Employee Benefits Programs to Attract the Best and Brightest
By Kathy Dodson

Because taking care of your patients is your first order of business, developing employment policies to ensure you recruit the best professional talent is essential to delivering quality care. Attracting and retaining great staff requires competitive benefits and compensation policies.

AOPA’s 2007 Operating Performance and Compensation Report provides details to help you benchmark your policies with the entire market.

In addition to data on total compensation by position, the report details the full range of benefits offered by participants, which can be as important as compensation to most employees. Health care is the real hot button. (The report is based on 2006 data gathered from 204 companies.)

Eighty-six percent of the responding companies provide a company-paid medical program, with PPO being the most utilized plan (57 percent), followed by HMO (35 percent). Nearly half of respondents offer fully-paid employee programs; only one percent of programs are fully paid by employees, and the others are shared programs. Dependent coverage is fully paid by 48 percent of responding companies.

Survey respondents report a median annual health-care insurance expenditure of $4,342 per employee. This figure dips to a median of $3,272 among profit leaders (defined as such based on financial performance--top 25 percent return on assets during 2006). The expenditure rises to $4,957 among companies with $5 million-plus in sales.

Other insurance coverage provided includes life insurance (75 percent provide), dental (68 percent), optical/vision (44 percent), short-term disability (58 percent), and long-term disability (61 percent).  

Retirement plans are offered by 82 percent of participating companies, but substantially more companies in the $2 to $5 million range (97 percent) offer retirement plans. Defined contribution plans are the most popular (89 percent).

Paid leave is another important benefit.  A median of seven paid holidays are offered, and 59 percent of respondents offer full-time employees a combined vacation/sick/personal leave arrangement often known as paid time-off (PTO). The median length of service required for six to 10 days of PTO is two years. However, larger firms with sales in the $1 million to $5 million range require only one year of service.  Four years of service are required for 11 to 15 days of PTO. For 16 or more days, an employee would need a seven-year tenure. Overall, respondents provide a median of five sick/personal days. More than half of respondents (55 percent) allow vacation days to carry over from one year to the next, but limit the carryovers to anywhere from five to 12 days. Fewer companies allow sick/personal days to carry over from one year to the next (41 percent). Paid leave and PTO policies vary little based on community size, according to the 2007 survey.

Every company is challenged to build the most appealing, yet affordable, employee benefits program and policies. However, knowledge about marketplace trends can help you compete for the best staff.
 

Kathy Dodson is the senior director of government affairs for AOPA.
Questions? Contact Kathy Dodson at (571) 431-0810 or kdodson@AOPAnet.org.