The STRENGHTEN2 project organized its third symposium for development banks to foster discussions and provide presentations focused on measuring the quality of employment and non-direct employment impacts. The symposium took place on December 4th and 5th 2023, both at ILO headquarters in Geneva and online, where representatives from various organizations attended, including the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank Group, the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Finance Corporation, the Swiss Investment Fund for Emerging Markets, the University of Geneva, the Joint Impact Model Foundation, and many other development banks.

The objectives of the first day centered on exploring and understanding the measurement of employment quality. The sessions aimed to delve into various facets: introducing the ILO's perspective on employment quality and the decent work indicators and how some of these indicators have been applied to assess employment impacts, the practice of operationalizing employment quality by development banks and finance institutions, evaluating the pros and cons of different indicators, and engaging in a World Café session for peer-learning on challenges and solutions in measuring employment quality.

The second day revolved around the exploration of the non-direct employment impacts of investment operations. The day began with a session aimed at understanding and comparing different models' outcomes concerning employment impact assessment, identifying underlying sources of variations, and brainstorming ways to improve estimation methods. Following this, sessions delved into the temporal dimensions of non-direct effects, analyzing their persistence, sustainability, and differentiation between short-term and long-term impacts. Additionally, there was a focus on the accessibility and requirements of data for meaningful employment impact assessment, discussing challenges and data availability.

The symposium captured the discourse on measuring employment quality and non-direct impacts of investment operations. Through collaborative sessions and panel discussions, it highlighted the complexities of assessing employment impacts, emphasizing the need for standardized and contextualized indicators, and improved data accessibility. The event concluded with a call for continued collaboration among diverse institutions to refine employment impact assessments in investment operations.