Small business owners overwhelmingly cite cost as the main barrier to improving job quality, but when we asked workers what they valued most, many of their top answers cost relatively little. That gap between owner perception and worker priorities is one of the most actionable findings from the final evaluation of Shared Success, an initiative by the Aspen Institute's Economic Opportunities Program (with support from the Gates Foundation) that worked with 11 Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to embed job quality programming into their existing small business support.
FAI led the evaluation, working with EA Consultants on fieldwork between January 2024 and May 2025, comprising over 150 interviews with business owners and more than 50 with workers in those businesses. The findings have implications for how the business support ecosystem thinks about job quality, what it costs to improve, and what workers actually value.
This blog sets out four key findings from the report. Read the full version here.
Age and revenue, not size, predict whether owners invest in job quality
Ninety-two percent of businesses in our sample made at least one job quality improvement during the two-year demonstration—evidence that the demonstration's approach of embedding job quality work into existing CDFI support reached owners. On average, businesses made three improvements, ranging from one to nine. The most common: creating more supportive working environments (53%), offering more competitive compensation (46%), and expanding opportunities for workers to build skills and advance (45%).
Workforce size didn't predict whether owners made improvements—even the smallest firms were investing in job quality. Businesses that reported improvements tended to be older and have substantially higher revenues, suggesting that the resources and experience that come with age and revenue matter more than firm size for whether owners can act on job quality.
Cost is the main barrier, but workers' top priorities aren't all about money
Eighty-six percent of business owners in our sample cited financial constraints as their primary challenge to making job quality improvements. But the thing workers most value at work isn't something that primarily depends on owners' budgets. When we asked workers to rank what they valued most, the most frequently named top priority was a supportive work environment—being listened to, respected, and treated as part of a team.
That doesn't mean pay doesn't matter. Pay ranked second in workers' priorities. In qualitative interviews, however, workers emphasized that the security and predictability of their compensation and their scheduling were as important as the amount—knowing when they would work, and when and what they would be paid.
Owners working under tight financial constraints have more levers than the cost barrier implies. Higher wages and expanded benefits are valuable, but they aren't the only ones available. Practices like listening to workers, being transparent about decisions, and giving them predictable schedules can meaningfully improve workers' day-to-day experience.
Workers' priorities vary by sector and circumstance
Certain elements mattered more in some contexts than in others. For instance, workers in child care, manufacturing, and agriculture placed particular importance on workplace safety, particularly around training. And workers juggling family and work responsibilities placed greater emphasis on work/life balance and schedule flexibility.
Job quality isn't one-size-fits-all. For owners and CDFI advisors, this means that the best job quality investments account for the different experiences workers have across sectors and in their lives outside work.
Most owners said job quality improvements paid off
Most workers interviewed could identify at least one specific job quality improvement their employer had made during Shared Success, and could describe how those changes affected their day-to-day experience at work.
Owners reported seeing changes too. Eighty-four percent said they noticed a difference in either business performance or their employees after making a job quality improvement. The most commonly reported was improvement in employee well-being or satisfaction (72%), followed by productivity or revenue gains (56%) and easier recruiting or retention (53%). These reported outcomes aligned with what owners said had motivated them to make changes in the first place—productivity and revenue (35%) and employee satisfaction or well-being (33%).
These results contributed to most owners (85%) saying they plan to make further job quality improvements. Skill development opportunities (28%), additional benefits (20%), and more competitive wages (13%) were owners' top priorities for next steps.
Small businesses employ 59 million people—46% of US private sector workers, and 61% of job growth since 1995. Even modest improvements in how owners run those businesses reach a substantial share of the American workforce.
Read the full reports here.