Business Roundtable companies are investing in worker training, raising wages and expanding benefits. Business Roundtable has previously called for an increase in the federal minimum wage and for federal paid family and medical leave legislation. We recognize a need to bolster our focus on underrepresented populations to ensure equitable hiring, promotion and compensation practices. This includes stepping up to the challenge of advancing diversity and inclusion in corporate America.
When employers change their hiring and promotion practices to embrace competency- or skills--based hiring, rather than evaluating candidates based on credentials alone, they realize benefits including access to more diverse pools of talent.[1] Over 80 Business Roundtable member companies have signed on to be part of Business Roundtable’s new multi-year targeted effort to reform companies’ hiring and talent management practices.
Business Roundtable member companies have signed on to new multi-year targeted effort
By partnering with community colleges, colleges and universities, and private training providers, employers can help ensure their workers have the right preparation for high-demand occupations and that on-the-job training and mentoring are available to underrepresented populations. Business Roundtable is expanding its Workforce Partnership Initiative (WPI), with a focus on underrepresented workers, to bring companies and education and training providers together to train and recruit workers for high-demand careers by providing internships, apprenticeships and/or full-time employment opportunities.
A number of Business Roundtable companies have committed to steps to increase corporate diversity. To track progress, Business Roundtable supports, as a leading practice, voluntary public disclosure of key diversity metrics on at least an annual basis, including board diversity, senior executive diversity, workforce diversity and supplier diversity.
Unjustified disparities in compensation are one of the drivers of gender- and race-based wealth and income inequality. Business Roundtable calls on companies to conduct periodic pay equity reviews and regular pay equity analyses, and to implement processes to review and close gaps.
The current public workforce training system is overly focused on short-term crisis intervention to unemployed workers, while ignoring more strategic investments that would raise the skills of all workers. A modern workforce system should offer more flexible options for adult workers to acquire associate degrees, technical certificates and industry-recognized credentials with documented value in the labor market. Business Roundtable calls for modernization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) to create an employer-driven workforce system.
Business Roundtable calls for an increase in the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage has not been raised since 2009, the longest period since its inception. Due to inflation, it has lost significant value and no longer provides an adequate income to many working Americans who depend on it.
Business Roundtable supports federal legislation to ensure paid family and medical leave benefits are available to as many working Americans as possible. As Congress and the Administration consider paid family and medical leave legislation, Business Roundtable urges policymakers to enact uniform standards and procedures that would apply nationwide.
