Working to Build People-Centered Organizations for a Better Society
Collaborating with employers to create rigorous, transparent, and open human capital reporting that accelerates strategic investment in people for equity and growth
WHY METRICS OF EMPLOYMENT QUALITY (MEQ)?
The Value of Measuring Human Capital
Employees create tremendous value for their organizations. Leading employers know the importance and benefits of developing innovative employment practices to address economic opportunity, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and work-life balance.
But how do employers know where to focus their efforts? Metrics of Employment Quality (MEQ) is a set of Human Capital Reporting (HCR) standards for evaluating employment practice outcomes. Using MEQ, leaders can determine what works and what doesn’t, and investors can assess the quality of employment in prospective ventures.
HCR Concepts are a start
HCR is relatively new. Current efforts to advance HCR have focused on identifying key HCR concepts. A consensus has formed around headcount by employee category (full time, part time, gig), turnover, compensation/workforce costs, and simple diversity representation measures. The current minimal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) HCR mandate will likely be expanded to require disclosure of these consensus concepts.
From Concepts to Standardized Metrics
General concepts like “turnover” and categories like “full-time” are important, but require more developed definitions to be implemented in standardized metrics. Standardized metrics must:
- Have rigorous implementation rules that ensure cross-company comparability
- Be transparent and openly available at no cost to reporting companies
Without standardized metrics
- HCR metrics are inconsistent across and within employers. resulting in inaccurate comparisons and benchmarking
- Employers can “greenwash” or provide an overly optimistic picture of their human capital, especially for DEI.
Current HCR concepts need implementation rules or “data architecture” to prevent inaccurate data and incompletely informed investor decisions on human capital. Without quick and coordinated action to develop better implementation rules, the new SEC rules may fail to achieve their ends.
HOW WE WORK
Harness the power of people analytics
Improving employment quality requires measuring what works and what doesn’t, but traditional methodologies lack the rigor to design and report these metrics. The profession with the requisite expertise to develop broadly accepted measures of employment quality is people analytics.
MEQ is uniquely suited for this work, as it is led by the people analytics community, the teams within employers that quantify and measure employer human capital practices and make those practices visible to investors.
Employer collaboration
MEQ is designed in collaboration with employers who are committed to innovative practices for improving economic opportunity, DEI, and the quality of the employee experience. These organizations believe that their efforts need continuous improvement and that this demands better metrics for internal reporting. Furthermore, they are anticipating the time when some of these metrics will be sufficiently mature to disclose to external stakeholders.
What MEQ is and isn't
MEQ is an objective broker of standardized human capital reporting. Led by employer people analytics experts, MEQ defines clear standards in human capital reporting, providing reliable and accurate information on human capital that is aligned with financial reporting.
MEQ does not advocate a particular point of view. It provides clear and actionable non-financial reporting on human capital reporting that helps guide decision-making without advising on what to do with the information.
Who can benefit from MEQ
MEQ is useful for both returns-oriented investing and for Environmental, Social & Governance investing.
MEQ is useful for employers developing their own robust employment quality reporting.