Work Perks

Work Perks

EMPLOYMENT TRENDS by Jean Gruss | Editor/Lee-Collier

More vacation time. Faster vesting of benefits. All-expense-paid cruises.

These are some of the tools employers say they're using to retain and attract employees in Collier County, where the unemployment rate now hovers near 2%.

The Economic Development Council of Collier County recently commissioned a survey of local businesses to find out what they're doing to attract and retain employees. They used the information to name the best places to work in Collier County.

With the unemployment rate under 3% in every Gulf Coast county from Hillsborough to Collier, the survey's results can be a useful measuring stick for anyone doing business in Southwest Florida.

"If you're not competitive, you can pretty much expect the better companies to come in and raid your good employees," says Gerry Hoeffner, president of Personnel Dynamics Consulting, a Fort Pierce-based firm that conducted the Collier survey.

Hoeffner, who performed similar surveys for 11 other Florida counties last year, says companies are especially aggressive with benefits such as vacations and savings plans such as 401ks. For example, some companies have started offering new employees vacation time based on their time in the industry, not their tenure with the company. "That's the first time I've seen that," he says. Others vest employees immediately in the company match to 401ks and provide health benefits from day one.

Some companies, such as Gulfstream Homes, sent every employee and a guest on an all-expense paid cruise last year. "What it does is get people to talk," Hoeffner says. Company employees talk to friends and neighbors about the cruise and word spreads. "Your employees start marketing you and that's important," he says.

Another trend that Hoeffner is seeing is in the area of new-employee orientation. Companies are pairing employees with long tenures with new hires to make sure they're happy in their new positions. "You want to keep them and make the transition go better," Hoeffner says.

Southwest Florida

UNemployment RATE

County Rate (3/06)

Charlotte 2.8%

Collier 2.2%

Hillsborough 2.7%

Lee 2.2%

Manatee 2.3%

Pinellas 2.9%

Sarasota 2.3%

Florida 2.9%

United States 4.8%

Source: Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation

Best places to work

How does your company stack up against the best? The Economic Development Council of Collier County says Graef, Anhalt, Schoemer and Associates, Gulfstream Homes and WilsonMiller are the three best companies to work for in the county. Here's what they do right:

Category: 50 employees or less

Winner: Graef, Anhalt, Schoemer and Associates, Naples

Industry: Engineering and architecture

Number of employees: 4

Turnover: 0%

Amount spent on training and development per employee: $1,000

Hours of training per employee: 32

Cool benefits: Vacation awarded based on years in the industry; profit sharing plan, company funded retirement plan, 401k plan, stock ownership plan.

Category: 50 to 175 employees

Winner: Gulfstream Homes, Naples

Industry: Home building

Number of employees: 77

Turnover: 3.9%

Training: 93.8% of employees received training last year

401k plan participation: 90%

Profit-sharing plan participation: 90%

Cool benefits: All expense-paid cruise for employees and a guest in 2005; employee committee structures bonus system.

Category: More than 175 employees

Winner: WilsonMiller

Industry: Engineering

Number of employees: 184

Turnover: 12.5%

Amount spent on training and development per employee: $2,236

Hours of training per employee: 41

Stock-ownership plan participation: 77%

401k-plan participation: 73.4%

Bonus plan participation: 96%

Profit-sharing plan participation: 86%

Cool benefits: Accrual of 15 days of personal time off during the first year of employment; reward up to $3,000 for recruiting qualified co-workers; assigns a mentor to every new employee.

How does your

business compare?

Personnel Dynamics Consulting of Fort Pierce surveyed businesses in Collier and other Florida counties of similar size on employment issues ranging from turnover rates to training costs. Here are some of the results for 2005:

Collier Florida

Turnover rate 25.4% 21.4%

Revenue growth 15.7% 9%

Promotions 11.2% 10.9%

Training costs* $454 $571

• per employee

Collier employment strategies

Conduct employee evaluations after probation: 78%

Survey employee satisfaction: 29.7%

Employ disabled workers: 21.6%

Trained employees in 2005: 61.7%

Provided more than 25 hours of training per employee in 2005: 20%

Offer stock-ownership plan: 33%

Offer 401K, 403b or 457 plan: 89.2%

Participation rate in 401K, 403b or 457 plan: 63.6%

Company funded retirement plan: 20%

Profit-sharing plan: 37.8%

Bonus plan: 64%

Health insurance: 100%

Dental insurance: 91.8%

Life insurance: 87%

Long-term disability insurance: 95%

Short-term disability insurance: 69.4%

Telecommuting: 41.6%

Childcare/Eldercare: 10.8%

Flex-time policy: 0%