to see.

[01:24:05] Matt: Cary, anything you want to share from your perspective on this?

[01:24:07] Cary: I think we have two main obstacles, and I’ll tell you what they are. When I started this, I would have told you it was employers participating. That’s not the obstacle; it’s time, right? We’re asking for some time. That’s our number one obstacle. We really, as a program and testament to our team and to Allison and her wisdom, have tried to build scheduling practices that are favorable, flexible, and adaptable. That’s the most important piece, that this can work within the framework of your busy life as an employer.

Then I think the second piece is we rarely ever receive resistance to data-sharing. We’re a national data center. All I have to do is put Dr. Hoopes on the phone, and we’re done, right? Everything is fine. What I think happens is, and what we’re asking for is basic benefit census data; it’s information that should be being collected and tabulated once a week, and it should be an easy upload, and it’s really just capacity to remember and do it. That is our second obstacle.

The timing of that can be a challenge, but you don’t have to participate in that piece in order to get a lot out of the experience. I would say those are our two biggest obstacles, is really operational and not enthusiasm or willingness to be part of something like this.

[01:25:38] Matt: Great. Lynn and Beth, another question from the chat. I don’t know if this has popped up as an issue for you all, but I imagine it might have. As people’s wages start to grow incrementally, oftentimes their benefits start to go down, right? We call it the benefits cliff. It can be a real impediment to advancement for folks. I’m curious within the health system or the school district if that’s been a challenge you all have noticed, and how you might be grappling with addressing that.

[01:26:12] Lynn: That’s a good question. I have not heard that, but I can see where it would be. I don’t know if you have something to add about that, Beth.

[01:26:22] Beth: We do see that as the wages increase, that benefits cliff, and it is hard. It’s really hard to transition from some of the systemic supports to providing your own benefits for your family. Medical insurance can be $500, $600 a month, easily. One of the ways that we combat that is, for our benefits, we have a zero deductible, so if you are paying those premiums, you’re not also paying copays, right?

Then we also have a clinic and a pharmacy for our employees. Clinic visits are free. Pharmaceuticals are free or extremely low-cost. That’s some of what we do to help combat that for our employees. For our employees that have no health coverage, they can’t participate in our medical coverage; they can still use our clinics.

[01:27:19] Matt: That’s great. That’s wonderful. I think that’s a great note to end on, that something positive like that exists. Well, Lynn, Beth, Cary, thank you all so much for this third part of today’s event and this wonderful conversation. Thank you to all of our speakers, Dr. Hoopes, Sherra, Allison, and Jessica, as well. I learned a lot about United for ALICE and ALICE at Work today, and I hope the audience did too.

Appreciate all the questions and comments we got in the chats, and we got to as many of them as we can. Like I said, feel free to reach out to us, and we’ll help connect you to the person that can answer your question if we didn’t make it around to it today. Please join us for our next event, which is going to be on June 2nd and 3rd. It’s an in-person event, but available virtually as well. It’s called the Employee Ownership Ideas Forum. It’s actually where I met Allison Pepin, who you met earlier, and where we started the conversation, I think a year or so ago, about doing this together, so that stood out to me as well.

As part of that event, we’re going to have a special panel on ownership during the AI revolution, thinking about employee ownership in the context of this artificial intelligence moment. You can register for that separately and attend that as well as part of the forum. A huge thank you to my team at the Economic Opportunities Program. Special thanks to Tony, Frances, Nora, and always Maureen, Sinin, and Colleen, and our wonderful partners at Architex. Thank you again to our partners at United for ALICE for hosting this event with us today. We’ll see you next time. Thanks again.

[01:29:04] [END]

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