Unlock Business Potential Through Better Business Intelligence

WORC helps employers and investors transform business performance by creating an ownership culture using the best business intelligence there is — the wisdom of your employees.

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What We Do

Actionable Workforce Diagnostics

We work with employee-owned companies, privately-held businesses, and private equity-backed portfolio companies to deploy science-backed workforce diagnostics for actionable insights – and we give you the support you need to implement evidence-based solutions for impact.

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Research & Evaluation for Impact

We work with nonprofits and private foundations focused on workforce and worker advocacy to create bespoke research and program evaluations that drive job quality innovation and employee ownership impact.

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Why WORC?

Our workforce diagnostics help you:

Design a workplace culture where your employees are empowered and inspired to think and act like owners with a sense of responsibility and accountability to achieving your company's financial goals and values.
Create jobs that result in a satisfied, engaged, and productive workforce, and enhance your ability to attract and retain highly skilled talent at all levels of your business.
Close the gap between your company’s perception of employees’ experiences and what employees actually think to create meaningful jobs, increase retention, align incentives, and improve financial KPIs.
Increase the return on employee engagement activities with business intelligence that tells you where to focus investments that will drive measurable change in the metrics you care about most (turnover, burnout, absenteeism, revenue, EBITDA, etc.)
Take care of your most valuable asset—the talented people who make it possible for your company to fulfill its mission.

Let’s partner for impact

Who We Are

Dr. Ellen G. Frank-Miller
Founder & CEO

WORC envisions a thriving economy where every worker has a job worth having.

WORC is a research firm that relentlessly develops thought leadership and builds tools to help employers and employee-owned companies design workplaces that maximize the ROI on human capital.

Using proprietary workforce diagnostics, we give companies and their investors the insights they need to create a culture of ownership and solve real workplace problems like turnover, burnout, quiet quitting, low morale, and employee disengagement that create risk, destroy business value, and make workers suffer.

CAREERS

Meet Our Partners

Hear What Our Clients and Partners Are Saying

“We appreciate that WORC is bringing science-backed resources to the broad-based ownership field. At Ownership Works, we’re working with companies and investors to expand employees' access to wealth-building opportunities through shared ownership. WORC's diagnostics will advance the field by making it easier for employers and workforces to reap the benefits of broad-based employee ownership strategies with actionable guidance based on valid and reliable data.”
— Anna-Lisa Miller, Executive Director, Ownership Works
“While conducting impact diligence for a portfolio company, I was impressed with Ellen and the WORC team's analysis which tied actionable goals for improving job quality to evidence-based KPIs. WORC's Worthwhile Jobs Framework(TM) provides an approachable methodology and meaningful set of tools for impact investing funds and organizations that believe investing in human capital is critical to business success.”
— Bhairvee Shavdia, Managing Director, SBJ Elevation Fund
“WORC's unique combination of rigorous research expertise and understanding of businesses and people operations was exactly what we needed for our highly-complex project. Getting five large employers to collaborate effectively and engage in research to figure out how to develop career pathways for lower-level workers in healthcare is no small feat - I don't think typical academics or typical consultants could do what WORC is doing for us.”
— April Harrington, Project Manager, Chicagoland Healthcare Workforce Collaborative
“Ellen Frank-Miller and her team at WORC and CCAT first evaluated our systems and business imperative — employee engagement to enable success of strategy. They then applied their decades of broad evidence base (that defines what people are looking for and how to create systems to provide it) to design a phased plan to identify our specific needs (by asking associates what they want), create processes in support of that context, and the ability to systematically measure our success as we move through this journey. ”
— Milton Ives, Operations Leader
“Working alongside WORC was such a pleasure. They made each step clear and on track, and their insights were invaluable. From handling our proposal to adhering to our budget, WORC was timely in its execution and an excellent partner throughout, playing a critical role in our program's growth. I look forward to any reason to partner with you in the future!”
— Brittany Robinson, Program Director, WorkLife Partnership
“Ellen and her team have been instrumental in supporting our partners' efforts to build capacity to evaluate complex job quality initiatives. Ellen's disciplined and rigorous approach to applied research is accessible to players with varying levels of understanding of evaluation.”
— Michelle Wilson, EdD, Program Evaluation Expert
“WORC has been incredibly effective at collaborating with us and our employer partners. Ellen has an amazing way of making evaluation easy to understand and implement — and has helped our organizations demonstrate the impact improving their lower-wage jobs had on key indicators such as employee satisfaction and retention, costs of turnover, and quality of care. Having WORC's expertise and their ability to make meaningful evaluation accessible has helped us build our capacity as an organization.”
— Hope Arthur, Workforce Innovation Leader