Corporate Voices for Working Families

America’s greatest resources have always been the talent of its people and the innovation of its businesses. Businesses know best what they need in employees, and best-practice companies are creating “Enterprising Pathways” to connect, cultivate and sustain previously untapped talent with the skills to succeed on the job. In Washington, both President Obama and Congress are working toward a plan that will put Americans back to work and jump-start the nation’s economy. This is reflected in President Obama’s recent jobs speech, the debates, and the proposed solutions from both parties regarding the debt ceiling and the American Jobs Act. With the business community’s long-standing need for skilled and educated employees – everyone needs a win on jobs and the economy.  “Enterprising Pathways” can help make considerable progress toward finding a solution. By training untapped talent with workplace skills that match workforce needs, these “Enterprising Pathways” provide a greater opportunity for employees, and lead to the success of individual businesses and the overall economy.

Untapped talent, or so-called “disconnected youth” refer to out-of-school 16- to 24-year-olds who are motivated to succeed but frequently lack the skills needed to access meaningful work.  These young adults are often from low-income families who are less likely than those from higher income families to do well across a number of metrics, including completing high school, receiving postsecondary credentials, being continuously employed and having health insurance coverage according to a recent report on low income workers entitled A Profile of Young Workers (16-26) in Low-Income Families by Corporate Voices.

Drawing from that same report, just under half of the low-income young adults profiled have not received any postsecondary education, and many are struggling to complete high school.  This is serious, given that a majority of the jobs of the future will require at least some postsecondary education, according to Help Wanted Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements through 2018 by Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.  Of those who have had some postsecondary education, only half have actually earned a degree.  The results, according to the report, suggest two themes: 1.) a large number of youth never make it into the advanced education pipeline; and 2.) many of those who do attempt an advanced degree will either delay or give up on completing their education.

According to another recent report released by The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, a “college degree is the key to economic opportunity, conferring substantially higher earnings on those with credentials than those without.”  And the statistics back it up—the median lifetime earnings by highest educational attainment for those who have not completed a high school diploma is $973,000; for those with a high diploma it is $1,304,000; it increases with an associate degree and with a bachelor’s degree, for which the median lifetime earnings is $2,268,000 (the earnings differ based on occupation, age, race/ethnicity and gender).

Increasingly, leading businesses are recognizing that young low-income employees or previously untapped talent matter to the business bottom line. This population not only represents customers today, but serves as a source of present and future talent.  Currently, a number of best practice companies are partnering with community organizations, community colleges and others to support the educational attainment and career opportunities of their workforce.  These companies are working to ensure that these employees have the education and skills they need to succeed not just in a job, but in a career – impacting not only their future earnings, but those of the company, with positive benefits for their entire community.

Corporate Voices has highlighted several of these companies and employers engaged in “Enterprising Pathway” partnerships through a series of micro-cases.  While these cases focus on innovative partnerships between nonprofit organizations and businesses to train untapped talent and expose them to educational and career opportunities, Corporate Voices also documents ways best practice companies are helping people to complete their postsecondary education through a Learn and Earn micro business case series. By focusing on how employers can close the gap between educational access and completion for untapped talent, they can play a positive role in addressing our national skills gap and unrelenting unemployment.

Corporate Voices has just released three new Learn and Earn micro business cases, including cases that spotlight Applied Scientific Instrumentation’s partnership with Lane Community College in Oregon; Crest Cadillac’s partnership with Brookhaven College in Dallas, Texas; and Millstone Power’s partnership with Three Rivers Community College in Connecticut.  All three employers, through close partnerships with community colleges, are participating in and contributing to enhancing career opportunities for young workers in their regions.

Now more than ever, businesses see the benefit of engaging and investing in the education and skills of their current and future workforce.  Enterprising Pathway and Learn and Earn partnerships, led and driven by the business community, are two unique ways they can develop future talent and become more competitive in the 21^st century economy.

Recognizing workplace flexibility as a smart business strategy, as well as a smart traffic management strategy, Virginia has passed new legislation creating a Telework Expenses Tax Credit for employers. This new law provides for a tax credit of up to $1,200 per employee, with a maximum of $50,000 per organization, for eligible telework expenses incurred during 2012 and 2013.

This is good news for both employers and employees in specific areas of Northern Virginia where large transportation and construction projects are underway, such as the Dulles Metrorail Extension. The state legislation supports telework as a strategy to help businesses reduce their real estate costs, and to help their employees become more productive and reduce their impact on air pollution and traffic congestion. To be eligible for the credit, employers must apply with the Virginia Department of Taxation by October 31, 2011.

Governor Bob McDonnell, who signed the Virginia telework tax credit into law earlier this year, said in a press release,

“Transportation is one of the key challenges facing the Commonwealth, and ensuring we have a modern and efficient transportation system is a key part of keeping Virginia the nation’s best place to live and do business…Virginia’s new telework tax credit legislation and the Virginia Transportation Challenge all work together to improve our transportation system to meet the demands of the future and help address the congestion we are facing today.”

In fact, Virginia’s telework tax credit is similar to other tax credits and telework programs that many states have adopted, and echoes what the Obama administration has championed at the federal level. Important progress was made in expanding the federal government’s use of telework when President Obama signed the bipartisan Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 into law in December 2010. That Act expanded telework opportunities for most federal workers, allowing eligible employees to work remotely from home or an off-site location. Under this law, executive agencies were required to establish telework policies, determine employee eligibility for telework, establish telework training programs for workers and managers, and provide yearly reports to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA 10), who co-sponsored the federal legislation, said:

“People who telework are very productive, it takes cars off the road, so it’s good for the environment and it helps ensure continuity of government. There are almost no downsides to telework, when done appropriately. Telework is an idea whose time has come, and so the Act brings the government into the 21st century. This is not a  philosophical issue, a republican, democratic, liberal or conservative issue. It’s an issue of pragmatism and it just works.”

Corporate Voices for Working Families believes that workplace flexibility policies and practices, like telework, help modernize the workplace so that working families and businesses can be more productive, more competitive, healthier and happier. That is why it launched a national workplace flexibility campaign in 2010, at the request of the White House, to create a broader awareness of the positive business and employee benefits of workplace flexibility. The campaign spotlights “Business Champions” of workplace flexibility, which to date consist of 55 best practice organizations across industries that have signed Corporate Voices’ “Statement of Support for Expanding Workplace Flexibility.”

By signing this Statement, the campaign’s “Business Champions” have committed to communicate the business imperative flexibility, expand flexibility within their own organizations and to build workplaces where flexibility is available to all workers. Companies that join the campaign also have access to research, business cases and educational resources to help them design and maintain successful flexibility programs.

As the nation continues to struggle with the challenges of high unemployment and anemic economic growth, tax credits and legislation to encourage workplace flexibility practices offer businesses support in maintaining a competitive advantage, and help workers balance work and life. Corporate Voices’ national flexibility campaign will also play a role in keeping the momentum for flexibility moving forward. For businesses interested in learning more about this campaign, visit Corporate Voices’ website.

Related Materials:

• Find out more about the Virgina Telework Expenses Tax Credit
• Sign up for a free Telework! VA Tax Credit Webinar, occurring on September 30, 2011
• Access more information about Corporate Voices’ national flexibility campaign
• Read Corporate Voices’ “Business Impacts of Flexibility: An Imperative for Expansion”

Over the course of the last quarter century, the dialogue about opportunity and social mobility in America has fundamentally changed. Now, the dialogue centers not on opportunities for upward social mobility, but on consequences and how certain groups are experiencing downward mobility from the middle class. This is the main subject of a new study by the Pew Charitable Trusts called, “Downward Mobility from the Middle Class: Waking Up from the American Dream.”

The study finds that a third of Americans who were raised in the middle class have fallen down the income ladder as adults. This downward social mobility is driven by factors such as education, marital status, test scores, drug use, gender and race. Namely, those most likely to experience downward mobility are:

• Men and women who are divorced or never married;
• Men and women who do not obtain education beyond high school;
• Those who receive low scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT); and
• Those engaged in heavy drug use.

Among white men and women, women were more likely to be downwardly mobile than men, and African-American men raised in middle class families were 17 percentage points more likely to fall from the middle class than white men raised in the middle.

The survey tracked Americans from youth into adulthood—the data focused on people who were middle-class teenagers in 1979 and who were between 39 and 44 years old in 2004 and 2006. It defined people as middle-class if they fell between the 30th and 70th percentiles in income distribution. For a family of four, that’s between $32,900 and $64,000 a year in 2010 dollars. If people fell below the 30^th percentile in income, they were considered downwardly mobile.

Noteworthy is that the most important factor accounting for racial differences in the mobility gap were average test scores, highlighting the importance of education and the link between education and economic stability.

As the Pew study notes,

 “A key element of the American Dream is that each generation will exceed the living standards and economic position of the one that came before it. At the very least, parents want to ensure that their own economic position will transfer to their children.”

The findings of the Pew study, however, upend that dream, and shed light on the sober reality that many Americans are experiencing: it is becoming increasingly more difficult to enter and stay in the middle class. This downward mobility, and the “unraveling” of the middle class, is a trend that other studies, such as one published by the national policy group Demos, are confirming.

As more Americans find themselves falling down the income ladder, businesses can play a positive role in helping lower-wage workers maintain economic stability. By educating workers about tax credits and other benefits that they have earned, supporting low-wage workers in managing their work-life balance, and by supporting nursing mothers at work, employers can help lower-income workers retain more of their income and improve their quality of life.

Corporate Voices for Working Families has published practical toolkits to help employers, in turn, help their hourly workers, recognizing that policies and practices to do so positively affect the business bottom-line. In fact, the following toolkits published by Corporate Voices help businesses improve their recruitment and retention rates, employee productivity and engagement levels and help lower health care costs.

• The 2010 Employer Guide: this guide provides businesses with practical tools, like paycheck stuffers, posters and a guidebook that provides information about the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, Medicaid and other benefits.
• Healthy Babies Make Happy Moms, and Excellent Employees!: This online workplace lactation toolkit gives employers practical information about new federal workplace lactation provisions, and how they can implement lactation programs to support nursing mothers in hourly positions. Including things like employer talking points, a lactation room checklist and breastfeeding resources for new moms, this toolkit supports a mother’s choice to breastfeed while also helps businesses engage a key segment of the labor force.
• Workplace Flexibility Toolkits for Hourly Employees and Managers: This set of toolkits help managers effectively implement flexible work arrangements (FWAs) for hourly workers. They also help workers assess what kind of flexibility they need and give them useful tips on how to request an FWA.

At a time when the middle class is struggling with the challenges of high unemployment, the rising costs of health care, child care and college tuition, and when many Americans are finding themselves sliding out of the middle class, it is helpful to remember ways that businesses can play a role in improving the lives of working families.

Note: Corporate Voices encourages employers to use its toolkits free of charge. Re-branding opportunities, however, are only available to Corporate Voices partner companies.