Leading Practices

Aurora Health Care is a not-for-profit integrated health care provider based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that helps employees with housing close to the hospital. A 2008 evaluation showed participating employees performed better, stayed with the company longer and had lower turnover.

The Live Near Your Work program partners with first-time home buyers by matching $2,500 from the employer with $2,500 from the city of Baltimore (for a combined total of $5,000 in employee assistance) to be applied to down payments and closing costs. Currently more than 100 employers are enrolled in the program.

The Boulder County Health and Human Services Department recognized that the lack of access and high cost of early child and infant care was contributing to turnover and creating significant stress for parents of new babies who continued to work. In 2016, they created a Babies at Work policy to allow employees to bring their infant children to work with them, reducing attrition and use of sick leave and increasing employee satisfaction.

A survey of 1,717 workers found that more than 40% of hourly paid workers have at least occasional on-call work, often with very short advance notice, and almost half have little to no input into their daily work schedules. More than a third of all workers have less than one week’s advance notice of their schedule, and almost half have a preference to work more hours for more income. Irregular shifts and underemployment are both higher among part-time workers. The findings include a list of public policy recommendations to address the erratic work schedules and their documented work-life consequences for working people.

Chipotle has partnered with Guild Education since 2018 to provide its employees the opportunity to earn an advanced degree such as an online bachelor’s degree in 18 months. Classes fit into workers’ schedules and are designed to help them grow in their careers. The program is part of Chipotle’s educational assistance program, which provides up to $5,250 a year in tuition assistance and a Guild Education personal success coach who helps students enroll in classes and apply for financial aid.

The NYC Department of Education administers the Teach NYC program for public school teachers who commit to working in high-needs schools for 3+ years. Teachers receive an initial payment of $5,000 + $400/month for housing-related expenses.

Cupcakin' Bake Shop is a Northern-California-based business with multiple locations. The company is committed to maintaining job quality as it grows. The owner offers her workers a living wage, career-building opportunities, wealth-building opportunities and a fair and engaging workplace. Cupcakin’ partnered with Pacific Community Ventures and their Good Jobs, Good Business program to implement job quality practices, including tracking and measuring changes over time, as well as to receive access to capital to scale operations efficiently and prepare the business for the future while supporting quality jobs.

Firmenich, the world’s largest privately owned fragrance and taste company, achieved living wage certification across all of its global operations. Following an external assessment by Fair Wage Network, a widely recognized international nongovernmental organization, the group was awarded the certification. The firm is pairing living wage investments internally with training for 100 major suppliers on human rights to include living wage, women’s empowerment, education and human rights practices.

Firebrand Bakery in Oakland, California, is a bakery owned by and for its employees through an employee ownership trust. Firebrand has 11 purposes baked into its corporate charter such as obligations to hire people who are formerly homeless or incarcerated, year-end profit sharing with all employees, creating a diverse and equitable supply chain and operating the company for long-term success rather than short-term profit.

The Gap ran a pilot at 28 stores in San Francisco and Chicago. This report is the first randomized controlled experiment of a multi-component intervention designed to shift schedules in hourly retail jobs toward greater stability. The Stable Scheduling Study found that increasing the stability of work schedules is possible and even profitable in today’s competitive retail environment. Key findings include increases in consistency, predictability and worker input. Adequacy of work hours did not increase for most associates; experienced associates may have benefited more from the shift to stability than inexperienced employees. Stable scheduling significantly increased median sales and labor productivity, and return on investment was high. Fluctuating customer demand is not the primary source of instability; managers consistently implemented advanced notice and elimination of on-calls in both control and treatment stores. Store managers’ responses to the Intervention were generally positive, with a strong recommendation that other business practices be changed at the same time as scheduling practices.

Since 2017, the Hilton Apprenticeship Academy has taught hospitality through hands-on exposure to a range of industry disciplines. Hilton apprentices complete a six-week rotation through all hotel departments, including security, food and beverage, engineering, accounting, human resources and front office. Once they complete the rotation, apprentices choose a specific department to focus on for an additional 16 weeks. Upon the conclusion of those 16 weeks, apprentices complete a final project that includes a presentation to Hilton’s executive committee.

This family-owned manufacturing company pays 33% of childcare costs for employees’ babies up to 12 months as a retention benefit for new parents. The only requirement is that parents choose a center that is rated as a level 3 or higher in Paths to QUALITY, the state’s voluntary quality rating and improvement system for childcare.

Since 2015, Landed has partnered with employers of essential professionals in the healthcare, education, and public administration to provide down payment assistance through a shared equity program. Landed invests up to $120,000 toward home down payments and shares in future gain or loss in the employee’s home value.

In 2016, Minneapolis, Minnesota, created the Labor Standards Enforcement Division within its Department of Civil Rights. Through a team of five employees, the office enforces the city’s paid sick and safe time, minimum wage, wage theft and freelance worker protection laws.

Since 1983, this private company has provided onsite childcare for working caregivers and has published a book to make the case that on-site childcare for working families is at the heart of responsible business today.

In June 2020, voters amended the city charter to create the Philadelphia Department of Labor. The Office of Worker Protections, located within the Department of Labor, has a total of nine full-time employees and enforces wage theft, paid sick leave and fair work week laws; laws covering specific industries (domestic worker bill of rights, wrongful discharge, recall and/or retention of hotel, travel and hospitality workers) and more. The office established a domestic worker task force and has been tasked with creating a portable benefits system for domestic workers, one of the nation’s first. In addition, in 2020 and 2021, the office partnered with worker organizations on the Philadelphia Worker Relief Fund, helping to distribute more than $2,200,000 to 2,820 families left out of COVID-19 government relief.

Quest Diagnostics had high turnover and operational issues, leading to frustrated employees and customers. In 2015, under new leadership, the company launched a Good Jobs Transformation to improve the performance and lives of the workers through creating greater meaning and purpose at work.

The San Diego County workforce board produced a position paper in 2021 to raise awareness of the importance of scheduling and to support advocacy efforts for the implementation of a scheduling ordinance in the county. The paper addresses the benefits to workers and businesses of making a shift in scheduling stability, predictability and reliability.

The Office of Equality Assurance of San Jose, California, implements, monitors and administers living wage requirements for city contractors, the prevailing wage law for public construction projects and the minimum wage ordinance. The office also contracts with a number of neighboring localities to provide minimum wage enforcement services for their own local minimum wages, working together with smaller cities to enforce laws across the regional labor market.

In 2015, Seattle, Washington, created the Office of Labor Standards, and by 2022 it had 34 full-time equivalents enforcing 18 city laws including paid sick and safe time; fair chance employment; wage theft; the city’s stable scheduling ordinance for retail and food services workers; ordinances protecting domestic workers, transportation network company drivers and hotel workers and laws enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The office has instituted a number of successful enforcement actions and is active in city labor policymaking.