Cricket Named a 2012 "Best Company for Hourly Workers," By WORKING MOTHER Magazine

SAN DIEGO and NEW YORK, April 5, 2012 — Working Mother magazine today named Cricket Communications, Inc. one of the "Best Companies for Hourly Workers" for 2012, awarding the Company for its leadership in offering the best policies and programs for promoting women and a dynamic work life culture. In addition to Cricket, Best Buy, Capital One, Hilton, Marriott and Target are among the 12 companies that made the list. This is the second consecutive year that Cricket has been named to Working Mother's "Best Companies" list.

The survey, conducted by the Working Mother Research Institute, found that women at the winning companies earned 56 percent of all promotions from hourly non-manager to non-exempt manager positions at the winning companies. One hundred percent of the winners offered their hourly workers personal and family health insurance benefits.

Jennifer Owens, Editorial Director of Working Mother Media, says, "This year's Best Companies exemplify best-practices in workplaces and cultures to help female hourly workers thrive. Most of the companies use the 70-20-10 rule: Focus 70 percent of your time on getting on-the-job experience, 20 percent on developing internal relationships and networks and 10 percent on formal training."

"Cricket is honored to again be selected as one of Working Mother's Best Companies for Hourly Workers," said Len Stephens, senior vice president, human resources for Cricket. "We are proud of our commitment to develop all Cricket employees in an atmosphere that enhances the employee's work experience and enables us to help make good on our promise to provide our customers with the best value in wireless."

Here are the Best Companies for Hourly Workers of 2012:

Company (in alphabetical order)
Headquarters
Best Buy
Richfield, MN
Bon Secours Virginia Health System
Richmond, VA
Capital One Financial
McLean, VA
Cricket Communications
San Diego, CA
Hilton Worldwide
McLean, VA
Marriott International
Bethesda, MD
PetSmart
Phoenix, AZ
Sodexo
Gaithersburg, MD
Target
Minneapolis, MN
University of New Mexico Hospitals
Albuquerque, NM
University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics
Madison, WI
Valassis Communications
Livonia, MI

Over the last year, the percentage of winning companies with formal compensation policies to reward managers who help hourly employees advance more than doubled, to 67 percent from 25 percent. A full 100 percent of the companies offer flexible work arrangements, and 79 percent of full-time hourly employees have access to them. On average, 73 percent of hourly workers at these Best Companies use flextime, up from 68 percent in 2011.

A majority of the Best Companies offer career advancement opportunities, including technology training and supervisor/team leader preparatory training. Nine out of 12 offer mentoring, career counseling and vocational skills training.
The full results of the WM Best Companies for Hourly Workers report can be found at: workingmother.com/hourly. Please visit us on Twitter (@_workingmother_ and @BestCompaniesWM) as well as at facebook.com/workingmother. Working Mother is owned by the Bonnier Corporation.

About Cricket
Cricket is the pioneer and leader in delivering innovative value-rich prepaid wireless services with no long-term contracts serving more than 5.9 million customers. Cricket offers wireless voice and mobile data services over the latest, high-quality, all-digital 4G (LTE) and 3G CDMA wireless networks. In 2011, Cricket launched its award-winning Muve Music® product, the first music service designed for a wireless phone that now has more than 500,000 customers. Cricket's innovative products and services are available at Cricket branded retail stores, dealers, national retailers and at www.mycricket.com. For more information about Cricket, please visit www.mycricket.com.

About Working Mother Media
Working Mother magazine reaches 2.2 million readers and is the only national magazine for career-committed mothers; WorkingMother.com (www.workingmother.com) gives working mothers @home and @work advice, solutions and ideas. This year marks the 27th anniversary of Working Mother's signature research initiative, Working Mother 100 Best Companies, and the tenth year of the Best Companies for Multicultural Women. Working Mother Media, a division of Bonnier Corporation (www.bonnier.com), includes the National Association for Female Executives (NAFE, www.nafe.com), Diversity Best Practices (www.diversitybestpractices.com) and the Working Mother Research Institute. Working Mother Media's mission is to serve as a champion of culture change.

SOURCE Cricket Communications, Inc.