Employer Brand Rankings: January 2023

Following the holiday slump, employer misbehavior has begun again! In January, there was good news: Maryland is trying to shorten the workweek and Chipotle launched a clever recruitment marketing campaign. And also very lousy behavior: American Airlines retaliated against sick employees and Microsoft executives behaved like out-of-touch, elitist boobs. 

Cream of the crop

5. Home Depot

Home Depot is changing the way it will pay its hourly employees. The company will now pay employees to the nearest minute of their time punches; in the past, hourly pay was rounded to the nearest 15 minutes. 

Back in the fall, Home Depot employees in California sued the retailer, saying they were getting stiffed under the old policy. Assuming this does, in fact, rectify the problem, it’s nice to see a company changing policies, albeit small, as a result of employee pressure.

4. Uniqlo 

In Japan, employees of clothing retailer Uniqlo can expect pay raises of up to 40%. Monica Miller and Mariko Oi report for the BBC: “Under the new policy the monthly salary of recent university graduates will rise from ¥255,000 ($1,926, £1,585) to ¥300,000, an increase of almost 18%. At the same time new store managers in their first or second year in the role will see their pay go up by about 35%.”

Inflation in Japan is super nasty, and Prime Minister Kishida recently implored companies to increase comp ASAP.

3. Chipotle 

Chipotle has declared the time from March to May “burrito season,” and is hiring 15,000 new store employees. Using “burrito season” to staff up is a solid recruitment marketing campaign—based on a very simple idea—that is winning the chain lots of press, including stories in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Quartz, and about a dozen local outlets. It looks extra good at the moment, when most headlines about employers are about laying off tens of thousands.

As for the term “burrito season,” I’m not sure if that means I should date them or hunt them, and are the two really that different?

We should note that Chipotle doesn’t have the best employer brand record. It is one of several companies that have donated to Save Local Restaurants, a coalition that has opposed wage increases for hourly restaurant workers.

2. The state of Maryland

The state of Maryland has proposed a plan they hope will create a four-day work week for residents. Maryland State Delegate Vaughn Stewart introduced a bill that, if passed, would offer tax credits to employers who institute a four-day, 32-hour work week.

Notable is that the state wants companies to reduce not just the number of days worked, but also the number of hours worked without reducing pay or cutting benefits. Many four-day work week models cram 40 hours into a shorter work week.

1. The Cleveland Clinic

It’s popular for employers to endorse the importance of skills-based hiring, as opposed to prioritizing degree, school, or professional background when recruiting new employees. The Cleveland Clinic is doing something about it.

Ginger Christ reports for HR Dive that “Cleveland Clinic also has now revised more than 260 job descriptions to remove four-year degree requirements and reworked more than 2,000 roles to be skills-first.” 

The state of Maryland made a similar decision last year, eliminating the four-year degree requirement for many state jobs.

Bottom of the barrel

3. Apple 

The National Labor Relations Board has determined that Apple “illegally imposed rules on its employees that prohibit them from discussing their wages and engaging in other protected activity,” reports Brian Fung for CNN Business.

It’s illegal in many cases to forbid employees from discussing pay and benefits, plus policies that restrict this kind of disclosure can lead to pay discrimination. 

2. American Airlines 

The U.S. Department of Labor says American Airlines retaliated against flight attendants who reported becoming ill as a result of exposure to jet fuel fumes.

“Flight attendants alleged that American docked attendance points and discouraged them from reporting work-related injuries and illnesses,” writes Lauren Kalser for HR Dive.

1. Microsoft

According to my favorite headline of the month: “Microsoft Executives Enjoy Intimate Performance by Sting Before Mass Layoffs.”

In a plot line befitting Succession: The night before the company announced it would lay off 10,000 of its employees, executives at Microsoft attended a private performance from Sting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 

As Emily Leibert put it: “I hope Sting ended the set with ‘Fields of Gold,’ leaving those sons of bitches sobbing inconsolably.”

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance reporter based in Richmond, VA, who covers the future of work and women’s experience in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Fast Company, Quartz at Work, and Digiday’s Worklife.news, among others.

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