Key Challenges

Reluctance to Revise Internal Practices: Agency leadership feels that employees already have stable schedules or are uncomfortable reviewing internal policy.

Tackling internal scheduling practices ensures that your staff is supportive of future efforts to make change in the community. It also shows employers your commitment to stable fair scheduling practices.

Stakeholder Pushback: Key stakeholders in your network disagree that your agency should be involved in activities to advance stable scheduling. Board members representing the interests of service industries, local chambers of commerce, staffing agencies and businesses, as well as elected officials who have heard from these constituencies are common sources of opposition. Typical objections might include:

“Workers in these jobs are mostly high school and college students. They like the flexibility.”

“Schedules are between a worker and their employer. A government agency doesn’t need to be involved.”

“It’s too costly for a business to make these changes.”

These critiques of efforts to advance stable and fair scheduling should be anticipated during stakeholder engagement and theory of change development. Use data to combat assumptions such as “these workers are high school students” as often as possible.

A. People often talk about job quality within the context of paying a living wage, but workers in hourly service sector jobs consistently say that their employer’s scheduling practices are just as important as wages when it comes to job satisfaction.

B. Schedule instability—including on-call scheduling, changing hours and less than 24 hours of notice of the following week’s schedule—impacts a significant percentage of workers in our region.

People feel a lack of control over their life when they have jobs with unstable scheduling practices. Jobseekers and workers, many of whom are in our programs and/or in our key target populations, cannot arrange child care, doctors' appointments, transportation, continued education or workforce training programs.

C. Variable “just-in-time” scheduling is bad for business. Retailer Gap Inc. experimented with more stable schedules in 19 stores over a 35-week period and gained $2.9 million in increased revenue. The company’s workers were happier, slept better and called in sick less frequently.

Lack of Expertise: A shortage of technical expertise and knowledge related to businesses implementing fair and stable scheduling practices.

Significant investment in staff training and/or tapping of external skills may be required. There are a variety of resources that can help an agency bring its vision for stable scheduling to life. Agencies can leverage Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act funds, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, community development block grants and related funding to cover costs associated with research, expertise and implementation.

Complacence toward Existing Guidelines: In states or cities that have stable and fair scheduling laws or ordinances in place, key stakeholders may take the position that scheduling problems have already been addressed.

Most ordinances and laws apply only to larger corporations, and their scope is limited in different ways depending on the state. Workforce and economic development agencies can still advance stable scheduling for more workers even if a law has been passed. Increasing the number of workers that have fair and stable schedules is central to our equity agenda. Workers identifying as women and Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) are overrepresented in sectors with endemic schedule instability.