Who Says It’s A Good Job?
WORC Presents Original Research at the Network of Social Work Managers 2022 Forward Thinking Summit
By Ellen Frank-Miller, PhD
In June 2022, WORC Founder and Chief Scientific Officer Ellen G. Frank-Miller, PhD was invited to present original research at the Network of Social Work Managers 2022 Forward Thinking Summit. We are proud to share this research that was conducted in partnership with the National Fund for Workforce Solutions with generous support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation . The paper, “Who Says It’s a Good Job? Comparing the Assessments of Low- to Middle-Income Workers at Small to Mid-Sized Businesses with Their Managers’ Assessments,” presents findings from a survey of 93 managers and workers in five U.S. cities. All of these organizations had already taken steps to make frontline jobs better, which is how they were selected for participation in the study.
The Survey
Employees and managers received a survey asking their opinion about the importance of various components of a good job. Managers were asked to answer from the perspective of their workers – what do they think their workers believe makes a job a good job?
The survey presented 27 response items to the question: “Thinking about your type of work [the type of work your employees do], how important would it be for a ‘good’ job to have each of the following characteristics?” Some example response items include: wages, good-quality supervision, job security, and consistency in the scheduling of working hours.
Highlights of Findings
Overall, there was a high degree of similarity between frontline employees’ importance rankings of job characteristics and managers’ rankings (Spearman’s Rho = 0.868) as well as some meaningful differences between managers’ and employees’ rankings.
Specifically, managers under-estimated the importance of these 6 job characteristics to their employees (p<.05):
Traditional benefits
Advancement opportunities
Entry-level training
Specialized training
Cross-training
Bonuses
Overall, the strong correlation between managers’ and employees’ rankings suggests that managers in this sample have their fingers on the pulse of employees’ job quality priorities, for the most part. Even in companies that are taking action to make jobs better, employee listening can surface opportunities to make jobs better in ways that matter to workers and improve the bottom line for employers.
About the author:
Ellen G. Frank-Miller, PhD (ellen@worcimpact.com), has spent her 30-year career collaborating with investors, employers, national advocates, and community-based organizations to help make frontline jobs better and more accessible to all people. An organizational scholar by training, Dr. Frank-Miller has 15 years of experience in HR consulting and excels at creating evidence-informed programs and policies. Prior to launching the Workforce & Organizational Research Center (WORC), she founded and led the Workforce Financial Stability Initiative at the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Frank-Miller has taught research methods at Washington University in St. Louis and at the University of Chicago, where she earned her Ph.D.
