Apprenticeships: a Classic Solution to the Modern Problem of Worker Shortages

BY Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | February 14, 2024

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Groceries as a Benefit: As Workers Struggle With Living Costs, Employers Help Cover Basic Needs

As the cost of living in the U.S. has climbed sharply in recent years, Stevi Evans, the head of benefits at Weight Watchers, has heard more often from the company’s hourly workers who struggle financially. Salaried employees might be bothered by increases in their health-insurance premiums, for example, but Weight Watchers’ hourly workforce, many of whom are part-timers and work second jobs, have been pinching every penny. The basics are increasingly hard to come by: Food prices in the U.S. rose nearly 24% from 2020 to 2024, according to the Consumer Price Index, and the cost of transportation grew more than 34% over the same period. Credit-card delinquencies are up in every state since 2022, reports the Urban Institute, a non-profit research organization. Wellness benefits have been growing incrementally. Since 2018, Weight Watchers offered a $200 annual wellness reimbursement for its hourly employees to use on things like sneakers and workout clothing. Employees liked it and used it, said Evans, but as the cost of living increased, she realized needs were growing even more basic. Evans has stay attuned to the social determinants of health, the non-medical factors that affect health outcomes and quality of life, for example economic stability and access to healthcare and education. She wanted to help satisfy those needs. “We heard our hourly population talk about economic hardships,” Evans said. “That’s when I thought, ‘Why don’t we just include groceries in the wellness reimbursement?’” So last year, Weight Watchers added them to the list of reimbursable expenses, and requests “rolled in like crazy,” she said. Ninety-two percent of hourly employees now use the reimbursement, said Evans. And 77% of those use it for groceries.Evans expected to see receipts from specialty grocery stores, indicators that people might be using it to treat themselves to something novel (which, for the record, she would have no problem with), “but these are from Walmart,” she said. People need the essentials.The Basics Can Include Everything from Utility Costs to EmergenciesIn years when employers were hunting fervently for workers, many companies engaged in a spirited game of benefits one-upmanship, offering the most unusual–and often eyebrow-raising–perks to get attention and gain a competitive edge. Most recently, those benefits ranged from pet leave to ketamine therapy. Before that, it was in-office ping-pong tournaments and beer taps that flowed any time of day.Now, as companies freeze hiring and many costs continue to mount, employers are increasingly aiming at the base of the needs hierarchy, furnishing essentials like food, shelter, and expanded healthcare.Sometimes it’s an emergency. Companies scrambled to supply basic provisions to workers in Los Angeles after wildfires ruined huge parts of the city in January. And now that natural disasters are endangering areas not historically considered to be disaster-prone, like Asheville, N.C., companies are bolstering business continuity plans with disaster preparedness plans.Natural disasters, rising auto-and-home insurance premiums, and mass corporate layoffs mean that many people are anxious about their financial well-being and looking to their employers for help. When Gallup asked survey-takers in early 2025 to identify America’s problems, economic issues topped the list. Sixty-seven percent said the affordability of healthcare is “a very big problem,” while 63% said the same about inflation, and 53% pointed to the number of Americans living in poverty.Why not just raise worker salaries? Companies have to stay competitive on that scale, but that’s often not enough to improve multifaceted financial health. “If you want to become a stand-out employer,” Manisha Thakor, founder and CEO of MoneyZen Wealth Management, wrote recently in HBR, “one of the most effective HR benefits you can provide is a base layer of what I call ‘financial health,’” meaning that employees’ basic financial needs are met and they understand how their money choices affect their lives. Does Worker Financial Well-Being Affect the Bottom Line?Employers are linking financial health with mental health with workplace productivity. Energy tech company Enphase Energy makes financial benefits a pillar of its overall wellness strategy, which also includes things like healthcare.Others are linking it to retention and engagement. During a From Day One virtual conference in March, Jason Simmonds, the global head of employee experience at Morgan Stanley, noted that some employees have even gotten themselves out of debt thanks to the company’s financial wellness benefits—and highlighting their success has increased uptake of the program.One popular way to cover employees’ basic needs is a lifestyle spending account, or LSA. Tom Kelly, principal consultant in the health practice at benefits brokerage Gallagher, told From Day One that there’s been an uptick in companies opting for this benefit.LSAs are employer-funded accounts that allow employees to file for reimbursement for various expenses designated by the employer. The list could be very long, and full of necessities or luxuries, like groceries, gas or other transportation costs, childcare, tuition and education costs, financial counseling, running shoes, fitness classes, or nutritional supplements. While the list is created by the employer, it’s up to the employee to chose what serves them best. The “ecosystem” approach recommended by Thakor in her HBR article is one that considers employees’ unique experiences in favor of a generalized approach.Amanda Verdino, a director at Forma, which runs lifestyle spending accounts, told From Day One that the employers that do use them are rapidly expanding the list of reimbursable expenses. It’s not uncommon for employers to cover food and tuition assistance benefits through their LSAs. One of Forma’s clients, a sportswear brand, just added the cost of heating and cooling to its list of reimbursable expenses.According to Forma’s 2024 LSA benchmark report, food expenses ranked second in terms of number of transactions, right after fitness-related expenses. Verdino said tuition assistance is rising in popularity in both availability and utilization, as is commuter assistance and childcare. Regardless of category, utilization for LSAs is high. For every dollar an employer offers in the food category, employees spend 75 cents.LSAs aren’t all. At Gallagher, Tom Kelly noted that their clients are rolling out grocery savings programs as well as home and car insurance discounts to great success. “For discount marketplaces and purchase programs, we see really high utilization, to the tune of 70% to 90% of employees using these perks platforms on a regular basis.”Companies are conducting benefit gap analyses to understand the needs of their workforce based on their demographics, he said. And many confirm that employees need help with the basics.Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.(Featured image by Cyano66/iStock by Getty Images)

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza May 21, 2025

Pride Month Without Partners: As June Approaches, Corporate Support Recedes

As Pride Month nears and WorldPride prepares to mark its 50th anniversary in Washington, D.C., the celebration comes with a question: where did all of the corporate allies go?In years past, brands jumped at the chance to market themselves as allies during Pride Month. Companies like Nike, Target, and Apple poured millions into Pride campaigns, with Pride-themed products, promotional materials, and partnerships. In the month of June, rainbows could be found anywhere you looked, from social media to train cars and store shelves. While Pride had become a major corporate initiative, with Fortune 500 companies sponsoring parades and selling rainbow products, skeptical members of the LGBTQ+ community criticized these efforts as performative, and the term “rainbow-washing” gained traction in media.But this year, as the economic and political landscape has changed, those who doubted the depth of corporate commitment have been validated. Many companies are quietly, or not so quietly, stepping back from their rainbow-filled marketing efforts and broader DEI commitments. “Since Jan. 21, when President Trump signed an executive order calling DEI ‘dangerous, demeaning and immoral,’ companies have treated it like a dietary fad suddenly found to pose mortal health risks,” wrote Bloomberg’s Brad Stone.“I know that they’re facing tough decisions inside those organizations, and I don’t want to call them out,” Suzanne Ford, the executive director of San Francisco Pride, told NBC News. “I want to call them in. We will remember who stood by us and who didn’t. When it was politically popular, they were lined up.” The Growing Shift in Corporate SupportIn New York City, home to an annual Pride March on Fifth Avenue and the host of WorldPride in 2019, companies such as Mastercard, PepsiCo, and Citi have scaled back or withdrawn their sponsorship of this year’s events, reports the Wall Street Journal. “Two-thirds of last year’s NYC Pride sponsors have agreed to renew their sponsorships, but the rest remain in negotiations to return, have scaled back their funding or have said they are not sponsoring this year,” writes Journal reporter Patrick Coffee. Some companies are even asking for their names to be taken off of promotional materials and event merchandise, out of fear of political backlash, says Eve Keller, co-president of United States Association of Prides. “It’s multilayered, and it’s all happening at the same time,” she said.The retreat from advocacy and financial support occurs amid a broader upheaval in the DEI landscape. Resistance to DEI, which has been growing for over two years, intensified when president Trump’s second term launched a crackdown on DEI across the government, academia, cultural organizations, and corporate America. Before the new legal threat, major companies like Walmart, Google, Target, Ford, Lowe’s, and Amazon had already scaled back their DEI efforts. These cutbacks included reductions in DEI spending, labeling, diversity goals, and partnerships with organizations that track DEI progress.But the backlash to DEI advancement has produced its own backlash. The consequences of companies stepping away from DEI are becoming visible. Target’s decision to scale back its DEI program, including support for gay rights, sparked a boycott that has taken a toll on in-store traffic, which dropped 9% in February and 6.5% in March compared to the previous year. While Target is still sponsoring New York City’s annual Pride march, it has taken a quieter, “silent partnership” role, according to Kevin Kilbride, media marketing manager for NYC Pride. The shift is part of a broader trend of companies pulling back from public LGBTQ+ support, which can weaken the visibility and impact that Pride sponsorships are meant to have. Meanwhile, Twin Cities Pride has declined Target’s sponsorship altogether. NBC News reports: “Andi Otto, the executive director of Twin Cities Pride, said he chose to turn down the company’s $50,000 sponsorship because he didn’t like the message it was sending to the LGBTQ community and communities of color.”Marching Forward, With or Without Corporate SupportIn contrast to the pushback, some companies have remained steadfast in their commitment to supporting the LGBTQ+ community. Levi’s, a longstanding ally, has continued its support, with product lines focusing on “queer joy through self expression,” and continued funding for Outright International, a global organization working to advance human rights for LGBTQIA+ people. Ben & Jerry’s, the prototypical progressive brand, has also maintained its visibility, professing LGBTQ+ Rights as an issue they care about. Other brands like Visa and Oreo have implemented and renewed Pride campaigns, emphasizing inclusion even in a more cautious corporate climate.The question now is whether the corporate world will eventually return to the visibility and support it showed in recent years, continue to retreat into quieter forms of advocacy, or withdraw from the conversation altogether. Some in the LGBTQ+ community may not view corporate involvement as essential, but it can signal broader public support and offer a sense of visibility and empowerment, much needed at a time when the Trump administration is slashing funding for research into LGBTQ health. In keeping with its opposition both to DEI programs and gender-affirming care for adolescents, the administration has scrapped “more than $800 million worth of research into the health of  LGBTQ people, abandoning studies of cancers and viruses that tend to affect members of sexual minority groups and setting back efforts to defeat a resurgence of sexually transmitted infections,” the New York Times reported this week, based on an analysis of federal data.While the drop in sponsorships and LGBTQ+ supportive marketing is disheartening to the community and its advocates, Pride’s core message remains unchanged. Since the Stonewall Uprising in 1969, Pride has been more than a celebration. It has always been a movement rooted in resistance, liberation, and the ongoing fight for visibility, with or without corporate support.Erin Behrens is an associate editor at From Day One.(Featured photo: Vladimir Vladimirov/iStock by Getty Images)

Erin Behrens May 06, 2025

The Brand Manager’s Nightmare: Is Every Purchase Decision Now a Political One?

Starting May 12, Avelo Airlines, a budget carrier, is scheduled to begin flights chartered by the U.S. government to fly from Mesa, Ariz., to El Salvador. The Boeing 737s will be carrying not vacationers but people, in shackles, who are being deported, destined for a known hellhole of a prison.Even before the plane took off, Avelo had touched down in a public relations fiasco. Avelo said it was proud to assist the government, yet all but stated that it needed the business. The company is a startup, an Ultra Low Cost Carrier (ULCC) that operates out of secondary airports such as Wilmington, Del. Avelo quickly became the target of a boycott by groups in Delaware, as well as Connecticut and California, where it operates, who accused the airline of transporting people who were being deported without due process. For that same reason, Connecticut’s attorney general, Will Tong, threatened Avelo’s tax breaks and subsidies.A higher-profile company, Tesla, has learned the cost of the controversy created by its CEO, Elon Musk, who spent $250 million to help elect Donald Trump president and then fired tens of thousands of federal workers in his role as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).The world’s richest man has lost some $150 billion in wealth this year as shares in his car company continue to fall. Tesla reported that its profits dropped 71% and revenue from car ales declined 20% in the first quarter as customers abandoned a brand once viewed as progressive and eco-friendly. But Musk’s ties to Trump have made the Tesla brand toxic. The used car market is flush with Teslas, as owners abandon the company. Tesla owners who can’t afford to unload them display bumper stickers proclaiming, “I bought this before Elon went crazy.”For other companies caught one way or another in the political crossfire—Target, Anheuser-Busch, Costco—it’s a year that offers lots of bad options concerning brand and reputational risk as America’s politics continue get more strained. And pained.Even America as a brand is in play, the golden door having been slammed shut, the world leader now becoming isolationist. The president of the U.S. dissing Canada, geography’s nicest neighbors, has set off a boycott by Canadian tourists that is already apparent in places like Las Vegas, New York, and Florida.  Within this political maelstrom, companies are trying to figure out whether consumers are going to turn every purchase decision into a political one. As for me, I'm just trying to buy paper towels on the cheap.  Does my cereal choice really have to be a commentary on the Trump Administration?  Can’t a hamburger just be a hamburger? Increasingly, the answer is no.The Hazard of Getting Outside the Brand FitOf all the corporate jobs I wouldn’t want to have right now—other than DEI director—brand manager might be one of them. This used to be a fairly straightforward assignment. If you are in charge of say, Ivory Soap, your job is to make sure the brand speaks to purity, cleanliness and motherhood.But in our over-politicized world, virtue signaling and value signaling can trip over each other. And when they do, there’s trouble. We saw this happen, most spectacularly, when Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Lite brand decided to do a promotion with a transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. There was an actual brand fit—Bud Lite has a longstanding marketing presence in the LBGTQ community, just as it does in deep red areas. And given that Bud Lite had run some pretty insipid creative in the past (and I’m talking about you, Spuds MacKenzie), this promotion should have had a half-life of about 30 seconds.But Bud’s umbrella brand image of traditional American masculinity—all of it pulled by Clydesdale horses—was too much for MAGA America, which staged a loud boycott. Bud Lite’s sales tanked until the company counter-programmed with the reddest of red, white and blue advertising. Gay and trans people are still drinking Bud Lite, presumably, but you are just not going to see that highlighted as much. You can call A-B a coward for being bullied, but brands, and the companies behind them, adjust their identities at considerable peril. Consider what happened to BP, the British oil giant that tried to reposition itself as a green energy company.  Then its Texas refinery blew up, revealing the firm’s horrible environmental record. Granted, oil companies did green energy pantomime during the Biden Administration, but they are suddenly oil-and-gas companies again, as opposed to the energy companies.And maybe that kind of honesty is preferable. Resource extraction is a dirty business. If you’re driving a gasoline-powered auto, maybe you shouldn’t expect chlorophyl from a hydrocarbon seller;  just fill’er up, shut up, and drive.But if  you want to know how to do down-and-dirty,  there’s Waste Management, now known as WM, which has managed to raise trash removal to some kind of sacred environmental  mission. WM’s communications all but scream, “We love garbage!” It’s a clear corporate statement that shareholders and other constituencies can understand.How Much Leeway Does a Brand Have?A company’s brand or trademark is often explained in terms of permission: What does your brand or logo allow you to offer customers? Being Budweiser gives you permission to market the beer made by a company founded by a German immigrant—that is now part of a Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate—as All-American. But Anheuser-Busch earned that permission over the last 100 years of brand communication. What it doesn’t permit you to do is engage in identity politics, at least not today.And not every brand-marketing failure is caused by controversy. In the 1980s the old-line retailer Sears, Roebuck bought Dean Witter, an old-line stockbroker. The reasoning was that consumers would gladly buy stocks where they buy socks. Because both firms were trusted, went the logic. But people didn’t shop for equities and power tools the same way, wouldn’t you know. Sears had neither mission nor permission to sell stocks.Costco, on the other hand, is an example of a company that had permission from its customers to freely reject the anti-DEI initiatives of the Trump Administration. From its beginning as a membership wholesale club, Costco was green, liberal, worker-friendly and an absolutely first-rate operation. Customers love the place because cheap groceries and merchandising magic are bipartisan. There was no red drain from Costco’s coffers, because the company and its culture were behaving in the way that co-founder Jim Sinegal had executed from the start.Target employees marching in the New York City Pride Parade in 2017. When Target stepped away from its DEI commitments earlier this year, a boycott broke out (Photo by Aneese/iStock by Getty Images) On the other hand, poor Target, the midwestern retailer that’s been a favorite of young families, managed to catch it from both the left and the right by trying to please both. Target’s decision to back away from its DEI program, which included supporting gay rights, infuriated the soccer-mom set as well as Black shoppers. The ensuing boycott has hurt in-store traffic, down 9% in February and 6.5% in March  vs. the prior year, compelled CEO Brian Cornell to seek a meeting with Black leaders to try to repair the damage. The company pledged to buy $2 billion from Black-owned suppliers. But not everyone in the community is onboard.Then we’ve got Ben & Jerry’s, where the corporate owner, the Dutch conglomerate Unilever, just fired the CEO for being too political, even though the brand has a stated mandate to be socially progressive. This in the context of Unilever's decision to sell its ice-cream portfolio, which the company carefully assembled and artfully mismanaged. Co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield have offered to buy back the company and return the brand to its progressive roots. Set Chunky Monkey free! That might not matter to people who just want some chocolate ice cream. But if you are part of the company and its community, you care a lot, because the politics are part of the culture.That’s why nobody expects Patagonia to be anything but a fierce environmental steward, because that’s exactly the company that Yves Chouinard created. How fierce? In 2021, Patagonia pulled its business from the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort after a then-owner hosted a fundraiser for far-right, which is to say anti-green, Republicans.Essentially, Patagonia fired one of its prestige customers. You might label that decision as extreme, but it’s also an example of a company living up to its culture and mission. Over the long term, there may be way more value in reinforcing the mission than losing a customer.Bill Saporito is an editor at large at Inc. magazine whose work has also appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post. Previously, he worked as an assistant managing editor at Time magazine and as a senior editor at Fortune. He has written for From Day One on the power gap among labor unions, the myth of the “woke” corporation, and the perils of getting technology and people misaligned.(Featured photo: People take part in a protest on March 2025 outside of the Tesla centre at Park Royal in West London, as part of a campaign encouraging customers to boycott Tesla. Photo by Stefan Rousseau/Associated Press)

Bill Saporito April 30, 2025