Valuing Employment Exercise

The Valuing Employment exercise can be used to show the importance of impact measurement in designing incentives and contracts. The exercise has two phases. In the first phase, participants play the role of managers at the State of Massachusetts Infrastructure Department. They are tasked with evaluating competing bids for a 10-year, $100 million project from two finalist companies: Infrastructure Bay and Infrastructure Gold. Participants are asked to evaluate the bids after taking into account workforce impact. To measure impact and determine the winning company, students must develop a methodology to create monetized impact figures for each company based on factors such as workforce diversity and injury rate. In the second phase of the exercise, participants are assigned to one of three teams: Infrastructure Bay, Infrastructure Gold, or State of Massachusetts Infrastructure Department. During this phase, the competing companies present their cases for why they should be awarded the bid, while the members of the Infrastructure Department must make a final decision and provide a rationale for who will win the contract.