This report details the findings of a stable scheduling study conducted at Gap stores by an interdisciplinary team of academics. During the pilot study, stores in San Francisco and Chicago implemented stable scheduling practices, including two-week advance notice, elimination of on-call scheduling, tech-enabled shift swapping, and targeted additional staffing. Findings included a 7% increase in median sales and 5% increase in labor productivity at treatment stores. This study’s findings help to demonstrate the potential business benefits of stable scheduling.
In the coming decades, the success of the US economy will become increasingly tied to the success of Latino Americans. With 58 million Latinos in the US today and projections of population growth in the years to come, Latino workers, consumers, and business owners will shape the present and future of the US economy. How can we secure economic stability and mobility for Latino workers, families, and communities? What policies, practices, or strategies could help to improve job quality, increase skills and access to high-quality jobs, and expand business ownership opportunities?
The Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program (EOP) and the Latinos and Society Program (AILAS) invite you to watch “Drivers of Opportunity: How Will Latinos Shape the Future of the American Dream?”
Out of sight and out of mind for most of us, at least 1 million farmworkers (estimates vary) in the US harvest tomatoes, strawberries, melons, oranges, and more. These workers endure strenuous working conditions, low pay, long hours, and all-too-frequent abuse, mistreatment, and exposure to chemical and other hazards.
In Florida’s tomato fields, a group of farmworkers came together to improve their working conditions. They formed the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and won industry agreements to the Fair Food Program, a partnership of farmers, farmworkers, and retail food companies that ensure humane wages and working conditions at participating farms. In her new book, I Am Not a Tractor! How Florida Farmworkers Took on the Fast Food Giants and Won, Susan Marquis tells the story of the Coalition and draws implications for other industries. This event featured a discussion of the book, the Fair Food Program, and the potential for worker-driven social responsibility strategies to improve job quality throughout the nation and world.
This brief outlines some key metrics to consider when designing paid family and medical leave programs. These insights are drawn from the National partnership for Women and Families’ research, consultations with organizations that work with low wage workers, and experiences providing technical assistance to advocates and policymakers. The brief focuses on seven main aspects: setting the benefit amount and duration, eligibility requirements to access paid leave, definitions of “employee” and “employer”, definition of “family member”, waiting period before accessing paid leave, job and benefits protection while receiving family and medical leave insurance benefits, and public education and outreach. This resource can be particularly helpful for policymakers, advocates, researchers, and practitioners.
This is a profile of Charm City Run, a Baltimore-area running and walking specialty store, as part of the Good Companies/Good Jobs initaitive research.
In this report, Investing in Workforce Program Innovation: A Formative Evaluation of Five Workforce Organizations’ Experiences during the Human Capital Innovation Fund Initiative, we describe the five organizations’ experiences planning, implementing, and adapting new strategies. Investing in Workforce Program Innovation offers insights into the complex work of developing and maintaining relationships that cross institutions. We discuss factors grantees considered when identifying partner organizations, the approaches they used to find common ground and work effectively together, and the ways in which partnerships evolved and deepened over time. We describe how organizations cultivated long-term relationships with employers to not only inform workforce program design and promote job placement, but also to engage employers to reflect upon their hiring and employment practices. Finally, we discuss the ways in which HCIF-supported organizations tailored comprehensive and ongoing supports to the unique needs of their participants to help them succeed in and beyond training programs.
This issue brief by PHI analyzes the impacts of recent policy changes in New York state impacting home care aides and defines what a quality job looks like for a caregiver. The elements of a quality job in this occupation are organized in three categories: compensation, opportunity, and supports. While designed for care workers, the framework has relevance across industries and application for all practitioners seeking to define and assess job quality in an organization.
New ways of developing skills, expanding access to jobs, and encouraging the creation of quality jobs are critical for building an economy that works for everyone, including businesses, workers, and communities. To accelerate such strategies, we are pleased to announce the release of the Communities that Work Partnership Playbook. The Playbook emerges from the Communities that Work Partnership, jointly launched by AspenWSI, FutureWorks, and the US Economic Development Administration in April 2015. Since then, the initiative has documented and accelerated the development of employer-led regional workforce partnerships across the country. Seven regional teams — composed of leaders from diverse sectors in Buffalo, New York; Phoenix, Arizona; Houston, Texas; the San Francisco Bay area in California; northwest Georgia; New York City; and Washington, DC — engaged in a learning exchange focused on strengthening local talent pipelines and improving access to quality employment. The Communities that Work Partnership Playbook, published by AspenWSI and FutureWorks, highlights key takeaways from the seven regional teams’ work. The “plays” describe strategies that will be useful for those creating talent development approaches that leverage knowledge, capacity, and resources of not only education, workforce, and economic development partners, but also business partners.
In April 2015, the Aspen Institute Workforce Strategies Initiative jointly launched the Communities that Work Partnership with the US Economic Development Administration. The purpose of this initiative was to document and accelerate the development of employer-led regional workforce initiatives across the country. Seven competitively-selected sites — in Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Georgia, New York (upstate and NYC), and Texas — participated in a learning exchange focused on bridging economic and workforce development to strengthen local talent pipelines and improve access to quality employment.
Restore the Promise of Work: Reducing Inequality by Raising the Floor and Building Ladders, published by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program and PHI in February 2016, encourages a broader community beyond workforce development to engage in initiatives that redesign work to expand economic opportunity and address growing social, political, and economic inequality. Restore the Promise of Work underscores that both public and private changes, in both policies and practices, are essential. This new brief calls for leaders from workforce development, education, business, philanthropy, labor, government, and more to forge a powerful, coordinated agenda to promote better quality jobs. A coordinated effort will be critical to sustaining and expanding the successes that members of this community have already attained.RR