The role of private sector procurement and how it can be leveraged to affect economic opportunities and expand quality employment for workers has become a critical area for attention. In the United States, procurement for goods and services among the largest US companies accounts for, on average, 75% of their total spending. Through these funds and the processes by which suppliers are identified, selected, or measured, businesses have a powerful mechanism to promote jobs that provide greater stability, family-sustaining wages, and enhanced benefits — all elements that are essential for improving workers’ economic opportunity and well-being.

To this end, in 2019, the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program (EOP) received a grant from the James Irvine Foundation to support the pilot of California Good Companies/Good Jobs — a four-year project aimed at leveraging business incentives to boost high-road employer practices and expand quality employment for frontline workers, particularly women and people of color. With an emphasis on strategies that can improve access to quality jobs for workers, the pilot focused on procurement decision-making among local governments and anchor institutions in California. By emphasizing the strategic use of procurement contracts, the pilot sought to encourage employers to prioritize the expansion of opportunities and job quality elements such as pay, benefits, and job stability for frontline workers.

This brief discusses the potential of data-driven impact procurement as a job quality strategy and specifically how, through strategic partnerships, Kaiser Permanente (KP) embedded job quality in its procurement practices from 2019 to 2023. It describes KP’s strategies to engage pilot partners, design the implementation process, and use the data and lessons from this work to inform future action. The analysis is derived from interviews conducted by EOP staff in 2024 with stakeholders involved in the California Good Companies/Good Jobs pilot.

In addition to KP leadership, these stakeholders included leaders from the data analytics platform Working Metrics (WM), KP, and security services firm Blackstone Consulting Inc (BCI). Interviews focused on the context of each organization’s engagement in the pilot, the rationale for and design of the pilot, the results of the pilot and reaction of the organizations involved, and resulting changes in practices and policies. EOP staff also reviewed pilot materials from KP and WM, previous WM use case briefs, and literature on job quality and the procurement landscape.

Read the full article about expanding quality employment by Lauren Starks, Maxwell Johnson, and Maya Smith at The Aspen Institute.