American Opportunity Index 2024 ranks companies that are providing opportunity for advancement for workers

Report: Which of the nation’s top employers are advancing the careers of their workers?

American Opportunity Index: Top employers are paying and promoting workers at more than double the rate of their peer companies for the same jobs
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The latest American Opportunity Index 2024 reports mixed results on how well the nation’s top employers are doing in advancing the careers of their workforce.

On one hand, the Index finds that many firms beyond the technology and financial services industries, including those in the energy and resource-related sectors, are succeeding at providing pathways to career opportunity for workers.

The Index shows that the nation’s top employers are paying and promoting workers at more than double the rate that their competitors are for the same types of jobs.

However, overall, it also shows that a majority of the 100 companies studied companies did not increase hiring of early career and non-college workers, and 60% of firms on the list decreased promotion
opportunities.

Now in its third year, the American Opportunity Index is a first-of-its-kind assessment that measures how well companies are investing in talent to unlock the full potential of their workforce.

The Schultz Family Foundation launched the nonprofit project in 2022 in partnership with Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School to help workers access which large U.S. companies are doing the best to advance the careers of their employees and grow the middle class in an evolving labor market.

Topping this year’s ranking are: W.W. Grainger, Costco Wholesale, Capital One Financial, Meta Platforms, ServiceNow, J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, MetLife, and Bank of America.

You can read the full report here.

Explore our WorkingNation articles, videos, and podcasts on the previous American Opportunity Index reports here.

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.