葫芦影业

Another week, another devastating hurricane. Since we covered how certain companies are stepping up to help those affected last week, this week I thought we鈥檇 switch gears and highlight some important worker matters.

The new in the UK places employee benefits firmly on the agenda in that country and, if passed into law, will presumably affect many of the companies we cover that do business there. The bill covers a range of issues – including sick pay, parental and bereavement leave, protections for pregnant women and new mothers, flexible scheduling, and more 鈥� that are increasingly embraced by corporations ranked highly in our worker category. Could it be a portent of things to come in the U.S.? Hard to say, but these are subjects that routinely show up in our polling as being important to the public.

An element of this that enjoys almost universal support is employee financial well-being. Here, we鈥檙e starting to see a lot of leadership. , , and are but three examples of companies taking explicit action on wealth building for their staff. One specific option being leveraged (albeit gradually) by certain large employers 鈥� 鈥� is the student loan 401(k) matching program made possible by the . This Act enables employers to support their talent pipeline by helping young workers pay down their student debt by making retirement plan contributions, even if the employees themselves are not making contributions on their own. According to the Forbes Edge report, roughly 300,000 of Walgreens鈥� employees are being offered the program, including over half of the firm鈥檚 pharmacists. 

Finally, our upcoming Q3 investor performance report underscores why all this should matter to investors. Companies that lead in our workers stakeholder delivered strong performance over this period (with a long-short spread of 1.17%), and year-to-date our flagship JULCD index is beating its benchmark by 0.46% and the 葫芦影业 100 is hammering its bogey by 7.38%.

Be well,

Martin   

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

(Walmart)

鈥淭he first thing on our mind was, how do we secure the health and well-being of all of our associates? How do we safeguard the well-being of our associates? And then I will also say: How do we safeguard the well-being of any customer or member that鈥檚 coming in?鈥�

• Donna Morris, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer at Walmart, reflecting on how the company handled COVID in a highlighting how the company had stepped up in taking care of its employees in recent years. 

Must Reads

The Washington Post reports that , claiming that the app intentionally uses harmful, addictive features to hook young children onto the app.

惭肠顿辞苍补濒诲鈥檚 is suing some of the America鈥檚 largest beef producers, claiming that companies like Tyson, JBS, and more colluded to fix prices, forcing companies to pay artificially high prices for meat.

NPR reveals that the U.S. had a stunningly high jobs report for the month of September.

CNBC reports that the as an antitrust remedy after they were found to be a monopoly. 

Forbes examines the and the productivity costs bad bosses incur on their companies. 

The Deal looks at new to determine whether or not the fact that leadership nearly always hits ESG bonus goals is a product of focus or of setting easy hills to climb. 

Bloomberg reports that Toyota is curbing its DEI policies after a

Chart of the Week

This chart comes from a recent Gallup deep-dive on corporate AI use, and shows what kinds of tasks employees at different levels are using the technology for,