Beyond the Label: Acentech’s Commitment to a Just Workplace

In 2025, Acentech earned a Just 3.0 Label from the International Living Future Institute (Living Future), an achievement that reflects both where we are today and our commitment to building a workplace where people can thrive.

For Acentech, participating in Just was not simply about earning a label. It was an opportunity to look closely at how our values show up in our policies, practices, benefits, and employee experience, and to identify opportunities for improvement.

What Is Just?

Just is a voluntary organizational transparency and disclosure program developed by Living Future. Rather than functioning as a traditional certification, the program provides organizations with a framework for evaluating and publicly reporting their performance on social justice and equity issues.

Under Just 3.0, organizations are evaluated across 21 indicators within six categories: Diversity, Inclusion, Compensation, Health, Benefits, and Stewardship. Each indicator has four performance levels. Level 1 begins with establishing a written policy, while higher levels require organizations to demonstrate their practices through data and supporting documentation. Level 4 represents the program’s highest performance level.

The result is a label that provides an at-a-glance view of an organization’s performance while encouraging something equally important: continuous improvement.

Living Future describes the goals of Just as ‘elevating discussion around social justice and equity, creating a common framework for measuring these issues, improving employee and community-related policies and practices, and ultimately improving the experience of people in the workforce.’

Why Acentech Participated

Many of the principles measured through Just were already closely aligned with Acentech’s culture and values.

As an employee-owned consulting firm, we have long believed that investing in our people is fundamental to the success of our company. Our values include fostering a productive, collaborative, and employee-focused workplace; cultivating a welcoming, diverse, and equitable work environment and community; encouraging innovation; and acting with integrity.

The Just process challenged us to go further by asking an important question: How do we demonstrate those commitments?

That meant reviewing policies, examining data, documenting practices, and, in some cases, formalizing approaches that had previously been part of our culture but had not necessarily been captured in a written policy.

What We Achieved

After several months of data gathering and preparation, Acentech earned its Just 3.0 Label in October 2025. Living Future evaluates participating organizations across areas ranging from racial, ethnic, and gender diversity to belonging, accessibility, employee engagement, living wages, pay equity, health and safety, benefits, professional development, and community stewardship.

The process highlighted a number of areas where Acentech’s existing practices aligned particularly well with the principles behind Just.

Fair and equitable compensation is one example. Acentech’s compensation philosophy emphasizes fairness, market competitiveness, living wages, and transparency. Our approach includes market-based salary ranges, regular compensation reviews, employee ownership through our ESOP, retirement contributions, and a comprehensive benefits package.

We have also formalized our commitment to racial, ethnic, and gender pay equity through compensation reviews designed to identify and address disparities.

Just also looks beyond compensation. The framework considers whether organizations are creating workplaces where employees feel included, supported, safe, and able to grow. Those goals are reflected throughout Acentech’s employee programs, from professional development and flexible work arrangements to health and well-being initiatives and policies designed to support an inclusive workplace.

Transparency Matters

One of the things that makes Just different is that participation requires transparency.

The label is not intended to suggest that an organization has reached some final definition of a “perfect” workplace. Instead, it provides a snapshot of where an organization stands today. Living Future encourages participating organizations, including those reaching the highest performance levels, to continue examining their practices and looking for ways to improve.

That philosophy resonates with us.

Acentech’s Just Label identifies areas of strength, but it also makes opportunities for improvement visible. We see that as a benefit, not a drawback.

Measurement creates accountability. Transparency creates trust. And understanding where we have room to grow gives us a roadmap for deciding what comes next.

The Work Continues

Earning the Just Label was an important milestone, but it was never intended to be the finish line.

Just labels are renewed every two years, creating an ongoing opportunity for organizations to reassess their policies, practices and performance. For Acentech, that means continuing to evaluate where we can make meaningful progress and ensuring that the policies we put on paper translate into the everyday experiences of our employees.

It also means recognizing that a strong workplace evolves. Employee expectations change. Our company changes. The communities in which we work change. Our practices need to evolve with them.

Our participation in Just provides a framework for having those conversations thoughtfully and measuring our progress over time.

Acentech’s work has always been about improving the human experience through acoustics, engineering, and technology. Our participation in Just reflects a similar idea internally: the experience of the people doing that work matters, too.

We are proud of what our 2025 Just 3.0 Label represents, and even more interested in what we can accomplish next.