Transparency and communication emerged as common themes among top companies at the keynote panel during EBN's 2012 Benefits Forum & Expo, where executives from Southwest Airlines, The Ken Blanchard Companies, Alston & Bird LLP and CHG Healthcare Services - companies that share the distinction of being on Fortune's "Best Companies to Work for in America" list - revealed their best practices and benefits strategies in a session moderated by Jennifer Benz, chief strategist and founder of Benz Communications.
None of the four companies had the deliberate goal of making the "Best Companies" list. Rather, making the list was a byproduct of other goals, such as lowering turnover or benchmarking. For the companies at the panel, "programs are not solely created to be on a list," said Shari Conoway, director of people at Southwest Airlines. "They're created because they're necessary, because it's the right thing to do. And the list comes after that."
Below, an excerpted transcript from the session offers advice and insight from Conoway and her peers on what the best companies do best.
Benz: Southwest is one of those companies where you can immediately see that people love working there. That seems like an immediate connection to the business. Do the rest of you have that relation to how the focus on people supports the rest of the business?
Cathy Benton, chief human resources officer at law firm Alston & Bird LLP: We do. We wouldn't be anything without our people. It's the product we provide - our legal services - so it's incredibly important that our people are happy and engaged. I think if you go through the organization you will find that - that people really enjoy working at the firm.
A lot of the time at law firms and other professional services organizations there's a class structure - your partners, your staff, your associates. We try everything we can to break down those barriers wherever we can. We do a lot to keep our regular employees, who are not lawyers, very informed about what's going on so they understand how their role fits in to the organization.
Kevin Rickfels, senior vice president, CHG Healthcare Services, a health care staffing company: What you see at Southwest is engaged employees. It does cost extra money to do this but from my perspective, in our industry, we probably spend the most on our employees but we're also the most profitable in our industry and we're also the most productive in our industry. You get it back in so many ways by having these employees.
Benz: What are some of the benefits you provide?
Conoway: A lot of people don't realize we are 87% unionized. Each of those different collective bargaining agreements will have different things. But we are so passionate about ensuring people can take care of themselves once they leave Southwest. Our 401(k) match is at 9.3% dollar-for-dollar, which is unheard of. Our employee benefit cost is lower than the average. We want to make sure we take care of the employee and that the dependent care after that is still affordable. It's a huge recruiting tool. We ask [recruits] 'how much do you pay in premiums each month?' and nine times out of 10, they're going to get a raise when they come to Southwest.
Shirley Bullard, chief administrative officer and vice president of HR at Ken Blanchard, a leadership training company: For a small organization, we really are challenged with regards to benefits. I think of benefits as the big 'B' and the little 'b.' With regards to the big 'B,' we provide those core benefits across the company to all employees - medical, dental, vision, life insurance, as well as short- and long-term disability.
But then there are a lot of smaller perks that are intangible. One of them being that all of the courses we offer to companies, all of our employees can attend for free. We hold courses for their children and parents, which is unique.
And every day, one of the nicest things that probably happens, is that [company founder] Ken leaves us a message every morning reminding us how wonderful it is to live in the United States, how lucky we are to be in a business where we help people make a difference, and he shares news and gives us inspiration every morning. I know a lot of places rarely hear from the head of the organization but for him, it's really important to have that connection with us every day.
Benton: We try to recognize that employees are at different stages in their lives and have different needs. Not everyone needs child care, of course, although that's gotten a lot of play. Many of our employees have pets so we provide doggie day care discounts and pet insurance. We also have a program with Bright Horizons called Back-Up Advantage that provides in-home child care when your child is sick, and it also provides care for elderly parents. After adding that program we saved over 400 days of attorney time.
Rickfels: What we've tried to do is expand the concept of benefits to include not only health benefits but financial wellness, health and wellness, emotional wellness, work life balance, training and development, leadership development. We've tried to expand the view of benefits way past what would normally be considered a benefits package.
Our philosophy is centered around, 'How do we make everyone's job easier?' It's not anything new but the fact we can offer payroll-deducted home and car insurance through work - that doesn't cost the company any extra money - makes it easy for the employee. We have a patient advocacy program where if you have claims and if you've been in the hospital, we provide an advocate for you, outside of the company, who can help you navigate through the health care system.
Benz: Health care is obviously a big challenge. How do you reconcile wanting to invest in your employees and managing health care costs?
Rickfels: Our goal isn't to take care of our employees in the sense of providing everything for free. Our goal is always building ability, trust and relationship and engaging our employees so honesty has really played out. A number of years ago we started telling people, every year, how much insurance costs and that we were going to pay 74% and they're going to pay 26%.
In 2007, we had a 5% reduction so we were able to go to employees and say 'all your contributions are going down by 5%.' It also helps you in the bad years because when costs go up 20%, they see the number and they can do the math ... We've tried to be really transparent and that's worked for us.
Benton: We also feel it's really important to be open and honest and communicate to employees. It's important to build that trust between management and all the employees. We have town halls and we tell them everything, how much health care costs.
Bullard: Transparency really is the best policy. We don't just tell employees about what's happening with regards to benefits, we make information available on all of our financials so that they know where the money is going, what's coming, and that they are very informed.
Back in 2008 and 2009, when we had relatively flat growth and we were seeing double-digit increases [in health care costs], it was our CEO who got out in front of our employees to talk about us needing to take greater control as an organization in terms of what's happening in health care. For years we'd been telling employees on their annual statements what it cost so they were well aware of how much they were paying and how much the organization was paying for their health care. We implemented a five-year strategy involving the employees to turn that around. And I'm very pleased to say that this past year we had a zero [percent increase] and I'm expecting the same for this year.
Benz: How do you communicate benefits and get [employees] engaged?
Conoway: We have a communications manager in every department. Our benefits folks or 401(k) folks or training folks will write special messages. Our population is spread out and we have a significant population that doesn't have an office, so [communication methods include] paper-based, [notices] in break rooms, before-fly briefings for flight attendants and pilots. Being this diverse, we have to have various avenues of communication.
Rickfels: Something we've tried to do is tie benefits to the bigger message of the company. Benefits for most people are really boring, let's be honest. But, how we tie it together is [to say], 'Well, why do we do benefits? We do benefits because we want to put people first. We want to create a total well-being package for you as an individual so we offer medical.' That's much more exciting than saying, 'We offer a comprehensive medical plan.' Tying it to something bigger that people can emotionally connect to gets them to at least listen to the mechanics of it. ... We've done that messaging long enough that people now see everything we do as a benefit.
