Earlier this month, ILFI proudly launched the latest iteration of our Just® program during the 2024 Living Future Conference in Atlanta, Georgia—Just 3.0!

Initially introduced in 2014, Just is a disclosure tool and framework for reflection, evaluation, and continuous improvement that helps organizations address social justice and equity throughout all aspects of their policies, practices, and culture. Just uplifts the understanding that it is people who make up businesses and communities and that people are the core of creating a Living Future.

Through Just, organizations publicly commit to an equitable and healthy workplace, examine their existing systems, culture, and practices, and then take meaningful action. While Just is primarily focused on organizations working in and adjacent to the building industry, the program is open to organizations across all industries.  

Taking a step back: why does justice matter for organizations?

While there has been ample research to show a strong business case for embedding social justice and equity into company policies and practices, the real reason for doing so is much simpler and more profound: it is the right thing to do. 

In recent years, there has been increased attention and awareness around workplace equity, showing a trend toward fostering more inclusive and diverse environments. However, there is still a long way to go to ensure equal opportunities and treatment for all employees. For example:

The good news is that organizations can play a role in reversing these trends. Many organizations in the building industry are waking up to equity issues and have a deepening desire to address them, but need a guiding framework to help them get started and keep growing. For individuals, the best place to start on this journey is with self-reflection and personal work. This holds true for organizations as well.

The best way for organizations to begin their social justice and equity journeys is by taking an introspective look inward. They can examine the current state of their own employee experience and operations and start transforming their internal policies and practices. That’s where Just can help: Just is a tool to help organizations better the lives of their employees and the broader community by providing measurable benchmarks to demonstrate commitment and action. 

How does Just work?

Just 3.0 is organized around 21 social justice and equity Indicators that are housed within six Categories: Diversity, Inclusion, Compensation, Health, Benefits, and Stewardship. It’s worth noting that overlaps and intersections inherently exist between both Categories and Indicators. For example, Gender Diversity affects Belonging, Accessibility affects Engagement, Workforce Empowerment and Living Wage affect Well-Being, and more.

Category

Indicator

Diversity
  1. Racial + Ethnic Diversity
  2. Gender Diversity
  3. Recruitment
Inclusion
  1. Belonging
  2. Accessibility
  3. Engagement
  4. Workplace Empowerment
Compensation
  1. Living Wage
  2. Pay Scale Equity
  3. Racial + Ethnic Pay Equity
  4. Gender Pay Equity
Health
  1. Physical Health + Safety
  2. Well-Being
Benefits
  1. Health Care
  2. Retirement
  3. Family + Medical Leave
  4. Professional Development
Stewardship
  1. Community Connections
  2. Volunteering
  3. Charitable Giving
  4. Procurement

The Categories and Indicators are not meant to convey defined boundaries or distinctions; rather, Just provides a framework for organizations to focus on specific actions that when taken together across all Indicators, help to collectively create more socially just and equitable workplaces. 

Each Just Indicator includes four levels of performance with associated metric criteria at each level, starting from the beginning of the journey of reflecting and assessing, all the way up to executed actions.

  • Level 1 requires organizations to develop a policy. This focus on policy first is designed to prioritize codifying an organization’s commitments to equity and also makes participation in Just possible for all organizations.
  • Levels 2 to 4 require actions of increasing effort toward embodying equity and justice related to the respective Indicator’s domain.
  • Achieving Level 4 indicates an organization has demonstrated significant action toward “what good looks like” based on the current understanding of justice and equity and represents the highest performance level within the Just program.

ILFI encourages all organizations, including ones that achieve Level 4, to continually look at ways to further optimize equity, diversity, and inclusion within their organization. Our hope is that Just organizations partner with ILFI to work in tandem in evolving Just and the industry’s understanding and action plan for addressing health and equity. In the same way that ILFI will continuously seek to learn and push the bar further, organizations will similarly challenge themselves to take greater action to enhance equity in their workplaces.

Just. Organization Name: ABC Corporation Organization Type: Construction Headquarters: Seattle, WA Location(s) Covered: Seattle, WA - Dallas, TX - Atlanta, GA Number of Employees: 240 Social Justice & Equity Indicators: DIVERISTY [2/4] Racial & Ethnic Diversity [3/4] Gender Diversity [2/4] Recruitment INCLUSION [4/4] Belonging [1/4] Accessibility [3/4] Engagement [2/4] Workplace Empowerment COMPENSATION [2/4] Living Wage [4/4] Pay Scale Equity [2/4] Racial & Ethnic Pay Equity [2/4] Gender Pay Equity HEALTH [3/4] Physical Health + Safety [2/4] Well-Being BENEFITS [4/4] Healthcare [3/4] Retirement [2/4] Family/Medical leave [4/4] Professional Development STEWARDSHIP [1/4] Community Connections [2/4] Volunteering [3/4] Charitable Giving [2/4] Procurement

A Just label provides basic information about an organization, such as organization type, location, and number of employees, as well as “at a glance” information about its progress across 21 social justice and equity Indicators.

An organization’s performance in the 21 Indicators is summarized on their Just label, which also includes high-level organizational information and a link to its individualized page on ILFI’s public Just database. This public disclosure of an organization’s achievement at the time of label publication:

  • demonstrates an organization’s commitment to its equity and justice goals;
  • facilitates transparency and accountability to its employees and prospective members of its workforce, clients, partners, and the rest of the industry; and
  • provides a platform for showing continued improvement over time.

In the same way that ILFI will continuously seek to learn and push the bar further, organizations will similarly challenge themselves to take greater action to enhance equity in their workplaces.

What’s new in Just 3.0?

Just 3.0 is the result of a robust development process that took place over several years and involved conducting extensive research; collaborating with the 20 collective members of our Organizational Equity TAG; soliciting input from peer organizations, industry partners, and the public; and integrating feedback from our existing community of Just organizations. In an effort to encourage the further advancement of equity in the building industry, Just 3.0 includes additional and adjusted metrics to more holistically represent “what good looks like” as well as provide further guidance and clarity around how an organization can demonstrate its commitments and take action. 

Just 3.0 includes updates that apply across the program:

Comprehensive Program Manual structure

We have reorganized the program to consolidate the Standard (i.e., the Just 2.0 Manual) with the Handbook, creating one comprehensive Program Manual for Just. This brings together the broad goals and specific requirements of the program, as well as enhances the user experience by providing a singular reference document to Just organizations. Additionally, all Program Manuals are publicly available at no cost, removing them from behind the ILFI Membership paywall.

Resources for learning and implementation

Each Indicator section of the Program Manual closes with a list of resources for further learning and to support implementation strategies. Although these lists are not meant to be exhaustive, the resources within provide additional background, research findings, tools, and more. 

Greater emphasis on advocacy

We recognize that in some specific sectors within the building industry, diversity at all levels of the workforce is an area for significant growth and improvement. Enhancing diversity within an industry that itself is not very diverse is challenging without larger change. As a means to promote an investment in systemic change, Just 3.0 asks organizations to take action toward removing existing barriers and creating opportunities for underrepresented and underestimated groups through demonstrated advocacy efforts and action. 

Just 3.0 introduces several new Indicators:

Recruitment

The Recruitment Indicator focuses on diversifying the workforce to include historically marginalized and underestimated groups that have a range of identities, beliefs, and experiences. Intentional, equitable recruitment is a pivotal catalyst for enhancing workplace diversity, and this Indicator encourages organizations to thoughtfully bring together a workforce that reflects an expansive view of diversity that goes beyond race, ethnicity, and gender (addressed in existing Indicators) to consider age, sexual orientation, physical or mental disabilities, physical appearance, parental/caregiver status, religion, education, socioeconomic background, nation of origin, preferred language, accent or dialect, prior justice system involvement, and more.

Accessibility

Accessibility is a key component of organizational equity and employee experience which is not addressed in Just 2.0. The intent of the Accessibility Indicator is to promote work environments that accommodate people with a broad range of accessibility needs. This Indicator asks organizations to address both physical and digital accessibility as well as factors related to workplace culture, policies, training, and regular assessment of practices and systems.

Racial + Ethnic Pay Equity

The intent of the Racial and Ethnic Pay Equity Indicator is to reduce significant discrepancies in pay equity across racial and ethnic identities. While Just 2.0 addresses pay variance among genders within an organization’s pay classes, we recognized the imperative of extending this focus in Just 3.0 to include racial and ethnic pay equity as well.

Other Indicators include significant refinements, resulting in a shift in focus and/or intent as well as impact:

Belonging

The intent of the Belonging Indicator is to create and maintain an inclusive work environment that is welcoming, safe, and supportive for all employees. We recognize that many factors affect an employee’s sense of belonging, and this Indicator (known as Inclusion in Just 2.0) includes expanded metrics focused on both establishing organizational protocols and assessing the actual employee experience.

Workforce Empowerment

Known as Freedom of Association in Just 2.0, this Indicator’s intent is to foster transparent systems that solicit and incorporate employee input into decisions that impact the workforce and the organization as a whole, and to support the right and effort of employees to self-organize and/or unionize. The Just 2.0 version of this Indicator is specifically focused on self-organization and unions, and Just 3.0 recognizes and encourages additional efforts and actions that contribute toward workforce empowerment.

Physical Health + Safety

The intent of the Physical Health and Safety Indicator is to facilitate work environments that proactively support the physical health and safety of employees. Given the diverse working environments within the building industry, we deemed it crucial to update the language of this Indicator to include safety in the name, better reflect the range of work settings, and add metrics that place a distinct emphasis on safety considerations.

Community Connections

The Community Connections Indicator focuses on facilitating restorative connections and empowering relationships between organizations and the communities they serve and in which they operate. We expanded this Indicator (known as Local Communities in Just 2.0) to focus on encouraging organizations to learn about their community context through a robust community assessment and conduct meaningful community engagement, relationship building, and actions.

Procurement

The intent of the Procurement Indicator is to build awareness and contribute positively to the social conditions of source communities along the supply chain through the intentional use of procurement funds. This Indicator combines elements of the Just 2.0 Equitable Purchasing and Supply Chain Indicators. To hone the focus of Just 3.0 on organizational equity and employee experience, we opted to not to have a stand-alone supply chain indicator; however, we recognize the inherent overlap between procurement and supply chain processes. Thus, Just 3.0 instead includes one integrated Indicator that addresses sourcing from both local businesses and those owned by members of communities who have been traditionally underestimated or marginalized as well as due diligence toward ensuring a socially responsible procurement process.

For more details, including specific revisions made to existing Indicators to address challenge and gap areas, please visit our Resources page and review the Just 2.0 to 3.0 Program Update Summary. Note that the Program Manual itself will be your one-stop shop for all of the performance metrics and documentation requirements as well as supporting information and resources for organizations to undergo the process of pursuing a Just 3.0 label–we highly encourage you to review the Program Manual for full details of the current program requirements!

The Just journey

An organization’s Just label is a snapshot of the organization’s performance at the time of label publication. ILFI intends for the Just program to be a tool for organizations to use in their long-term journey toward holistically embodying social justice and equity. We encourage organizations to see their first label as a benchmark of where they are and to use the Just program to create a roadmap for where they want to go within each of the Indicators. We advocate for organizations to routinely reassess the relevance and impact of their policies, programs, and actions in order to understand what is working well and where changes can be made to increase the social justice and equity benefits for their employees and communities.

We invite you to join the Just community and start on your journey of growth and transformation toward social justice and equity in the workplace.

START YOUR JUST JOURNEY
Written By

ILFI Staff

The International Living Future Institute’s mission is to lead the transformation toward a civilization that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative.