Across the U.S., levels of income and wealth inequality continue to climb and almost half of American workers remain stuck in low-wage jobs with little opportunity for advancement. In addition, the number of small businesses has reached all-time lows, and race and where you’re born remain some of the biggest factors influencing financial success in life.
At Pacific Community Ventures, we’re focused on supporting small businesses and mission-driven investors to create jobs in underserved communities — but creating jobs alone is not enough to combat inequality and all of these other troubling trends. We know that business owners want to provide really good jobs for workers, but aren’t always sure how to raise wages, offer health benefits, or better engage their workers in ways that also make sense for their budget and bottom line. Good Jobs, Good Business is a first-of-its-kind free tool for small business owners to do right for their workers while also growing their business and boosting their profits.
The Good Jobs, Good Business toolkit reflects our commitment to creating practical resources that can be used by small businesses and organizations that work with small businesses to advance good jobs and create stronger communities from the bottom. However, we can’t achieve this vision alone. If you’re a CDFI, workforce development organization, investment fund, government agency, or another type of organization working with small businesses and are interested in integrating Good Jobs, Good Business into your work we’d love to hear from you and discuss how we can support you in your efforts.
The Good Jobs, Good Business Model
The incorporation of job quality as part of the deployment of capital in our communities has many benefits. Improving job quality for workers can help businesses in achieving better financial results and have a ripple effect on local economic growth. At the same time, we can’t expect business owners to shoulder the costs and responsibility of improving job quality without providing them with tools and free advising on how to do it.
Whether it’s worker retention, rising minimum wages, offering health or retirement benefits, or engaging employees – small business owners know what their biggest challenges are. We created the toolkit to remove the guesswork from the “how to” of creating good jobs in ways that strengthen small businesses. Good Jobs, Good Business provides step-by-step guidance through six key areas:
- Employee Compensation
- Health Benefits
- Retirement Benefits and Other Wealth-Building Strategies
- Scheduling, Vacation, and Paid Leave
- Hiring, Training, and Professional Development
- Employee Engagement
Each section has detailed advice, workbooks, and stories and advice from fellow small business owners on how they implemented a “good jobs” element and how it helped their company. PCV also offers additional good jobs support through our Small Business Mentoring platform, BusinessAdvising.org. PCV’s Business Advising platform can match each small business utilizing the toolkit with an advisor to support the business owner in taking steps to create better jobs that are good for their business and good for their workers.
If you’re interested in using the Good Jobs, Good Business model as part of your own work, contact us today to learn more.
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