By Tim Gurrister
Employers are finding they must (pun unavoidable) perk up the perks, maybe even to include the.
“The trend today and for the past two years has been low unemployment resulting in increased competition for talent between employers,” said Luke Morris, vice president for talent at Intermountain Healthcare, considered Utah’s largest private employer.
Job seekers these days at all skill levels have multiple employment options with companies in different industries, he said. “It’s very different from past years where employees clung to one industry.”
The trend likely goes back further, even before 2015, said Ryan D. Nelson, a Salt Lake City labor law attorney and Utah president of the Employers Council, which serves Utah, Colorado and Arizona.
“The Utah labor market,” he said, “tightened by many years of growth and low unemployment, has encouraged — even emboldened — employees to demand more from employers.”
Enticements in play now from employers include game rooms, fully stocked kitchens, transit passes, daycare, tuition reimbursement, gym access, onsite healthcare, company retreats, work-from-home, flexible hours, personal time off accounts beyond sick time and holiday pay, even humanitarian opportunities that appeal to millennials (workers aged 19 to late 30s.)
Also on the table are benefits for domestic violence survivors, military training leave, loan repayment assistance, insurance programs that pay back policy-holders for their deductibles from healthcare insurance plans. Employers are organizing employee soccer tournaments and offering assistance paying for gender reassignment surgery.
And for pet owners? How about pet healthcare insurance and even pet bereavement leave?
A recent survey found surprising numbers of workers wanting paid time off when the family pet passes. The nationwide poll by the pet product review site MyPetNeeds-That.com details Utahns opting for four days of leave, the near-unanimous norm west of the Rockies, except for those indifferent souls in Wyoming, who only need two days. Most of those who lose pets across the rest of the country would settle for three days, while South Dakota could bear no less than six.
“I have heard a little about that,” said Nelson. “It doesn’t surprise me. It’s a logical outgrowth from pet insurance, which we offer to our employees.”
Intermountain Healthcare also offers pet healthcare insurance for the 37,000 employees in its 23 hospitals, its dominant healthcare insurance arm and its medical group of 1,600 doctors working in 180 clinics in Utah and Idaho.
Nelson said workers have realized if they can’t find what they want with one company, they can try others, especially if they’re highly skilled. “Many employers, recognizing the dire need to attract and retain quality employees, have capitulated and continue to up the ante in this high-stakes game for talented labor.”
Salary is just a starting point, with workers citing other offers and asking, “What else you got?”
“Yes, we are seeing this regularly,” said Morris. “It’s not just about the salary offered anymore.”
Pay must be “in the ballpark,” he said, but job seekers increasingly want to work for an organization whose mission resonates. “We at Intermountain believe that perks not tied to organizational mission will ultimately fail to attract and keep the best talent.”
Nelson credited millennials with fueling the change. “Salary is still the primary slice of the total compensation pie employees expect, along with good benefits and a solid retirement plan. However, as millennials continue to influence and, in some ways, upend the traditional workforce, more employees want a workplace environment that offers additional benefits.”
Those benefits range from the tangible like recreation rooms and snack bars, Nelson said, to the intangible, “like a fun, engaging culture ... and involvement in a cause.”
Mark Tenney, Intermountain’s director of compensation and benefits, said the healthcare giant offers many of the perks aforementioned. Intermountain, he said, finds that medical; dental; paid time off; retirement plans, including 401(k) matching; and health savings accounts “are our most highly rated benefits.”
Tenney listed recently added benefits changes including expansions and bolstering of various healthcare options and plans and the addition of pet insurance — but no pet bereavement time yet.
“We’ve been on this expansionary path for roughly six years now,” said Carrie Mayne, chief economist for the Utah Department of Workforce Services. “The ease with which employees are able to find jobs and increase their wages, through job changes, raises, etc., will affect their expectations.
“While employment has been expanding for quite some time, wages were slow to start growing after the Great Recession. Wage growth has since picked up some speed, but still lags other growth measures,” Mayne said.
Christina Davis, senior public information officer with the department, said after reaching out to some of the department’s employment specialists, she found the more popular benefits are personal time off, tuition reimbursement, stocked kitchens or provided lunch, game rooms, flexible hours and transit passes. The first two are most popular with millennials, Davis said, “For more seasoned workers, they prefer the flexible time and telecommuting options as well as personal time off.”
One company Davis came across that is opening its first facility in Utah posted a job listing offering, in additional to traditional benefits, intramural sports such as softball and flag football, massages and bi-monthly haircuts.
“We haven’t heard of any companies that offer pet bereavement at this time,” said Davis.
The public sector has a slightly different take on employee benefits.
“I can quickly tell you the Davis County School District doesn’t offer things like game rooms, fully stocked kitchens, transit passes, etc.,” said Chris Williams, spokesman for the district, one of the state’s larger employers, with 8,144 employees, including 3,658 teachers — numbers that make it the second-largest school district in the state.
“We are funded with taxpayer money and need to be as frugal as we can with those funds,” he said. “So, competing with the many other industries for the most talented people is difficult. But for the first time in our history — as of two years ago — new teachers were able to earn more than $40,000 a year.”