Vacation, travel perks keep employees loyal
Newlyweds Joy and Matthew Bennett had planned to wait until next year to take their honeymoon.
Then Joy’s employer, the consumer advocacy website ConsumerAffairs.com, changed its vacation policy to give employees unlimited time off. On top of that, the company now offers each employee a vacation stipend of 2 per cent of his or her salary up to $1,000.
Now, the Bennetts will embark on their honeymoon much sooner. Next month, they plan to spend a week in Los Angeles thanks to her stipend and flexible vacation time.
“By being encouraged to take time off during the year, I feel refreshed and energized while I’m in the office, which increases my productivity and dedication,” says Joy Bennett, who has worked at the company’s Tulsa, Okla., office for more than a year.
The improving economy has encouraged many companies to offer employees more travel-related perks. This summer, many offices will shorten work weeks so employees can travel; pay for their vacations; or give them unlimited time off. This comes just a few years after the recession forced companies to cut salaries and employees.
“Boy, that’s a far cry from six years ago,” says Jim Rose, a director at Purk and Associates, an accounting firm in St. Louis that’s treating all 25 employees to a Mexican vacation this summer.
While the Society for Human Resource Management says only 1 per cent of U.S. employers offered unlimited time off in 2014, a growing number of companies say that vacation perks help them retain employees and makes them more productive.
“One of our goals as a company is to be a best place to work,” says Eric Jenkins, chief operating officer of ConsumerAffairs, which has 40 employees in its Tulsa office. “So we’ve looked for innovative ways to create a culture and environment that’s going to attract high-performing individuals.”
Employees who take advantage of their stipend must agree to take a trip for at least five days. There’s good reason to mandate that. According to the U.S. Travel Association, the average American earns 21 days of time off each year but forfeits 4.9 days.
“We don’t want you to take off and just sit in your basement and play Xbox,” Jenkins says. “I don’t care if it’s driving to Kansas City or Dallas, but you have to go out and experience life.”
This summer, Argyle Executive Forum, a New York City-based marketing services company, is paying for its employees to experience life at a house in the Hamptons.
Each employee is guaranteed a trip to the 2,000 square-foot three-bed- room East Hampton rental at least once through a lottery system.
“Our goal as an organization is to create value for our employees, and this is a fresh way to do that,” says Joe Rosenbaum, Argyle’s vice president of human resources. “We like to do things that wow our employees, and the Hampton house is in that spirit.”
Revelry, a marketing agency with offices in Portland, Ore., and Fairfield, Conn., offers employees free white-water rafting trips through Orange Torpedo Trips.
Although Orange Torpedo is owned by the company, the trips, which are done on the Rogue River in southern Oregon and the Salmon River in Idaho, cost at least $1,000 a person.
Josh Makepeace, a creative strategist for Revelry for two years, has taken the rafting trip twice.
“It’s not some arbitrary financial perk. It’s not some benefit that is office-related,” he says. “With this approach, they are offering opportunities for us to disconnect, which is important for morale, for our overall health and well-being.”