does homework help you get smarter

Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

A conversation with a Wheelock researcher, a BU student, and a fourth-grade teacher

“Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives,” says Wheelock’s Janine Bempechat. “It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.” Photo by iStock/Glenn Cook Photography

Do your homework.

If only it were that simple.

Educators have debated the merits of homework since the late 19th century. In recent years, amid concerns of some parents and teachers that children are being stressed out by too much homework, things have only gotten more fraught.

“Homework is complicated,” says developmental psychologist Janine Bempechat, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development clinical professor. The author of the essay “ The Case for (Quality) Homework—Why It Improves Learning and How Parents Can Help ” in the winter 2019 issue of Education Next , Bempechat has studied how the debate about homework is influencing teacher preparation, parent and student beliefs about learning, and school policies.

She worries especially about socioeconomically disadvantaged students from low-performing schools who, according to research by Bempechat and others, get little or no homework.

BU Today  sat down with Bempechat and Erin Bruce (Wheelock’17,’18), a new fourth-grade teacher at a suburban Boston school, and future teacher freshman Emma Ardizzone (Wheelock) to talk about what quality homework looks like, how it can help children learn, and how schools can equip teachers to design it, evaluate it, and facilitate parents’ role in it.

BU Today: Parents and educators who are against homework in elementary school say there is no research definitively linking it to academic performance for kids in the early grades. You’ve said that they’re missing the point.

Bempechat : I think teachers assign homework in elementary school as a way to help kids develop skills they’ll need when they’re older—to begin to instill a sense of responsibility and to learn planning and organizational skills. That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success. If we greatly reduce or eliminate homework in elementary school, we deprive kids and parents of opportunities to instill these important learning habits and skills.

We do know that beginning in late middle school, and continuing through high school, there is a strong and positive correlation between homework completion and academic success.

That’s what I think is the greatest value of homework—in cultivating beliefs about learning and skills associated with academic success.

You talk about the importance of quality homework. What is that?

Quality homework is engaging and relevant to kids’ lives. It gives them autonomy and engages them in the community and with their families. In some subjects, like math, worksheets can be very helpful. It has to do with the value of practicing over and over.

What are your concerns about homework and low-income children?

The argument that some people make—that homework “punishes the poor” because lower-income parents may not be as well-equipped as affluent parents to help their children with homework—is very troubling to me. There are no parents who don’t care about their children’s learning. Parents don’t actually have to help with homework completion in order for kids to do well. They can help in other ways—by helping children organize a study space, providing snacks, being there as a support, helping children work in groups with siblings or friends.

Isn’t the discussion about getting rid of homework happening mostly in affluent communities?

Yes, and the stories we hear of kids being stressed out from too much homework—four or five hours of homework a night—are real. That’s problematic for physical and mental health and overall well-being. But the research shows that higher-income students get a lot more homework than lower-income kids.

Teachers may not have as high expectations for lower-income children. Schools should bear responsibility for providing supports for kids to be able to get their homework done—after-school clubs, community support, peer group support. It does kids a disservice when our expectations are lower for them.

The conversation around homework is to some extent a social class and social justice issue. If we eliminate homework for all children because affluent children have too much, we’re really doing a disservice to low-income children. They need the challenge, and every student can rise to the challenge with enough supports in place.

What did you learn by studying how education schools are preparing future teachers to handle homework?

My colleague, Margarita Jimenez-Silva, at the University of California, Davis, School of Education, and I interviewed faculty members at education schools, as well as supervising teachers, to find out how students are being prepared. And it seemed that they weren’t. There didn’t seem to be any readings on the research, or conversations on what high-quality homework is and how to design it.

Erin, what kind of training did you get in handling homework?

Bruce : I had phenomenal professors at Wheelock, but homework just didn’t come up. I did lots of student teaching. I’ve been in classrooms where the teachers didn’t assign any homework, and I’ve been in rooms where they assigned hours of homework a night. But I never even considered homework as something that was my decision. I just thought it was something I’d pull out of a book and it’d be done.

I started giving homework on the first night of school this year. My first assignment was to go home and draw a picture of the room where you do your homework. I want to know if it’s at a table and if there are chairs around it and if mom’s cooking dinner while you’re doing homework.

The second night I asked them to talk to a grown-up about how are you going to be able to get your homework done during the week. The kids really enjoyed it. There’s a running joke that I’m teaching life skills.

Friday nights, I read all my kids’ responses to me on their homework from the week and it’s wonderful. They pour their hearts out. It’s like we’re having a conversation on my couch Friday night.

It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Bempechat : I can’t imagine that most new teachers would have the intuition Erin had in designing homework the way she did.

Ardizzone : Conversations with kids about homework, feeling you’re being listened to—that’s such a big part of wanting to do homework….I grew up in Westchester County. It was a pretty demanding school district. My junior year English teacher—I loved her—she would give us feedback, have meetings with all of us. She’d say, “If you have any questions, if you have anything you want to talk about, you can talk to me, here are my office hours.” It felt like she actually cared.

Bempechat : It matters to know that the teacher cares about you and that what you think matters to the teacher. Homework is a vehicle to connect home and school…for parents to know teachers are welcoming to them and their families.

Ardizzone : But can’t it lead to parents being overbearing and too involved in their children’s lives as students?

Bempechat : There’s good help and there’s bad help. The bad help is what you’re describing—when parents hover inappropriately, when they micromanage, when they see their children confused and struggling and tell them what to do.

Good help is when parents recognize there’s a struggle going on and instead ask informative questions: “Where do you think you went wrong?” They give hints, or pointers, rather than saying, “You missed this,” or “You didn’t read that.”

Bruce : I hope something comes of this. I hope BU or Wheelock can think of some way to make this a more pressing issue. As a first-year teacher, it was not something I even thought about on the first day of school—until a kid raised his hand and said, “Do we have homework?” It would have been wonderful if I’d had a plan from day one.

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Senior Contributing Editor

Sara Rimer A journalist for more than three decades, Sara Rimer worked at the Miami Herald , Washington Post and, for 26 years, the New York Times , where she was the New England bureau chief, and a national reporter covering education, aging, immigration, and other social justice issues. Her stories on the death penalty’s inequities were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Her journalism honors include Columbia University’s Meyer Berger award for in-depth human interest reporting. She holds a BA degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan. Profile

She can be reached at [email protected] .

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There are 81 comments on Does Homework Really Help Students Learn?

Insightful! The values about homework in elementary schools are well aligned with my intuition as a parent.

when i finish my work i do my homework and i sometimes forget what to do because i did not get enough sleep

same omg it does not help me it is stressful and if I have it in more than one class I hate it.

Same I think my parent wants to help me but, she doesn’t care if I get bad grades so I just try my best and my grades are great.

I think that last question about Good help from parents is not know to all parents, we do as our parents did or how we best think it can be done, so maybe coaching parents or giving them resources on how to help with homework would be very beneficial for the parent on how to help and for the teacher to have consistency and improve homework results, and of course for the child. I do see how homework helps reaffirm the knowledge obtained in the classroom, I also have the ability to see progress and it is a time I share with my kids

The answer to the headline question is a no-brainer – a more pressing problem is why there is a difference in how students from different cultures succeed. Perfect example is the student population at BU – why is there a majority population of Asian students and only about 3% black students at BU? In fact at some universities there are law suits by Asians to stop discrimination and quotas against admitting Asian students because the real truth is that as a group they are demonstrating better qualifications for admittance, while at the same time there are quotas and reduced requirements for black students to boost their portion of the student population because as a group they do more poorly in meeting admissions standards – and it is not about the Benjamins. The real problem is that in our PC society no one has the gazuntas to explore this issue as it may reveal that all people are not created equal after all. Or is it just environmental cultural differences??????

I get you have a concern about the issue but that is not even what the point of this article is about. If you have an issue please take this to the site we have and only post your opinion about the actual topic

This is not at all what the article is talking about.

This literally has nothing to do with the article brought up. You should really take your opinions somewhere else before you speak about something that doesn’t make sense.

we have the same name

so they have the same name what of it?

lol you tell her

totally agree

What does that have to do with homework, that is not what the article talks about AT ALL.

Yes, I think homework plays an important role in the development of student life. Through homework, students have to face challenges on a daily basis and they try to solve them quickly.I am an intense online tutor at 24x7homeworkhelp and I give homework to my students at that level in which they handle it easily.

More than two-thirds of students said they used alcohol and drugs, primarily marijuana, to cope with stress.

You know what’s funny? I got this assignment to write an argument for homework about homework and this article was really helpful and understandable, and I also agree with this article’s point of view.

I also got the same task as you! I was looking for some good resources and I found this! I really found this article useful and easy to understand, just like you! ^^

i think that homework is the best thing that a child can have on the school because it help them with their thinking and memory.

I am a child myself and i think homework is a terrific pass time because i can’t play video games during the week. It also helps me set goals.

Homework is not harmful ,but it will if there is too much

I feel like, from a minors point of view that we shouldn’t get homework. Not only is the homework stressful, but it takes us away from relaxing and being social. For example, me and my friends was supposed to hang at the mall last week but we had to postpone it since we all had some sort of work to do. Our minds shouldn’t be focused on finishing an assignment that in realty, doesn’t matter. I completely understand that we should have homework. I have to write a paper on the unimportance of homework so thanks.

homework isn’t that bad

Are you a student? if not then i don’t really think you know how much and how severe todays homework really is

i am a student and i do not enjoy homework because i practice my sport 4 out of the five days we have school for 4 hours and that’s not even counting the commute time or the fact i still have to shower and eat dinner when i get home. its draining!

i totally agree with you. these people are such boomers

why just why

they do make a really good point, i think that there should be a limit though. hours and hours of homework can be really stressful, and the extra work isn’t making a difference to our learning, but i do believe homework should be optional and extra credit. that would make it for students to not have the leaning stress of a assignment and if you have a low grade you you can catch up.

Studies show that homework improves student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college. Research published in the High School Journal indicates that students who spent between 31 and 90 minutes each day on homework “scored about 40 points higher on the SAT-Mathematics subtest than their peers, who reported spending no time on homework each day, on average.” On both standardized tests and grades, students in classes that were assigned homework outperformed 69% of students who didn’t have homework. A majority of studies on homework’s impact – 64% in one meta-study and 72% in another – showed that take home assignments were effective at improving academic achievement. Research by the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) concluded that increased homework led to better GPAs and higher probability of college attendance for high school boys. In fact, boys who attended college did more than three hours of additional homework per week in high school.

So how are your measuring student achievement? That’s the real question. The argument that doing homework is simply a tool for teaching responsibility isn’t enough for me. We can teach responsibility in a number of ways. Also the poor argument that parents don’t need to help with homework, and that students can do it on their own, is wishful thinking at best. It completely ignores neurodiverse students. Students in poverty aren’t magically going to find a space to do homework, a friend’s or siblings to help them do it, and snacks to eat. I feel like the author of this piece has never set foot in a classroom of students.

THIS. This article is pathetic coming from a university. So intellectually dishonest, refusing to address the havoc of capitalism and poverty plays on academic success in life. How can they in one sentence use poor kids in an argument and never once address that poor children have access to damn near 0 of the resources affluent kids have? Draw me a picture and let’s talk about feelings lmao what a joke is that gonna put food in their belly so they can have the calories to burn in order to use their brain to study? What about quiet their 7 other siblings that they share a single bedroom with for hours? Is it gonna force the single mom to magically be at home and at work at the same time to cook food while you study and be there to throw an encouraging word?

Also the “parents don’t need to be a parent and be able to guide their kid at all academically they just need to exist in the next room” is wild. Its one thing if a parent straight up is not equipped but to say kids can just figured it out is…. wow coming from an educator What’s next the teacher doesn’t need to teach cause the kid can just follow the packet and figure it out?

Well then get a tutor right? Oh wait you are poor only affluent kids can afford a tutor for their hours of homework a day were they on average have none of the worries a poor child does. Does this address that poor children are more likely to also suffer abuse and mental illness? Like mentioned what about kids that can’t learn or comprehend the forced standardized way? Just let em fail? These children regularly are not in “special education”(some of those are a joke in their own and full of neglect and abuse) programs cause most aren’t even acknowledged as having disabilities or disorders.

But yes all and all those pesky poor kids just aren’t being worked hard enough lol pretty sure poor children’s existence just in childhood is more work, stress, and responsibility alone than an affluent child’s entire life cycle. Love they never once talked about the quality of education in the classroom being so bad between the poor and affluent it can qualify as segregation, just basically blamed poor people for being lazy, good job capitalism for failing us once again!

why the hell?

you should feel bad for saying this, this article can be helpful for people who has to write a essay about it

This is more of a political rant than it is about homework

I know a teacher who has told his students their homework is to find something they are interested in, pursue it and then come share what they learn. The student responses are quite compelling. One girl taught herself German so she could talk to her grandfather. One boy did a research project on Nelson Mandela because the teacher had mentioned him in class. Another boy, a both on the autism spectrum, fixed his family’s computer. The list goes on. This is fourth grade. I think students are highly motivated to learn, when we step aside and encourage them.

The whole point of homework is to give the students a chance to use the material that they have been presented with in class. If they never have the opportunity to use that information, and discover that it is actually useful, it will be in one ear and out the other. As a science teacher, it is critical that the students are challenged to use the material they have been presented with, which gives them the opportunity to actually think about it rather than regurgitate “facts”. Well designed homework forces the student to think conceptually, as opposed to regurgitation, which is never a pretty sight

Wonderful discussion. and yes, homework helps in learning and building skills in students.

not true it just causes kids to stress

Homework can be both beneficial and unuseful, if you will. There are students who are gifted in all subjects in school and ones with disabilities. Why should the students who are gifted get the lucky break, whereas the people who have disabilities suffer? The people who were born with this “gift” go through school with ease whereas people with disabilities struggle with the work given to them. I speak from experience because I am one of those students: the ones with disabilities. Homework doesn’t benefit “us”, it only tears us down and put us in an abyss of confusion and stress and hopelessness because we can’t learn as fast as others. Or we can’t handle the amount of work given whereas the gifted students go through it with ease. It just brings us down and makes us feel lost; because no mater what, it feels like we are destined to fail. It feels like we weren’t “cut out” for success.

homework does help

here is the thing though, if a child is shoved in the face with a whole ton of homework that isn’t really even considered homework it is assignments, it’s not helpful. the teacher should make homework more of a fun learning experience rather than something that is dreaded

This article was wonderful, I am going to ask my teachers about extra, or at all giving homework.

I agree. Especially when you have homework before an exam. Which is distasteful as you’ll need that time to study. It doesn’t make any sense, nor does us doing homework really matters as It’s just facts thrown at us.

Homework is too severe and is just too much for students, schools need to decrease the amount of homework. When teachers assign homework they forget that the students have other classes that give them the same amount of homework each day. Students need to work on social skills and life skills.

I disagree.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what’s going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Homework is helpful because homework helps us by teaching us how to learn a specific topic.

As a student myself, I can say that I have almost never gotten the full 9 hours of recommended sleep time, because of homework. (Now I’m writing an essay on it in the middle of the night D=)

I am a 10 year old kid doing a report about “Is homework good or bad” for homework before i was going to do homework is bad but the sources from this site changed my mind!

Homeowkr is god for stusenrs

I agree with hunter because homework can be so stressful especially with this whole covid thing no one has time for homework and every one just wants to get back to there normal lives it is especially stressful when you go on a 2 week vaca 3 weeks into the new school year and and then less then a week after you come back from the vaca you are out for over a month because of covid and you have no way to get the assignment done and turned in

As great as homework is said to be in the is article, I feel like the viewpoint of the students was left out. Every where I go on the internet researching about this topic it almost always has interviews from teachers, professors, and the like. However isn’t that a little biased? Of course teachers are going to be for homework, they’re not the ones that have to stay up past midnight completing the homework from not just one class, but all of them. I just feel like this site is one-sided and you should include what the students of today think of spending four hours every night completing 6-8 classes worth of work.

Are we talking about homework or practice? Those are two very different things and can result in different outcomes.

Homework is a graded assignment. I do not know of research showing the benefits of graded assignments going home.

Practice; however, can be extremely beneficial, especially if there is some sort of feedback (not a grade but feedback). That feedback can come from the teacher, another student or even an automated grading program.

As a former band director, I assigned daily practice. I never once thought it would be appropriate for me to require the students to turn in a recording of their practice for me to grade. Instead, I had in-class assignments/assessments that were graded and directly related to the practice assigned.

I would really like to read articles on “homework” that truly distinguish between the two.

oof i feel bad good luck!

thank you guys for the artical because I have to finish an assingment. yes i did cite it but just thanks

thx for the article guys.

Homework is good

I think homework is helpful AND harmful. Sometimes u can’t get sleep bc of homework but it helps u practice for school too so idk.

I agree with this Article. And does anyone know when this was published. I would like to know.

It was published FEb 19, 2019.

Studies have shown that homework improved student achievement in terms of improved grades, test results, and the likelihood to attend college.

i think homework can help kids but at the same time not help kids

This article is so out of touch with majority of homes it would be laughable if it wasn’t so incredibly sad.

There is no value to homework all it does is add stress to already stressed homes. Parents or adults magically having the time or energy to shepherd kids through homework is dome sort of 1950’s fantasy.

What lala land do these teachers live in?

Homework gives noting to the kid

Homework is Bad

homework is bad.

why do kids even have homework?

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Does homework really work?

by: Leslie Crawford | Updated: December 12, 2023

Print article

You know the drill. It’s 10:15 p.m., and the cardboard-and-toothpick Golden Gate Bridge is collapsing. The pages of polynomials have been abandoned. The paper on the Battle of Waterloo seems to have frozen in time with Napoleon lingering eternally over his breakfast at Le Caillou. Then come the tears and tantrums — while we parents wonder, Does the gain merit all this pain? Is this just too much homework?

However the drama unfolds night after night, year after year, most parents hold on to the hope that homework (after soccer games, dinner, flute practice, and, oh yes, that childhood pastime of yore known as playing) advances their children academically.

But what does homework really do for kids? Is the forest’s worth of book reports and math and spelling sheets the average American student completes in their 12 years of primary schooling making a difference? Or is it just busywork?

Homework haterz

Whether or not homework helps, or even hurts, depends on who you ask. If you ask my 12-year-old son, Sam, he’ll say, “Homework doesn’t help anything. It makes kids stressed-out and tired and makes them hate school more.”

Nothing more than common kid bellyaching?

Maybe, but in the fractious field of homework studies, it’s worth noting that Sam’s sentiments nicely synopsize one side of the ivory tower debate. Books like The End of Homework , The Homework Myth , and The Case Against Homework the film Race to Nowhere , and the anguished parent essay “ My Daughter’s Homework is Killing Me ” make the case that homework, by taking away precious family time and putting kids under unneeded pressure, is an ineffective way to help children become better learners and thinkers.

One Canadian couple took their homework apostasy all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. After arguing that there was no evidence that it improved academic performance, they won a ruling that exempted their two children from all homework.

So what’s the real relationship between homework and academic achievement?

How much is too much?

To answer this question, researchers have been doing their homework on homework, conducting and examining hundreds of studies. Chris Drew Ph.D., founder and editor at The Helpful Professor recently compiled multiple statistics revealing the folly of today’s after-school busy work. Does any of the data he listed below ring true for you?

• 45 percent of parents think homework is too easy for their child, primarily because it is geared to the lowest standard under the Common Core State Standards .

• 74 percent of students say homework is a source of stress , defined as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss, and stomach problems.

• Students in high-performing high schools spend an average of 3.1 hours a night on homework , even though 1 to 2 hours is the optimal duration, according to a peer-reviewed study .

Not included in the list above is the fact many kids have to abandon activities they love — like sports and clubs — because homework deprives them of the needed time to enjoy themselves with other pursuits.

Conversely, The Helpful Professor does list a few pros of homework, noting it teaches discipline and time management, and helps parents know what’s being taught in the class.

The oft-bandied rule on homework quantity — 10 minutes a night per grade (starting from between 10 to 20 minutes in first grade) — is listed on the National Education Association’s website and the National Parent Teacher Association’s website , but few schools follow this rule.

Do you think your child is doing excessive homework? Harris Cooper Ph.D., author of a meta-study on homework , recommends talking with the teacher. “Often there is a miscommunication about the goals of homework assignments,” he says. “What appears to be problematic for kids, why they are doing an assignment, can be cleared up with a conversation.” Also, Cooper suggests taking a careful look at how your child is doing the assignments. It may seem like they’re taking two hours, but maybe your child is wandering off frequently to get a snack or getting distracted.

Less is often more

If your child is dutifully doing their work but still burning the midnight oil, it’s worth intervening to make sure your child gets enough sleep. A 2012 study of 535 high school students found that proper sleep may be far more essential to brain and body development.

For elementary school-age children, Cooper’s research at Duke University shows there is no measurable academic advantage to homework. For middle-schoolers, Cooper found there is a direct correlation between homework and achievement if assignments last between one to two hours per night. After two hours, however, achievement doesn’t improve. For high schoolers, Cooper’s research suggests that two hours per night is optimal. If teens have more than two hours of homework a night, their academic success flatlines. But less is not better. The average high school student doing homework outperformed 69 percent of the students in a class with no homework.

Many schools are starting to act on this research. A Florida superintendent abolished homework in her 42,000 student district, replacing it with 20 minutes of nightly reading. She attributed her decision to “ solid research about what works best in improving academic achievement in students .”

More family time

A 2020 survey by Crayola Experience reports 82 percent of children complain they don’t have enough quality time with their parents. Homework deserves much of the blame. “Kids should have a chance to just be kids and do things they enjoy, particularly after spending six hours a day in school,” says Alfie Kohn, author of The Homework Myth . “It’s absurd to insist that children must be engaged in constructive activities right up until their heads hit the pillow.”

By far, the best replacement for homework — for both parents and children — is bonding, relaxing time together.

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Kids are onto something: Homework might actually be bad

By Stan Horaczek

Posted on Sep 23, 2021 8:00 AM EDT

6 minute read

When you’re a kid, your stance on homework is generally pretty simple: It’s the worst. When it comes to educators, parents, and school administrators, however, the topic gets a lot more complicated. 

Collective educational enthusiasm toward homework has ebbed and flowed throughout the 20th century in the US. School districts began abolishing homework in the ‘30s and ‘40s, only for it to come roaring back as the space race kicked off in the late ‘50s and drove a desire for sharper math and science skills. It fell out of fashion again during the Vietnam War era before it came back strong in the ‘80s .

As the country mostly transitions back to full-time, in-person schooling, the available research on homework and its efficacy is still messy at best. 

How much homework are kids doing?

There’s a fundamental issue at the very start of this discussion: we’re not entirely sure how much homework kids are actually doing. A 2019 Pew survey found that teens were spending considerably more time doing schoolwork at home than they had in the past—an hour a day, on average, compared to 44 minutes a decade ago and just 30 in the mid-1990s. 

But other data disagrees , instead suggesting that homework expansion primarily affects children in lower grades. But it’s worth noting that such arguments typically refer to data from more than a decade ago. 

How much homework are kids supposed to be doing?

Many schools subscribe to a “rule of thumb” that suggests students should get 10 minutes of homework for each grade level. So, first graders should get just 10 minutes of work to do at home while high schoolers should be cracking the books for up to two hours each night. 

This once served as the official guidance for educators from the National Education Association, as well as the National PTA. It also serves as the official homework policy for many school districts, even though the NEA’s outline of  the policy now leads to an error page . The National PTA also now relies on a less-specific resolution on homework which encourages districts and educators to focus on “quality over quantity.”

The PTA’s resolution effectively sums up the current dominant perspective on homework. “The National PTA and its constituent associations advocate that teachers, schools, and districts follow evidence-based guidelines regarding the use of homework assignments and its impact on children’s lives and family interactions.”

Even with these well-known standards, a study from researchers at Brown University, Brandeis University, Rhode Island College, Dean College, the Children’s National Medical Center, and the New England Center for Pediatric Psychology, found that younger children were still getting more than the recommended amount of homework by two or three times . First and second graders were doing roughly 30 minutes of homework every night. 

Does homework make kids smarter?

In the mid-2000s, a Duke researcher named Harris Cooper led up one of the most comprehensive looks at homework efficacy to-date. The research set out to explore the perceived correlation between homework and achievement. The results showed a general correlation between homework and achievement. Cooper reported, “No strong evidence was found for an association between the homework–achievement link and the outcome measure (grades as opposed to standardized tests) or the subject matter (reading as opposed to math).” 

The paper does suggest that the correlation strengthens after 7th grade—but it’s likely not a causal relationship. In an interview with the NEA , Cooper explains, “It’s also worth noting that these correlations with older students are likely caused, not only by homework helping achievement but also by kids who have higher achievement levels doing more homework.”

A 2012 study looked at more than 18,000 10th-grade students and concluded that increasing homework loads could be the result of too much material with insufficient instructional time in the classroom. “The overflow typically results in more homework assignments,” the lead researcher said in a statement from the University. “However, students spending more time on something that is not easy to understand or needs to be explained by a teacher does not help these students learn and, in fact, may confuse them.”

Even in that case, however, the research provided somewhat conflicting results that are hard to reconcile. While the study found a positive association between time spent on homework and scores on standardized tests, students who did homework didn’t generally get better grades than kids who didn’t. 

Can homework hurt kids?

It seems antithetical, but some research suggests that homework can actually hinder achievement and, in some cases, students’ overall health. 

A 2013 study looked at a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper middle class communities. The results showed that “students who did more hours of homework experienced greater behavioral engagement in school but also more academic stress, physical health problems, and lack of balance in their lives.” And that’s in affluent districts. 

When you add economic inequity into the equation, homework’s prognosis looks even worse. Research suggests that increased homework can help widen the achievement gap between low-income and economically advantaged students ; the latter group is more likely to have a safe and appropriate place to do schoolwork at night, as well as to have caregivers with the time and academic experience to encourage them to get it done. 

That doesn’t mean financially privileged kids are guaranteed to benefit from hours of worksheets and essays. Literature supporting homework often suggests that it gives parents an opportunity to participate in the educational process as well as monitor a child’s progress and learning. Opponents, however, contest that parental involvement can actually hurt achievement. A 2014 research survey showed that help from parents who have forgotten the material (or who never really understood it) can actually harm a student’s ability to learn. 

The digital homework divide

Access to reliable high-speed internet also presents an unfortunate opportunity for inequity when it comes to at-home learning. Even with COVID-era initiatives expanding programs to provide broadband to underserved areas, millions of households still lack access to fast, reliable internet . 

As more homework assignments migrate to online environments instead of paper, those students without reliable home internet have to make other arrangements to complete their assignments in school or somewhere else outside the home. 

How do we make homework work?

Some experts suggest decoupling homework from students’ overall grades. A 2009 paper suggests that, while homework can be an effective tool for monitoring progress, assigning a grade can actually undercut the main purpose of the work by encouraging students to focus on their scores instead of mastering the material. The study recommends nuanced feedback instead of numbered grades to keep the emphasis on learning—which has the added benefit of minimizing consequences for kids with tougher at-home circumstances. 

Making homework more useful for kids may also come down to picking the right types of assignments. There’s a well-worn concept in psychology known as the spacing effect , which suggests it’s easier to learn material revisited several times in short bursts rather than during long study sessions. This supports the idea that shorter assignments can be more beneficial than heavy workloads.  Many homework opponents add that at-home assignments should appeal to a child’s innate curiosity. It’s easy to find anecdotal evidence from educators who have stopped assigning homework only to find that their students end up participating in more self-guided learning. As kids head back into physical school buildings, the homework debate will no doubt continue on. Hopefully, the research will go with it.

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Is homework a necessary evil?

After decades of debate, researchers are still sorting out the truth about homework’s pros and cons. One point they can agree on: Quality assignments matter.

By Kirsten Weir

March 2016, Vol 47, No. 3

Print version: page 36

• Schools and Classrooms

Homework battles have raged for decades. For as long as kids have been whining about doing their homework, parents and education reformers have complained that homework's benefits are dubious. Meanwhile many teachers argue that take-home lessons are key to helping students learn. Now, as schools are shifting to the new (and hotly debated) Common Core curriculum standards, educators, administrators and researchers are turning a fresh eye toward the question of homework's value.

But when it comes to deciphering the research literature on the subject, homework is anything but an open book.

The 10-minute rule

In many ways, homework seems like common sense. Spend more time practicing multiplication or studying Spanish vocabulary and you should get better at math or Spanish. But it may not be that simple.

Homework can indeed produce academic benefits, such as increased understanding and retention of the material, says Duke University social psychologist Harris Cooper, PhD, one of the nation's leading homework researchers. But not all students benefit. In a review of studies published from 1987 to 2003, Cooper and his colleagues found that homework was linked to better test scores in high school and, to a lesser degree, in middle school. Yet they found only faint evidence that homework provided academic benefit in elementary school ( Review of Educational Research , 2006).

Then again, test scores aren't everything. Homework proponents also cite the nonacademic advantages it might confer, such as the development of personal responsibility, good study habits and time-management skills. But as to hard evidence of those benefits, "the jury is still out," says Mollie Galloway, PhD, associate professor of educational leadership at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. "I think there's a focus on assigning homework because [teachers] think it has these positive outcomes for study skills and habits. But we don't know for sure that's the case."

Even when homework is helpful, there can be too much of a good thing. "There is a limit to how much kids can benefit from home study," Cooper says. He agrees with an oft-cited rule of thumb that students should do no more than 10 minutes a night per grade level — from about 10 minutes in first grade up to a maximum of about two hours in high school. Both the National Education Association and National Parent Teacher Association support that limit.

Beyond that point, kids don't absorb much useful information, Cooper says. In fact, too much homework can do more harm than good. Researchers have cited drawbacks, including boredom and burnout toward academic material, less time for family and extracurricular activities, lack of sleep and increased stress.

In a recent study of Spanish students, Rubén Fernández-Alonso, PhD, and colleagues found that students who were regularly assigned math and science homework scored higher on standardized tests. But when kids reported having more than 90 to 100 minutes of homework per day, scores declined ( Journal of Educational Psychology , 2015).

"At all grade levels, doing other things after school can have positive effects," Cooper says. "To the extent that homework denies access to other leisure and community activities, it's not serving the child's best interest."

Children of all ages need down time in order to thrive, says Denise Pope, PhD, a professor of education at Stanford University and a co-founder of Challenge Success, a program that partners with secondary schools to implement policies that improve students' academic engagement and well-being.

"Little kids and big kids need unstructured time for play each day," she says. Certainly, time for physical activity is important for kids' health and well-being. But even time spent on social media can help give busy kids' brains a break, she says.

All over the map

But are teachers sticking to the 10-minute rule? Studies attempting to quantify time spent on homework are all over the map, in part because of wide variations in methodology, Pope says.

A 2014 report by the Brookings Institution examined the question of homework, comparing data from a variety of sources. That report cited findings from a 2012 survey of first-year college students in which 38.4 percent reported spending six hours or more per week on homework during their last year of high school. That was down from 49.5 percent in 1986 ( The Brown Center Report on American Education , 2014).

The Brookings report also explored survey data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which asked 9-, 13- and 17-year-old students how much homework they'd done the previous night. They found that between 1984 and 2012, there was a slight increase in homework for 9-year-olds, but homework amounts for 13- and 17-year-olds stayed roughly the same, or even decreased slightly.

Yet other evidence suggests that some kids might be taking home much more work than they can handle. Robert Pressman, PhD, and colleagues recently investigated the 10-minute rule among more than 1,100 students, and found that elementary-school kids were receiving up to three times as much homework as recommended. As homework load increased, so did family stress, the researchers found ( American Journal of Family Therapy , 2015).

Many high school students also seem to be exceeding the recommended amounts of homework. Pope and Galloway recently surveyed more than 4,300 students from 10 high-achieving high schools. Students reported bringing home an average of just over three hours of homework nightly ( Journal of Experiential Education , 2013).

On the positive side, students who spent more time on homework in that study did report being more behaviorally engaged in school — for instance, giving more effort and paying more attention in class, Galloway says. But they were not more invested in the homework itself. They also reported greater academic stress and less time to balance family, friends and extracurricular activities. They experienced more physical health problems as well, such as headaches, stomach troubles and sleep deprivation. "Three hours per night is too much," Galloway says.

In the high-achieving schools Pope and Galloway studied, more than 90 percent of the students go on to college. There's often intense pressure to succeed academically, from both parents and peers. On top of that, kids in these communities are often overloaded with extracurricular activities, including sports and clubs. "They're very busy," Pope says. "Some kids have up to 40 hours a week — a full-time job's worth — of extracurricular activities." And homework is yet one more commitment on top of all the others.

"Homework has perennially acted as a source of stress for students, so that piece of it is not new," Galloway says. "But especially in upper-middle-class communities, where the focus is on getting ahead, I think the pressure on students has been ratcheted up."

Yet homework can be a problem at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum as well. Kids from wealthier homes are more likely to have resources such as computers, Internet connections, dedicated areas to do schoolwork and parents who tend to be more educated and more available to help them with tricky assignments. Kids from disadvantaged homes are more likely to work at afterschool jobs, or to be home without supervision in the evenings while their parents work multiple jobs, says Lea Theodore, PhD, a professor of school psychology at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. They are less likely to have computers or a quiet place to do homework in peace.

"Homework can highlight those inequities," she says.

Quantity vs. quality

One point researchers agree on is that for all students, homework quality matters. But too many kids are feeling a lack of engagement with their take-home assignments, many experts say. In Pope and Galloway's research, only 20 percent to 30 percent of students said they felt their homework was useful or meaningful.

"Students are assigned a lot of busywork. They're naming it as a primary stressor, but they don't feel it's supporting their learning," Galloway says.

"Homework that's busywork is not good for anyone," Cooper agrees. Still, he says, different subjects call for different kinds of assignments. "Things like vocabulary and spelling are learned through practice. Other kinds of courses require more integration of material and drawing on different skills."

But critics say those skills can be developed with many fewer hours of homework each week. Why assign 50 math problems, Pope asks, when 10 would be just as constructive? One Advanced Placement biology teacher she worked with through Challenge Success experimented with cutting his homework assignments by a third, and then by half. "Test scores didn't go down," she says. "You can have a rigorous course and not have a crazy homework load."

Still, changing the culture of homework won't be easy. Teachers-to-be get little instruction in homework during their training, Pope says. And despite some vocal parents arguing that kids bring home too much homework, many others get nervous if they think their child doesn't have enough. "Teachers feel pressured to give homework because parents expect it to come home," says Galloway. "When it doesn't, there's this idea that the school might not be doing its job."

Galloway argues teachers and school administrators need to set clear goals when it comes to homework — and parents and students should be in on the discussion, too. "It should be a broader conversation within the community, asking what's the purpose of homework? Why are we giving it? Who is it serving? Who is it not serving?"

Until schools and communities agree to take a hard look at those questions, those backpacks full of take-home assignments will probably keep stirring up more feelings than facts.

Further reading

• Cooper, H., Robinson, J. C., & Patall, E. A. (2006). Does homework improve academic achievement? A synthesis of research, 1987-2003. Review of Educational Research, 76 (1), 1–62. doi: 10.3102/00346543076001001
• Galloway, M., Connor, J., & Pope, D. (2013). Nonacademic effects of homework in privileged, high-performing high schools. The Journal of Experimental Education, 81 (4), 490–510. doi: 10.1080/00220973.2012.745469
• Pope, D., Brown, M., & Miles, S. (2015). Overloaded and underprepared: Strategies for stronger schools and healthy, successful kids . San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

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Is homework worthwhile?

Associate Professor of Education, University of Virginia

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Robert H. Tai receives funding from National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Robert Noyce Foundation, S. D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, and Overdeck Family Foundation.

University of Virginia provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected] .

There’s a huge debate about homework and whether it helps kids learn during the school year. But everyone agrees that homework can take lots of time. The most commonly accepted guidelines recommend one hour for middle school and two hours for high school. However, I think this amount of time on homework every day can be too much.

The nightly hour many middle schoolers spend on homework adds up to about 180 hours over a school year. That’s time that kids could be playing sports, reading books or just taking a break after a long day.

It’s common for high school students to devote twice as much time, about two hours daily, to their homework. And some schools require much more homework. In some school systems, even kindergartners do some homework .

Does making kids study in what could be their personal time pay off? Homework appears to work best when the teacher and students are clear about what it’s for and the assignments are worthwhile . While I do believe doing some homework is helpful, I don’t think it should be assigned unless it’s necessary.

My research group and I found this out by examining survey responses of students. They told us how much time they spent doing homework, what grades they got and how they did on standardized tests.

The evidence we found suggests that students who spend more time doing homework don’t necessarily get better grades . But it may help them get higher scores on the standardized tests that nearly all American public school students take. That is because doing more homework to practice things you know can help you get better and faster at doing those things.

[ You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can get our highlights each weekend .]

From what I’ve seen with my own students, those who seem to spend a lot of time on homework are usually struggling to understand what they are being asked to do. That could explain why devoting more time to homework doesn’t automatically improve grades.

In these situations, I believe students would probably be better off learning the material in class with their teacher before going home and trying it on their own. One benefit is what happens when students get back this extra time after school: There’s more time for sports, music, books and friends.

Everyone needs a break after a long day of work, after all. And that includes students.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to [email protected] . Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

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Credit: August de Richelieu

Does homework still have value? A Johns Hopkins education expert weighs in

Joyce epstein, co-director of the center on school, family, and community partnerships, discusses why homework is essential, how to maximize its benefit to learners, and what the 'no-homework' approach gets wrong.

By Vicky Hallett

The necessity of homework has been a subject of debate since at least as far back as the 1890s, according to Joyce L. Epstein , co-director of the Center on School, Family, and Community Partnerships at Johns Hopkins University. "It's always been the case that parents, kids—and sometimes teachers, too—wonder if this is just busy work," Epstein says.

But after decades of researching how to improve schools, the professor in the Johns Hopkins School of Education remains certain that homework is essential—as long as the teachers have done their homework, too. The National Network of Partnership Schools , which she founded in 1995 to advise schools and districts on ways to improve comprehensive programs of family engagement, has developed hundreds of improved homework ideas through its Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program. For an English class, a student might interview a parent on popular hairstyles from their youth and write about the differences between then and now. Or for science class, a family could identify forms of matter over the dinner table, labeling foods as liquids or solids. These innovative and interactive assignments not only reinforce concepts from the classroom but also foster creativity, spark discussions, and boost student motivation.

"We're not trying to eliminate homework procedures, but expand and enrich them," says Epstein, who is packing this research into a forthcoming book on the purposes and designs of homework. In the meantime, the Hub couldn't wait to ask her some questions:

What kind of homework training do teachers typically get?

Future teachers and administrators really have little formal training on how to design homework before they assign it. This means that most just repeat what their teachers did, or they follow textbook suggestions at the end of units. For example, future teachers are well prepared to teach reading and literacy skills at each grade level, and they continue to learn to improve their teaching of reading in ongoing in-service education. By contrast, most receive little or no training on the purposes and designs of homework in reading or other subjects. It is really important for future teachers to receive systematic training to understand that they have the power, opportunity, and obligation to design homework with a purpose.

Why do students need more interactive homework?

If homework assignments are always the same—10 math problems, six sentences with spelling words—homework can get boring and some kids just stop doing their assignments, especially in the middle and high school years. When we've asked teachers what's the best homework you've ever had or designed, invariably we hear examples of talking with a parent or grandparent or peer to share ideas. To be clear, parents should never be asked to "teach" seventh grade science or any other subject. Rather, teachers set up the homework assignments so that the student is in charge. It's always the student's homework. But a good activity can engage parents in a fun, collaborative way. Our data show that with "good" assignments, more kids finish their work, more kids interact with a family partner, and more parents say, "I learned what's happening in the curriculum." It all works around what the youngsters are learning.

Is family engagement really that important?

At Hopkins, I am part of the Center for Social Organization of Schools , a research center that studies how to improve many aspects of education to help all students do their best in school. One thing my colleagues and I realized was that we needed to look deeply into family and community engagement. There were so few references to this topic when we started that we had to build the field of study. When children go to school, their families "attend" with them whether a teacher can "see" the parents or not. So, family engagement is ever-present in the life of a school.

My daughter's elementary school doesn't assign homework until third grade. What's your take on "no homework" policies?

There are some parents, writers, and commentators who have argued against homework, especially for very young children. They suggest that children should have time to play after school. This, of course is true, but many kindergarten kids are excited to have homework like their older siblings. If they give homework, most teachers of young children make assignments very short—often following an informal rule of 10 minutes per grade level. "No homework" does not guarantee that all students will spend their free time in productive and imaginative play.

Some researchers and critics have consistently misinterpreted research findings. They have argued that homework should be assigned only at the high school level where data point to a strong connection of doing assignments with higher student achievement . However, as we discussed, some students stop doing homework. This leads, statistically, to results showing that doing homework or spending more minutes on homework is linked to higher student achievement. If slow or struggling students are not doing their assignments, they contribute to—or cause—this "result."

Teachers need to design homework that even struggling students want to do because it is interesting. Just about all students at any age level react positively to good assignments and will tell you so.

Did COVID change how schools and parents view homework?

Within 24 hours of the day school doors closed in March 2020, just about every school and district in the country figured out that teachers had to talk to and work with students' parents. This was not the same as homeschooling—teachers were still working hard to provide daily lessons. But if a child was learning at home in the living room, parents were more aware of what they were doing in school. One of the silver linings of COVID was that teachers reported that they gained a better understanding of their students' families. We collected wonderfully creative examples of activities from members of the National Network of Partnership Schools. I'm thinking of one art activity where every child talked with a parent about something that made their family unique. Then they drew their finding on a snowflake and returned it to share in class. In math, students talked with a parent about something the family liked so much that they could represent it 100 times. Conversations about schoolwork at home was the point.

How did you create so many homework activities via the Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork program?

We had several projects with educators to help them design interactive assignments, not just "do the next three examples on page 38." Teachers worked in teams to create TIPS activities, and then we turned their work into a standard TIPS format in math, reading/language arts, and science for grades K-8. Any teacher can use or adapt our prototypes to match their curricula.

Overall, we know that if future teachers and practicing educators were prepared to design homework assignments to meet specific purposes—including but not limited to interactive activities—more students would benefit from the important experience of doing their homework. And more parents would, indeed, be partners in education.

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Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement?

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Educators should be thrilled by these numbers. Pleasing a majority of parents regarding homework and having equal numbers of dissenters shouting "too much!" and "too little!" is about as good as they can hope for.

But opinions cannot tell us whether homework works; only research can, which is why my colleagues and I have conducted a combined analysis of dozens of homework studies to examine whether homework is beneficial and what amount of homework is appropriate for our children.

The homework question is best answered by comparing students who are assigned homework with students assigned no homework but who are similar in other ways. The results of such studies suggest that homework can improve students' scores on the class tests that come at the end of a topic. Students assigned homework in 2nd grade did better on math, 3rd and 4th graders did better on English skills and vocabulary, 5th graders on social studies, 9th through 12th graders on American history, and 12th graders on Shakespeare.

Less authoritative are 12 studies that link the amount of homework to achievement, but control for lots of other factors that might influence this connection. These types of studies, often based on national samples of students, also find a positive link between time on homework and achievement.

Yet other studies simply correlate homework and achievement with no attempt to control for student differences. In 35 such studies, about 77 percent find the link between homework and achievement is positive. Most interesting, though, is these results suggest little or no relationship between homework and achievement for elementary school students.

Why might that be? Younger children have less developed study habits and are less able to tune out distractions at home. Studies also suggest that young students who are struggling in school take more time to complete homework assignments simply because these assignments are more difficult for them.

These recommendations are consistent with the conclusions reached by our analysis. Practice assignments do improve scores on class tests at all grade levels. A little amount of homework may help elementary school students build study habits. Homework for junior high students appears to reach the point of diminishing returns after about 90 minutes a night. For high school students, the positive line continues to climb until between 90 minutes and 2½ hours of homework a night, after which returns diminish.

Beyond achievement, proponents of homework argue that it can have many other beneficial effects. They claim it can help students develop good study habits so they are ready to grow as their cognitive capacities mature. It can help students recognize that learning can occur at home as well as at school. Homework can foster independent learning and responsible character traits. And it can give parents an opportunity to see what's going on at school and let them express positive attitudes toward achievement.

Opponents of homework counter that it can also have negative effects. They argue it can lead to boredom with schoolwork, since all activities remain interesting only for so long. Homework can deny students access to leisure activities that also teach important life skills. Parents can get too involved in homework -- pressuring their child and confusing him by using different instructional techniques than the teacher.

My feeling is that homework policies should prescribe amounts of homework consistent with the research evidence, but which also give individual schools and teachers some flexibility to take into account the unique needs and circumstances of their students and families. In general, teachers should avoid either extreme.

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• Our Mission

5 Ways to Make Homework More Meaningful

Use these insights from educators—and research—to create homework practices that work for everyone.

Homework tends to be a polarizing topic. While many teachers advocate for its complete elimination, others argue that it provides students with the extra practice they need to solidify their learning and teach them work habits—like managing time and meeting deadlines—that have lifelong benefits. 

We recently reached out to teachers in our audience to identify practices that can help educators plot a middle path. 

On Facebook , elementary school teacher John Thomas responded that the best homework is often no-strings-attached encouragement to read or play academically adjacent games with family members. “I encourage reading every night,” Thomas said, but he doesn’t use logs or other means of getting students to track their completion. “Just encouragement and book bags with self selected books students take home for enjoyment.” 

Thomas said he also suggests to parents and students that they can play around with “math and science tools” such as “calculators, tape measures, protractors, rulers, money, tangrams, and building blocks.” Math-based games like Yahtzee or dominoes can also serve as enriching—and fun—practice of skills they’re learning.

At the middle and high school level, homework generally increases, and that can be demotivating for teachers, who feel obliged to review or even grade halfhearted submissions. Student morale is at stake, too: “Most [students] don’t complete it anyway,” said high school teacher Krystn Stretzinger Charlie on Facebook . “It ends up hurting them more than it helps.”    

So how do teachers decide when to—and when not to—assign homework, and how do they ensure that the homework they assign feels meaningful, productive, and even motivating to students? 

1. Less is More

A 2017 study analyzed the homework assignments of more than 20,000 middle and high school students and found that teachers are often a bad judge of how long homework will take. 

According to researchers, students spend as much as 85 minutes or as little as 30 minutes on homework that teachers imagined would take students one hour to complete. The researchers concluded that by assigning too much homework , teachers actually increased inequalities between students in exchange for “minimal gains in achievement.” Too much homework can overwhelm students who “have more gaps in their knowledge,” the researchers said, and creates situations where homework becomes so time-consuming and frustrating that it turns students off to classwork more broadly.

To counteract this, middle school math teacher Crystal Frommert said she focuses on quality over quantity. Frommert cited the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics , which recommends only assigning “what’s necessary to augment instruction” and adds that if teachers can “get sufficient information by assigning only five problems, then don’t assign fifty.” 

Instead of sending students home with worksheets and long problem sets from textbooks that often repeat the same concepts, Frommert recommended assigning part of a page, or even a few specific problems—and explaining to students why these handpicked problems will be helpful practice. When students know there’s thought behind the problems they’re asked to solve at home, “they pay more attention to the condensed assignment because it was tailored for them,” Frommert said. 

On Instagram , high school teacher Jacob Palmer said that every now and then he condenses homework down to just one problem that is particularly engaging and challenging: “The depth and exploration that can come from one single problem can be richer than 20 routine problems.” 

2. Add Choice to the Equation 

Former educator and coach Mike Anderson said teachers can differentiate homework assignments without placing unrealistic demands on their workload by offering students some discretion in the work they complete and explicitly teaching them “how to choose appropriately challenging work for themselves.” 

Instead of assigning the same 20 problems or response questions on a given textbook page to all students, for example, Anderson suggested asking students to refer to the list of questions and choose and complete a designated number of them (three to five, for example) that give students “a little bit of a challenge but that [they] can still solve independently.” 

To teach students how to choose well, Anderson has students practice choosing homework questions in class before the end of the day, brainstorming in groups and sharing their thoughts about what a good homework question should accomplish. The other part, of course, involves offering students good choices: “Make sure that options for homework focus on the skills being practiced and are open-ended enough for all students to be successful,” he said. 

Once students have developed a better understanding of the purpose of challenging themselves to practice and grow as learners, Anderson also periodically asks them to come up with their own ideas for problems or other activities they can use to reinforce learning at home. A simple question, such as “What are some ideas for how you might practice this skill at home?” can be enough to get students sharing ideas, he said. 

Jill Kibler, a former high school science teacher, told Edutopia on Facebook that she implemented homework choice in her classroom by allowing students to decide how much of the work they’ve recently turned in that they’d like to redo as homework: “Students had one grading cycle (about seven school days) to redo the work they wanted to improve,” she said. 

3. Break the Mold 

According to high school English teacher Kate Dusto, the work that students produce at home doesn’t have to come in the traditional formats of written responses to a problem. On Instagram , Dusto told Edutopia that homework can often be made more interesting—and engaging—by allowing students to show evidence of their learning in creative ways. 

“Offer choices for how they show their learning,” Dusto said. “Record audio or video? Type or use speech to text? Draw or handwrite and then upload a picture?” The possibilities are endless. 

Former educator and author Jay McTighe noted that visual representations such as graphic organizers and concept maps are particularly useful for students attempting to organize new information and solidify their understanding of abstract concepts. For example, students might be asked to “draw a visual web of factors affecting plant growth” in biology class or map out the plot, characters, themes, and settings of a novel or play they’re reading to visualize relationships between different elements of the story and deepen their comprehension of it. 

Simple written responses to summarize new learning can also be made more interesting by varying the format, McTighe said. For example, ask students to compose a tweet in 280 characters or less to answer a question like “What is the big idea that you have learned about _____?” or even record a short audio podcast or video podcast explaining “key concepts from one or more lessons.”

4. Make Homework Voluntary 

When elementary school teacher Jacqueline Worthley Fiorentino stopped assigning mandatory homework to her second-grade students and suggested voluntary activities instead, she found that something surprising happened: “They started doing more work at home.” 

Some of the simple, voluntary activities she presented students with included encouraging at-home reading (without mandating how much time they should spend reading); sending home weekly spelling words and math facts that will be covered in class but that should also be mastered by the end of the week: “It will be up to each child to figure out the best way to learn to spell the words correctly or to master the math facts,” she said; and creating voluntary lesson extensions such as pointing students to outside resources—texts, videos or films, webpages, or even online or in-person exhibits—to “expand their knowledge on a topic covered in class.”

Anderson said that for older students, teachers can sometimes make whatever homework they assign a voluntary choice. “Do all students need to practice a skill? If not, you might keep homework invitational,” he said, adding that teachers can tell students, “If you think a little more practice tonight would help you solidify your learning, here are some examples you might try.”

On Facebook , Natisha Wilson, a K–12 gifted students coordinator for an Ohio school district, said that when students are working on a challenging question in class, she’ll give them the option to “take it home and figure it out” if they’re unable to complete it before the end of the period. Often students take her up on this, she said, because many of them “can’t stand not knowing the answer.” 

5. Grade for Completion—or Don’t Grade at All  

Former teacher Rick Wormeli argued that work on homework assignments isn’t “evidence of final level of proficiency”; rather, it’s practice that provides teachers with “feedback and informs where we go next in instruction.” 

Grading homework for completion—or not grading at all, Wormeli said—can help students focus on the real task at hand of consolidating understanding and self-monitoring their learning. “When early attempts at mastery are not used against them, and accountability comes in the form of actually learning content, adolescents flourish.” 

High school science teacher John Scali agreed , confirming that grading for “completion and timeliness” rather than for “correctness” makes students “more likely to do the work, especially if it ties directly into what we are doing in class the next day” without worrying about being “100% correct.” On Instagram , middle school math teacher Traci Hawks noted that any assignments that are completed and show work—even if the answer is wrong—gets a 100 from her.

But Frommert said that even grading for completion can be time-consuming for teachers and fraught for students if they don’t have home environments that are supportive of homework or if they have jobs or other after-school activities. 

Instead of traditional grading, she suggested alternatives to holding students accountable for homework, such as student presentations or even group discussions and debates as a way to check for understanding. For example, students can debate which method is best to solve a problem or discuss their prospective solutions in small groups. “Communicating their mathematical thinking deepens their understanding,” Frommert said. 

The New York Times

The learning network | does your homework help you learn.

Does Your Homework Help You Learn?

Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

• See all Student Opinion »

New research suggests that a lot of assigned homework amounts to pointless busy work that doesn’t help students learn, while more thoughtful assignments can help them develop skills and acquire knowledge. How would you characterize the homework you get?

In the Sunday Review article “The Trouble With Homework,” Annie Murphy Paul reviews the research on homework:

The quantity of students’ homework is a lot less important than its quality. And evidence suggests that as of now, homework isn’t making the grade. Although surveys show that the amount of time our children spend on homework has risen over the last three decades, American students are mired in the middle of international academic rankings: 17th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math, according to results from the Program for International Student Assessment released last December. In a 2008 survey, one-third of parents polled rated the quality of their children’s homework assignments as fair or poor, and 4 in 10 said they believed that some or a great deal of homework was busywork. A new study, coming in the Economics of Education Review, reports that homework in science, English and history has “little to no impact” on student test scores. (The authors did note a positive effect for math homework.) Enriching children’s classroom learning requires making homework not shorter or longer, but smarter.

She goes on to enumerate some of the aspects of effective independent assignments, like “retrieval practice,” which basically means doing practice tests to reinforce learning and commit it to memory, and “interleaving,” in which problems are not grouped into sets by type, but rather scattered throughout an assignment, which makes the brain work harder to grasp the material.

Students: Tell us how effective you think your homework is. What kinds of assignments seem pointless? Which ones are confusing or frustrating? Which ones are most engaging and interesting? Which ones are you fairly sure help you learn and grow?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

“I see homework as a big part that helps me learn and grow” that’s what I always said up till I was moved to a different math class. My old math teacher made math easy and fun as well as understandable. But when I was moved I got confused easily, I found it boring, and I even found paying attention hard. Then there’s my English class. I love English with all my heart but my teacher makes me feel like I’m in Preschool! She has hand signs for every rule and if we don’t do them we get more homework! She always puts us into groups and so far every group I’ve been placed in I can’t get along in. One group wouldn’t let me talk and when I gave my opion they scolded me and said I was wrong though it was an opion lesson… Another group was lazy and since I ran out of my medicine that helps me focus, I was lost and told them I need their help to help me keep up with what’s going on yet they let me drag along! History was never my strong point from the start even though my dad is a History teacher. But when I got into a certain class I couldn’t stand it! I was miles behind in homework and around every corner was either homework or projects! I asked for help and I got yelled at! I’m sorry but sometimes homework feels like slave work since I don’t get anything out of good grades except a smile and/or a pat on the back and that’s it. Yes homework can be good for you but there is a limit of how much a student can handle before they collaspe underneath all of that work! But I love it when teachers make homework fun or competive (which we normally do now and days)! Cause that’s when I’m having a blast! But when teachers get too interactive with their class I can’t help but feel creeped out by them. (Cough, Cough, English teacher, Cough, Cough) I do love school but right now…its like they don’t want us going out and enjoying life…

Back at my old school I was drowning in homework! I just couldn’t get the chance to sit back and be young! It was just too much! In every class I had homework! Study this, learn that, solve this, and every where in between! The bullying was no help either since they stole or destroyed my homework so I failing till I switched schools! My suggestion to all you kids who don’t like homework….DON’T GO TO [name of school removed]!!!!!!!! Especially if you’re like me and are considered one of the special kids since the teachers don’t flex to your needs!

At my school , we all think that homework helps people learn in so many different ways. You do your homework to get better grades on test scores because some of the homework you get will have some stuff that can be on test. Another reason is that homework can get you better grades if you just hand it in. You can learn from homework. In my opinion.For example, I had to take notes in algebra yesterday for homework and only took 10 minutes it really help a lot the next day because we had a little mini quiz on it !

Doing my homework every night helps me learn because it helps me remember the lesson gone over in class that day. It also makes it easier to follow the next lesson, which is usually an extension from the lesson the day before.

Homework helps me learn because it’s a review of what we learned in class. Sometimes they give too much work though.

I feel like it all depends on if you understand the work. If a teacher taught you a new topic in class and you didn’t understand it, I dont think you would understand it if you did it again. If you understood it, It would help you because you are repeating the problems.

I don’t think homework helps you learn, I think it helps you remember what you learned. Homework is more of a review of what you did in school during the day, rather than a new subject to learn on a whole.

I personally am not a big fan of homework though, I think that some teachers don’t really realize that we have several other classes which also give us homework, and we sometimes end up with a large amount by the end of the day.

But I’m sure that my procrastination has a lot to do with it as well.

Homework definitely helps me learn. By the time i get home from school some subjects become unfamiliar and homework help reinforce what i learned in class. Better students do their homework and teachers recognize that frequently. Repetition of your homework also helps memorize which you could benefit from on tests and other classwork activities.

Depending on the subject or the assigment, homework can either be redundant or effective. Assignments which make you copy straight out of a textbook are redundant. These assignments are redundant because students hardly put all that much effort into it. By copying a textbook, people aren’t focused on the material, because they are just focusing on getting the assigment done. Straight copying is seen as boring or even in some cases ‘annoying’ by students, which translates into them not learning what they need to learn. Assigments where students are interactive and aren’t just being taught the textbook are interesting and that’s when students learn the most. Writing samples when students are asked for their opinion and to have their voice heard are deemed the most interesting. Thus, being because students then have the ability to share what they’ve learned in their own words and also get to apply their knowledge in their own voice.

On the other hand, when homework is done effectively, the end product will be better grades. If a student neglects to do homework, whether interesting or boring, it will show in their grades. Students who do apply their strongest efforts into their homework will ultimately contribute to better grades.

I think that homework is pointless when the teachers give us homework that is for fun and we have to waist our time doing little projects when we can be doing other more important things like studying. I think that most homework is important I just don’t like it when teachers give too much and it becomes over whelming and I can’t have time to study because it would be too late and then I wouldn’t be able to sleep. If anything I think teachers should give us homework but give us one big homework a week and we work on it for the whole week which it would be due on Friday and then get a test grade for it since it was a big homework. If teachers wouldn’t do that I would love if teachers would give us only three days of homework a week and Fridays we would get a test.

Homework is assigned so that students can practice what they have learned in school and see if they can remember what happened in class. Personally, the homework that has been assigned to me lately has been nothing but busy work that I feel is pointless. The truth is most of the modern day students don’t see the value in doing homework but the discipline and the practice for the real world really are fundamental. The most confusing type of homework assignments that we have come with little to no instructions. When teachers give assignments on things that they haven’t covered yet seems pointless to me since it really isn’t evaluating anything at all. Another type of pointless homework would be the ones in which there is so much repetition that it becomes pointless. In my personal life ive been faced with all types of homework. I believe homework is fundamental to the development of the mind and I will keep doing my homework.

I go to an American school in Bogota, Colombia. Recently in my school I have been getting exaggerated amounts of homework, and most of it has no impact on my learning. I say this because the homework I am assigned is just “busywork” and keeps me up until late hours in the night. The homework I am given is also extremely long and not smart, it is just a very basic review of what we did in class that day. Homework like that is a waste of time since if the student is good and pays attention in class he should know all of the material and shouldn’t be forced to demonstrate it through homework. I believe that what should be improved in not the quantity but the quality of the homework we are assigned. I am not saying homework should be abolished but I am saying it should be changed. If a student is overwhelmed with homework his academic development would also be affected. For example if a student has allot of homework he will probably stay up at night doing it. Maybe he will finish his homework around 10 or 11 in the night. The next day he will have to wake up very early and will only get about 5-6 hours of sleep. In order for the teenage brain to develop correctly a kid needs 8 hours of sleep. So. excessive amount of homework leads to a very tired, unmotivated and less active student. In my school I think the only homework assignments that help me learn are the math ones.

Each subject is different and each grade in school requires a different amount of practice. For example, Math is a subject that I believe needs out-of-classroom practice no matter what grade you are in, or what topic you are covering. It is one of the most essential aptitudes one must acquire in order to be successful in life. Language, whether it be english, spanish, or etc, is also a subject that is vital for an accomplished life. I believe that one must practice in order to become and eloquent speaker and writer, but i only think that a small amount of homework should be given, especially once one reaches the ends of high school. A subject that I feel doesn’t need practice outside of school is history. For me, history is more like a gossip story with dates that “should” be remembered than anything else; therefore, I don’t believe that homework would be necessary to enforce a subject like that.

The idea of having to work all night, studying for a billion exams the next day, getting the college applications going, and practicing a sport isn’t something strange for the average senior at CNG. It seems as if the need to excel at everything might just be the COD of many high school students. As college admissions become more competitive, as more and more people take AP exams and admissions tests there is a greater weight on our shoulders. But is it really worth it? I mean, even if everything goes the way we want it to, was it really worth all our time and energy? There are just better things to do with my life. I would prefer to go deeper into the sciences, write of some philosophical tendency I’m being carried into, do more social work, etc. But I need to commit to an organized agenda, learn the Standards I’m supposed to be learning and show my progress through time. These are fancy ways of creating a level playing field so students can be compared. Is this really what learning has become?

Practice makes perfect some might say. There is no arguing about that. Success in those specific tasks, such as doing homework or working on a particular project that requires zero creativity clearly needs those levels of repetitive practice and great memory. But are we supposed to do this the rest of our lives? I don’t think so. Harris Cooper, a professor from Duke University dedicated to homework research states that “even for high school students, overloading them with homework is not associated with higher grades” (Cooper). I’m sorry, so isn’t homework even doing what its supposed to be doing? The counter-productivity of too much homework, especially in such a critical moment as in college application season, makes the whole educational system lose credibility. Are we being trained to do something we aren’t going to really do or even need in the future? What is the real purpose of doing homework when we aren’t truly learning from it?

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe homework is critical in developing certain skills. How were we supposed to learn basic arithmetic operations without those tons of worksheets and problem sets? Yes, homework is a useful tool but only when used consciously. Statistical evidence seems to agree with this: “teachers in many of the nations that outperform the U.S. on student achievement tests–such as Japan, Denmark and the Czech Republic–tend to assign less homework than American teachers, but instructors in low-scoring countries like Greece, Thailand and Iran tend to pile it on” (Wallis). The need to assign homework, to put a million grades in is too antiquated in my opinion. What’s the problem with guiding classes to a true educational experience and leave behind the limitations of grading, of classifying students, of making them lose all interest, worse yet lose passion for learning and generate hatred towards certain areas of knowledge while capturing valuable time that is needed to explore others?

It depends on what type of homework and the time that it takes to finish it. The homework that I get from English, history, science, and math benefit me and my grades a lot. From my three band classes, and P.E. class, I usually do busy work. I love how the school is run… I learn a lot from the class just itself, and from school assemblies, etc. First, I have to learn before I get my grades… meaning, I don’t care what my grades are like until I actually know and understand the material and knowledge that I learned at school. What we learn from school and from homework are is different. We learn more at school and then apply what we learned in our homework. So most of the time we don’t learn anything that much from homework.

Homework assignments should be provided, but once a month. It allows children to have freedom, and actually feel like life is not all about study and going to a prestigious university.

Homework wastes our time, and in recent articles they say that school’s are killing creativity, and now there is an uproar about homework not providing learning material.

What homework should be is a subjet, say history, and children can choose one that interests them, and they could research it for a month. And after the month is up children can present in class, so that means the child knows thoroughly about their topic and can explain well to their friends, and also they will have an opportunity to listen to other peoples’ research.

I wish we didn’t have homework, because the learning network is providing us with a great amount of resources that homework, in a year, can’t accomplish.

40 hours per week, 8 hours a day, is the legal limit of hours an adult can work in California without being payed overtime. An employee must be payed 150% their usual salary for every hour they work past 8 hours a day. I spend between 34 and 39 hours per week at school, not counting homework (aprox. 10-15 hours per week). My suggestion is that any work assigned to students requiring them to spend more than 40 hours a week on academics be graded with a bonus of 50% the student’s grade. This would encourage students to do well in order to have a higher bonus, and would discourage teachers from assigning so much work (since we all how much giving out bonus points pains them!) As for the questions: I think that homework is effective as long as it will help improve a student’s understanding and execution of course material. As a general rule, I don’t think it’s very useful to be assigned more than one assignment in each category of homework to a class (1 chapter to read, 1 exercise, 1 essay). 5 math exercises is 5 too many if I understand the lesson, and 4 too many if it is the teacher’s goal to find out whether or not I do. As a student, I have a limited amount of time and love to divide up into my work. I find work that leaves the thinking up to the student to be the most engaging and helpful to my understanding: the fewer details on how I should do the assignment, the more I work to make it reflect my understanding of the topic.

It is interesting to write your homework in your free time at home. Homework and assignments are important for innovation and elaboration. Take your time in doing your homework because this will help you understand the lesson more.

i think this is the best amendment ever.

Sense at my school , school just started we do not have that much homework. But I’ve hear a lot of people say that towards the middle of the year is when everyone’s backpack’s become really heavy. Teacher’s start giving more than one homework assignment per class. So I think that homework does not help you learn because you do work at school why do you need to do it again at home? I think teacher’s do that because they want to figure out if you are capable to do the same thing at home and also because they just want us to have some type of work to do at home. Once again I do no think that homework helps you learn.

I personally don’t think homework helps a student learn. I feel if you don’t get what the teacher teaches in class then I personally don’t get the homework at all. If I don’t get the subject then I personally to the homework wrong and I’m sure that other people do it wrong too. My teachers all say that they don’t give so much homework and they really don’t, but since they all give about 20-30 minutes of homework each subject, it piles up.I think that homework is effective as long as it will help improve a student’s understanding and execution of course material. I personally don’t think that homework always helps, but it does.

I think that homework is useful sometimes, but not always. Most of the time, it is just the same thing we did in class, and if we didn’t get it then we still won’t get it at home, primarily because our parents have no clue about how to do it either.

i think that homework should not in are school systems because homework is just practice and i know that practice makes perfect but when you got 5 subjects it add to a lot. I also i believe that all homework (practice) is just studying and unless we have i don’t want to take the time for nothing but another school day

1) What kinds of assignments seem pointless?

I don’t believe that any assignments are pointless, because teachers always have a reason for giving homework. However, teachers often give homework where the effort on the part of the student outweighs the teacher’s goal. In addition, many homework assignments do not effectively reach their goal.

2) Which ones are confusing or frustrating?

Assignments are usually not confusing, although sometimes, when given very easy assignments, I do not understand what the point is (which does not mean that the assignments are pointless — the point is simply mysterious to me). I get most frustrated by homework when I receive virtually identical assignments at regular intervals, but never get feedback from the teacher. When this happens, I cannot improve because I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. For example, our French teacher has given us this assignment three times this year: Comment on a predetermined stanza of a Baudelaire poem. The first two stanzas earned me 17 (out of 20) with no corrections other than grammatical mistakes. For the third assignment, I have written a very similar analysis and I expect to get a very similar grade. If there are 20 possible points and I didn’t get all of them, why did the teacher not provide any comments?

3) Which ones are most engaging and interesting?

Honestly, although I understand the value of homework, I do not enjoy doing it (unless it involves creativity, but with no art, music or creative writing classes in high school, this is extremely rare).

Which ones are you fairly sure help you learn and grow?

I believe all homework helps me learn and grow — the question is whether the amount of growth induced by the homework is worth the effort involved.

Yes, some homework are important. Like learning rhetoric at home to be able to talk about it in class. Doing a math problem to make sure the lesson is understood. But is doing ten exercises on a lesson we did not fully go over because the teacher did not manage to end the lesson on time and now needs us to try to figure it out on our own useful? Is doing forty little problems with the same math equation over and over again necessary? I believe it is not. I believe some teachers are using a lot of useless homework because they must think in some way that it will be beneficent one day or another. They are often wrong. Unless a whole class of twenty students decided they want to be physician, i do not understand why learning what is the kind of relation between the Earth and the Moon, over a dozen of exercises, is in anyway useful. Also, a teacher might think they are doing the right thing, making us practice something that is already learned in class, by giving its students five exercises. Sure, it is not a bad idea. But since all the teachers, or most of them, are looking to do the right thing, five teachers that wants you to practice with some homework exercises, becomes twenty-five exercises for the students. Over something they either understood, or not understood. In any case it’s frustrating. If you understand what it is about then you are just wasting your time doing those exercises. If you did not understand it, you are going to spend ten minutes on each question, usually ending by guessing wrong, when all it could have taken was another clear explanation from the teacher. So yes, homework can be useful, and it often is, but not always.

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Studying 101: Study Smarter Not Harder

Do you ever feel like your study habits simply aren’t cutting it? Do you wonder what you could be doing to perform better in class and on exams? Many students realize that their high school study habits aren’t very effective in college. This is understandable, as college is quite different from high school. The professors are less personally involved, classes are bigger, exams are worth more, reading is more intense, and classes are much more rigorous. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you; it just means you need to learn some more effective study skills. Fortunately, there are many active, effective study strategies that are shown to be effective in college classes.

This handout offers several tips on effective studying. Implementing these tips into your regular study routine will help you to efficiently and effectively learn course material. Experiment with them and find some that work for you.

Reading is not studying

Simply reading and re-reading texts or notes is not actively engaging in the material. It is simply re-reading your notes. Only ‘doing’ the readings for class is not studying. It is simply doing the reading for class. Re-reading leads to quick forgetting.

Think of reading as an important part of pre-studying, but learning information requires actively engaging in the material (Edwards, 2014). Active engagement is the process of constructing meaning from text that involves making connections to lectures, forming examples, and regulating your own learning (Davis, 2007). Active studying does not mean highlighting or underlining text, re-reading, or rote memorization. Though these activities may help to keep you engaged in the task, they are not considered active studying techniques and are weakly related to improved learning (Mackenzie, 1994).

Ideas for active studying include:

• Create a study guide by topic. Formulate questions and problems and write complete answers. Create your own quiz.
• Become a teacher. Say the information aloud in your own words as if you are the instructor and teaching the concepts to a class.
• Derive examples that relate to your own experiences.
• Create concept maps or diagrams that explain the material.
• Develop symbols that represent concepts.
• For non-technical classes (e.g., English, History, Psychology), figure out the big ideas so you can explain, contrast, and re-evaluate them.
• For technical classes, work the problems and explain the steps and why they work.
• Study in terms of question, evidence, and conclusion: What is the question posed by the instructor/author? What is the evidence that they present? What is the conclusion?

Organization and planning will help you to actively study for your courses. When studying for a test, organize your materials first and then begin your active reviewing by topic (Newport, 2007). Often professors provide subtopics on the syllabi. Use them as a guide to help organize your materials. For example, gather all of the materials for one topic (e.g., PowerPoint notes, text book notes, articles, homework, etc.) and put them together in a pile. Label each pile with the topic and study by topics.

For more information on the principle behind active studying, check out our tipsheet on metacognition .

Understand the Study Cycle

The Study Cycle , developed by Frank Christ, breaks down the different parts of studying: previewing, attending class, reviewing, studying, and checking your understanding. Although each step may seem obvious at a glance, all too often students try to take shortcuts and miss opportunities for good learning. For example, you may skip a reading before class because the professor covers the same material in class; doing so misses a key opportunity to learn in different modes (reading and listening) and to benefit from the repetition and distributed practice (see #3 below) that you’ll get from both reading ahead and attending class. Understanding the importance of all stages of this cycle will help make sure you don’t miss opportunities to learn effectively.

Spacing out is good

One of the most impactful learning strategies is “distributed practice”—spacing out your studying over several short periods of time over several days and weeks (Newport, 2007). The most effective practice is to work a short time on each class every day. The total amount of time spent studying will be the same (or less) than one or two marathon library sessions, but you will learn the information more deeply and retain much more for the long term—which will help get you an A on the final. The important thing is how you use your study time, not how long you study. Long study sessions lead to a lack of concentration and thus a lack of learning and retention.

In order to spread out studying over short periods of time across several days and weeks, you need control over your schedule . Keeping a list of tasks to complete on a daily basis will help you to include regular active studying sessions for each class. Try to do something for each class each day. Be specific and realistic regarding how long you plan to spend on each task—you should not have more tasks on your list than you can reasonably complete during the day.

For example, you may do a few problems per day in math rather than all of them the hour before class. In history, you can spend 15-20 minutes each day actively studying your class notes. Thus, your studying time may still be the same length, but rather than only preparing for one class, you will be preparing for all of your classes in short stretches. This will help focus, stay on top of your work, and retain information.

In addition to learning the material more deeply, spacing out your work helps stave off procrastination. Rather than having to face the dreaded project for four hours on Monday, you can face the dreaded project for 30 minutes each day. The shorter, more consistent time to work on a dreaded project is likely to be more acceptable and less likely to be delayed to the last minute. Finally, if you have to memorize material for class (names, dates, formulas), it is best to make flashcards for this material and review periodically throughout the day rather than one long, memorization session (Wissman and Rawson, 2012). See our handout on memorization strategies to learn more.

It’s good to be intense

Not all studying is equal. You will accomplish more if you study intensively. Intensive study sessions are short and will allow you to get work done with minimal wasted effort. Shorter, intensive study times are more effective than drawn out studying.

In fact, one of the most impactful study strategies is distributing studying over multiple sessions (Newport, 2007). Intensive study sessions can last 30 or 45-minute sessions and include active studying strategies. For example, self-testing is an active study strategy that improves the intensity of studying and efficiency of learning. However, planning to spend hours on end self-testing is likely to cause you to become distracted and lose your attention.

On the other hand, if you plan to quiz yourself on the course material for 45 minutes and then take a break, you are much more likely to maintain your attention and retain the information. Furthermore, the shorter, more intense sessions will likely put the pressure on that is needed to prevent procrastination.

Silence isn’t golden

Know where you study best. The silence of a library may not be the best place for you. It’s important to consider what noise environment works best for you. You might find that you concentrate better with some background noise. Some people find that listening to classical music while studying helps them concentrate, while others find this highly distracting. The point is that the silence of the library may be just as distracting (or more) than the noise of a gymnasium. Thus, if silence is distracting, but you prefer to study in the library, try the first or second floors where there is more background ‘buzz.’

Keep in mind that active studying is rarely silent as it often requires saying the material aloud.

Problems are your friend

Working and re-working problems is important for technical courses (e.g., math, economics). Be able to explain the steps of the problems and why they work.

In technical courses, it is usually more important to work problems than read the text (Newport, 2007). In class, write down in detail the practice problems demonstrated by the professor. Annotate each step and ask questions if you are confused. At the very least, record the question and the answer (even if you miss the steps).

When preparing for tests, put together a large list of problems from the course materials and lectures. Work the problems and explain the steps and why they work (Carrier, 2003).

Reconsider multitasking

A significant amount of research indicates that multi-tasking does not improve efficiency and actually negatively affects results (Junco, 2012).

In order to study smarter, not harder, you will need to eliminate distractions during your study sessions. Social media, web browsing, game playing, texting, etc. will severely affect the intensity of your study sessions if you allow them! Research is clear that multi-tasking (e.g., responding to texts, while studying), increases the amount of time needed to learn material and decreases the quality of the learning (Junco, 2012).

Eliminating the distractions will allow you to fully engage during your study sessions. If you don’t need your computer for homework, then don’t use it. Use apps to help you set limits on the amount of time you can spend at certain sites during the day. Turn your phone off. Reward intensive studying with a social-media break (but make sure you time your break!) See our handout on managing technology for more tips and strategies.

Switch up your setting

Find several places to study in and around campus and change up your space if you find that it is no longer a working space for you.

Know when and where you study best. It may be that your focus at 10:00 PM. is not as sharp as at 10:00 AM. Perhaps you are more productive at a coffee shop with background noise, or in the study lounge in your residence hall. Perhaps when you study on your bed, you fall asleep.

Have a variety of places in and around campus that are good study environments for you. That way wherever you are, you can find your perfect study spot. After a while, you might find that your spot is too comfortable and no longer is a good place to study, so it’s time to hop to a new spot!

Become a teacher

Try to explain the material in your own words, as if you are the teacher. You can do this in a study group, with a study partner, or on your own. Saying the material aloud will point out where you are confused and need more information and will help you retain the information. As you are explaining the material, use examples and make connections between concepts (just as a teacher does). It is okay (even encouraged) to do this with your notes in your hands. At first you may need to rely on your notes to explain the material, but eventually you’ll be able to teach it without your notes.

Creating a quiz for yourself will help you to think like your professor. What does your professor want you to know? Quizzing yourself is a highly effective study technique. Make a study guide and carry it with you so you can review the questions and answers periodically throughout the day and across several days. Identify the questions that you don’t know and quiz yourself on only those questions. Say your answers aloud. This will help you to retain the information and make corrections where they are needed. For technical courses, do the sample problems and explain how you got from the question to the answer. Re-do the problems that give you trouble. Learning the material in this way actively engages your brain and will significantly improve your memory (Craik, 1975).

Take control of your calendar

Controlling your schedule and your distractions will help you to accomplish your goals.

If you are in control of your calendar, you will be able to complete your assignments and stay on top of your coursework. The following are steps to getting control of your calendar:

• On the same day each week, (perhaps Sunday nights or Saturday mornings) plan out your schedule for the week.
• Go through each class and write down what you’d like to get completed for each class that week.
• Look at your calendar and determine how many hours you have to complete your work.
• Determine whether your list can be completed in the amount of time that you have available. (You may want to put the amount of time expected to complete each assignment.) Make adjustments as needed. For example, if you find that it will take more hours to complete your work than you have available, you will likely need to triage your readings. Completing all of the readings is a luxury. You will need to make decisions about your readings based on what is covered in class. You should read and take notes on all of the assignments from the favored class source (the one that is used a lot in the class). This may be the textbook or a reading that directly addresses the topic for the day. You can likely skim supplemental readings.
• Pencil into your calendar when you plan to get assignments completed.
• Before going to bed each night, make your plan for the next day. Waking up with a plan will make you more productive.

See our handout on calendars and college for more tips on using calendars as time management.

Use downtime to your advantage

Beware of ‘easy’ weeks. This is the calm before the storm. Lighter work weeks are a great time to get ahead on work or to start long projects. Use the extra hours to get ahead on assignments or start big projects or papers. You should plan to work on every class every week even if you don’t have anything due. In fact, it is preferable to do some work for each of your classes every day. Spending 30 minutes per class each day will add up to three hours per week, but spreading this time out over six days is more effective than cramming it all in during one long three-hour session. If you have completed all of the work for a particular class, then use the 30 minutes to get ahead or start a longer project.

Use all your resources

Remember that you can make an appointment with an academic coach to work on implementing any of the strategies suggested in this handout.

Works consulted

Carrier, L. M. (2003). College students’ choices of study strategies. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 96 (1), 54-56.

Craik, F. I., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104 (3), 268.

Davis, S. G., & Gray, E. S. (2007). Going beyond test-taking strategies: Building self-regulated students and teachers. Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, 1 (1), 31-47.

Edwards, A. J., Weinstein, C. E., Goetz, E. T., & Alexander, P. A. (2014). Learning and study strategies: Issues in assessment, instruction, and evaluation. Elsevier.

Junco, R., & Cotten, S. R. (2012). No A 4 U: The relationship between multitasking and academic performance. Computers & Education, 59 (2), 505-514.

Mackenzie, A. M. (1994). Examination preparation, anxiety and examination performance in a group of adult students. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 13 (5), 373-388.

McGuire, S.Y. & McGuire, S. (2016). Teach Students How to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate in Any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation. Stylus Publishing, LLC.

Newport, C. (2006). How to become a straight-a student: the unconventional strategies real college students use to score high while studying less. Three Rivers Press.

Paul, K. (1996). Study smarter, not harder. Self Counsel Press.

Robinson, A. (1993). What smart students know: maximum grades, optimum learning, minimum time. Crown trade paperbacks.

Wissman, K. T., Rawson, K. A., & Pyc, M. A. (2012). How and when do students use flashcards? Memory, 20, 568-579.

If you enjoy using our handouts, we appreciate contributions of acknowledgement.

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Re-reading is inefficient. Here are 8 tips for studying smarter.

by Joseph Stromberg

The way most students study makes no sense.

That’s the conclusion of Washington University in St. Louis psychologists Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel — who’ve spent a combined 80 years studying learning and memory, and recently distilled their findings with novelist Peter Brown in the book Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning .

using active learning strategies is most effective

The majority of students study by re-reading notes and textbooks — but the psychologists’ research, both in lab experiments and of actual students in classes, shows this is a terrible way to learn material. Using active learning strategies — like flashcards, diagramming, and quizzing yourself — is much more effective, as is spacing out studying over time and mixing different topics together.

McDaniel spoke with me about the eight key tips he’d share with students and teachers from his body of research.

1) Don’t just re-read your notes and readings

Photofusion/UIG via Getty Images

”We know from surveys that a majority of students, when they study, they typically re-read assignments and notes. Most students say this is their number one go-to strategy.

when students re-read a textbook chapter, they show no improvement in learning

”We know, however, from a lot of research, that this kind of repetitive recycling of information is not an especially good way to learn or create more permanent memories. Our studies of Washington University students, for instance, show that when they re-read a textbook chapter, they have absolutely no improvement in learning over those who just read it once.

“On your first reading of something, you extract a lot of understanding. But when you do the second reading, you read with a sense of ‘I know this, I know this.’ So basically, you’re not processing it deeply, or picking more out of it. Often, the re-reading is cursory — and it’s insidious, because this gives you the illusion that you know the material very well, when in fact there are gaps.”

2) Ask yourself lots of questions

Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe via Getty Images

”One good technique to use instead is to read once, then quiz yourself, either using questions at the back of a textbook chapter, or making up your own questions. Retrieving that information is what actually produces more robust learning and memory.

retrieving information is what produces more robust learning and memory

”And even when you can’t retrieve it — when you get the questions wrong — it gives you an accurate diagnostic on what you don’t know, and this tells you what you should go back and study. This helps guide your studying more effectively.

”Asking questions also helps you understand more deeply. Say you’re learning about world history, and how ancient Rome and Greece were trading partners. Stop and ask yourself why they became trading partners. Why did they become shipbuilders, and learn to navigate the seas? It doesn’t always have to be why — you can ask how, or what.

“In asking these questions, you’re trying to explain, and in doing this, you create a better understanding, which leads to better memory and learning. So instead of just reading and skimming, stop and ask yourself things to make yourself understand the material.”

3) Connect new information to something you already know

”Another strategy is, during a second reading, to try relating the principles in the text to something you already know about. Relate new information to prior information for better learning.

”One example is if you were learning about how the neuron transmits electricity. One of the things we know if that if you have a fatty sheath surround the neuron, called a myelin sheath , it helps the neuron transmit electricity more quickly.

“So you could liken this, say, to water running through a hose. The water runs quickly through it, but if you puncture the hose, it’s going to leak, and you won’t get the same flow. And that’s essentially what happens when we age — the myelin sheaths break down, and transmissions become slower.”

( Quasar/Wikimedia Commons )

4) Draw out the information in a visual form

”A great strategy is making diagrams, or visual models, or flowcharts. In a beginning psychology course, you could diagram the flow of classical conditioning . Sure, you can read about classical conditioning, but to truly understand it and be able to write down and describe the different aspects of it on a test later on — condition, stimulus, and so on — it’s a good idea to see if you can put it in a flowchart.

“Anything that creates active learning — generating understanding on your own — is very effective in retention. It basically means the learner needs to become more involved and more engaged, and less passive.”

5) Use flashcards

”Flashcards are another good way of doing this. And one key to using them is actually re-testing yourself on the ones you got right.

keeping a correct card in the deck and encountering it again is more useful

”A lot of students will answer the question on a flashcard, and take it out of the deck if they get it right. But it turns out this isn’t a good idea — repeating the act of memory retrieval is important. Studies show that keeping the correct item in the deck and encountering it again is useful. You might want to practice the incorrect items a little more, but repeated exposure to the ones you get right is important too.

“It’s not that repetition as a whole is bad. It’s that mindless repetition is bad.”

6) Don’t cram — space out your studying

Johannes Simon/Getty Images

”A lot of students cram — they wait until the last minute, then in one evening, they repeat the information again and again. But research shows this isn’t good for long term memory. It may allow you to do okay on that test the next day, but then on the final, you won’t retain as much information, and then the next year, when you need the information for the next level course, it won’t be there.

practice a little bit one day, then two days later

”This often happens in statistics. Students come back for the next year, and it seems like they’ve forgotten everything, because they crammed for their tests.

“The better idea is to space repetition. Practice a little bit one day, then put your flashcards away, then take them out the next day, then two days later. Study after study shows that spacing is really important.”

7) Teachers should space out and mix up their lessons too

Andy Cross/The Denver Post via Getty Images

”Our book also has information for teachers. And our educational system tends to promote massed presentation of information as well.

”In a typical college course, you cover one topic one day, then on the second day, another topic, then on the third day, another topic. This is massed presentation. You never go back and recycle or reconsider the material.

”But the key, for teachers, is to put the material back in front of a student days or weeks later. There are several ways they can do this. Here at Washington University, there are some instructors who give weekly quizzes, and used to just put material from that week’s classes on the quiz. Now, they’re bringing back more material from two to three weeks ago. One psychology lecturer explicitly takes time, during each lecture, to bring back material from days or weeks beforehand.

the key, for teachers, is to put the material back in front of a student days or weeks later

”This can be done in homework too. It’s typical, in statistics courses, to give homework in which all of the problems are all in the same category. After correlations are taught, a student’s homework, say, is problem after problem on correlation. Then the next week, T tests are taught, and all the problems are on T tests. But we’ve found that sprinkling in questions on stuff that was covered two or three weeks ago is really good for retention.

”And this can be built into the content of lessons themselves. Let’s say you’re taking an art history class. When I took it, I learned about Gauguin, then I saw lots of his paintings, then I moved on to Matisse, and saw lots of paintings by him. Students and instructors both think that this is a good way of learning the painting styles of these different artists.

”But experimental studies show that’s not the case at all. It’s better to give students an example of one artist, then move to another, then another, then recycle back around. That interspersing, or mixing, produces much better learning that can be transferred to paintings you haven’t seen — letting students accurately identify the creators of paintings, say, on a test.

“And this works for all sorts of problems. Let’s go back to statistics. In upper level classes, and the real world, you’re not going to be told what sort of statistical problem you’re encountering — you’re going to have to figure out the method you need to use. And you can’t learn how to do that unless you have experience dealing with a mix of different types of problems, and diagnosing which requires which type of approach.”

8) There’s no such thing as a “math person”

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

”There’s some really interesting work by Carol Dweck , at Stanford. She’s shown that students tend to have one of two mindsets about learning.

it turns out that mindsets predict how well students end up doing

”One is a fixed learning model. It says, ‘I have a certain amount of talent for this topic — say, chemistry or physics — and I’ll do well until I hit that limit. Past that, it’s too hard for me, and I’m not going to do well.’ The other mindset is a growth mindset. It says that learning involves using effective strategies, putting aside time to do the work, and engaging in the process, all of which help you gradually increase your capacity for a topic.

”It turns out that the mindsets predict how well students end up doing. Students with growth mindsets tend to stick with it, tend to persevere in the face of difficulty, and tend to be successful in challenging classes. Students with the fixed mindset tend not to.

“So for teachers, the lesson is that if you can talk to students and suggest that a growth mindset really is the more accurate model — and it is — then students tend to be more open to trying new strategies, and sticking with the course, and working in ways that are going to promote learning. Ability, intelligence, and learning have to do with how you approach it — working smarter, we like to say.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Intelligence

How much does education really boost intelligence, a new analysis estimates the potential gain in iq points..

Posted June 25, 2018 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

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The scientific case that an increase in education grows students’ cognitive abilities is not a new one . But figuring out exactly how much an additional stretch of schooling earns someone in terms of intelligence is a complicated challenge. One plausible reason more educated people tend to be more intelligent, after all, is that smarter youths are more likely to stay in school. Anyone who wants to ascertain whether an extra year of education has real cognitive benefits has to devise ways to account for that.

A new meta-analysis blends the results of 28 studies that all took measures to mitigate this problem. Based on data from more than 600,000 participants, all told, psychologists Stuart Ritchie and Elliot Tucker-Drob have arrived at a rough estimate of how much an added year of education lifted participants’ IQ scores, on average: between 1 and 5 points.

Understanding that result, however, requires some context. “This is a very sophisticated statistical analysis,” says psychologist Richard Haier , professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine. “And yet there’s no doubt in my mind there will be a lot of misunderstanding about it.”

First, the estimates of IQ improvement depend on the type of study. In their analysis—the first to quantitatively distill the data on this question—Ritchie, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh, and Tucker-Drob, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, examined three types of study designs, producing different estimates for each one. They included studies in which:

• Cognitive tests were taken before participants differed in their degree of education (e.g., before some dropped out of high school) and again afterward, sometimes decades later.
• A policy change, such as an increase in the mandatory education level, resulted in some students staying in school for longer.
• Students who made an age cutoff to begin schooling were compared with students who had not.

“They all used a cognitive test of some kind,” Ritchie says—measuring vocabulary, memory , verbal and nonverbal reasoning, or other abilities—and the results in each category were aggregated. (The studies focused only on education after age 6.) The three study types respectively yielded estimated IQ increases of approximately one point, two points, and five points per additional year of schooling.

The results are “not really controversial within the field,” says Haier, who is editor of the journal Intelligence . (Ritchie and Tucker-Drob also serve on its editorial board). “It really just documents something that has kind of been suspected for years.”

It’s not clear yet exactly how education might increase IQ scores, or whether effects of schooling build up with each passing year. (So don’t assume that earning a four-year degree is going to pump up your IQ score by 20 points.) Further, IQ and general intelligence are not the same thing, as Haier points out; one is an imperfect proxy for the other. “IQ points are useful metrics,” he says, “but they’re not really a measure of intelligence directly.” Any effects of education on IQ may be related to improvements in particular skills, as opposed to a broader elevation of general cognitive ability.

There is also the open question of how much a gain of one or a few IQ points—modest, given that an average IQ score is 100—matters for real-world outcomes.

“If you or I got knocked on the head and lost two IQ points, it wouldn't make a huge difference,” Ritchie says. But previous studies show a relationship between IQ and measures such as job efficiency and performance, he notes. While more research would be required to find out whether the sort of IQ gains suggested by the latest report lead to improvements on such outcomes, Ritchie says, it’s possible that “if everyone was two IQ points higher, you’d have just a little bit higher efficiency, fewer accidents.” On a societal scale, “that could end up saving quite a lot of money.”

Another potential takeaway, as psychologist (and PT blogger) Jonathan Wai has articulated , is that if a whole year’s worth of studying raises IQ by just a couple of points, shorter-term cognitive training programs—the effectiveness of which has been disputed —are unlikely to have much practical impact.

The new report does reaffirm the conclusion of psychologists that intelligence—despite being heavily influenced by genetics —is subject to change. The public may not yet be on the same page, according to Ritchie, despite previous research reviews in tune with his paper. “I think the idea that IQ is completely set in stone is still hanging around,” he says. “I think, in this case, we have some of the strongest evidence that it’s not.”

LinkedIn Image Credit: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock

Ritchie, S. J., & Tucker-Drob, E. M. (2018). How Much Does Education Improve Intelligence? A Meta-Analysis. Psychological Science, 095679761877425. doi:10.1177/0956797618774253

Matt Huston is a Commissioning Editor at Aeon Media. He is a former Senior Editor at Psychology Today .

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Sticking up for yourself is no easy task. But there are concrete skills you can use to hone your assertiveness and advocate for yourself.

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Does Homework Work?

There's absolutely no proof that homework helps elementary school pupils learn more or have greater academic success. In fact...when children are asked to do too much nightly work, just the opposite has been found. And study after study shows that homework is not much more beneficial in middle school either. Even in high school, where there can be benefits, they start to decline as soon as kids are overloaded.

Most kids hate homework. They dread it, groan about it, put off doing it as long as possible. It may be the single most reliable extinguisher of the flame of curiosity.

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The Trouble With Homework

By Annie Murphy Paul

• Sept. 10, 2011

Annie Murphy Paul is the author of “Origins" and is at work on a new book about the science of learning.

WHEN you think of America’s students, do you picture overworked, stressed-out children bent under backpacks stuffed with textbooks and worksheets? Or do you call to mind glassy-eyed, empty-headed teenagers sitting before computer screens, consumed by video games and social networking sites, even as their counterparts in China prepare to ace yet another round of academic exams? The first view dominates a series of recent books and movies, including the much-discussed film “Race to Nowhere.” The second image has been put forth by other books, with titles like “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.”

Divergent though they are, these characterizations share a common emphasis: homework. The studying that middle school and high school students do after the dismissal bell rings is either an unreasonable burden or a crucial activity that needs beefing up. Which is it? Do American students have too much homework or too little? Neither, I’d say. We ought to be asking a different question altogether. What should matter to parents and educators is this: How effectively do children’s after-school assignments advance learning?

The quantity of students’ homework is a lot less important than its quality. And evidence suggests that as of now, homework isn’t making the grade. Although surveys show that the amount of time our children spend on homework has risen over the last three decades, American students are mired in the middle of international academic rankings : 17th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math, according to results from the Program for International Student Assessment released last December.

In a 2008 survey, one-third of parents polled rated the quality of their children’s homework assignments as fair or poor, and 4 in 10 said they believed that some or a great deal of homework was busywork. A new study, coming in the Economics of Education Review, reports that homework in science, English and history has “little to no impact” on student test scores. (The authors did note a positive effect for math homework.) Enriching children’s classroom learning requires making homework not shorter or longer, but smarter.

Fortunately, research is available to help parents, teachers and school administrators do just that. In recent years, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and educational psychologists have made a series of remarkable discoveries about how the human brain learns. They have founded a new discipline, known as Mind, Brain and Education, that is devoted to understanding and improving the ways in which children absorb, retain and apply knowledge.

Educators have begun to implement these methods in classrooms around the country and have enjoyed measured success. A collaboration between psychologists at Washington University in St. Louis and teachers at nearby Columbia Middle School, for example, lifted seventh- and eighth-grade students’ science and social studies test scores by 13 to 25 percent.

But the innovations have not yet been applied to homework. Mind, Brain and Education methods may seem unfamiliar and even counterintuitive, but they are simple to understand and easy to carry out. And after-school assignments are ripe for the kind of improvements the new science offers.

“Spaced repetition” is one example of the kind of evidence-based techniques that researchers have found have a positive impact on learning. Here’s how it works: instead of concentrating the study of information in single blocks, as many homework assignments currently do — reading about, say, the Civil War one evening and Reconstruction the next — learners encounter the same material in briefer sessions spread over a longer period of time. With this approach, students are re-exposed to information about the Civil War and Reconstruction throughout the semester.

It sounds unassuming, but spaced repetition produces impressive results. Eighth-grade history students who relied on a spaced approach to learning had nearly double the retention rate of students who studied the same material in a consolidated unit, reported researchers from the University of California-San Diego in 2007. The reason the method works so well goes back to the brain: when we first acquire memories, they are volatile, subject to change or likely to disappear. Exposing ourselves to information repeatedly over time fixes it more permanently in our minds, by strengthening the representation of the information that is embedded in our neural networks.

A second learning technique, known as “retrieval practice,” employs a familiar tool — the test — in a new way: not to assess what students know, but to reinforce it. We often conceive of memory as something like a storage tank and a test as a kind of dipstick that measures how much information we’ve put in there. But that’s not actually how the brain works. Every time we pull up a memory, we make it stronger and more lasting, so that testing doesn’t just measure, it changes learning. Simply reading over material to be learned, or even taking notes and making outlines, as many homework assignments require, doesn’t have this effect.

According to one experiment, language learners who employed the retrieval practice strategy to study vocabulary words remembered 80 percent of the words they studied, while learners who used conventional study methods remembered only about a third of them. Students who used retrieval practice to learn science retained about 50 percent more of the material than students who studied in traditional ways, reported researchers from Purdue University earlier this year. Students — and parents — may groan at the prospect of more tests, but the self-quizzing involved in retrieval practice need not provoke any anxiety. It’s simply an effective way to focus less on the input of knowledge (passively reading over textbooks and notes) and more on its output (calling up that same information from one’s own brain).

Another common misconception about how we learn holds that if information feels easy to absorb, we’ve learned it well. In fact, the opposite is true. When we work hard to understand information, we recall it better; the extra effort signals the brain that this knowledge is worth keeping. This phenomenon, known as cognitive disfluency, promotes learning so effectively that psychologists have devised all manner of “desirable difficulties” to introduce into the learning process: for example, sprinkling a passage with punctuation mistakes, deliberately leaving out letters, shrinking font size until it’s tiny or wiggling a document while it’s being copied so that words come out blurry.

Teachers are unlikely to start sending students home with smudged or error-filled worksheets, but there is another kind of desirable difficulty — called interleaving — that can readily be applied to homework. An interleaved assignment mixes up different kinds of situations or problems to be practiced, instead of grouping them by type. When students can’t tell in advance what kind of knowledge or problem-solving strategy will be required to answer a question, their brains have to work harder to come up with the solution, and the result is that students learn the material more thoroughly.

Researchers at California Polytechnic State University conducted a study of interleaving in sports that illustrates why the tactic is so effective. When baseball players practiced hitting, interleaving different kinds of pitches improved their performance on a later test in which the batters did not know the type of pitch in advance (as would be the case, of course, in a real game).

Interleaving produces the same sort of improvement in academic learning. A study published last year in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology asked fourth-graders to work on solving four types of math problems and then to take a test evaluating how well they had learned. The scores of those whose practice problems were mixed up were more than double the scores of those students who had practiced one kind of problem at a time.

The application of such research-based strategies to homework is a yet-untapped opportunity to raise student achievement. Science has shown us how to turn homework into a potent catalyst for learning. Our assignment now is to make it happen.

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Why homework doesn't seem to boost learning--and how it could.

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Some schools are eliminating homework, citing research showing it doesn’t do much to boost achievement. But maybe teachers just need to assign a different kind of homework.

In 2016, a second-grade teacher in Texas delighted her students—and at least some of their parents—by announcing she would no longer assign homework. “Research has been unable to prove that homework improves student performance,” she explained.

The following year, the superintendent of a Florida school district serving 42,000 students eliminated homework for all elementary students and replaced it with twenty minutes of nightly reading, saying she was basing her decision on “solid research about what works best in improving academic achievement in students.”

Many other elementary schools seem to have quietly adopted similar policies. Critics have objected that even if homework doesn’t increase grades or test scores, it has other benefits, like fostering good study habits and providing parents with a window into what kids are doing in school.

Those arguments have merit, but why doesn’t homework boost academic achievement? The research cited by educators just doesn’t seem to make sense. If a child wants to learn to play the violin, it’s obvious she needs to practice at home between lessons (at least, it’s obvious to an adult). And psychologists have identified a range of strategies that help students learn, many of which seem ideally suited for homework assignments.

For example, there’s something called “ retrieval practice ,” which means trying to recall information you’ve already learned. The optimal time to engage in retrieval practice is not immediately after you’ve acquired information but after you’ve forgotten it a bit—like, perhaps, after school. A homework assignment could require students to answer questions about what was covered in class that day without consulting their notes. Research has found that retrieval practice and similar learning strategies are far more powerful than simply rereading or reviewing material.

One possible explanation for the general lack of a boost from homework is that few teachers know about this research. And most have gotten little training in how and why to assign homework. These are things that schools of education and teacher-prep programs typically don’t teach . So it’s quite possible that much of the homework teachers assign just isn’t particularly effective for many students.

Even if teachers do manage to assign effective homework, it may not show up on the measures of achievement used by researchers—for example, standardized reading test scores. Those tests are designed to measure general reading comprehension skills, not to assess how much students have learned in specific classes. Good homework assignments might have helped a student learn a lot about, say, Ancient Egypt. But if the reading passages on a test cover topics like life in the Arctic or the habits of the dormouse, that student’s test score may well not reflect what she’s learned.

The research relied on by those who oppose homework has actually found it has a modest positive effect at the middle and high school levels—just not in elementary school. But for the most part, the studies haven’t looked at whether it matters what kind of homework is assigned or whether there are different effects for different demographic student groups. Focusing on those distinctions could be illuminating.

A study that looked specifically at math homework , for example, found it boosted achievement more in elementary school than in middle school—just the opposite of the findings on homework in general. And while one study found that parental help with homework generally doesn’t boost students’ achievement—and can even have a negative effect— another concluded that economically disadvantaged students whose parents help with homework improve their performance significantly.

That seems to run counter to another frequent objection to homework, which is that it privileges kids who are already advantaged. Well-educated parents are better able to provide help, the argument goes, and it’s easier for affluent parents to provide a quiet space for kids to work in—along with a computer and internet access . While those things may be true, not assigning homework—or assigning ineffective homework—can end up privileging advantaged students even more.

Students from less educated families are most in need of the boost that effective homework can provide, because they’re less likely to acquire academic knowledge and vocabulary at home. And homework can provide a way for lower-income parents—who often don’t have time to volunteer in class or participate in parents’ organizations—to forge connections to their children’s schools. Rather than giving up on homework because of social inequities, schools could help parents support homework in ways that don’t depend on their own knowledge—for example, by recruiting others to help, as some low-income demographic groups have been able to do . Schools could also provide quiet study areas at the end of the day, and teachers could assign homework that doesn’t rely on technology.

Another argument against homework is that it causes students to feel overburdened and stressed.  While that may be true at schools serving affluent populations, students at low-performing ones often don’t get much homework at all—even in high school. One study found that lower-income ninth-graders “consistently described receiving minimal homework—perhaps one or two worksheets or textbook pages, the occasional project, and 30 minutes of reading per night.” And if they didn’t complete assignments, there were few consequences. I discovered this myself when trying to tutor students in writing at a high-poverty high school. After I expressed surprise that none of the kids I was working with had completed a brief writing assignment, a teacher told me, “Oh yeah—I should have told you. Our students don’t really do homework.”

If and when disadvantaged students get to college, their relative lack of study skills and good homework habits can present a serious handicap. After noticing that black and Hispanic students were failing her course in disproportionate numbers, a professor at the University of North Carolina decided to make some changes , including giving homework assignments that required students to quiz themselves without consulting their notes. Performance improved across the board, but especially for students of color and the disadvantaged. The gap between black and white students was cut in half, and the gaps between Hispanic and white students—along with that between first-generation college students and others—closed completely.

There’s no reason this kind of support should wait until students get to college. To be most effective—both in terms of instilling good study habits and building students’ knowledge—homework assignments that boost learning should start in elementary school.

Some argue that young children just need time to chill after a long day at school. But the “ten-minute rule”—recommended by homework researchers—would have first graders doing ten minutes of homework, second graders twenty minutes, and so on. That leaves plenty of time for chilling, and even brief assignments could have a significant impact if they were well-designed.

But a fundamental problem with homework at the elementary level has to do with the curriculum, which—partly because of standardized testing— has narrowed to reading and math. Social studies and science have been marginalized or eliminated, especially in schools where test scores are low. Students spend hours every week practicing supposed reading comprehension skills like “making inferences” or identifying “author’s purpose”—the kinds of skills that the tests try to measure—with little or no attention paid to content.

But as research has established, the most important component in reading comprehension is knowledge of the topic you’re reading about. Classroom time—or homework time—spent on illusory comprehension “skills” would be far better spent building knowledge of the very subjects schools have eliminated. Even if teachers try to take advantage of retrieval practice—say, by asking students to recall what they’ve learned that day about “making comparisons” or “sequence of events”—it won’t have much impact.

If we want to harness the potential power of homework—particularly for disadvantaged students—we’ll need to educate teachers about what kind of assignments actually work. But first, we’ll need to start teaching kids something substantive about the world, beginning as early as possible.

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Articles & Advice > Majors and Academics > Articles

Our Best Advice for Homework, Studying, and Tests

Homework, studying, and tests, oh my! There's just so much work to be done, but don't stress. You can make your studies easier by checking out our best advice.

by CollegeXpress

Last Updated: Sep 5, 2023

Originally Posted: Nov 26, 2021

Homework, studying, and tests make up a huge bulk of your academic life whether you’re in high school or college—and they can also be difficult and draining. So to help you get through this semester and beyond, we’ve compiled our best advice to help you get your schoolwork done. From tips to work smarter to playlists for your study sessions to the best snacks for your brain power, we’ve got everything you need right here to ace all your assignments and tests. (And don’t worry about any content labeled “for college students” or “high school”; most of this advice can help students of any age.) Good luck with your studies!

Learning how you study best

• Infographic: Find Your Learning Style and Study Smarter : You know the saying: Study smarter, not harder. And there's no smarter way to study than figuring out how you learn best.
• 5 Smart Study Tips for All Students : Some things about studying don’t change whether you’re in high school or college. These five tips will help you study smarter for better grades at any level.
• 5 College Study Tips That Will Make Your Life Easier : Despite the previous advice, a lot of things about studying will change when you get to college. Here are five tips to make the transition easier.
• 6 Creative Study Tips for College Students : These creative study methods will help you refine your study approach for your learning style so you can enjoy it a little more along the way.
• 5 Things You Need for Your Next Study Session : Any good study session should include a few key things. So before you kick it off, make sure you set yourself up for success.
• Top 5 Study Tips From a College Freshman : Who better to give you study tips than a college freshman who’s learned how to adapt from high school to college-level schoolwork? Check out their insider advice!

Boosting your academic skills

• How to Improve Your Time Management and Study Skills : Worried about doing well in all your classes with so much homework, so many tests to study for, and not enough time in the day? Don’t be! Here’s some great advice to make it work. 
• How to Get Organized and Manage Your Time as a High School Student : Struggling to get it together? These simple tips can help you get organized, get homework done efficiently, and manage your time better in high school.
• How Can I Improve My Memorization for School? : While memorization isn't the ideal way to learn, sometimes it's needed. One of our experts has eight quick methods for you to try out.
• How to Balance Homework and Internships in High School : A big part of being responsible with your academics is learning how to balance them with everything else. Here’s how you can succeed in your classes and an after-school internship.
• A Step-by-Step Guide for an Effective Research Paper : Mastering the art of the research paper is one thing you need to learn for college. Here are some tips for effective writing.
• Video: Top 10 Ways to Avoid Procrastination : Procrastination is the killer of all productivity. A sure-fire way to boost your academic skills is to stop procrastinating and do the work with these 10 tips.

Preparing for finals and AP tests

• 3 Important Tricks to Help You Survive Finals Week : Wondering just how you’re going to make it through finals? Here are three keys to making it out alive by the end of your tests.
• 21 Apps to Get You Through Finals This Semester : Finals week is always a stressful time, and even more so if you have to manage finals from home. Here are 21 apps that will make exam season easier.
• 9 Study Tips to Help You Conquer AP Tests : Whether you're tackling your very first test this year or prepping for your very last one, these 10 study tips will help you score high on any AP exam.
• The 5 Best Ways to Handle AP Exam Stress : It’s never too early to prepare yourself for AP tests, but it certainly can be too late. Here’s some advice for handling AP exam stress to prep you ahead of time.
• Poetry Study Guide for AP English Language & Literature : Check out our quick poetry review that can help you score high on AP English tests, both Literature and Language.

Studying for standardized tests

• When Should I Start Studying for the ACT or SAT? : If you're wondering when to start studying for standardized tests, that’s good news—you probably like to be prepared, which can only help you ace your exam. Here's some expert advice on when to start prepping.
• How to Prepare for the ACT, SAT, and Other Tests : This standardized test guide covers the ACT, SAT, AP tests, and more. It's basically everything you need to know to get ready for your high school exams!
• 2 Easy Study Tips for Both Admission and Language Tests : The SAT. The ACT. AP tests. And the TOEFL too? International students have a lot to juggle, but the test prep pros at Magoosh are here for you.
• 4 Awesome (and Free) SAT Prep Resources : Looking for resources to help you get ready for the SAT? Check out these four fun, easy-to-use, and totally free online test prep resources!
• The Best ACT Test Prep Sites, Books, and More : These are simply the best ACT prep resources available, from websites to books and beyond, plus other helpful tips for doing well on this college admission test.
• How to Tackle the Hardest Parts of the ACT : The ACT is pretty tough overall, but some sections are more difficult than others! Luckily, familiarizing yourself with the harder parts can help you maximize your study time.

Taking care of yourself

• How Important Is Sleep to Academic Success? : Better sleep is a key component to better studying in college. Here's how you can improve your sleep and in turn boost your academic performance.
• The Best Study Snacks for Healthy Eating in College : With finals stress, a lot of students turn to food for comfort and not always in the best way. Read on to learn how to snack healthily this finals season.
• Feeling Burnt Out? 5 Steps to Get Back on Track : If you feel like you're in a studying rut, here are five ways to fight burnout and work your way out of it.
• College Stress Solutions for Academic Anxiety : Stress from college coursework is no joke, but there are methods you can employ to ease that stress, including these solutions from a college expert.
• How to Create Smart, Long-Lasting Habits in High School : It's important to develop good study skills and healthy habits that you can carry from high school to college. Read these tips and find what works best for you!

Making your studies more fun

• 5 Simple Ways You Can Make Studying More Fun : How do you make studying more fun? It's often a matter of managing your time, scheduling intensive periods as well as breaks, giving yourself small rewards, and creating the right environment.
• Great Study Playlists for All Your High School Classes : Who doesn't need a little musical inspiration to face their chemistry homework head on? These four playlists for all types of classes should do the trick!
• Top 5 Ambience Playlists to Soundtrack Your Studies : Looking for a great instrumental playlist to create the perfect distraction-free atmosphere for studying? Check out student writer Hailey's top picks on YouTube and Spotify!
• Easy Ways to Make Studying for Standardized Tests Fun : We know, we know—studying for standardized tests is never going to actually be fun, but these ideas can certainly make it more bearable and enjoyable to get through.
• Fun SAT Vocab Prep With the Dictionary of Difficult Words : The Dictionary of Difficult Words is a children's book that's useful for all ages, especially students studying for the SAT. Unwind and review your vocab at the same time with this unconventional test prep book!
• The CollegeXpress SAT Word Game : Our SAT Word Game will help you study for the test and participate in a little friendly competition with other CollegeXpress students. Can you make it on our leaderboard?

We've compiled our top-tier content for other topics too, like how to find internships and the best advice for transferring. Check them out using the tag  "our best advice."

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How to Be a Smart Student

Last Updated: June 24, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Ashley Pritchard, MA . Ashley Pritchard is an Academic and School Counselor at Delaware Valley Regional High School in Frenchtown, New Jersey. Ashley has over 3 years of high school, college, and career counseling experience. She has an MA in School Counseling with a specialization in Mental Health from Caldwell University and is certified as an Independent Education Consultant through the University of California, Irvine. There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 482,528 times.

It's easy to fall behind in school whether you're smart or not – it's a lot of work! To be a smart student – a student who knows how to study and how to succeed – you've got to start from day one. With the right studying tactics and a few tricks up your sleeve, this student will be you .

Setting Yourself Up for Success

• Buy binders for every class. On the inner flap, put the syllabus. Then start organizing your homework and the sheets your teacher gives you in chronological order, if possible.
• Keep specific materials you need (markers, scissors, etc.) organized by class. Every binder should have a pen and a highlighter, too.
• Throw some stuff out! If your locker looks like a paper hurricane just hit it, clean it out! The less stuff you have to sort through to get to what you want, the more time you save to do other, more important things.

• Have you ever heard of context-dependent memory? That's when your memory finds it easier to recall things in the place where it learned them. [1] X Trustworthy Source Simply Psychology Popular site for evidence-based psychology information Go to source So if you study there one night, studying there the next will make it easier to recall what you studied before!
• If you can, have more than one study space – the library, at a friend's house, etc. Research says that the more places you study, the more connections your brain has and the easier it is to remember the facts you study. [2] X Research source

• If your teacher doesn't give you this list, ask! He or she will be very impressed with the initiative you took and how seriously you're taking their class. You may become a favorite!

• This is true for everything from math to history to art. There's always more reading you can do to wrap your mind around a topic, regardless of what it is.

• This also establishes a relationship with your teacher from early on. You'll be the one who cares about their grade and is trying their best. When grading time rolls around and you're at an A- on the edge of an A, your teacher may give you the benefit of the doubt because you're a good student and bump you up to an A!

Staying on Top Every Day

• Turn sentences into charts or pictures. Germany in 1941 was 60% Jewish? Turn it into a pie chart. It'll be easier to see in your notes, too.
• Use mnemonics to help you remember. What are the colors of the rainbow? Why, Roy G. Biv of course! (Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain)
• Use highlighters. The more color your notes have, the more fun they'll be to read. Develop a color-coding system to help you find stuff quicker, too.

• If you don't know what the reading was, look at your syllabus. There's a reason it should be in the front flap of your binder – it should have listed every piece of homework or reading and when it's going to be talked about. A quick look at that piece of paper and you'll know exactly what to do.

• If you have a long time to do a certain piece of homework, that means it's probably bigger than usual and important. Do a bit each day after you get it – that way the work is spread out and you don't feel swamped.

• Besides, if the teacher thinks you're not paying attention, she might ask you a question and you might not know how to answer because you have not been paying attention! The less you embarrass yourself, the better!

• Talk to your parents about how they can help or reward you. If you get all straight As, could you get that video game you've been hoping for? Extended curfew? You need all the motivation you can get!

• You can also ask your older siblings or parents to help you, too, if they're good at a certain subject. Just make sure they wouldn't distract you and can actually help you get work done.

Acing Tests and Projects

• Make sure the people you're studying with are good students that care. You don't want to be working with a few people who just want to mess around during your "study group" time.
• Have everyone bring snacks and think of a few things to talk about. Make a rough schedule of what you're going to cover and delegate a person as that week's group leader, so they can help keep everyone on track.
• If it's a Friday night and you have a test in a class on the following Monday, gather up 2-3 of your friends that are in your class and quiz each other. If a person gets a correct answer, then they get 2 points, if they get a wrong answer, they get 1 point taken away. Whoever gets the most points at the end of the study session get to pick a movie to watch!

• And other times this extra credit will just be tacked onto your year-end score. That's good, too! With extra-credit, you really can't go wrong.

• Your body needs sleep (7-9 hours, depending on your specific preferences). A lot of being a good student is about taking care of yourself, too! So skip the cramming, go to sleep, and eat a healthy breakfast. Studies show eating a good breakfast can power your brain and get you better grades, too! [10] X Research source

• During your break, grab a handful of blueberries, nuts, broccoli, or even dark chocolate for a brain boost. [12] X Research source Snacking can give you more energy if you're feeling a little fatigued, too.

• This is especially good if you have a friend with you during this time you can study with. You can each give each other a few flash cards and quiz each other. When you're reading and talking about the information, it becomes more solidified in your mind.

Being an Ideal Student

• Nursing homes
• Homeless, battered women's, or children's shelters
• Animal shelters
• Soup kitchens

• No one said you had to be good at these things. If you're a star basketball player, take an art class or try out for the school play. If you're in the school choir and can't throw a ball to save your life, try out for the soccer team. It's only for a season!

• What's more, these are some of the easiest organizations to find leadership roles. Saying you're the "president' of something is pretty impressive!

• If your school doesn't have a class you want to take, a lot of schools have partnership programs where you can take the class at a different school or local community college. And if you're in high school, you may even be able to get college credit!

• A school-wide recycling program
• A thespian, chess, or writer's club
• LGTBAU group
• Pre-SAT or ACT study organization
• Technology club

Supercharge Your Studying with this Expert Series

Expert Q&A

Reader Videos

Share a quick video tip and help bring articles to life with your friendly advice. Your insights could make a real difference and help millions of people!

• If you're really struggling in a certain subject, get a tutor! Thanks Helpful 3 Not Helpful 0
• Before studying, do meditation to keep a free mind. Thanks Helpful 3 Not Helpful 1
• If you think you have some extra time in your hand, don't waste it. Study ahead so you know what's going on in class. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 1

Tips from our Readers

• Don't be afraid to ask your teacher questions if you don't understand a concept. Other students may have the same question you did, so this can help the teacher know what topics that they may need to spend additional time on.
• Try writing down your assignments and their due dates in a planner or calendar, and checking them off as you complete them. This can help you stay organized.
• Try involving your hobbies and interests into your studying. For example, if you like music, you could try making up a song to help you remember a topic.
• When you're studying for an exam, try making note cards. This can be a great way to help you remember key terms.

• Don't give out answers when having a quiz or an exam. Thanks Helpful 439 Not Helpful 58

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.simplypsychology.org/context-and-state-dependent-memory.html
• ↑ https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2020.00054
• ↑ Ashley Pritchard, MA. School Counselor. Expert Interview. 4 November 2019.
• ↑ David Jia. Academic Tutor. Expert Interview. 23 February 2021.
• ↑ https://www.fnu.edu/10-reasons-form-study-group/
• ↑ Ted Coopersmith, MBA. Academic Tutor. Expert Interview. 12 May 2021.
• ↑ http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/cramming-for-a-test-don-t-do-it-237733
• ↑ https://www.npr.org/2006/09/04/5738848/a-better-breakfast-can-boost-a-childs-brainpower
• ↑ https://psychcentral.com/news/2011/02/09/taking-breaks-found-to-improve-attention/23329.html
• ↑ https://www.piqe.org/back-to-school-success-begins-at-home/

About This Article

If you want to be a smart student, the best thing you can do is to turn up to every class. In class, focus on taking effective notes, such as by turning sentences into charts or creating mnemonics to help you memorize things. Then, use your notes to review the material covered in class so you don't fall behind. Additionally, organize your materials for each subject in a separate folder so you know where everything is when you need it. You'll also want to start working on projects or studying for tests a week or 2 in advance so you're not cramming at the last minute. For tips on how to get great grades for a test or project, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How Does Homework Help You Be Smarter?

All students hate doing homework. If you try to find the school or college student who considers homework an important part of studying and pays a lot of attention to it, you will probably fail. There are lots of reasons for such behavior. First of all, we mustn’t forget about the complexity of the assignments that are set by teachers and professors. Students don’t have enough time to do it because they are busy with work and so on. 

But it doesn’t mean that all students should hold the view that homework is redundant. Teachers ask you to complete this or that assignment or to carry out research to help you absorb the material, consolidate your knowledge, and master the skills you acquired in lessons. Moreover, students who do homework regularly develop good study habits and get the desire to learn something new. All of these aspects make students smarter, and it’s one of the key objectives of studying. 

Where Can Students Get Assignment Writing Help?

People who’ve graduated from school and college about 10-15 years ago are used to finding assistance in books or asking their friends for help. Modern students also can do homework together and look for information on the Internet; however, it isn’t the most popular way of dealing with a huge academic workload. They prefer finding an online essay writing service and getting their assignments done by professional writers.

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PEOPLE's 100 Companies That Care in 2024: Employers Putting Their Communities First

The businesses on PEOPLE's annual list go the extra mile to honor their customers, empower their employees — and make the world a better place

Alycee Byrd

Together with global workplace authority Great Place to Work, we surveyed companies across the U.S. to find those that best demonstrate outstanding respect, care and concern for their communities, their employees and the environment. The rankings are based on more than 1.3 million survey responses from companies representing more than 8.2 million employees. Companies interested in applying for next year’s list can visit Great Place to Work .

Cisco , a worldwide leader in technology that powers the Internet, has a purpose-driven mission: to power an inclusive future for all. And that mission drives the San Jose-based IT giant well beyond technological innovation.

In 2018, Cisco made an historic pledge to address homelessness in Santa Clara County, Calif., committing $50 million in grant funding over five years — the largest corporate donation of its kind at the time. The aim: to make homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring in the county; to develop a model that could be replicated outside of Silicon Valley; and to encourage other like-minded companies to join the fight. In the past six years, that commitment has been exceeded, with more than $130 million invested worldwide. This includes fruitful partnerships with nonprofit organizations like Covenant House, Habitat for Humanity and Communità di Sant’Egidio in Italy. 

"At Cisco, we are driven by our Purpose to power an inclusive future for all, and it's an honor to see our team and partners recognized in People . Awards like Companies that Care empower a growing movement to make sure individuals and populations don't get left behind in this transformative age," says Francine Katsoudas, Chief People, Policy and Purpose Officer at Cisco. "This past year and for the fifth consecutive year, over 80 percent of Cisco employees supported communities and causes they love. But giving back and helping all individuals realize their full potential is not just fundamental to Cisco's culture — it's fundamental to our shared future."

The Hilton Global Foundation and Tempo

Hilton — a leading global hospitality company with a portfolio of 22 world-class brands comprising 7,300 properties and nearly 1.1 million rooms in 123 countries and territories — is committed to championing organizations whose efforts support destination stewardship, climate action, career development and community resilience. 

Through its charitable arm, the Hilton Global Foundation, the company has awarded grants that have positively impacted more than 1.4 million people and provided critical relief to impoverished communities worldwide. In September 2023, in partnership with the Planet Water Foundation, Hilton team members helped install an AquaTower water filtration system in Puebla, Mexico, to provide the community access to clean drinking water.

“Hilton was founded on the belief that hospitality is a powerful force for good. Hilton and the Hilton Global Foundation are harnessing the transformative power of hospitality by driving meaningful impact in the communities where we live, work and travel,” says Katherine Lugar, EVP, Corporate Affairs and president, Hilton Global Foundation.

The Wonderful Company

Wonderful College Scholars

The Wonderful Company — the Santa Monica-based enterprise that grows, harvests, packages and markets popular brands like FIJI Water and POM Wonderful — wants to ensure that the next generation of leaders receives quality education.

That’s why children of Central Valley, Calif.-based employees (among more than 5,000 students from 70 high schools supported across the region annually) are eligible to receive company-sponsored scholarships of up to $30,000 per year, as well as individual college and career guidance. Beginning in ninth grade, they offer one-on-one counseling, weekly homework labs and individualized tutoring sessions. They also offer college-campus tours and assistance with financial aid applications. 

“As Wonderful Neighbors, our commitment is to actively listen to community needs and collaborate on game-changing opportunities,” said Andy Anzaldo, chief operating officer of corporate social responsibility at The Wonderful Company in 2023. “All to improve the lives and opportunities of generations to come.”

Marriott International

A hospitality leader based in Bethesda, Md., Marriott International encompasses a portfolio of nearly 8,900 properties across more than 30 leading brands in 141 countries and territories. That global positioning has given the company a unique perspective on doing good work throughout the world. 

In 2022, Marriott made a public commitment to hire at least 1,500 refugees in the U.S. by 2025, and the following year they doubled down on 1,500 more hires throughout their European region by 2026. Putting a human face on this commitment are Ehsanullah Safi and Shah Faisal Safi, cousins who fled Afghanistan in 2021, and who are now proud associates at the Marriott Bethesda Downtown at Marriott HQ.

“The Safi cousins are fantastic associates, passionate and hardworking,” says Apoorva Gandhi, Senior Vice President Multicultural Affairs, Social Impact and Business Councils. “They’ve earned enough to buy their first family car, and their shifts are aligned so they can travel from home together. It provides them with not only income, but opportunities for the future. I text with their uncle, and he tells me they love their job, they love Marriott, and they love America. Multiply this hundreds of times, and you can begin to see the impact that we’re having on people’s lives."

Veterans United Home Loans

Veterans United , headquartered in Columbia. Mo., helps service members and veterans achieve the American Dream of homeownership — but the company also demonstrates a strong commitment to literacy and education. 

Through its partnership with Scholastic Book Fairs, the Veterans United Foundation has been successful in bringing book fairs to Title 1 schools across Missouri, Kansas, Texas and Virginia, with the goal to foster a love of reading. Hundreds of VUF volunteers help set up displays, read aloud to children and help students select age- and reading-level-appropriate titles they can take home to enjoy. 

“Through the data Scholastic gathered,” explains Erika, a VUF manager, “we learned there were some schools that hadn’t had a book fair in more than ten years.” Said another volunteer: “When the students came in today, their eyes were as big as saucers. It just means the world to these kids.”

A key innovator of computer graphics and A.I.,the Santa Clara, Calif.-based NVIDIA recognizes its passionate, driven employees, who know where and how they want to make an impact in their communities. 

To help inspire even more involvement, NVIDIA’s Inspire 365 program rewards giving back by doubling charitable donations, organizing volunteer opportunities and even matching employees to nonprofits specifically aligned with their interests. In each office, employee representatives, called Inspire Champions, work closely with the company’s charitable arm, the NVIDIA Foundation, to identify causes most important to local employees and nearby communities. In the last fiscal year, more than 40 percent of NVIDIANs participated in the Foundation's Inspire 365 efforts, donating more than $16 million and logging nearly 40,000 hours of hands-on volunteer time.

“[We] here at NVIDIA feel our work is meaningful and impactful to the world at large,” says one team member. “Our CEO [Jensen Huang] says, ‘Come to NVIDIA to do your life's work,’ and we feel that is exactly what we are doing.”

Wegmans Food Markets, Inc.

Wegmans , the supermarket chain with more than 100 locations in the eastern U.S., lives the values of the late Robert Wegman: “Never think of yourself; always help others.” 

One way the company is succeeding in giving back is through its Perishable Pickup Program, which donates unsold perishable food items to local food pantries and food banks throughout the week, getting the items to people who need them desperately. What began as a limited program comprised mainly of donations from in-store bakeries has expanded to include items from the dairy, deli, cheese shop, meat and produce departments, and restaurant. In all, last year Wegmans donated more than 32 million pounds of perishable and nonperishable food to help reduce hunger.

“At Wegmans, we believe good people working toward a common goal can accomplish anything they set out to do,” said CEO Colleen Wegman in the company’s 2023 impact report. “[We] continue to deliver against our mission to help people live healthier and better lives.”

BayCare Health System

Baycare Health Systems

Formed in 1997 by a group of local hospitals determined to continue providing not-for-profit health care to the community, BayCare Health System provides an integrated network of services, with 16 hospitals, ambulatory and physician services throughout the Tampa Bay and West Central Florida regions. 

BayCare realizes that effective care doesn’t end when a patient leaves the hospital, and that nutrition is an essential component of wellness, which is why they ask everyone they discharge if they have enough food at home, providing food insecure individuals with “healing bags,” a two- to three-day supply of nonperishable items, like pasta, canned goods and grains. 

“We strive to bridge the gap between hunger and health, treating food insecurity as we would any other barrier to well-being,” says Lisa Bell, BayCare’s director of Community Benefit, whose team has helped drive implementation of the initiatives across the system. “By addressing this fundamental need, we are not only nourishing bodies but also fostering stronger, healthier communities.”

Sheetz, Inc.

Founded in 1952, Sheetz —based in Altoona, Pa.—is one of America's fastest-growing family-owned and -operated convenience restaurant chains, with more than 680 stores in six states serving 1.6 million customers daily.

Supporting accessibility and increasing employment opportunities are core values at Sheetz, which led the company to create the Store Team Helper program, which places individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The pilot program has already helped 20 people, including Abel Keith of Hollidaysburg, Pa., gain experience and employment in multiple locations in Pennsylvania. 

“As soon as Abel walks through the door in the morning, it sounds like a sitcom in here because we're all like, ‘ Heyyyyy , Abel!’" says store manager Sarah Rogal. “He has brought patience and laughter to our store. He pays attention to all of our life happenings and asks about them. He loves to say hello and greets any customer he sees. He pumps us up when he starts dancing to the songs on the radio. There is never not a smile on his face, and he always fist bumps us goodbye and asks when he'll see us next. Any task that is asked of him, he says, ‘You got it, Boss,’ with a smile. He’s always eager to learn something new.”

The consumer finance specialists at Synchrony , based in Stamford, Ct., know that it’s essential to invest in the development and retention of team members. So they’ve taken great strides to offer skills training, education, mentorship and learning and development opportunities. 

Through Synchrony’s Tech Apprenticeship Program, employees are offered a year of intensive training and education in different tracks, including artificial intelligence (AI), business continuity and disaster recovery, information security and tech supplier management. Open to anyone in a non-tech role, with or without a college degree or technical training, the program is designed to develop technology, business and leadership skills. 

“I have the curiosity to learn new things all the time,” says Brittany Weisbeck, an AI apprentice who started her career at Synchrony in 2014. Weisbeck, a working mother who doesn’t have a college degree, calls the opportunity life-changing: “This unique program, which will prepare me for a career in artificial intelligence, is a huge opportunity for me, and I’m so grateful for it every day.”

Rocket Companies

Rocket Company

Rocket Companies , a fintech platform centered on personal finance and consumer technology, operates under a For-More-Than-Profit philosophy, recognizing that businesses and communities are inextricably linked.

Since 2010, Rocket Companies’ team members have volunteered more than one million hours nationwide, the equivalent of 114 years of time donated to community cleanup, student mentoring, building homes and much more. In Rocket’s hometown of Detroit, the company is helping citizens buy homes and complete necessary repairs on their current homes. The Rocket Community Fund developed the Motor City Contractor Fund (MCCF), alongside their partners at Community Reinvestment Fund, Invest Detroit and Barton Malow Builders. MCCF, which was launched as a $10 million pilot program, will remove barriers for and provide Detroit-based contractors with a suite of services to grow their capacity and succeed in the increasingly competitive local marketplace. 

“The support we give our community and the city of Detroit is amazing,” says one employee. “It is the reason I came to work for the company. Our CEO and the Rocket Community Fund really support the Detroit, and I am helping support that mission.”

Paramount Software Solutions

Paramount Software Solutions , an emerging technology product, technology services and staffing solutions company based in Atlanta, uses a “Rethink, Reinvent and Give Back” paradigm to guide their business. Socially-driven innovation is at the heart of Farm To Plate, their flagship blockchain-for-food-supply-chain product, which connects consumers, farmers, producers, manufacturers and logistics — promoting food and financial sustainability and reducing waste. 

“Our goal is simple yet profound,” explains Pramod Sajja, Paramount’s president and CEO. “To build a transparent, sustainable and trusted food supply chain that benefits producers and consumers, ensuring that every product’s journey from farm to plate is one of integrity.”

Paramount is also a lead sponsor of the Vibha Dream Mile race in Atlanta. Vibha, a platinum-rated nonprofit rated among the top 0.5 percent of 1.8 million listed nonprofits in the world, uses the funds generated from the race and other initiatives to help drive child development programs in the United States and India. To date, the Dream Mile has raised more than $3 million to support more than 180,000 children.

Comcast NBCUniversal

Comcast NBCUniversal , the global media and technology company based in Philadelphia, is committed to helping low-income families access the Internet so they can fully participate in educational opportunities and the digital economy. Working alongside a network of nonprofit partners and city leaders, in 2020 the corporation launched Lift Zones, providing free WiFi inside centrally located neighborhood community centers for students, adults and seniors. 

Comcast NBCUniversal has activated more than 1,250 Lift Zones nationwide, helping more than six million unique users get connected. More than 92 percent of sites with Lift Zones reported that the functionality helped them increased digital equity in their communities. 

“We will continue to create even more packages and options to offer our customers and the communities we serve,” explains Broderick D. Johnson, Executive Vice President, Public Policy, and Executive Vice President, Digital Equity for Comcast Corporation. “We’ve made so much progress closing the digital divide and we remain committed to doing our part to ensure more Americans stay connected and that no one gets left behind.”

Alston & Bird LLP

Alston and Bird

Based in Atlanta, Alston & Bird is a leading international law firm with core practices spanning complex litigation, corporate, intellectual property and tax — but the firm’s culture is steeped in service and teamwork. 

To help create an intentionally inclusive culture, Alston & Bird’s D&I and Pro Bono Committees joined together in 2020 to launch a Racial Justice Initiative, and that important work continues today through steady pro bono work, racial justice panel discussions, a Racial Justice Fund and much more. The fund has supported Michelle Mapp, an Equal Justice Works Fellow, who has advocated for the passage of a Tenant Right to Counsel law in South Carolina to prevent eviction and displacement of low-income and African American households. In total, last year, the firm completed 56,682 pro bono hours, with 98 percent of associates participating. 

“The firm continues to place a true emphasis on culture, which shows in who we hire and how people interact with one another on a daily basis,” says one associate. “This is a truly collegial place to work. Showing that its priorities are in the right place, the firm highly emphasizes diversity, inclusion and pro bono work.”

Publix Super Markets

Publix Super Markets , currently operating 1,377 stores across eight states, cares for its employees and the communities they live and work in — especially in times of need. 

When Hurricane Ian struck in 2022, the Publix store in Fort Myers Beach, Fla., was forced to close for months. On May 25, 2023, it reopened, with associates and locals joining in the celebration. The store handed out care packages to the first 300 customers and provided boxed lunches to the residents and construction crews still working to rebuild homes and infrastructure on the island. Publix also donated $5,000 in shelf-stable food, hygiene items, paper products and a Publix gift card for the purchase of additional needs to Beach Baptist Church to go toward efforts to help those still impacted by the storm.

“At Publix, we remain committed to standing side-by-side with residents and our associates as the community rebuilds,” said Lindsey W., Publix media relations manager at the time. “We are honored and privileged to serve our customers and welcome them back to their Publix store.”

Jeff Harasimowicz with Dream Foundation

Headquartered in San Francisco, Turo Inc. is the world’s largest car sharing marketplace, with a vibrant community of trusted hosts across the US, Canada, France, Australia and the U.K.

For the past five years, Turo has partnered with Dream Foundation, the only national dream-granting organization for terminally ill adults, to help fulfill end-of-life wishes. In collaboration with the Dream Foundation, Turo has helped facilitate 239 “dreams,” with 92 accomplished last year alone. 

This includes one for Debra Sodomka of Burnsville, Minn., who at 63 was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a terminal brain cancer. With Turo’s assistance in assuring the Sodomkas could travel comfortably and for free, Debra and her husband Joe went Seattle to see their musician son Dan perform on stage and celebrate his album release. “Every parent likes to see their children experience their own dreams,” said Debra of the trip. “To be a part of that...was amazing.”

Nugget Market, Inc.

Nugget Market

Nugget Markets , family-owned and -operated in Northern California since 1926, is a family of 16 stores, a central kitchen, a warehouse distribution center and a corporate support team, all dedicated to creating an extraordinary grocery experience — and an eco-friendly one at that.

Nugget recently celebrated its first full year of implementing the use of clean, green energy at half of their store locations with Bloom Energy fuel cells. The cells provide those eight stores with certified clean energy 24/7, eliminating the need for reliance on PG&E — even when the power grid suffers interruption.The cells generate a total of 16.4 billion watts of electricity annually, eliminating 4.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide from the environment — the equivalent of saving 225,000 gallons of gasoline. Nuggets eco-friendly efforts are pushed forward by a dedicated sustainability coordinator and “Green Guru” teams in every store.

“It’s an incredible company to work for,” says one associate. “They truly care. In the end, we’re more than just workers — we’re family.”

Bank of America

Joel Plotkin

Bank of America creates a culture of caring for its employees by respecting work-life balance. The financial institution headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., offers an industry-leading sabbatical program to recognize and reward loyal employees. Teammates with 15 years of continuous service have the opportunity to take an additional four weeks of paid time off to recharge and refocus. After reaching 20 or 25 years, five weeks are available; after 30 years, six weeks are available.

In 2023, One BoA employee used the opportunity to take her young son from California to Nevada to meet his 87-year-old great-grandmother, the woman who raised her — a meeting that hadn’t yet happened because of the pandemic. In all, she was able to take a month to recharge and invest in joyful family times.

“It felt so amazing to spend quality, uninterrupted time with Jimi, and see him experience so many new things he was not able to because of the pandemic,” she says. “We made memories I will never forget.”

American Express

Leading global payment company American Express is committed to helping their team members — and community members — reach their career goals.

Through the American Express Leadership Academy, funded through the Amex Foundation, they have invested more than $100 million to support 165,000 leaders over the past 16 years. Many of those Academy alumni are now senior leaders and CEOs of nonprofits around the world. Amex relaunched the Academy in late 2022 to amplify its impact, focusing on “Resilient Changemakers” and helping nonprofit leaders around the world accelerate their development and build skills to meet the unique challenges facing communities post-pandemic. The 2023 class of 75 underrepresented nonprofit leaders from the U.S., Canada and Latin America took part online and on site in talks and panel discussions with cultural, governmental and philanthropic leaders; got hands-on training in communication and storytelling; and received peer coaching and one-on-one coaching, with a focus on combating burnout.

Alice Lin Fabiano, Vice President of Community Impact and Chief Operating Officer of the American Express Foundation recently said of the 2024 class:  "We're thrilled… to support the development of nonprofit leaders worldwide. We aim to strengthen the skills of leaders who are embedded within and represent the communities they serve so they can deliver solutions to societal challenges during uncertain times."

Hyatt Hotels Corporation

Hyatt Hotels Corporation , headquartered in Chicago, is a leading global hospitality company, with more than 1,300 properties in 76 countries — and it's a company guided by the purpose to care for people so they can be their best. 

Recognizing that economic inequality is at the root of systemic injustice, Hyatt has adopted a robust supplier diversity program intended to drive social change and racial equity by expanding opportunities for diverse- and women-owned businesses. The corporation set a goal to expand its purchasing with minority-owned businesses, specifically Black-owned businesses. By the end of 2022, Hyatt had surpassed its stated goal, with Black supplier spending accounting for 34 percent of these new diverse- and women-owned suppliers. In the past four years, more than 500 new Black suppliers have been identified, and their goods and services elevate the Hyatt experience. 

Derrick Morrow, general manager of Hyatt Regency Atlanta, calls partnering with Symphony Chips, a local Black-own potato chip producer, an honor. “We want to represent the community we serve,” he says.

Plante Moran

Southfield, Mich.-based Plante Moran , one of the nation’s largest audit, tax, consulting and wealth management firms, bases its company culture, according to one team member, on the Golden Rule: “It makes us unique. We care about our people. We care about our clients. We care about our community. We care about our families. And we are dedicated to bringing the highest level of client service while giving our staff the opportunity to grow and thrive in a fun and caring environment.”

That fun and caring environment was on full display at a recent Black History Month Art Experience, a tribute to Black excellence that transformed Plante Moran’s largest offices into an art institute and sparked joy for all who attended. Arranged by the nearly 200-person-strong African American staff resource group, the event provided a venue for Black artists to display their work, and for local Black business owners to network and support each other. 

“It was a whole experience , says team member Clenetta, “from the way the food was displayed to the live music and dancing to the joy of being together. The night was a total success. And it was a surreal moment, being able to celebrate ourselves, our history and our heritage.”

Wild About You Photography

Salesforce , a leader in customer relationship management based in San Francisco, proves that you can see the best in people when the worst happens. 

Following the catastrophic 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, a group of passionate Salesforce  employees launched a grassroots fundraising campaign that had an initial goal of $100,000. By May 2023, they had raised more than $1 million, which was used to provide supplies, healthy meals and emotional support to those impacted. They also maintained a direct line of communication with philanthropy partners in Turkey and Syria, including Save the Children, CARE and World Central Kitchen.

“The campaign is the perfect example of Salesforce’s unique culture at its best,” says Regional Vice President and Turkish citizen Hayal Koc. “At Salesforce, not only do we believe that social impact is a core part of our DNA, but we are empowered as individual employees to drive action and make an impact. With this campaign, we humanized an environmental disaster, raised awareness about a tragedy in a part of the world that is commonly overlooked and demonstrated that each of us can truly make a difference.”

Team members at Baird , an employee-owned international financial services firm based in Milwaukee, believe that giving back isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s at the core of what it means to call a community home.

Each year, during Baird Gives Back Week, associates and their families come together to donate their time. They set a firmwide record in 2023, with more than 2,500 Baird volunteers from 103 locations participating, more than 7,700 hours of service logged and 223 charitable organizations supported. In one act of respect, Baird associates came together with other organizations on Memorial Day to plant 27,000 flags representing fallen service members from Wisconsin (see above). 

“From the top executives down to the administrative staff,” says one associate, “Baird cares about its employees and community involvement, and they focus their attention on maintaining a positive work environment for everyone.”

SAP America, Inc.

Andreea Cardani/San Jose Sharks

A global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP lets its associates know: Care isn’t simply a verb; it’s a way of being. And that includes care for the environment and being a responsible steward of the planet’s natural resources. 

The Newtown Square, Pa.-based company is working to become carbon neutral, following an “avoid-reduce-compensate" approach. SAP is increasing the number of e-cars in its car fleet, setting a CO2 price tag for business flights and reducing greenhouse gas emissions overall. SAP has also pledged to address plastic pollution through a commitment with customers to strive for a dramatically cleaner ocean by 2030 at the World Economic Forum in Davos. And SAP set a goal of planting 21 million trees by the end of 2025.

“Everyone has the opportunity to make change happen,” wrote Henry Levenberg, a SAP learning management associate, to mark Earth Day. “But it’s up to us to make the change for the better."

SCAN Health Plan

SCAN Health Plan is a mission-driven not-for-profit organization that operates Medicare Advantage health plans that serve nearly 300,000 members in five states, as well as four subsidiary medical groups, to support seniors.

To promote wellness in employees’ everyday lives, SCAN has introduced “Get Moving” competitions to encourage daily exercise, offered Fitbits to help team members track their fitness and activity levels and made available other health and wellness resources, like HeadSpace for mindfulness and meditation and DietID for healthy eating.

“SCAN sticks by their mission to keep seniors healthy and independent, always thinking of new ways to service our diverse group of members,” says one team member. “Employees are treated the same. The organization always thinks about our needs as employees and recognizes our hard work and efforts throughout the year with various rewards and company events and outings.”

Headquartered in San Jose, Cadence is a leader in electronic systems design — and they use that to industry-leading know-how to tackle global challenges.

Recently, Cadence employees teamed up with RefuSHE, a nonprofit based in Kenya, to support refugee girls and women by developing two important projects: a new e-learning and wellness website that is also mobile-friendly, and revamping their flagship education model, the Girl’s Empowerment Program. RefuSHE supports vulnerable women refugees through unique programs that provide equal access to safety, education and economic prosperity. A group of six employees developed a fully functioning e-learning and wellness platform for RefuSHE users with low literacy levels. This platform will help participants learn the foundations of running a small business and vocational skills, and introduce them to the importance of mental health support. In all, the RefuSHE project impacted more than 450 learners, totaling over 2,000 hours of pro bono consulting valued at $420,000.

“This company's work culture is truly exceptional, making it an inspiring place to work,” says a team member. “At the end of each day, you will feel proud of making a meaningful difference.”

Camden Property Trust

New Hope Housing Berry Project

Houston-headquartered Camden Property Trust is a publicly traded, multi-family real estate investment trust that provides homes and exceptional customer service to more than 90,000 people across the country.

Through Camden’s partnership with New Hope Housing, they are transforming lives, helping to provide life-stabilizing, affordable and permanent housing and services for at-risk individuals in the Houston community. This includes people with physical or cognitive challenges, seniors, veterans, the formerly homeless, and individuals and families living on limited incomes. Camden Builders has completed 10 New Hope communities providing 1,541 homes, with more in the pipeline.

“Camden Builders is a true partner,” says Joy Hrovat Brown, Chief Executive Office of New Hope Housing. “They share our core commitment to excellence and deploy a superb team of project managers, supervisors and support personnel. Camden is dedicated, professional, thorough and responsive. I feel relieved when working with Camden because I know that I can trust them to act as an ambassador for New Hope’s interests.”

Bell Bank , headquartered in Fargo, N.D., shows intentional care with its employees, customers and the broader community. Since 2008, the company’s Pay It Forward initiative has empowered more than $26 million in giving, primarily by providing every full-time Bell employee $1,000, and every part-time employee $500, every year to give away as they choose to individuals, families and organizations in need. 

The stories of Pay It Forward’s impact are inspiring, having provided everything from backpacks to shoes to freshwater wells, and impacting people in Bell Bank employees’ own backyards and across the world. In one instance, Bell Bank employees — inspired by second graders hosting a lemonade stand to raise money for a classmate with brain cancer — teamed up to raise more than $30,000 to help the student and his family. 

“People care about one another here, and that makes for an amazing workplace,” says one team member. “The company gives back to the community and shows a high level of interest and compassion for the employees.”

World Wide Technology

WORLD WIDE TECHNOLOGY

Founded in 1990, St. Louis-based World Wide Technology (WWT) is a technology solutions provider leading the AI and Digital Revolution. 

As a good steward of the environment, WWT is striving to reduce waste and water use, two factors they believe tend to get overlooked in the global race to lessen greenhouse-gas emissions. To date, WWT has achieved 51 percent waste diversion from landfills through cardboard, wood, plastic and single-stream recycling, and is on track to meet a 75 percent diversion goal from landfills by 2030. WWT is also on track to achieve water neutrality by 2040. 

“WWT was founded and built on our culture and core values, and it's these core values that differentiate our company from others,” says an employee. “Steadfast leadership driving consistent culture at its core makes this company a great place to work.”

Delta Air Lines

Casey Sykes for Rank Studios/Delta Air Lines

More than 100,000 Delta people deliver a world-class customer experience on more than 4,000 daily flights to more than 275 destinations on six continents, connecting people to places and each other. 

Listening to employee feedback has helped Delta better serve its team. Through survey responses from more than 40,000 people, they learned that financial wellness was top of mind, leading them to launch an emergency savings program rooted in financial education. Team members earn $1,000 after completing a financial education course and individual financial coaching to help employees decrease debt, improve their credit scores and start (and grow) a rainy-day fund. Today, more than a third of Delta people have participated, and those who completed the program indicated a 77 percent increase in feeling in control of their overall financial situation, with a 140 percent increase in feeling in control of their ability to save for goals other than emergencies.

“Delta has an amazing customer/employee centric culture that permeates every aspect of what we do,” says a team member. “The values and expectations are clearly set, and people do the right thing because it's the right thing to do.”

DHL Express

With a global network in more than 220 countries and territories, DHL Express is the most international company in the world and can offer solutions for all logistics needs. 

Of course, you don’t get to be an expert in global transport and logistics without being willing to go the extra mile — and that extends to finding innovative ways to support local kids and veterans abroad. Case in point: For its Operation Cookie/Hometown Heroes campaign, DHL partners with Girls Scouts of Nassau to deliver boxes of cookies to U.S. military personnel and first responders stationed overseas and on Long Island, N.Y. They successfully delivered more than 85,000 in May, the 19th year of the partnership. This initiative brings smiles and a taste of home to those who dedicate themselves to serving their communities and country. 

“It has been inspiring to collaborate with the GSNC over the past 19 years to support Operation Cookie, which acknowledges the sacrifices of those serving our country and community," Pawel Zagaja, Senior Director of JFK Gateway, DHL Express, said earlier this year. “The growth of this program and the increasing number of donated cookie boxes each year is a heartwarming testament to the strong community spirit in Nassau County. We’re proud to leverage DHL’s extensive global air network to deliver a sweet taste of home to our hometown heroes and the brave U.S. servicemen and women stationed abroad."

Deloitte — which provides audit, consulting, tax and advisory services to the majority of Fortune 500 companies — promotes a culture of inclusion, collaboration, high performance and purpose. 

Last September, in collaboration with Citi, Salesforce, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the World Economic Forum, Deloitte helped launch Yes SF, the first location-based UpLink challenge created in direct response to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 11: to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. The Yes SF Urban Sustainability Challenge engages local organizations to bring specialized expertise to help create equal access to opportunity and a more sustainable future. The mission of the Challenge is aligned with Deloitte’s social impact strategy and Deloitte’s ongoing efforts to help drive equity in places with the greatest need.

“The Challenge provides an opportunity to help support the San Francisco community in addressing some of its biggest challenges,” said Kwasi Mitchell, chief purpose and DEI officer at Deloitte. “This type of effort is foundational to our organization’s purpose and commitment to social impact in the communities where we live and work. We hope it will help catalyze systemic change by creating a more sustainable and equitable future for this city.”

Edward Jones

As a national presenting sponsor of the Alzheimer’s Association Walk to End Alzheimer’s, the financial specialists at Edward Jones participate in more than 600 walks held nationwide each year. More than 100,000 participants have walked under the Edward Jones banner, and the company is well on its way to its pledged $50 million goal.

Edward Jones’s continued support enhances the Alzheimer’s Association’s care and support programs, provides educational materials, funds critical Alzheimer’s research and impacts early detection. 

As managing partner Penny Pennington remarked, “This is a cause that’s near and dear to our hearts at Edward Jones. The reason why is that Alzheimer’s and other dementias rob people of their treasure. Their financial treasure, yes, but even more importantly, their treasured memories and the relationships with the people that they love the most. [...] As of yet, there’s not a cure and there’s not a survivor, but with all of our help there will be.”

IHG Hotels & Resorts

IHG Hotels Resorts

IHG Hotels & Resorts  is a global hospitality company with a purpose to provide True Hospitality for Good. With a family of 18 hotel brands and IHG One Rewards, one of the world's largest hotel loyalty programs, IHG has more than 6,000 hotels in more than 100 countries, and more than 1,800 in the development pipeline.

As a global company, IHG considers addressing human trafficking a key component of its larger commitment to responsible business. That’s why IHG proudly partners with leading anti-human trafficking organizations ECPAT-USA and Polaris on education and advocacy efforts. IHG also supports the international nonprofit organization It’s a Penalty, which works to stop trafficking around sporting events, and Atlanta nonprofit organization Wellspring Living in the U.S., which focuses on transforming the lives of those at risk for or victimized by sexual exploitation. 

At a 2023 anti-trafficking forum held in Atlanta, Elie Maalouf, CEO, Americas, IHG Hotels & Resorts, said: “IHG’s purpose in convening this conversation with our partner Polaris, trafficking survivors, elected officials and businesses is twofold: to keep trafficking prevention in the spotlight, but also to shine a new light on barriers that prevent survivors’ livelihoods. Putting a stop to trafficking requires deep collaboration and commitment, from the hotel training we require across more than 4,300 Americas IHG hotels to partnering with our industry, nonprofits and government.”

Adobe Systems Incorporated

As technology continues to reshape how we connect and engage with the world around us, Adobe Systems Incorporated is guided by its mission to change the world through digital experiences. But thinking globally hasn’t stopped Adobe from acting locally, specifically when it comes to improving its beloved San Jose, Calif., home base of nearly 30 years.

Recently, Adobe strengthened its Hometown Commitment, an initiative that aims to create positive change in its communities by bringing the full power of Adobe — including financial support from the Adobe Foundation — to achieve the missions of nonprofit partners. Adobe’s commitment is a holistic approach that encompasses employee engagement, volunteering and advocacy, along with financial and product donations to drive positive social impact — utilizing creativity, uplifting creators and supporting the infrastructure of downtown to build a thriving community for employees and partners. To that end, the Adobe Foundation has invested millions to support the San Jose Downtown Association, HomeFirst, The Kelsey, Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, The Tech Interactive, Cinequest, Local Color SJ and the San José Museum of Art.

“Working at Adobe is more than just a job; it's an experience filled with purpose,” says a team member. “The culture here fosters creativity and collaboration, making it truly enjoyable to be a part of the team.”

Intuit Inc.

Intuit , a global technology platform with more than 100 million customers worldwide, states its corporate values plainly:  “Integrity Without Compromise,” “Courage,” “Customer Obsession,” “Stronger Together” and “We Care and Give Back.”

Living that commitment to care and give back, Intuit recently celebrated “Small Business Big Impact Day.” The event took place in 17 locations in several countries, with thousands of Intuit employees participating, injecting life into small businesses and communities, from the Bay Area to Bangalore to Sydney and beyond. In total, they poured more than $1 million into their small business customers, purchasing items to donate to dozens of local nonprofits. Teams also logged more than 10,000 volunteer hours sorting, packaging, creating, writing and delivering much-needed items and notes to individuals and communities in need.

“The values that we speak are truly at the center of our decisions,” says an employee. “ It is empowering to work for a company that backs their values.”

David Weekley Homes

Houston-based David Weekley is one of the largest privately held homebuilders in America, and they’re passionate about their “Building Dreams, Enhancing Lives” purpose. 

In 2023, 14 of the company's 19 local divisions, as well as the corporate office, completed Build Month projects to construct 1,015 beds. This included partnerships with 13 local chapters of Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Other projects included assembling bikes and skateboards for children in foster care, building dressers for families rebuilding their lives after suffering personal tragedy, painting a shed and building window flower boxes for children in foster care and performing onsite maintenance repairs at a camp for children and adults with disabilities. In all, David Weekley’s CARE Program has donated more than $275 million to charitable causes over the past 20 years.

“Our CARE program is one of my favorite aspects of working for David Weekley Homes,” said Pam Hirsh, a land purchasing analyst at David Weekley Homes in Denver, last July.  “Our annual Build Month projects really connect me to our community here and open my eyes to the different opportunities we have to help those around us.”

Chicago-based RSM US LLP , the leading provider of professional services to the middle market, believes in investing in their people and the communities in which they operate.

Each year, RSM embarks on its Season of Service, which honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of service by encouraging everyone across the firm to serve others and give back by sharing their time, talent and treasures throughout the winter holiday season. During last year’s Season of Service, local offices across the firm hosted events in their communities, including the highly anticipated #HashtagLunchbag event to pack lunches for those in need. Through this program, volunteers safely packed and delivered 11,012 meals to the homeless. RSM volunteers also donated to the Racial Understanding Campaign, a foundation program that matches up to $200,000 in donations to be split among 10 charities focused on providing youth with equitable access to resources and opportunities. In total, 448 volunteers provided 1,017 service hours and generated $73,130 in donations.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

Professional services giant PricewaterhouseCoopers is committed to employee development and the upskilling of its people to grow and expand their career opportunities.

Over the next five years, PwC will build upon this commitment through one of our biggest and boldest leadership investments yet. PwC's recent announcement of a $1 billion investment in AI over the next three years is a significant step toward the firm's goal of delivering human-led and tech-powered solutions to clients. As part of My+, PwC US will invest in upskilling its 65,000 people on AI tools and capabilities to work faster and smarter, help grow their careers and advise clients on the benefits of AI, as well as other transformative technology.

Says one PwC team member: “I feel like the company values me and shows that. My relationship leader tries to set me up for success. I have autonomy to do my job.”

Orrick is a forward-looking global law firm focused on advising the world’s most disruptive companies in three sectors: technology and innovation, energy and infrastructure and finance. The firm is known for innovating in the way it serves its clients and thinking differently about inspiring, sustainable careers.

To emphasize inclusion, Orrick introduced the The Orrick Inclusion Conversation Series. As part of the series, the firm hosts four or five conversations each year with leading thinkers on justice and equity. Orrick’s affinity groups nominate speakers and lead the conversations, which typically draw around 1,000 team members and clients. The company has also launched a Senior Leader Ally Sponsorship Program, which pairs Black and Latinx lawyers with a Board or Management Committee member to serve as their sponsor, ensuring that diverse lawyers have access to the most influential people at the firm.

“Orrick strives to give us the best of the best,” says a team member. “We are given the type of work-life balance that allows us freedom and confidence, therefore we all work harder. I am proud to be an employee of Orrick and cannot imagine working anywhere else.”

CrowdStrike

Austin-based CrowdStrike has redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data.

In keeping with theme of security, CrowdStrike has taken strong measures to ensure that all of its people feel safe and respected. In response to rapidly changing legislation in the U.S., CrowdStrike realized many employees and their loved ones felt unease over health and security concerns. CrowdStrike’s chief human resources officer and president hosted a company-wide town hall to support LGBTQ+ employees and their family members. The town hall included an overview of the resources available to employees as well as a listening session, where employees shared their experiences. CrowdStrike’s diversity, equity and inclusion team also created an LGBTQ+ benefits guide and gender transition guidelines and launched a best practice to display pronouns in company tools like Zoom, Slack and Workday.

Said one team member: “I found it very impactful that with the state of emergency declared for LGBTQ people's safety, people higher up in the company held a forum to discuss the concerns and pledge allyship and support to LGBTQ employees. Said another: “There have been benefits added in light of recent events in the United States. It gave me more confidence in upper management and made me feel supported.”

Target Corporation

Ackerman + Gruber

Retail giant Target , headquartered in Minneapolis, has a vision to co-create an equitable and regenerative future with the help of its guests, partners and communities. 

Making strides in sustainable operations, Target retrofitted its first net-zero energy store in 2022. It’s a powerful example of the company’s Target Forward strategy of sustainability, and a massive step toward Target’s commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. The Vista, Calif., location is its most sustainable yet. On its own, the store will generate more renewable energy than needed each year to power its operations. It also serves as a testing site for sustainability-minded innovations, providing learnings that will help inform future store designs.

“As a company and a member of the global community, it’s imperative for the health of both our business and our planet that we embrace new ways to move forward,” says Brian Cornell, chairman and CEO of the Target Corporation. “We know sustainability is tied to business resiliency and growth, and that our size and scale can drive change that is good for all. Target Forward deepens our collaboration with our partners and builds on our past efforts to ensure a better future for generations to come.”

Global technology leader HP Inc. shows care and consideration for its 12,000+ team members and the communities in which they live and work.

Last year, HP launched the “Better Me in ’23” campaign, with new tools, support and motivation to help employees determine their greatest areas of opportunity and create a personalized well-being plan to achieve their goals. HP has continued to partner with Included Health to support employees in navigating the complex world of healthcare. U.S. employees have the opportunity to receive one-on-one lifestyle coaching at no cost from certified professionals. HP also creates a culture of caring in their employees by providing benefits like four hours of paid volunteer time a month, which helps to foster an ongoing level of support for organizations in need. They also participate in “40 Days of Doing Good,” where teams around the world volunteer to support digital inequality, which resulted in 46,000 total volunteer hours in 2023.

“HP Inc. trusts and empowers employees to be their best selves,” says a team member. “We are offered great work-life balance, and the management is very supportive of growth within the company. I don't see myself leaving this company because of its values and support throughout the past years.”

Ronald McDonald House

West Des Moines, Iowa-based  ITA Group , which specializes in professional services and solutions, creates diverse and inclusive initiatives that promote team member achievement and success. 

ITA’s I.D.E.A. Council (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Allyship) works together throughout the year to bring educational resources to all team members through initiatives such as “It’s OK to Ask” Lunch and Learns, Conversations in Color, informative internal blog posts, trainings and activities that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Examples include company-wide DEI statements; current legislation impacting minorities and holiday education; Pride Month celebrations; gender-neutral dress codes; pronouns as part of hiring application process and employee email signatures; required leadership training with an external consultant on micro and macro aggressions; required team member DEI training as part of annual bonus plan; and support of our LGBTQ+YOU Committee,

The newest internal committee, the Remote Advisory Council, is made up of remote team members only. This group meets monthly to discuss topics important to remote workers and focuses on caring for their needs and ensuring they feel as ingrained in company culture as those who work in the office. “Leadership is 100 percent committed to implementing programs that lead to the personal fulfillment of its team members. It's an ever-evolving company,” says an employee.

Jamf — an information technology company that extends the legendary Apple experience people enjoy in their personal lives to the workplace — puts people at the core of everything they do.

To address the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, many Jamf team members in Poland opened their doors to Ukrainian families, volunteered at the border helping with supplies and support resources, and organized volunteer events to raise money. Jamf also reimbursed employees for expenses incurred while assisting refugees or aiding in the crisis including gas, food and lodging. Jamf employees were allowed to take any amount of VTO time related to supporting Ukraine, as well as taking the needed time to work on their mental health. Jamf Nation Global Foundation also donated an additional $30,000 for Polish Humanitarian Aid and People in Need.

“I truly believe Jamf cares about its employees and customers,” says an employee. “There are many opportunities to grow professionally here and find the best job for yourself. I have been given many opportunities to grow professionally and personally and I know that management cares a great deal about me.”

Louisville, Ky.-headquartered healthcare company Humana is committed to honoring the extraordinary commitments that active-duty military, veterans and their families have made for America. 

To this end, Humana provides employment and development opportunities to veterans and their spouses by honing in on uniquely qualified military talent. The company launched the Veterans Hiring Initiative in 2011 and has added more than 6,000 vets and military spouses to their ranks since. Humana has dedicated human resources team members focused exclusively on veterans and military spouses and helping Humana leaders better understand how this outstanding group of talent makes Humana an even better organization.

“I wanted to feel a sense of belonging and purpose in my career,” says one team member. “My husband is in the military, which caused us to move across the country, where we didn’t know anyone. I feel fortunate to work for a company that allows me to have a career, even as a military spouse. It has been such a stress relief knowing my position would be able to move with me.”

The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated

The Cheesecake Factory

The upscale casual restaurant chain based in Calabasas Hills, Calif., is one of the busiest in the country — but they remain committed to their purpose: to nurture bodies, minds, hearts and spirits by giving back to the communities they serve.

To tackle food insecurity, The Cheesecake Factory ’s Nourish Program takes excess food from restaurants to local nonprofits, which are, on average, seven miles from restaurants. In the past year-and-a-half, the company has donated more than 900,000 pounds of food in support of more than 700 nonprofits and food banks. The Nourish Program also benefits the environment. In 2022, the donations helped to avoid approximately 2.5 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The donation we received yesterday was tasty lasagna!” said a nonprofit partner in Irvine, Calif. “We used it to feed lunch to all 15 kids at our shelter today. We have small budget for groceries that we usually dip into twice a month, so donations help alleviate the worry of purchasing food. We truly appreciate it and are grateful for our partnership.”

PulteGroup, Inc.

Pulte Group

Atlanta-based PulteGroup is one of the nation's largest and most respected homebuilding companies, with operations in more than 40 markets throughout the country.

PulteGroup’s Built to Honor program has given more than 78 military families a new, mortgage-free home. Working in partnership with compassionate and generous suppliers and contractors, the program has gifted more than $35 million in value since 2013, in order to make one critical part of re-entry to civilian life easier for these men, women and their families. One such family — Matt and Helen Perry — received their new home on March 14, 2023, after three sequential head injuries during Matt's Marine combat mission in 2008 caused post-traumatic epilepsy secondary to closed brain injury, a chronic condition requiring lifetime monitoring and treatment. 

“Matt’s condition will only get worse,” says Helen, herself a former Army captain. “With this house, we don’t have to worry if he’ll be able to climb the stairs, because we have a wheelchair-accessible bedroom on the ground floor. We don’t have to worry if he’ll need special accommodations in the kitchen because we’ve been able to build all that in. I can’t tell you how much it means to us to not have to worry about the future anymore.”

As a leading content cloud platform, Box powers how the world works together — and the company puts that same purpose into making sure it’s working hard for its employees. 

Recently, Box has begun implementing Fresh Air Days, which are days off for mental health and well-being, and they also provide health and wellness stipends. Additionally, Box provides three days per year of PTO for Boxers to use volunteering.  

“Box is more than just a great place to work,” says one team member. “It's a community. Yes, we get meaningful work done and have exceptional clients. However, work has a different feeling when you are making a palpable impact with people you enjoy being around!"

Walmart Inc.

Walmart , the people-led, tech-powered omnichannel retailer, goes beyond employee training: They emphasize belonging and the role it plays in traditional diversity, equity and inclusion measures. 

In April 2023, Walmart appointed its first-ever Chief Belonging Officer (as an evolution of the Chief Diversity Officer role). The reason for this change was simple. In Walmart’s words: “Inclusion is an input. It’s about us — our efforts, our policies and programs. Belonging is an output. It’s about our people — their experiences, their day-to-day treatment, the way they feel at work.”  Walmart reports representation data twice a year through Culture, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (CDEI) reports that disclose metrics around demographics and progress in the inclusion space. This transparency helps them better understand which areas require their focus.

The company’s latest annual report shows Asian and Hispanic representation is up year to date across the board and the makeup of new-hire population is becoming increasingly diverse. This year, Walmart also scored 100 percent on the HRC corporate equality index, the sixth consecutive year to hit that benchmark.

Highlight Technologies, Inc.

Highlight Technology

Highlight Technologies, Inc. is an awarding-winning, employee-owned federal government contractor dedicated to providing digital government and mission support services to more than 20 federal agencies. 

Through HighlightCares, its corporate community service program, Highlight supports more than 16 national organizations and local communities, like the American Cancer Society and multiple local chapters of United Way, specifically their efforts to improve childhood literacy. (The Highlight team recently gave 179 books in addition to a $6,000 corporate donation.) HighlightCares also gave strong support to The Mission Continues and One Tree Planted, and hosted an Honor Run, where employees were challenged to compete for the fastest 5K time and for the most miles run or walked. In all, Highlight donated more than $12,000 and 50 hours to its causes, before closing out the year with support of HOPE Worldwide and their global food security initiative, raising more than $5,500 (or an estimated 55,000 meals) to those in need. 

“Highlight truly cares about its employees in a way that I believe is rare to find,” says one team member. "The intention to do good on behalf of or for the employees is behind every decision.”

Crowe LLP is a public accounting, consulting and technology firm with offices around the world. Crowe uses its deep industry expertise to provide audit services to public and private entities. 

Based on feedback from Crowe’s pulse surveys and focus groups, the company found that Black women are the most disconnected population in the firm and among the highest risk to leave. In response, Crowe launched its Lift as We Climb forums, bringing together early-career Black female professionals with Black female partners to establish deep connections while fostering community and support. Crowe’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer has hosted LAWC forums across many offices, including Atlanta, Chicago, Houston and Washington D.C., with plans to expand.

For Ariana Evans, who started her career at Crowe at the height of the pandemic in 2020, the forum provided a sense of community and belonging. “Being able to meet peers who look like me and have a safe space to talk about issues that other people might not understand was really important to me,” says the senior staff member in Consulting. “I left the forum feeling super motivated and energized.”

Microsoft Teams

Accenture is a leading global professional services company of 738,000 people in 120 countries. The company helps businesses, governments and organizations build their digital core, optimize operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance citizen services. 

Last February, Accenture introduced a way for its people to become Allies in Action. The global experience is designed to bring together all existing and new allies — to learn what it means to be an ally, practice inclusive behaviors and be role models for others. Allies in Action includes a variety of learning programs, events, community building activities and more. The experience introduces and amplifies Accenture’s five essential ally behaviors: activate awareness, practice presence, say something, have humility and inspire inclusion. All team members have the opportunity to become an ally in one or more of Accenture’s communities supporting racial and ethnic equality, LBGTIQ+, gender equality, mental health and well-being, neurodiversity, cross-cultural diversity, disability inclusion and cultural heritage.

Says one team member of the program: “The ability to be a Mental Health Ally and create a safe space for colleagues to talk and get support as needed [makes Accenture a great place to work].” Echoes another: “All people deserve love and compassion.”

Hilcorp Energy Company

Founded in 1989, Hilcorp Energy Company is the largest privately owned oil and natural gas producer in the United States. The Houston-based company says it's "built on the people and energy we produce, and strives for alignment with our fundamental core values.”

Hilcorp is creating “lifetime givers” in its employees, providing them with generous amounts of money to donate to organizations that touch them personally. The company also provides educational and informational resources to teach team members where their contributions can go furthest. As a result of the Growing Great Givers initiative, launched in partnership with the Greater Houston Community Foundation (GHCF) and the Alaska Community Foundation (ACF),  Hilcorp employees donated nearly $35 million to charities across the nation in 2022 alone, more than triple what their employees donate in a typical year. And 96 percent of Hilcorp employees continue to actively participate in the Hilcorp Giving Program

“The culture at Hilcorp is truly incomparable,” says a team member. “Our leadership puts the well-being of the employees at the forefront and truly cares.”

The Progressive Corporation

The Progressive Corporation provides insurance for personal and commercial autos and trucks, motorcycles, boats, recreational vehicles and homes.

Central to Progressive’s mission as a company is the implementation of programs that allow employees to better take care of themselves — and each other. Through a partnership with WinFertility, Progressive supports its people on their family-building journey with free 24/7 access to nurse care managers to help employees understand their benefits, explore treatment options, manage medication usage and ease emotional strain. Progressive also offers virtual care through its health clinic, and its fitness center teams offer hybrid fitness classes, allowing flexibility for employees to fit in a workout whether they’re in-office or working from home. Also offered: numerous events focused on mental health education, including webinars such as How to Define Yourself, Managing Social Anxiety, Understanding Eating Disorders, How to Slow Down and Accomplish More and The Pressure to Be Perfect.

“[Company leadership] goes above and beyond in providing a great work environment, even if you work from home,” says one team member. “Progressive is fair and really rewards those who work hard and do well. I've never felt more valued as an employee.”

Insmed , headquartered in Bridgewater, N.J., is a people-first global biopharmaceutical company striving to deliver first- and best-in-class therapies to transform the lives of patients facing serious diseases. 

The company is also taking definitive steps to become the best eco-friendly corporate citizen it can be. In May 2023, Insmed launched an employees-only company store for consumer goods and will be planting a tree for every item purchased. They have also partnered with the Arbor Day Foundation to plant more than 1,700 Aspen trees toward reforestation in the Pacific Northwest in honor of completing enrollment in the Phase 3 ASPEN clinical trial. Recently, Insmed also launched a pilot program to incorporate the use of electric vehicles into its fleet for field employees. The company also offers electric vehicle charging stations at its headquarters.

“Great culture!” says one team member of what makes Insmed such a special place to work. “And not as a tagline, but in a meaningful, intentional way. Insmed truly does foster an inclusive, diverse workforce in which everyone can have a voice.”

Service Now

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based ServiceNow provides a cloud platform and solutions that help digitize and unify organizations so that they can find smarter, faster, better ways to make work flow. 

For their employees, ServiceNow is making strides in the environmental, social and governance (ESG) spaces. The company has provided a carbon-neutral cloud platform for its customers and developed an approach to reach net zero by 2030. On the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) front, ServiceNow has improved their spend with diverse suppliers, achieving 19 percent (versus the industry average of 3 to 5 percent). Internally, their DEI work includes pay equity reviews and ensuring inclusive promotional practices. 

“The company strives to make it more than a job, encouraging belonging and involvement in the community,” says a team member. “We have a cycling team that rides for a global charity. Our executives are supportive by donating their time, including donating ‘executive experiences’ — golf or dinner with an executive — that we auction off to raise funds.”

Based in Dallas, Credera is a global, boutique consulting firm that creates measurable results at the intersection of strategy, data, transformation and technology. 

To build awareness and engagement, CredClimate began hosting Green Week — a week of team challenges, guest speaker events, book club discussions and other activities celebrating sustainability efforts and educating Credera team members on how to take action. CredClimate will host more educational events throughout the year, recognizing that the work of making a business more environmentally responsible is never truly done. Credera also holds a company-wide Service Day to give employees the opportunity to impact their communities. Recently, approximately 700 Credera team members paused client delivery and internal operations work to participate in 57 events across nine cities. Employees served a total of 3,000 hours with 27 nonprofit partners, impacting more than 72,000 lives.

“This company focuses on core values more than any company I have been a part of,” says a Credera team member. “They truly live up to the work-life balance expectations and care greatly for their employees.”

Credit Acceptance

Southfield, Mich.-based Credit Acceptance offers automobile dealers finance programs to help them sell vehicles to consumers, regardless of credit standing. That commitment to assisting people in getting a leg up can be life-changing — but life-changing work is just what Credit Acceptance does.

Case in point: Last year, Credit Acceptance granted a special wish to 4-year-old Lucy, who is battling leukemia, on behalf of its Sales Team of the Year. Before Lucy went to join the princesses at Disney World, the team threw her a sendoff celebration at a local park. The group celebrated Lucy’s wish come true with special “Lucy Got Her Wish” T-shirts and gifted Lucy’s family Mickey Mouse ears. 

Says Chris W., Sales Director of the Year: “This experience has been one of the highlights of my career at Credit Acceptance. We all know that we change dealers’ and credit-challenged individuals’ lives daily, but when you see the impact something like this has on an entire family and their closest friends firsthand, you realize we do much more than help dealers and customers. We really do change lives, including our own.”

Collaborative Solutions, a Cognizant Company

Collaborative Solutions, a Cognizant Company , is a leading global Finance and HR Transformation consultancy that leverages world-class cloud solutions to help deliver successful outcomes for clients. 

To successfully deliver a workplace at which team members can grow and thrive, the company has implemented “Collabie Convos,” video chats with small groups of employees and leaders, allowing for open dialogue to identify areas of improvement and celebrate wins within the organization. The convos are great opportunities not only for employees to share their voice and provide their input, but also to get to know the leadership team. The company also recognizes jobs well done through quarterly Collabie Champions, spotlighting team members who exemplify the core values of People, Collaboration, Knowledge, Balance and Integrity. Similarly, the Collabie Awards recognize hard work and dedication through peer nominations, in categories like Culture Champion, Outstanding Citizen and Mentor of the Year.

“An inclusive and collaborative culture” is how one team member sums up the company’s unique appeal. “Work-life balance is at forefront, and employees are extremely willing to lend a helping hand and support other growth and learning.”

Texas Health Resources, Inc.

Texas Health Resources 

Texas Health Resources, Inc has 28,000+ employees and is one of the largest faith-based nonprofit health systems in the U.S. and the largest in North Texas in number of patients served: more than 2 million annually across a service area of 8 million.

Texas Health’s culture of caring is demonstrated by its outstanding staff, like those at Texas Health Kaufman, who went above and beyond to help a patient with challenging home conditions. One of Texas Health’s paramedics would travel to the homes of patients who had been discharged to make sure they had everything they needed to recover and, hopefully, avoid being readmitted. When the paramedic saw that a particular patient lived in conditions unfavorable for improvement, he brought the situation to the attention of hospital leadership, who were moved to step in. 

“We got together on a Saturday and went to the patient’s home,” says Renea Kelley, a Texas Health radiologist. “We spent the entire day cleaning, visiting, going to buy food, getting medication and making sure the home and surroundings were a safe place for the patient to recover. We left with such a sense of pride in our hospital and each other. We worked hard —  but it didn’t seem like work at all.”

Jackson Healthcare

Alpharetta, Ga.-based Jackson Healthcare is one of the largest healthcare staffing companies in the U.S., which means they know a thing or two about support. 

That support extends to more than 430 nonprofits and organizations around the world. Jackson Healthcare provides medical care and training in underserved areas, and has performed more than 65,000 life-saving surgeries. They connect orphans in 31 countries with clinicians and provide educational programs and enrichment opportunities for children across the globe. Associates are enveloped in a culture of care and support each other when needed. Their LoveLifts Associate Relief Fund provides support to associates facing hardships. Working closely with partners, last year Jackson Healthcare served more than 39,000 orphans and foster children worldwide, and nearly 7.5 million students through educational programs and enrichment opportunities. 

“I like the values and how they are seen throughout the organization,” says one Jackson Healthcare team member. “In the associates, our vision and mission, and the giving of the company.”

Nations Lending Corporation

Nations Lending

Nations Lending Corporation is a fast-growing independent mortgage bank located in the Cleveland area that goes above and beyond to care for its employees. 

Nations Lending executives show love and support to employees by sending flowers during times of bereavement, food and other spirit-lifting gifts during times of prolonged illness or surgery, and birthday cards and other well wishes on special occasions. Additionally, Nations Lending promotes health and wellness among employees through annual Wellness Fairs and monthly Color Walks. And an in-house charitable committee called NLC Cares donates its time and efforts to nonprofits each month, whether cooking dinners for the families of patients in local hospitals or packing boxes at a local food bank. 

Says one team member: “The amount of effort the entire company puts forth in ensuring team member success — whether you are a loan officer, loan processor, underwriter or part of the management team — is top-notch and like nothing I have ever experienced at any other job.”

A “Big 4” professional services firm that provides audit, tax, advisory and industry services, KPMG promotes a diverse, inclusive and supportive culture that empowers its people and helps them to grow their career and thrive. 

In an effort to eliminate stigmas, KPMG recognized Mental Health Awareness Month by hosting a Courtside Chat with NBA player Kevin Love — a national advocate for mental health — on opening conversations. Employees were reminded that, similar to athletes, KPMG professionals need to care for themselves, especially after a busy season or major project. Following the session, everyone at the firm was encouraged to take the afternoon off as a mental health break. The chat and firm-wide break were part of a month-long program of activities focused on continuing to break the stigma surrounding mental health — including a series of webcasts, guided meditations and even a documentary screening — that provided tools, information and resources to help people prioritize their well-being and support the well-being of colleagues, friends and family.

“We’re corporate athletes, and we need to not only be physically ready to do our job, but we need to be mentally ready to do our job,” Sandy Torchia, KPMG’s vice chair of talent and culture, told Fortune in March. “If we make these investments in our people, we are going to have higher-performing teams.”

Venterra Realty

DAVID BARRON/Barron & Barron Photography

Founded in 2001, Houston-based Venterra Realty develops, owns and manages apartment communities in 19 US cities that provide housing to more than 44,000 people and 15,000 pets. 

Venterra’s WOW Program stands out as a pillar of its caring culture. Through the program, the company empowers its leaders to seek out and act on opportunities to “wow” members of their teams by creating personalized and memorable experiences. And Venterra allocates an annual team member WOW budget of more than $100,000 for leaders to use as they see fit. Some recent memorable WOW moments include unveiling a crib for a maintenance manager during a speech at his baby shower; gearing up a maintenance technician to take on his first ski trip; surprising a leasing consultant with a new grill and grilling tools in time for a relaxing Memorial Day weekend; secretly delivering wish list items to an assistant manager moving into her first roommate-free apartment; and rewarding an outdoorsy team member’s hard work with a new kayak.

“This company not only cares about its residents, they care about us, the employees, in ways I have never in my life seen before,” says one team member. “We here have a voice. We are treated as a part of the whole. It’s wonderful.”

EY , the professional services giant headquartered in New York City, exists to build a better working world — helping create long-term value for clients, people and society and build trust in the capital markets. But they’re also committed to creating more opportunities for underserved communities.

In 2023, EY’s Social Justice Fund provided a grant for the Nomi Network, where funding will support the organization’s first domestic site for the Youth Workforce Development Program. This program creates opportunities for economic empowerment for girls from historically under-resourced communities so they can break free from cycles of poverty and abuse. EY also provided a grant for Youthcast Media Group, where funding will provide program support over two years for 12 multimedia journalism boot camps and workshops — impacting up to 144 high school students, of whom more than 95 percent will be BIPOC. All will be recruited from schools where more than 60 percent are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch.

“Our work over the last year toward achieving our DEI ambitions reveals both progress and opportunities in creating an inclusive culture with people at the center,” EY leadership recently stated in a 2024 DEI report. “ We will continue to proactively drive positive change by valuing differences, cultivating a culture of care and empowering all our people through tremendous opportunities that enable us all to succeed."

AbbVie , a biotechnology and pharmaceuticals company headquartered in North Chicago, works nonstop to solve some of the world's most serious health issues — but never at the expense of care and compassion for individuals. 

In January 2023, AbbVie and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital opened Family Commons, the first-ever treatment-free and clinical-staff-free floor at St. Jude, offering patients and families a home-like space to find comfort and respite in between clinic appointments. The design and construction of Family Commons, a 45,000-square-foot space, was funded by a historic $50 million donation from AbbVie. AbbVie’s donation has also supported non-clinical services, such as music therapy and school programming, that will continue in Family Commons

“AbbVie has been an incredible partner in that they've been with us every step of the way, making sure that all the details are appropriate and that they're going to meet the needs of our patients and their families,” said Richard C. Shadyac Jr., the President and CEO of ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness organization for St. Jude.

Mastercard , headquartered in Purchase, N.Y., is a global technology company in the payments industry whose mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone, everywhere by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible.

Always looking for ways to improve employee experience, Mastercard has made great strides in a number of arenas. Recently, they increased the global median pay for female employees to 94 percent of the median pay for male employees, up 0.8 percent from 2021. (Females continue to earn $1 for every $1 males earn, with the median pay gap predominantly due to more men in senior roles.) The company also grew the number of U.S. Black leaders at vice president level and above from 62 to 72 — a year over year increase of 16 percent — in 2022. (Since 2020, the percentage of Black representation in leadership at the vice president level and above in the U.S. has grown by 7 percent.) And since Mastercard launched their In Solidarity commitment in 2020, they’ve invested $423 million in Black communities by expanding city programs, providing affordable financial tools and services, providing capital and resources for Black-owned businesses and increasing Mastercard’s spend with Black-owned suppliers.

“Mastercard truly walks the walk,” says a team member. “Doing well by doing good.”

Panda Restaurant Group Inc.

Panda Express

Panda Restaurant Group , headquartered in Rosemead, Calif., is a family-owned and family-inspired restaurant company with more than 52,000 associates and more than 2,500 restaurants worldwide. One of the group’s goals: to become a world leader in people development, by investing in employees and caring for community members. 

As the philanthropic arm of Panda Restaurant Group, Panda Cares provides food, funding and volunteer services to support underserved youth. Focusing on health, education and disaster relief efforts, Panda Cares fosters the core value of giving by empowering associates to fundraise in stores every day. In 2022, Panda donated $21 million, supported 131 children’s hospitals, helped 7.5 million patients and opened 11 new Panda Cares Centers of Hope for patients and students nationwide. They also donated 62,234 meals, hosted 461 Panda Cares events and donated 1,400 meals to first responders and their families. 

“Something unique about this company that makes it a great place to work is the kind of relationship associates and management have with each other,” says a Panda team member. “A sense of having a second family — and ensuring a positive and safe environment for everyone.”

Wellstar Health System

Marietta, Ga.-based   Wellstar Health System has a mission: to enhance the health and well-being of every person they serve. True to that mission, Wellstar is nationally ranked for its high-quality care, inclusive culture and exceptional physicians and caregivers.

And Wellstar knows that sometimes employees need a bit of help when unexpected costs arise, which is why they’ve adopted a unique benefit for their team members. The Wellstar Purchasing Power benefit helps employees immediately buy much-needed large ticket items such as appliances, electronics, furniture and more, and spread the cost over a year. There are no required credit checks, added interest or fees to use Purchasing Power. All costs are publicized up front in an easy 12-month fixed payment plan through payroll deduction. It’s a popular benefit that makes a positive financial difference for many team members. In 2022, Wellstar team members completed 3,653 Purchasing Power transactions.

“I have been employed with Wellstar for 16 years, the longest I’ve ever stayed with an organization,” says a team member. “I attribute this to the culture, my leadership team and colleagues. Wellstar is truly a great place to work!”

Elevance Health, Inc.

Indianapolis-based Elevance Health is a trusted health partner whose purpose is to improve the well-being of humanity, and that includes focusing on the overall health of its people. 

Elevance’s Life Essential Kits provide eligible associates the choice to select from healthy food, transportation or childcare funds to help cover the cost of these essentials. The Nutrition Kit includes a spending card up to $3,000 per family and access to a dietitian. The Child Care Kit funds up to $3,000 per year to help cover childcare expenses for children under 13 or other dependents who require support while the associate is working. And the Transportation Kit includes a spending card for up to $3,000 per family to access public transportation and rideshare programs, as well as coverage for fuel, repairs and maintenance costs. In just one year, associates who used the cards experienced a 10.2 percent decrease in overall medical costs; 13.8 percent decrease in ER visits; and a 12 percent decrease in preventable hospitalizations.

“I love the people that work on my team,” say an Elevance employee of the company culture. “We all have the same goal, and it is so nice to show up to work every day. I feel very lucky and proud to work here.”

Montoya Photography

CarMax , the Richmond, Va.-based used auto retailer, has ongoing and long-term partnerships with several national nonprofits, including The Mission Continues, Hiring Our Heroes and the American Red Cross.

One partnership that’s particularly near and dear to team members’ hearts is the collaboration with KABOOM!, an organization that helps build playgrounds for children. More than 80 CarMax volunteers built a playground in Uvalde, Texas, in response to the critical needs of the community (despite having no business presence in the area). And last October, CarMax completed its 100th build in conjunction with KABOOM!, a milestone that allowed them to reflect on more than $10 million invested in playspace equity and the more than 150,000 children annually who have been granted access to safe, fun equipment. 

Of the playground built in Uvalde, Javy Gallardo, senior sales consultant at CarMax’s San Antonio store, says: "My mom drives by daily and sees children playing on the new equipment and having a great time. It has really made a significant impact to this previously underserved community.”

Harbor Freight Tools

Harbor Freight

Harbor Freight Tools is a 45-year-old national tool retailer with the energy, enthusiasm and growth potential of a start-up. And the Calabasas, Calif.-headquartered business brings that same energy to improving its communities and the lives of its neighbors.

Harbor Freight Tools for Schools is a program of The Smidt Foundation, established by Harbor Freight Tools Founder Eric Smidt, to advance excellent skilled trades education in public high schools across America. With a deep respect for the dignity of these fields and for the intelligence and creativity of people who work with their hands, Harbor Freight Tools for Schools aims to drive a greater understanding of and investment in skilled trades education, believing that access to quality education gives high school students pathways to graduation, opportunity, good jobs and a workforce the country needs.

“The company itself is a unique place to work,” says a team member. “It is innovative, exciting, fun and dynamic at its core. One of the things that stands out is its diversity and the willingness to listen to people at all levels when there is an opportunity for recommendations.”

First American Equipment Finance

First American

Headquartered in Victor, N.Y., First American Equipment Finance provides equipment leasing and project financing to the most creditworthy and sophisticated commercial borrowers in the county, including nonprofit organizations. 

First American has taken an active role in increasing opportunities and equity for women in the workforce. One of First American’s most significant accomplishments toward its DEI goals is the recent launch of the Women in Business (WIB) employee resource group. The group currently has 114 members (representing 39 percent of First American employees). Its mission is to promote a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace where colleagues grow as leaders, build productive relationships and enjoy robust, fulfilling careers — pursuing their greatest potential by cultivating an empowered, confident and resilient mindset. The group meets quarterly for a networking breakfast and regularly hosts events like the recent “Women in Business Tell All” panel, International Women’s Day breakfast and self-defense training.

“First American gives its employees opportunities to pursue passions they feel strongly about,” says a team member. “For example, they allow employees to form committees or run events or projects that benefit the local community, and give employees set hours to volunteer their time in the community on an annual basis.”

Zillow Group

Zillow Group believes that home should be more than just a dream, which is why the Seattle-headquartered real estate specialists are committed to helping people get the home they want by connecting them with digital solutions, great partners and easier buying, selling, financing and renting experiences.

Zillow knows there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to home buying — or office work. The company’s CloudHQ model of work,  which has given the majority of its people the option to work where they are happiest, has been a gamechanger. Not only has it done away with forcing potential employees to weigh relocation and cost-of-living considerations, it allows Zillow to recruit the best and brightest talent, regardless of where they live. Employees now have the flexibility to work from where they are most productive, and make choices that work best for their families and personal responsibilities. To level the playing field even further, Zillow pays its people based on their experience, not where they happen to live. By the end of 2022, Zillow employees were working from 49 states and 73 percent were categorized as working remote.

“The culture here is unmatched,” says a Zillow employee. “I work with some of the best set of peers I've ever met for many different reasons, with a general understanding that we are all better together.”

Pinnacle Financial Partners

Pinnacle Financial Partners offers banking, insurance, trust and investment, specialty lending and mortgage services to businesses and consumers interested in a deep relationship with their financial provider. 

Recently, Pinnacle helped finance and shepherd through the development process The Skyliner, a new apartment building in Nashville that opened in 2023 to serve a mixed-income community close to downtown. It sits on a major transit route, offers many amenities popular in Nashville urban living and adds 147 units to Nashville’s affordable housing stock. This work was led by Rick Neal, a Pinnacle commercial real estate advisor who also serves as vice chair of the Tennessee Housing Development Agency. 

For home ownership to change lives, the new owners must be financially fit enough for it. So Pinnacle associates provide ongoing education on early concepts like budgeting, savings, debt retirement and how to manage a credit score. After seeing how Pinnacle approaches home loan assistance, one community partner said, “Your people came through my meeting and crushed it, making my day!”

Navy Federal Credit Union

Navy Federal Credit

Navy Federal Credit Union serves more than 13 million members of the military and their families from its operations centers in Florida and Virginia, with 350 worldwide branches. The company offers a full range of financial products and services such as savings, checking, credit cards, loans, financial education and counseling, brokerage accounts, trust services, auto and personal insurance and small business services. 

Navy Federal’s unique level of care extends to the environment, and the ways they encourage their team members to be good stewards of the earth. Last spring, their Greening Up team initiated an enterprise-wide sustainability challenge in which employees could come up with thoughtful solutions to create meaningful change, such as adding community composts to campus locations, upcycling household items and installing light sensors to reduce electricity use. The challenge finished with 500 participants, 35 challenges and 3,084 completed submissions. These climate ambassadors committed to pledges advocating for sustainability, increased awareness and education, and small incremental changes to their daily lives.

“Sustainability means meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” says Sherlyn Grecia, an assistant branch manager. “ It's important to know how we can help in our own little way for our planet, for the next generation.”

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company is one of the largest and strongest diversified insurance and financial services organizations in the United States. Their commitment to showing care for people inside and outside of the organization will have lasting impact for years to come. 

A prime example: Over the past few years, Nationwide’s leadership witnessed its employees becoming increasingly concerned about their children’s mental health. In fact, 8 out of 10 working parents believe mental health challenges have increased in recent years. In an effort to provide support to parents as they navigate their children’s mental health needs, the Nationwide Foundation recently funded the creation of the Bloom program. Bloom is a free, confidential set of resources created by the behavioral experts at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. The curriculum, which is part of a broader initiative for children’s mental health called On Our Sleeves, offers short courses that help parents and caregivers build mental wellness habits, start mental health conversations and recognize when kids need additional help. Nationwide associates were instrumental in helping to develop the curriculum as they piloted this effort and provided the hospital with critical insight into parents’ greatest needs. As of 2023, Bloom has transitioned from its pilot phase and is available to employers from all sectors, with no-cost to nonprofit organizations. The program earned the prestigious Halo Award for Best Health Initiative from the Engage for Good organization

Says a team member: “The culture is truly one of a kind, and we value people as our priority both internal to the organization, and in everything that we do. I have never been so aligned from a personal value and professional value standpoint and am very proud to work at Nationwide.”

Established in 1868, MetLife is the largest life insurer in the United States based on life insurance in force. The MetLife companies offer life insurance, annuities and other financial services to individuals. 

MetLife knows that a positive work environment begins with caring benefits, so at the start of May 2023, they launched a new Employee Care and Innovation Center of Excellence (COE), and introduced a new role: chief employee care officer. The goal of the COE is to design innovative, end-to-end solutions focused specifically on caring for employees. The COE is housed in HR, but aims to address every aspect of employee care across the enterprise. It supports employees in areas that span employee relations, DEI, learning and development, health and well-being, benefits, flexibility and other aspects of the day-to-day work experience. And while the COE is run by a centralized HR team, an enterprise-wide, cross-functional Employee Care Circle ensures its comprehensive reach.

“They genuinely care about their customers and stakeholders,” says a MetLife team member, “ about transparency and security. They use their resources to better their environments and use influence for good.”

Robert Half Inc.

Robert Half

San Ramon, Calif.-based Robert Half Inc. is the world’s first and largest specialized talent solutions and business consulting firm, whose mission is to positively change people’s lives by finding them rewarding work and to assist businesses in locating the talent they need to succeed.

In 2022, Robert Half launched its innovative People Promise, which includes four focus areas: well-being, career, connections and impact. The People Promise is the idealization of Robert Half’s values in action, providing a clear roadmap for investment in an employee's success. It also emphasizes Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Employee Experience, Operational Excellence, Talent Development, People Technology and Analytics. By the end of the year, Robert Half concluded that employee engagement was at an all-time high. 

“Building a thriving workplace culture means putting our people first,” explains Senior Vice President of Human Resources Lynne Smith. “Providing them with an inclusive work environment, connecting them with opportunities to learn and grow and giving them the support needed to achieve work-life balance, a feeling of connection and overall well-being.”

Splunk Inc.

Splunk Inc.  helps make the world’s largest organizations more resilient by keeping their digital systems secure and reliable on its unified security and observability platform. If you ask executives at the San Francisco-headquartered IT outfit the secret of their success, they’ll tell you: it’s the people — Splunkers, familiarly. 

One way they honor their people: “Pwny Perks,” a global well-being reimbursement program named in honor of the company’s mascot, Buttercup the Pony. The program allows employees to choose from perks, activities and programs that can improve their well-being or create conveniences to make their lives easier. Receiving a reimbursable budget each quarter of $500, Splunkers have a range of eligible expenses that include fitness and health products, family support and financial wellness resources. To date, 90 percent of all Splunkers across the globe have submitted at least one claim, with travel, gym memberships and personal care being the top three reimbursement categories.

“From my first day at Splunk, I felt the strength of the organizational culture,” says a Splunker. “Splunk has a strong culture. I enjoy contributing to the business’s success, as well as helping my team achieve their goals.”

Midland, Mich.-based Dow manufactures a broad range of advanced materials that include plastics, industrial intermediates, coatings and silicones

At the beginning of 2023, Dow Chair and CEO Jim Fitterling wrote to all employees, thanking them for their hard work: “Your resilience, your adaptability and your commitment were on full display… and I want to thank the entire Dow team for all you achieved.”

Dow’s spirit of adaptability goes both ways, as demonstrated by the company’s introduction of Design Your Day, a post-pandemic approach to productivity. Seeing firsthand that many team members could be productive while working away from their typical on-site office settings, Dow launched Design Your Day, which enables each employee and their leader to collaborate on an individual workplace plan — based on an individual’s specific role and responsibilities — that maximizes their productivity and balances personal needs. DYD also extends to how employees dress, encouraging a commonsense approach geared toward authenticity and flexibility.

Tri Pointe Homes, Inc.

Tri Pointe Homes

One of the largest homebuilders in the U.S., Tri Pointe Homes, Inc . is a recognized leader in customer experience, innovative design and environmentally responsible business practices. The company builds premium homes and communities in 12 states and the District of Columbia, with deep ties to the communities it serves — some for as long as a century.

Maintaining a sense of community is key to Tri Pointe’s business success, and the satisfaction of its team members. Tri Pointe’s Compass Club fosters a positive and inclusive culture by planning events that bring fun, purpose and value to their people and the communities they serve. This cross-functional team, with members at each of Tri Pointe’s divisional offices, embodies the H.E.A.R.T. (Humility, Empowerment, Authenticity, Results and Team) mission and values, recognizing and rewarding efforts, building relationships and strengthening teamwork. Through intentional and thoughtful planning, the Compass Club curates multiple events per month around fun and engaging culture-building themes, such as Random Acts of Kindness Week, National Adoption Month and holidays. They also engage the teams in charitable events like shoe drives, diaper drives and beach cleanups.

“The management in the company go above and beyond to support our success,” says a Tri Pointe associate “I appreciate the recognition for our hard work and dedication, and the team's ability to know what needs to be done and executing it well.”

Trane Technologies PLC

Trane Technologies PLC is a global climate innovator that brings efficient and sustainable climate solutions to buildings, homes and transportation, via strategic brands Trane and Thermo King, and a portfolio of environmentally responsible products and services.

In 2022, to inspire and enable its people to advance its corporate citizenship strategy around the world, Trane Technologies created Purple Teams. Among many other acts of goodwill, Purple Teams has partnered with Reading is Fundamental to collect and package backpacks with STEM-focused books, bookmarks, worksheets and handwritten notes for low-income schools. More than 200 Trane Technologies team members invested a total of 386 hours to help impact more than 11,000 students in 35 participating schools. That same year, Trane increased its philanthropic giving by 39 percent from 2021, to a total of over $15 million. Trane’s growing global network of dedicated partnerships support its mission to bolster access to STEM and sustainability curriculum among underrepresented students and to achieve a rich pipeline of diverse talent.

“We are literally helping change the world for the better with our products and Services,” says a Trane Technologies team member, “and are an example for all companies and communities to build diverse and inclusive environments that help people thrive.”

MCN Build, Inc.

Washington D.C.-based MCN Build offers pre-construction, construction management, general contracting and consulting services, and its transparent problem-solving approach and core technical competencies provide clients with the optimal construction partner from start to finish.

MCN Build and its employees put values into practice through the MCN Build Foundation. MCN’s dedicated philanthropic efforts allow employees to give back to the communities where they live and build, and to leave the world better than they found it. That means creating opportunities for children and adults who have been afforded fewer chances in life, by providing easier access to education, both locally and abroad. The MCN Build Foundation is a catalyst for the company to leverage experience and skills in construction to make the world a better place, one community at a time. The more than 20 nonprofits supported by the foundation include Bread For the City, DC Central Kitchen, St. Ann's Center, Wise Young Builders, Wreaths across America, She Builds, Dreaming Out Loud and Capitol Hill Ministries.

Says a team member: “This company has given me every opportunity to excel and utilize my experience to better the company. We hire great employees and give them great opportunities as well.”

Capital One Financial Corporation

Capital One

The diversified financial services company headquartered in McLean, Va., puts its people first through fair pay, transparency, a commitment to diversity and opportunities for growth. And investing in its people allows Capital One to share the benefits with the larger community.

Capital One strives to share its greatest assets — associates’ talents, ideas and knowledge — with communities through direct support to local and national nonprofits. In 2022, nearly 14,000 associates volunteered more than 250,000 hours in their communities. More than 900 of those associates engaged in pro bono volunteerism, supporting 162 unique community partners (55 percent Black-led and 56 percent women-led organizations) delivering almost 20,000 hours of skilled advice, counsel and problem-solving to community groups and nonprofit partners.

“Capital One has created a culture where people can be fully themselves,” says an associate. “I have always felt like I have a voice, and that my managers and mentors are advocates for me. I look forward to coming to work, engaging with my peers and finding creative solutions to get the job done, all facilitated by the Capital One culture.”

Teleperformance USA

Teleperformance

With nearly 500,000 inspired and passionate people speaking more than 300 languages, Teleperformance USA ’s global scale and local presence allow the Salt Lake City-based professional services outfit to be a force of good in supporting communities, clients and the environment. 

In March 2023, the TP Women resource group hosted events in Teleperformance locations across the country in honor of Women's History Month. TP Women set a hefty goal of $300,000 in clothing donation items through a professional clothing drive to benefit women entering or reentering the workforce. In total, more than 625 bags of clothing were donated in support of this cause, totaling more than $384,000 in gift-in-kind donations, far exceeding the initial goal. TP Women also installed 50+ new/expectant mother premier parking signs at the various Teleperformance physical locations to show appreciation for working mothers. 

"Teleperformance is a great place to work,” concludes one team member. “Good management, approachable bosses and supervisors. [And] there are so many interesting activities. Indeed the best!”

Mediavine is the largest full-service ad management company in the United States, exclusively representing and monetizing more than 10,000 publisher partner websites with 1.6 billion monthly page views in addition to its owned and operated properties. 

To mark National Foster Care Month 2022, and to honor team members who have direct connection to foster care, Mediavine launched its Nurture + Shine project. The goal of Nurture + Shine is to help children and families who are in the process of fostering or adopting receive the emotional and financial support that they don’t normally receive. In collaboration with Hello Bellow, Mediavine donated 6 months of diapers and household bundles to 25 families in the Denver area. 

“I love how diverse and interactive the company is,” says a Mediavine team member. “I feel truly seen and I walk into work feeling like I have the proper support system to help me do my job to the best of my benefit.”

Power Home Remodeling

Chester, Pa.-based Power Home Remodeling is the nation’s largest, full-service, exterior home remodeler and culture powerhouse, committed to creating an environment where people don’t just live — but thrive. 

At its core, Power views itself as a service organization, “because the deepest part of a Power person’s DNA is about serving others, without being asked and certainly without being told.” Power has maximized volunteer hours, the amount of goods they’ve donated and the dollars they’ve raised — and through a partnership with the financial investment firm Harvest Partners — established the Power of Giving Foundation, which allocated more than $5 million in charitable giving in 2023. 

Power describes their slightly unorthodox foundation this way: “[Power of Giving] has no mission statement and has no parameters yet — and that’s on purpose. While it’s in its infancy, we want to learn from our people so that the Foundation is a reflection of them. What are the things employees are most passionate about? Where do they think these dollars can make the biggest impact? The Foundation will put up the dollars, but employees are in the driver's seat when it comes to putting in the action that is required to make those dollars meaningful.”

W.W. Grainger Inc.

W. W. Grainger

Grainger is a leading broad line industrial distributor with operations primarily in North America, Japan and the United Kingdom, serving more than 4.5 million customers globally. 

Recently recognized for the second time by Military Times as a Best for Vets Employer, Grainger has made great efforts to recruit, retain and support current and former service members, military spouses and military caregivers. Grainger’s Veterans and Military Supporters (VMS) business resource group hosted an event with the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserves (ESGR), a group that works to promote the unique talents and skill set Guard and Reserve Service members can bring to the civilian workforce. Grainger also joined the ESGR’s Statement of Support Program, which encourages employers to act as advocates for employee participation in the military. Grainger Chairman and CEO D.G. Macpherson formally signed the ESGR pledge to reinforce Grainger’s commitment to this organization and to those team members who have or will serve in the military.

“The friendly environment that Grainger fosters is what helps make this a great place to work,” says a team member. “Everyone is willing to cooperate with one another.”

Stellar Solutions Inc.

Michael Troutman/www.dmtimaging.com

Los Altos, Calif.-based Stellar Solutions Inc. is a global aerospace and systems engineering services provider to commercial, defense, intelligence, civil and international sectors. The company values equity in the workplace and has committed to building a more diverse team.

In 2022, Stellar Solutions signed the Space Workforce 2030 pledge, a long-term commitment to improving diversity in the workforce and holding themselves accountable for measurable results. Members of this growing consortium of more than 30 companies meet at a working level twice per year for open discussions about progress and to exchange best practices. Annually, Stellar Solutions publicly shares aggregated industry data. In the past year they have already seen improvements in workforce diversity, especially at the leadership level.

“I believe I have a voice that is heard within the company,” says a team member. “I'm given the opportunity to build and grow within the company. Additionally, Stellar goes out of its way to recognize great work and looks for opportunities outside the organization for recognition.”

Vizient Inc.

Irving, Texas-based Vizient helps healthcare organizations improve their performance. It starts with Vizient’s mission, centered on assisting providers in achieving sustainable results, and a shared passion to think creatively about ways to improve America’s healthcare.

In 2022, Vizient launched two new diversity networking associations (DNAs). APIDA@Vizient supports and empowers employees who identify or relate to Asian, Pacific Islander and Desi-American heritage, while Dimensions@Vizient promotes awareness around intersected identities and elevates the voices of all employees with a focus on interwoven identities and lived experiences. And because DNA leaders add tremendous value, visibility and impact to the organization,  above and beyond their day jobs, Vizient now compensates qualifying DNA leaders with an additional $10,000 annually. To meet the threshold, they must be in their second year of successful leadership and otherwise be in good standing.

“The volunteer opportunities and commitment to creating and maintaining our culture as a company has been amazing in my time here so far,” says a Vizient associate. “I have been here for over one year now and have had opportunities to give back to my own community — even though I work remotely — participate in wonderful webinars and discussions and attend team-building events.”

Toast, Inc.

Dana J. Quigley Photography

Boston-based Toast Inc . powers successful restaurants of all sizes with a technology platform that combines restaurant point of sale, front of house, back of house and guest-facing technology with a diverse marketplace of third-party applications.

Toast is committed to the purpose: “Enrich the food experience for all.”  That corporate philanthropy is fueled by Toast.org, which galvanizes people to participate in community service, support other organizations and restaurants making a difference, create products that improve the food landscape and help drive impact across the cause pillars “food, community and environment.” In 2022, Toast launched its inaugural Impact Grants program, directing $1.25 million in grants to nonprofits working to create an impactful and inclusive restaurant community and to address food security in communities around the world. This global grant-making includes more than $1 million from the company’s inaugural round of Impact Grants to 22 nonprofit organizations and $200,000 to organizations supported by 40 Toast.org local volunteer committees.

Say a Toaster: “The culture makes Toast a great place to work. People are encouraged to bring their whole selves to work and we keep our customers at the forefront in everything we do.”

ezCater, Inc.

Headquartered in Boston, ezCater is the leading food for work technology company in the U.S, connecting anyone who needs catering for their workplace to more than 100,000 restaurants nationwide.

At heart of ezCater’s corporate philosophy is a simple truth: “We love to help.” That means helping customers, partners, vendors and each other. It also putting team members in the best position to help others, which ezCater has done through active nonprofit support. Their donations include more than 300,000 meals to Feeding America through the CaterCares initiative; 140 computers to the Boys & Girls Club of America and the Girls Inc. nonprofit organizations; and more than $7,000 in food to the New England Center and Home for Veterans, Volunteers of America and the Winter Walk Organization.

“The culture, camaraderie, transparency and opportunities for growth and advancement are unparalleled compared to other companies I have worked for,” says a team member.

Atlassian, Inc.

As a leading provider of collaboration software for teams, San Francisco-based Atlassian, Inc. knows the value of working together to increase wins and unleashing the potential of teams. 

When it comes to climate, this means helping other teams move faster to make a climate commitment. It’s not enough for Atlassian to reduce emissions; the company says it needs more businesses to get in the game now. So to make getting started easier, in April 2023 Atlassian released its “Don’t #@!% the Planet” resource, which lays out Atlassian’s own journey from establishing its sustainability program and setting science-based targets. The goal in sharing real-world experience is to provide a blueprint for teams to get started sooner and help others accelerate their current commitments, while empowering leaders to build momentum within their own companies — allowing everyone to move through roadblocks more quickly. The guide was downloaded more than 500 times in the first month. 

Of Atlassian’s unique magic, one employee says: “It's hard to explain, but you feel it. I trust my forward-thinking direct executive leaders. This is the future.”

Workiva is on a mission to power transparent reporting for a better world. The company builds and delivers the world’s leading cloud platform for assured integrated reporting to meet stakeholder demands for action, transparency and disclosure of financial and non-financial data.

Workiva knows that building a better world involves empowering employees around the globe to come together and give back. March 17 is the annual company-wide day of service. Last year, hundreds of employees banded together and participated in a variety of volunteer activities, like preparing meals at food banks, cleaning beaches, researching school curriculum for code.org, writing cards and more, serving more than 120 different nonprofits and tracking 2,484 volunteer hours. This paid day of service is also in addition to the eight hours of VTO every employee receives.

“This company truly lives by what it preaches,” says a Workiva team member. “Everyone here believes in the product and is willing to go the extra mile for customers. I feel seen as an individual and know I make a difference at our company.”

Lucid Software Inc.

Lucid Software

Lucid Software is a leader in visual collaboration, helping teams see and build the future from idea to reality. With its products — Lucidchart, Lucidspark and Lucidscale — teams can align around a shared vision, clarify complexity and collaborate visually, no matter where they're located.

Every summer, Lucid hosts an internal hackathon, setting aside three days to work on Lucid-related passion projects. Any employee who wants to participate may join a team and then together choose a project to focus on. Projects range from features they believe will enhance product to fun gamification adds to moonshot ideas that change the technological trajectory of the company. The effects of the hackathon last long beyond the three days, renewing the company’s creative energy for months. The projects and new ideas can also guide Lucid’s collective vision for the remainder of the year. Since 2020, the Hackathon includes both in-person and virtual components, ensuring Lucid’s teams across the globe are able to participate, watch project pitches and vote on their favorites.

“When it comes to core values, Lucid walks the walk,” says a team member. “This company is unique in that aspect. As a new employee, I've never felt more welcome at an organization. My leadership is transparent, supportive, wise and approachable. Lucid is a great place to be, and I am super grateful to be a part of this phenomenal team.”

Roth Staffing Companies, L.P.

Roth Staffing

Roth Staffing , based in Orange, Calif.,is an award-winning, full-service staffing firm, driven by its company purpose: “To make life better for the people we serve.” The organization includes five specialized business lines that work independently or together to fulfill clients’ workforce management needs.

Giving back to the community is one of the cornerstones of Roth Staffing’s efforts to fulfill that company purpose. One of the most impactful community initiatives has been “Roth Food for Thought," where coworkers across the nation volunteer at local food banks in support of Feeding America. Through this year’s initiative, Roth saw a huge influx of participation, coworker engagement and more than 650 volunteer hours, surpassing the prior year’s effort.

As one team member describes the undeniable appeal of Roth Staffing: “A culture of belonging, outstanding leadership team and excellent opportunities for advancement and growth.”

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard

Houston-based Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is the global edge-to-cloud company that helps organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, everywhere. 

To foster the spirit of community far and wide, HPE employs a program called Mystery Coffee. The program matches a team member with another HPE colleague from around the world based on similar interests and connects them in order to have a conversation – either virtually or in person. All team members are eligible to sign up and participate, and the program makes it easy by providing icebreaker ideas and setting up calendar invites. More than 4,000 team members globally have participated in this program to-date. And to promote peer recognition, HPE launched a tool called Star Point that makes it easier for team members to send e-cards to their peers and team and track recognition points to spend at an online store.

“The ability to be yourself and to voice your ideas and not be shot down [makes HPE special],” says an employee. “This company does a fantastic job of encouraging people to make change and we are supported all the way!

Sephora is a leading global prestige omni-retailer, featuring more than 3,000 stores globally, with a mission to champion a world of inspiration and inclusion where everyone can celebrate their beauty.

As a beauty retailer, Sephora believes in the responsibility to help its consumers make sustainable choices and informed decisions about the products they purchase. That’s why Sephora continues to improve its assortment with science-backed innovations and eliminate unwanted ingredients via the Clean at Sephora standards. In addition, the retailer actively works with brands to help update formulas to meet distinct criteria. Partnerships with organizations like Novi Connect and ChemForward help bring these goals to life.

“I appreciate the opportunity to contribute at multiple levels,” says a Sephora team member. “My opinion is never discounted just because it might not be within my direct area of responsibility. The collaborative spirit and inclusivity make this a special place to work and something that I have not seen in previous employers.”

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