Employer Brand Rankings: November 2022

The holidays are the season of giving . . . pink slips. The general line on bad behavior is that every November/December/ish, employers look at their balance sheets and shriek, then lay off a bunch of employees. The companies that do this year after year are not good at managing their resources. This year, it happens to be tech companies, like Meta, Amazon, Kraken, DoorDash, GameStop, and Twitter, some of whom went bananas hiring staff in the last twelve months, not really thinking about how that would work should the market shift even a teeny bit.

News from the world of better behavior is that, maybe the office Christmas party is back? Whether that qualifies as good news is, um, debatable. As the Telegraph pointed out, some Gen Zers have never had to attend such a thing. Their lives were so full of promise, we will say.

But really, here’s what happened in November.

Cream of the crop

5. Chick-fil-a

The operator of a Chick-fil-a in Miami, Florida, has instituted a three-day work week. Employees will work three fourteen-hour shifts per week. 

The operator, Justin Lindsey, told 6abc Action News in Philadelphia that profits were coming at the expense of employee burnout and that the new schedule is aimed at fixing that. He said that the location received 420 applications on a single job posting after the announcement. (The article does not mention the average application number before the change.) 

4. Imperial Beach City Council

In Imperial Beach, California, a small town south of San Diego, the city council has approved one-time retention stipends for city employees to help offset the ick of inflation.

3. DoorDash 

Julie Littman reports for HR Dive that “DoorDash has partnered with six companies to provide restaurant partners access to healthcare and mental health benefits and continued career development.” The program is part of DoorDash’s Merchants Benefits, which are intended to help restaurant owners recruit, retain, and develop staff. 

2. Cigna 

Cigna announced that it will double its paid caregiver leave in 2023. Employees will get up to eight weeks of leave each year, at 100% pay. The insurance company told HR Dive that it will also double the number of free EAP counseling sessions to 10.

1. Sephora

Beauty retailer Sephora has rapidly increased representation of Black and Hispanic employees in management and leadership in the last year. The number of Black employees has increased by 8% and Hispanic employees by 16%. To give you a sense of their overall numbers: People of color constituted 45% of Sephora employees at management level and above and 36% at VP level and above in 2022. (Those are crazy good numbers.)

“That’s a difficult feat in an organization’s upper echelons, a rank harder to diversify than entry-level and even more senior rank-and-file roles,” writes Amber Burton for Fortune’s CHRO Daily newsletter. The company credits its internal training programs, a “talent incubator,” and its development of a “diverse hiring toolkit” for hiring managers.

Bottom of the barrel

5. Twitter

I really hate to give E— M— any more real estate (he clearly loves the attention, and, frankly, I’m sick of reading about him), but he may be facing legal consequences for his boobery. TechCrunch reports that Twitter is being sued for violation of the California WARN Act, which requires 60 days written notice of layoffs, which he did not give.

4. University of California 

Forty-eight thousand academic workers employed by the University of California system are still on strike for the fourth week in a row, reports Phoebe Wall Howard at the Detroit Free Press. 

Things aren’t moving forward as the strikers planned. Apparently, the bargaining team is making more concessions than hoped.

According to The Guardian: “The strike has reached a moment of danger. UC administrators have offered the postdocs and the academic researchers, about 12,000 in number, a set of five-year contracts that modestly increase wages in year one and also provide a set of additional enhancements, including more money for parental leave, childcare benefit and longer appointments. But the graduate student teaching assistants, who compose a large majority of those on strike and who constitute the most militant and activist element among the unionists, have thus far been unable to persuade UC administrators to increase an initial wage offer – 7% now followed by smaller annual increases later on – that barely compensated them for the inflationary erosion of their real incomes.”

3. Dollar General

Dollar General has landed itself in OSHA’s Severe Violator Enforcement Program. The discount retailer has racked up dozens of violations and been fined millions by the administration.

Laurel Kalser reports for HR Dive: “Less than a month after the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration assessed Dollar General more than $1.6 million in safety penalties, the agency has proposed another $2.7 million for similar hazards, such as blocked exits and exposure to falling merchandise.”

2. Circle K

The convenience store chain Circle K will pay $8 million in a settlement with the EEOC. 

According to a press release from the commission: “This resolution resolves multiple charges of discrimination filed against Circle K and related entities, ending an investigation in which the EEOC determined it had reasonable cause to believe Circle K denied reasonable accommodations to pregnant employees and those with disabilities, subjecting them to actions such as involuntary unpaid leave, retaliation, requiring employees be 100% healed to return to work, or terminations.”

1. Walmart

Wamart is being sued by an employee who says the company ignored her complaints about a colleague’s concerning behavior. That colleague killed six people and wounded four when he opened fire in the Walmart store where he (and the plaintiff) worked in Chesapeake, Virginia.

According to Jacob Knutson for Axios, the lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff reported that the suspect made “cruel and inappropriate” remarks about her two months before the shooting and that “the company continued to employ the suspected gunman even though he ‘had known propensities for violence, threats and strange behavior’ toward other employees.” 

Vice reports that other employees had also filed complaints against the man, saying he had threatened to retaliate if he were ever fired.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance reporter who writes about the workplace, recruitment, the future of work, and women’s experiences on the job. Her bylines include The Washington Post, Fast Company, Digiday’s Worklife, From Day One, and Food Technology.

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