When Donna Klein left Marriott International six years ago she was Vice President for Workforce Effectiveness. She had dedicated her career to making the workplace work for families, reshaping the role of business in response to dramatic changes in the circumstances of workers' lives. Recognizing that neither the prevailing business management practices nor public policy adequately responded to the realities of work and family in the 21st century, she founded Corporate Voices for Working Families.
"The work of supporting working families in the business sector is probably 25- to 30-years-old," she says. "Businesses have really made major changes in their own policies and workforce support, responding to today's dual earner families. But about eight to 10 years ago, businesses probably reached the point where they were not able to invest and do more. By the mid 90's the appetite for growing that investment beg
Donna Klein (left) with the recipient of the 2007 Corporate Voices Corporate Champion of the Year, Alice Campbell of the Baxter Corporation.
an to wane. Clearly the changes they made were very effective. Smaller businesses with fewer resources were not able to invest in their human capital to the same degree. There became a noticeable differentiation between polices offered to their workers for top tier companies and the rest of the national workforce.
"It was becoming clear that, while businesses could solve many of the challenges facing their own workforce, the challenges facing the national workforce, especially those employed by mid- and small-sized businesses, required policy change at the state and federal levels. There was no avenue for companies to work together to address the common issues facing working families, to share their knowledge and experience in ways that can strengthen the workforce at large."
That was the mission of Corporate Voices: to be both a voice in the policy world of Washington, DC, and to act like a trade association working solely to help businesses meet the needs of their workforces, specifically working families. The Hitachi Foundation was one of the first foundations to recognize the potential value of such an organization to businesses, low-income individuals, and families. The Foundation provided the first planning grant that led directly to the creation of Corporate Voices.
In many ways our economy is driven by the lower-wage worker. According to Klein, one-third of U.S. employees — approximately 40 million workers — are in jobs paying less than 12 dollars an hour. To state the obvious, in today's economy it's extremely difficult to survive, no less thrive, making this kind of money. But American business depends on these workers.
"The more we can help lower-wage workers build assets, increase take home pay, save, and get tax benefits, the better off they are on a month to month basis," Klein says. "And the more economic stability there is in the family the more likely they are to be productive at work and continue employment, not switching jobs. We need to create a situation where loyalty and commitment are developed between employees and employer."
Early on, Corporate Voices took the tact that one of the best ways to strengthen the low-wage workforce is to give employers the tools they need to strengthen their relationship with that workforce. They began with an Employer Toolkit.
"The employees benefit guide began as a toolkit on the Earned Income Tax Credit, or EITC," Klein recalls. "Over the years we've expanded it to include a number of additional benefits so that it now includes information on EITC, the child care tax credit, food stamps, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, and other public benefits that low-wage workers may be eligible for.
"Our goal is to create one-stop shopping, so to speak, for employees at their workplace, so that the work site can function as the avenue to increased utilization of public benefits overall."
Klein reports that a number of major companies have embraced the toolkit, including, CVS/Caremark, HEB Grocery, Hyatt, Marriott, Mellon Financial, Nordstrom's, PNC Financial, Sodexho, Save-a-Lot, and TJX. Several of Corporate Voices partner companies, such as HEB Grocery and Sodexho, have made the Employer Guide directly available to their employees. In addition, Marriott went a step further and re-branded the Employer Guide as a Marriott product before distributing it.
Recently, Nordstrom's and Hyatt, two significant employers of lower-wage workers outside Corporate Voices' coalition, also re-branded and distributed the employer guide for the 2007 tax season. Hyatt's distribution reached all of their 112 domestic properties.
Building on this focus on the employee-employer relationship is a new Corporate Voices research initiative: workplace flexibility for lower-wage workers. "Hourly workers have limited flexibility, in large part because of public policies designed to ensure fair compensation for hours worked," reports Klein. "The problem is that, while they have less access to flexibility, they also need it more" than professional workers. "Many times they are working two jobs. They don't have the disposable income to pay for child care and other household services, for example. As a result there is lots of juggling they have to do."
Corporate Voices is hoping that, by understanding how employers can provide more flexibility to lower-wage, hourly workers, they can take a large and important step toward educating all employers to implement similar practices. Currently, they are in the research phase of the project. "We are in four companies right now, documenting what they are doing to increase flexibility for hourly workers." By the middle of 2008, they hope to be able to replicate a workplace flexibility initiative in other businesses, building the business case for offering flexibility to an increased percentage of lower-wage workers.
One active member of Corporate Voices is CVS/Caremark. Filling more prescriptions than any company in the world, they rely on lower-wage workers. And they need to be sure that these workers experience CVS/Caremark as a place where they can get on a meaningful career path — meaningful to them and their ability to move from managing paycheck to paycheck, to building their own family's economic stability.
"Since 1996, we've hired over 55,000 former welfare recipients," says Stephen Wing, Director of Government Programs at CVS/Caremark. "Over 60 percent of them are still with us and have moved up the career ladder. Many have been very successful. Others reach a certain point and need additional help and training.
"Our most important asset is our people. We have to be able to find the right people and in today's world we need new and innovative ways of doing that."
Wing says that Corporate Voices — both the tools they have developed and the partnerships the company has formed — has helped CVS/Caremark be innovative in recruiting, training, and retaining entry level employees.
He also notes that the contribution Corporate Voices makes to his and other companys' efforts to create a productive workforce is found in the very relationships spawned and nurtured by Corporate Voices. Indeed, the constant sharing of information that goes on between Corporate Voices' corporate members has led directly to many of the innovations that CVS/Caremark has embraced. "We are able to talk with other companies with similar missions and values and share with them what we are doing, and vice versa," without sharing proprietary information that a company needs to keep to themselves, Wing reports.
Corporate Voices directly draws the line between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), corporate focus on the bottom line, and The Hitachi Foundation's interest in strengthening the workplace to bring low-income individuals into the economic mainstream. "Our interest in the field of CSR has particularly focused on understanding how the business bottom line can be enhanced through practices that improve the economic outlook for low-income employees," says The Hitachi Foundation president and CEO Barbara Dyer. "Corporate Voices is teaching us how corporations can implement policies and procedures that directly benefit the company and create an economic future for low-income employees and their families."
It's all proof that creating a powerful national voice comprised of some of the nation's largest corporations can go a long way toward helping the little guy. And that goes a long way toward helping the corporate bottom line.
