Leading Practices

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Triversity is a Cincinnati, Ohio, based construction company that has established a mandate to “build a better way.” It accomplishes this mandate by measuring equity and job quality in both its recruiting and its advancement process through the working metrics tool, which allows tracking and analysis of data such as job growth, retention, earnings and benefits by race and gender.