May 11 - 12, 2023

Summit on Workforce Valuation & Performance

at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business

A convening of talks, activities, and workshops co-hosted by the University of Michigan Ross School of Business & the Human Capital Management Coalition

This event aims to create a space to discuss how we might get more useful and transparent data about how companies manage and support their people. Investors in recent years have been working to improve their collective understanding of human capital management (HCM), and other market participants and allies – including researchers, foundations, and others – have joined the push for higher-quality information regarding human capital in the marketplace. In June 2022, a group of prominent academics and former securities regulators (including several of our organizers) petitioned the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to substantially improve information reported by publicly-traded companies to investors on workforce costs and labor management quality. In August 2022, the Ford Foundation and JUST Capital convened a group of prominent academics, foundations, asset owners and asset managers, and other key thought leaders convened to discuss how best to build and support high-quality research into workforce valuation and performance.

These meetings made clear just how inadequate our current data are to understanding the organization of the 21st century economy, including such basic facts as “How many contingent workers does a company have? How much is spent on labor, including training? What’s the demographic profile of the workforce? How much turnover is there?" The May gathering aims to build on this momentum by mapping out next steps.

Pre-Conference
Thursday, May 11

The first day is a half-day summit for a small set of academics who bring unique perspectives and expertise from a diverse set of fields – management, law, accounting, economics, computer science – intended to lay the foundations for an interdisciplinary endeavor aimed at creating better, more systematic data about the workforce.
This is a closed-door, invitation-only meeting for a select group of scholars.

Summit
Friday, May 12

The second day is a convening of investors (asset owners and asset managers), academics, and other market participants with interest and familiarity on the topic (accounting/audit firms, regulatory experts, etc.).