Employer Brand Rankings: August 2022
This month’s employer brand rankings include the crying CEO and lots of good news for public employees.
Bottom of the barrel
5. Hypersocial
When the CEO of Hypersocial, Braden Wallake, posted a strange photo of himself crying after laying off some of the company’s employees, people went bananas. Some accused him of making the layoffs about him. Some defended him, saying he was “just being human.” Crying on social media is something people do now. Why not on LinkedIn?
Hypersocial is a B2B marketing agency that does things like content creation, and, appropriately, optimizing LinkedIn posts.
4. Vice
A few former employees at antivirus software maker Kaspersky say the company told them they should quit when they asked to be relocated out of Russia following the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine. They did.
3. Walmart
The EEOC filed a lawsuit in South Carolina claiming that Walmart did not allow a part-time employee who has a disability to use one of its electric carts. Emmalyse Brownstein reported for the Miami Herald that the employee had been using one of the store’s carts for about seven months, but then a manager told the employee the carts are for customers only.
She writes: “Walmart told the employee to get his own cart or transfer to another position at the self-checkout registers, feds said. Unable to obtain his own cart to perform the duties of his position, which included stocking shelves, and unable to perform the “duties of the self-checkout host due to his disability,” the man was sent home indefinitely and without pay, feds say.”
2. The New York Times
The New York Times Union says employees of color received consistently lower performance ratings than their whtie colleagues. This adds another bundle to the fire that is the NYT’s current reputation as an employer. The company has been accused of dragging its feet and even outright resisting union demands and it refused to voluntarily recognize a new tech workers union in late winter of this year.
1. Gravity Payments
CEO of Gravity Payments and LinkedIn celebrity Dan Price has been accused of assaulting a woman after a business meeting. Price resigned and said he will “dedicate more time to ‘fighting false allegations.’” Gravity Payments is very publicly linked to Price as its public persona—what will the effects on the company be?
Cream of the crop
4. Richmond
Schools in and around Richmond, Virginia, are experiencing a major teacher shortage. Karri Peifer at Axios reported that the problem is money. Teachers in the area just aren’t paid well enough. Well, the school board listened and has approved: $6,000 in moving costs for teachers at least 50 miles outside of Richmond, a $4,000 signing bonus for experienced educators, and a $2,000 one for new teachers. Hopefully, we’ll see salary increases too.
3. Iredell-Statesville Schools
Iredell-Statesville Schools in North Carolina is opening childcare centers in some of its schools for staff with younger-than-school-age children. The program is not free, but it is cheaper than the national average cost of childcare, and it makes childcare available. One school principal started the program after a teacher couldn’t find an option she was comfortable with.
2. Houston
The City of Houston, in conjunction with Houston Community College, is training its employees in emergency preparedness and public safety. Four hundred of the city’s 2,000 employees were affected by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, and the city is looking for ways to preemptively help its workers.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner told Celeste Schurman at Houston Public Media: “The explicit goal in the Houston Resiliency Plan is to train 500,000 of our citizens and our employees to be better prepared, more informed, and certified in specific areas of resilience and sustainability.”
1. California
The state of California will collect new demographic data on its employees, specifically whether those employees are descendants of enslaved people. Providing this data is optional, and employees can opt out.
Jaclyn Diaz writes for NPR: “In recent years, the state has been working to determine whether the state will pay reparations to Black Californians, particularly those who are descendants of slaves. And this year, the California Reparations Task Force affirmed lineage-based eligibility for state reparations — meaning only people who can prove they are descendants of slaves would be eligible.”
Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza writes about workplace culture, DEI, and hiring. Her work has appeared in Fast Company, From Day One, and InHerSight, among others.
ABOUT UNCUBED STUDIOS
Launched in 2016, Uncubed Studios is a full-service creative agency with a client list representing the most influential employers on earth along with the high growth tech companies.
The team that brings the work of Uncubed Studios to life is made up of award-winning experts in cinematography, journalism, production, recruitment, employee engagement, employer branding and more.
Interested in speaking with Uncubed Studios? Email us at studios@uncubed.com
