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.

Since 2014, the California Workforce Development Board’s High Road Construction Careers project has allocated more than $20,000,000 to labor union and workforce development board partnerships to diversify and expand building and construction trade union membership. The project is expanding union approved pre-apprenticeships that use the Multi-Core Craft Curriculum (MC3) and includes a statewide database of the union validated programs. The initiative is funded by revenues through California Senate Bill 1: The Road Repair and Accountability Act, the Clean Energy Jobs Act Program and carbon market cap and trade revenues administered by the California Air Resources Board. Funds have been used to support local partnerships among workforce boards, unions, community colleges and other partners in East San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles and Orange County and the Central Valley.

Founded in 1997, the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) operates in 31 cities across 12 states. It has placed more than 34,000 individuals who were formerly incarcerated in full-time employment. The center is one of the only evidence-based employment programs dedicated to working with individuals who have recently returned home from incarceration. A randomized control trial by MDRC found that CEO reduced rates of recidivism by 22% and created $3.30 in social benefit for every $1 spent on the program. This case study in Philadelphia outlines how CEO partners with local government to make an impact on the ground.

The Metropolitan Planning Council partners with Chicago employers to provide employees homeownership counseling and/or financial assistance. The Chicago Neighborhood Housing Services produced this guidebook for employers interested in setting up an employer-assisted housing (EAH) program, including financial and nonfinancial support.

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.

Colorado established a statewide Office of Employee Ownership to increase the number of employee-owned companies in the state by administering a statewide tax credit (HB-21-1311) for employee-owned companies. It provides grants for feasibility studies and technical assistance to help owners sell to their employees and educates businesses about employee ownership through storytelling and building a network of employee-owned companies.

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.

In 2022, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) provided a comprehensive overview with detailed examples of how local governments are protecting workers’ rights by establishing local labor standards offices to enforce workers’ rights laws, establishing worker boards and councils, passing local worker protections laws, setting job quality standards for contractors and internal employers and championing workers issues through local public leadership.

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.

This national nonprofit works with childcare workers and owners to increase the number of employee-owned childcare businesses and cooperatives, such as the Rose Garden in Buffalo, New York. Workforce and economic development agencies can partner with groups like ICA to create more resiliency, equity and wealth building opportunities in the childcare industry, helping childcare businesses grow and expand to create more spots for working families.

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.

Founded in 1938, JVS has demonstrated new ways to diversify revenue for and through their job training programs, including charging employers for placement services. In 2018, the organization had $16M in revenue from a mix of private and public funding sources.

A 2013 Kentucky law established the Center for Education and Workforce Statistics, which collects and links high-quality actionable data from five state agencies in order to improve education and workforce programs in the state. By providing data sets, publishing reports and fulfilling research requests, the center provides state-specific insights with appropriate data privacy and data access measures.

In 2015, voters approved “Best Start for Kids” levies, with the most recent local measure generating $800,000,000 to expand access, affordability and quality of the region’s childcare system, including a childcare worker wage-increase demonstration project. The King County Department of Community and Human Services is leading implementation focused on increasing access and affordability for high-quality childcare for working families and for job quality for childcare workers.

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.

The Lehigh Valley Workforce Board operations are integrated with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program with streamlined Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act(WIOA)/TANF co-enrollment to allow TANF to pay for childcare subsidies for many American Job Center customers. The WIOA/TANF integration began in 2014 with the implementation of WIOA reauthorization.

In 2021, Pacific Gateway, the local workforce development board, partnered in the development and implementation of a project labor agreement with the city of Long Beach (CA), local unions and private developers to fill local hire and other project labor agreements for public works projects. Pacific Gateway recruits and trains diverse applicants and refers them to the Los Angeles and Orange County Building and Construction Trades Council Multi-Core Craft Curriculum (MC3) pre-apprenticeship program at Long Beach City College.

Through a partnership between the city and county workforce agencies and employment social enterprises, the Los Angeles Regional Initiative for Social Enterprise (LA RISE) began in 2015  to help people overcoming major employment barriers get jobs, stay employed and take initial steps toward living wages and higher quality jobs. Now in its seventh year, LA RISE has nearly 50 partners and has enrolled more than 4,100 individuals in Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act programs through its Client Referral Form, Client Flier, Program Model and Participant Flow Chart. The Roberts Enterprise Development Fund provides backbone management services to manage the network, track outcomes and build capacity for service provider partners.