Impact Employer Practices Tool
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your journey
Begin with your big picture goal in mind. Maybe you want to reduce the communication gap in your organization, or cultivate a more diverse team, for example.
Select the area you want to focus on (Building Block) and the talent management function (lever) you want to improve. The tool will curate and present a set of actionable practices that align with your needs.
If you’re unsure what to choose first, view the full list by selecting ‘All’ and get inspired.
It’s now up to you and your team to implement these changes and make a positive impact.
Need help? We’re here.
Building Block
Talent Management Lever
Design Quality JobsCorporate Culture
- Implement work-life integration policies and practices. Examples include providing flexible scheduling, remote working arrangements, advance notice on schedules and work locations, and reasonable full-time hours, to enable employees to prioritize their well-being and personal lives.
Talent Development
- Provide paid job training and professional development during work hours and in a variety of formats, eliminating the need for employees to use their personal unpaid time for training and development.
- Provide the equipment employees need to pursue training and development
opportunities, such as computers. - When employees participate in internal and external job training and professional
development opportunities, reduce their workloads and allow for flex scheduling when
possible to ensure that they can take the time to invest in such opportunities. - Build a partnership with community-based organizations or employers in the same sector to offer employees access to further training and resources, especially those that can’t be provided in-house. Examples of external training and resources include language instruction and financial planning.
Total Rewards
- Provide employees with a holistic rewards package that is responsive to employee needs and includes competitive compensation benefits (including employer-sponsored health, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance), retirement savings with an employer match, employee assistance programs (EAPs), and recognition programs designed to acknowledge their contributions and performance.
- Offer timely and responsive EAP and lifestyle spending account (LSA) benefits to help employees navigate personal or work-related life situations that affect their well-being and job performance. Examples of EAP and LSA benefits include transportation stipends, classes for English learners, on-site health care services, reimbursements for health-care-related travel expenses, student loan payment support, on-site childcare, and financial planning services.
- Design and offer financial wellness programs to familiarize employees with personal finance concepts like budgeting, saving, investing, and debt management. Examples of financial wellness programs include financial education, financial counseling, and retirement planning programs.
- Provide employees with an annual partial or full education tuition reimbursement and/or professional development funds. Eligible tuition reimbursements could include certificates, credentials, and/or degrees at institutions of an employee’s choice. Professional development opportunities might include relevant job-related coursework, support from leadership coaches, and/or conference attendance.
- Automatically enroll full- and part-time workers in the company’s comprehensive benefits as quickly as possible once they are hired, and remove any unnecessary enrollment delays.
- Provide all workers with robust paid leave options, such as family and medical leave and bereavement, sick, personal, jury duty, sabbatical, civic duty, and adverse-weather leaves.
- Implement family-friendly policies to optimize flexibility and support for working parents. Examples include providing access to lactation rooms, flexible break and work schedules to accommodate childcare needs, health care coverage for dependents, reimbursement options for access to reproductive health care, and paid family leave.
Offboarding
- Provide all laid-off employees with significant notice (ideally 60 days or more), at least three months of fair and competitive severance pay, and continued short-term health insurance coverage. Consider providing access to mental health resources to support employees and their family members who are experiencing the emotional impact of job loss.
- Stagger offboarding processes over weeks or months so that job responsibilities are steadily transferred from departing employees to the remaining team member(s), minimizing abrupt and jarring changes in their daily work responsibilities.
Foster Equitable Career MobilityWorkforce Planning
- Establish a regular cadence and process to evaluate current and future needed workforce skills.
- Engage with both internal and external stakeholders to evaluate the impact of workforce market trends on current and future organizational needs, using workforce analytics and dashboards as needed to develop key internal workforce development metrics and inform the development of data-driven recommendations.
- Build transparent career pathways that outline lateral and upward career mobility opportunities and guidance on how to obtain new professional licenses or certifications. Examples of key guidance include information about regulations that limit credentialing opportunities for people with records, and options for appealing or challenging the barriers to licensure or certification attainment.
- Use integrated data from employee surveys across business functions (such as HR, strategy, and research and development) and market trends to strategically design jobs for evolving roles, and help employees develop the skills required for each of those roles.
- Partner with companies in adjacent industries to jointly design career pathways for employees in roles that are expected to evolve or be eliminated.
- Collaborate with nonprofits and public system partners to design training and/or off-ramp programs for employees whose skill profiles do not meet the future needs of your company.
- Advocate for fair chance licensure and certification regulations in collaboration with nonprofit, industry association, and public system partners.
- Promote and provide continuous learning and skills development opportunities at all levels of the organization, and offer these opportunities within your company’s career pathways.
- Increase wages and recognize employees for participating in professional development programs and attaining on-the-job skills as part of their performance evaluations.
- Train employees, especially frontline and entry-level employees, on skills needed across multiple roles, to cultivate internal talent, diversify employee skill sets, and improve employees’ prospects for long-term employment.
- Devote resources, including dedicated paid work time and proper compensation, to employees who perform extra work outside of their roles.
- Develop a technology-related sourcing, adoption, and implementation strategy that includes ways to identify potential new skills gaps that may arise due to the adoption of new technologies, and provide any necessary training to employees who will be required to use the new technologies.
- Provide training to soon-to-be-offboarded employees to help them develop new, durable skills, or give them paid access to third-party training to develop such skills, to support them in making new lateral and/or upward career mobility transitions.
- Work with community-based organizations, community colleges, and other nonprofits to develop internal work-based learning programs to prepare and recruit employees for emerging roles. Examples include apprenticeship and structured internship opportunities.
- Invest in agile learning platforms and methods that allow employees to quickly acquire new skills and keep pace with evolving skill demands. Examples include online courses, microlearning modules, and virtual reality training.
Talent Acquisition
- Identify regional and local partners that can support efforts to diversify company talent pipelines and have access to job postings. Examples of potential partners include community-based organizations, reentry organizations and programs, high schools, community colleges, and historically Black colleges and universities.
- Offer paid upskilling opportunities that include priority promotion or hiring consideration for open company roles for current employees. Examples of upskilling opportunities include apprenticeships, internships, fellowships, and work-based learning.
- Anonymize resumes by removing candidate information during the interview process to mitigate biases and create more effective and equitable screening practices. Examples of information to remove include the names of candidates and any academic institutions they attended.
- Develop a standard set of interview questions with an aligned hiring rubric and scorecard to ensure that all candidates are evaluated against the same criteria.
- Train those in recruitment and hiring roles on how to use company interview tools to create a more consistent interview process for prospective employees. Such tools could include standard interview questions with an aligned hiring rubric and scorecard.
- Implement the use of anonymized skills-based assessments and performance tests during the first stage of the interview process to identify candidates with skills aligned to the role that they are applying for and eliminate implicit biases from the review process.
- Review talent acquisition technology platforms, such as AI tools and algorithms, to assess whether automated screening processes have adequate safeguards against implicit biases. For example, ensure that AI platforms analyze data in an unbiased manner and do not unfairly exclude groups of individuals who are viable candidates, such as women, based on auto-generated and biased algorithms.
- Provide as-needed customized support to help candidates successfully navigate hiring processes. Examples of customized support include assistance with completing online applications if digital skills are not required for an open role, or the provision of translation services if English language skills are not required for the role.
- Establish diverse talent acquisition teams composed of a range of screeners, interviewers, and hiring decision makers to eliminate individual and collective biases throughout the interview process. Diversity considerations include race, gender, tenure at the organization, and prior educational and/or working experience.
Talent Development
- Create programs that give employees paid opportunities to learn new skills on the job, such as “earn and learn” or work-based learning programs.
- Offer timely and paid learning, training, and upskilling opportunities in a variety of formats and durations to account for different learning styles.
- Provide on-demand and virtual training to ensure that employees can pursue bite-size development opportunities that align with their availability.
- Implement a mentoring and sponsorship program that encompasses virtual one-on-one and peer-to-peer interactions, with opportunities to pursue individualized growth and development.
- Develop and circulate transparent promotion criteria and guidelines, with information about any skills required to move laterally and upward within the company and how promotion decisions are made.
- Equip and encourage employees to set personalized career goals and use technology tools to track their progress and inform their learning and development choices. Such technologies include tools with AI and/or machine learning capabilities, cloud-based platforms, and employee engagement and performance development software-as-a-service tools.
- Utilize technology-powered internal career mobility tools to improve assessments of employee skills and work experiences in internal talent- and role-matching processes and workflows. Examples of potentially useful technology-powered tools include AI, machine learning, and cloud-based platforms designed to support talent management processes.
- Prioritize internal mobility by filling job openings from within whenever possible and appropriate for the workforce need.
Total Rewards
- Invest in relationships with external partners that can provide ongoing wraparound supports to new hires and ensure employees’ stability and long-term commitment to their role. Examples of wraparound supports include English language programs, child care/caregiving support, reentry programs, counseling, financial coaching, and transportation stipends.
Offboarding
- Provide educational benefits, access to outplacement assistance programs, and professional coaching to assist former employees in securing their next employment opportunity. Examples of outplacement assistance resources include career counseling, job search assistance, and resume-writing support.
- Provide soon-to-be-offboarded employees with access to job placement resources and/or external job placement services, such as equipment and job search tools, resources, and subscriptions.
- Partner with local workforce boards, community colleges, and nonprofits that provide job placement and skills development programs, to ensure that offboarded employees have access to industry-aligned skills training and job placement opportunities.
- Identify and monitor career pathways that do not align with the company’s needs and are vulnerable to changing or being dissolved.
- Build an employee network that can offer former employees ongoing career and mentoring support and help them maintain connections within your organization to support the development of their professional social capital.
- Build sustainable relationships with industry peers and companies with similar talent pools to help facilitate industry connections for offboarded employees.
- Leverage field resources or industry associations to certify or attest to the skills and capabilities of offboarded employees so they can promote their past experiences when looking for new jobs.
- Give employees who have been laid off the option of signing liability waivers that permit their former peers and/or managers to share their name and qualifications with prospective employers looking to hire employees with their skill set, and avoid extraneous noncompete clauses for workers.
Act on Employee VoiceCorporate Culture
- Create accessible, transparent, and responsive employee channels, resource groups, and/or task forces to solicit worker input and provide support across a range of topics, such as pay, benefits, work schedules, and conflict resolution issues and opportunities.
- Provide employee channels, resource groups, and/or task forces with decision-making authority, the opportunity for regular check-in meetings with leadership, and financial resources.
- Designate leaders for employee channels, resource groups, and/or task forces; adjust their workloads to accommodate their new areas of responsibility; and compensate them for their time.
- Establish regular feedback loops with employees to solicit their opinions, protect employees from any potential forms of retaliation for sharing negative feedback, share key themes about employee feedback transparently with both leaders and employees, and communicate how the feedback will be addressed and incorporated into business decisions with all employees. Examples of check-in mechanisms include surveys; regular forums, such as town halls; and stand-up meetings.
- Establish a leadership team with decision-making power and financial resources to drive DEIB initiatives, including DEIB education and measurement, to identify and elevate DEIB issues and opportunities to the C-suite team and create a thriving, inclusive environment for all employees.
- Provide frontline workers with opportunities to contribute to key corporate initiatives, such as workforce planning, change management, business function research, technology adoption planning and implementation, and the development of onboarding or training resources.
Offboarding
Build a Culture of InclusionCorporate Culture
- Develop company values that focus on ensuring equitable economic advancement and inclusive career mobility for all workers, to boost the company’s social impact and improve business performance.
- Implement company-wide DEIB and accessibility policies. Examples of such policies include transparently sharing information about pay ranges and eligibility criteria for all positions, and providing workers with disabilities, including qualifying neurodivergent employees, with accommodations that are compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act.
- Create tailored and required training on company-wide policies and DEIB for all employees, and provide additional training for managers on how to create an inclusive culture. Examples of key training topics include cultural competence, implicit bias, fair chance policies, and gender identity.
- Ensure that leaders have the autonomy, decision-making authority, financial resources, and coaching required to drive DEIB initiatives and impact your company’s overall culture and operational outcomes.
- Hire DEIB officers and leaders with proven experience in these areas to lead DEIB work for your company. Ensure that these officers are part of your executive team and have direct input into key decisions, such as budget setting, hiring and performance standards, recruitment, sourcing partnerships, and communications strategies.
- Consider and include the perspectives of diverse employees, including those with disabilities, people of color, LGBTQ+ employees, immigrants, and formerly incarcerated individuals, in corporate decision-making processes.
- Actively and openly support and partner with public- and private-sector organizations to identify, advocate for, and implement policies that protect workers from unfair practices, increase wages, and improve job quality.
- Encourage and incentivize employees to participate in their local communities and in community-based organizations. Examples include offering community volunteer programs and paid time off for volunteering.
Talent Acquisition
- Establish external relationships with recruiters and diverse recruiting stakeholders to access new talent pools. Examples of such stakeholders include workforce boards and industry competitors that have connections to vulnerable worker populations, such as those who have experienced or are expected to experience job loss.
- Provide DEIB and skills-based recruitment training to hiring managers and staff members involved in the company’s job application review and interview processes.
- Embed progress toward annual DEIB and skills-based recruitment goals into the performance evaluations of hiring managers.
Talent Development
- Provide leaders, including people managers, with training that equips them with the tools, resources, knowledge, and skills needed to promote employee advancement, career exploration, and a culture of learning.
- Develop a comprehensive understanding of the talent development needs and opportunities for all roles across the organization. This includes collecting baseline data to measure year-to-year changes and ensuring that goal setting and professional development are part of performance management processes, so that employees can articulate their personalized professional development needs and wants to their managers.
- Develop a robust and transparent succession-planning strategy that incorporates efforts to equitably identify, prioritize, and develop internal potential leaders and improve employee development approaches that extend to entry-level and frontline workers.
- Implement real-time and 360-degree feedback mechanisms to provide employees at all levels with holistic performance insights about their strengths and areas for improvement, to support their growth and development.
- Promote internal cross-functional team collaboration to foster a more holistic understanding of the organization, promote a culture of learning and collaboration, and encourage employees to support work across different units.
Offboarding
- Build an organizational culture that supports lifelong learning, encourages career mobility, and enables workers to develop durable skills.
- Develop internal offboarding norms, and provide offboarding training to managers that emphasizes why good offboarding protocols are critical to business success and how to properly document the layoff process. Elements to document during a layoff include reasons for the layoff, the criteria for selecting employees for layoffs, and the steps taken to minimize the impact on affected employees.
- Provide internal communication guidelines that include definitions of key terminology to ensure that supervisors have the tools needed to develop and/or maintain long-term relationships with employees. Such guidelines could include advice on taking a human centered approach to offboarding messaging, such as acknowledging the soon-to-be offboarded employee’s contributions and thanking them for their service.
Center Accountability and Long-Term CommitmentCorporate Culture
- Provide regular updates to employees, customers, investors, and other key stakeholders on your company’s social impact and talent development actions, especially those that help employees overcome systemic barriers to advancement.
- Integrate organizational values and goals that foster DEIB and well-being into company-wide performance measurements at all levels.
- Develop an enterprise strategy and ethos around the adoption and implementation of technology (e.g., AI tools) with clear guidelines and standards around use, equity, safety, decision-making, and deployment.
Talent Acquisition
- Establish and measure progress toward achieving DEIB targets at every stage of the recruitment process (including sourcing, screening, and hiring), and establish a regular cadence to review and improve recruitment processes in collaboration with talent acquisition and DEIB team members.
Talent Development
- Track and assess any progress toward your talent development key performance indicators (KPIs) and any increases in operational efficiency resulting from internal employee development and training programs. Examples of KPIs include employee productivity, performance, training and development, engagement, job satisfaction, and turnover.
- Track and assess employee participation in development and training programs to ensure that program utilization and investments are equitable across all levels of the organization. Examples of data that can be tracked include race, gender, level of educational attainment, and current job title.
- Prioritize internal promotions, and develop performance metrics to track and measure managers’ effectiveness in equitably promoting team members.
- Conduct audits of current training and development tools to assess employee needs and skills and inform processes to improve related tools.
Total Rewards
- Establish transparent policies to achieve and ensure 100% gender and racial pay equity, such as by implementing and sharing pay bands for all role levels.
- Set a goal and a deadline for achieving pay equity, share the goal with employees, and regularly track and communicate progress toward this goal with employees.
- Identify and track key employee insurance and benefits utilization metrics, and regularly solicit feedback from employees about their insurance and benefits offerings, to ensure that they are aligned with employees’ needs, identify any gaps in benefits, and provide employees with relevant and timely stabilizing support.
Offboarding
- Set a target for former-employee job placement, such as helping 50% of laid-off employees secure new employment within five weeks of their departure from the company.
Maturity Model
Assess your progress and set future goals with our three-level maturity model, guiding you from emerging to distinctive Impact Employer status.