Are Employees Buying What You’re Selling?

"Yeah, that’s great, but are employees buying what you’re selling?"

I overheard a recruiter asking this question to her client when discussing how to position their company when speaking with candidates. She focused on the usual aspects of compensation and job description but also asked some challenging statements about why a candidate would want to work for THEM.

This is such an important question that allows for corporate leadership introspection – who are we, who do we want to be, who do we want to work for us, and so on. Why WOULD an employee want to work for us, rather than “be grateful we’re offering a job!” We’re often a small part of that conversation, helping organizations construct the retirement plan that will end up as the employees’ future and final paycheck. Budgeting and design are critical, as is the conversation on how the retirement plan fits in the greater picture of benefits (and benefits budget).

Flash forward: I was asked by podcast host Tony Martignetti of Nonprofit Radio to talk about employee benefits, this time from the perspective of the employee. What was good, bad, indifferent, what kinds of creative benefits are companies now offering, how has work from home affected the candidate marketplace, and so on.

I don’t often get to take the employee perspective, but this was such a great opportunity to relay what we find out in our one-on-one meetings with our clients! In the episode, I share the kinds of benefits we are seeing, ideas to consider (many of which come from our own smarty-pants clients), and also a reminder that benefits are only valuable if they’re relevant, and they’re only valuable if they are used and appreciated. If employees aren’t using them, they’re likely not “buying what you’re selling” about your workplace.

Here's the transcript of our conversation:

Tony (06:17): It's a pleasure to welcome Courtenay Shipley to Nonprofit Radio. She is the founder and Chief Planologist of Retirement Planology, a consulting and registered investment advisory firm for corporate sponsored and nonprofit sponsored retirement plans. She has worked with qualified retirement plans, developed strategies for third party administrators, and conducted over 10,000 educational meetings. Number 10,001 right now! Courtenay is on LinkedIn and her company is at retirementplanology.com. Courtenay, welcome to Nonprofit Radio.

Courtenay (07:00): Thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here!

Tony (07:03): Oh, I'm glad you are. And I don't even mean to cut you short, too. I'm saying this is 10,001, but you've already done over 10,000. So, this could be number 11,424. We don’t know.

Courtenay (07:15): I stopped counting!

Tony (07:16): You stopped counting. That’s probably a good idea. Alright, well, we don’t want to stop counting our benefits, and we want to look at this from the employee perspective. I’d like folks who are employees to know what they could get, whether what they’re getting is good or not, things like that. So, let’s start with what are minimum bare bones, you’re getting something but not a lot, but you’re getting the bare minimum type benefits package. What does that look like?

Courtenay (07:50): Okay, so when you’re thinking about your benefits package, think of it in terms of, your employer is providing your paycheck and then they’re providing these other benefits that, in general, are kind of building your foundation for your financial security in some way. So, you have your paycheck, which obviously is your largest asset, the ability to be able to work, they're providing that. We know that one. The next one that you might not be thinking about is, what happens if you have a health issue? Obviously, that's health insurance, right, or if it's really bad you can't go to work, you're out for an extended period of time, that's going to be disability insurance. What happens to your paycheck if you're not around anymore and somebody else depends on it? That's where life insurance comes in. What happens if you don't want to work forever for that paycheck?

Courtenay (08:44): Well, that's where your retirement plan comes in. So that's going to help you build a paycheck in the future from the money that you're saving today and maybe your employer is contributing, too. And so, when you think about your financial security from that perspective, that's kind of the easy thermometer for seeing what's good, what's not good. And then everything else after that will fall into a different category for you. For example, maybe you are early on in your career and you're going to need to get some more education to advance and maybe those tuition types of reimbursement programs are going to be useful for you. Maybe you live in a big city and getting to work is a pain. So, there's a transportation stipend that you're given or parking onsite -- my gosh, in the Washington, DC, area to have parking, what a luxury! Maybe you're looking more towards, you've got student loan payments and we know with many nonprofits, if you stay for a certain amount of time, then perhaps you can have your student loan taken care of by the government depending on if you qualify for all the programs.

Courtenay (10:02): So that's another thing to be thinking about. Or would they pay something towards your student loan – a student loan payback program? You might be looking at, do they have discounts with maybe childcare providers or someone that can help with your aging parent and figuring out what they need to do from a caretaker perspective? And, this could also just be building out further on the health insurance piece. Is there something that's going to help with mental wellness? Is there something that's going to help with financial wellness or these different types of programs? And those could be formal or informal. So, when you're looking at what they're providing to you, you want to have a list of what's important to you, and then you want to also look at their list and say, what on this list is relevant to me? Because they may have all the benefits in the world, but if it's not something that resonates with you and you're not going to use it, well, yay for having great benefits, but what a bummer that you don't get to use all of them.

Tony (11:09): If you don't have student loan debt or children, then student loan… 

Courtenay (11:13): …half of what I just talked about doesn't matter.

Tony (11:15): Repayment assistance and child care don't matter. And some places even provide child care, not just payments, but some larger organizations have onsite child care.

Courtenay (11:27): That's usually a very large organization. Yes, for sure.

Tony (11:30): Or maybe they have an arrangement somewhere. Alright. Yeah. You mentioned that something could be formal or informal. What do you mean by, well, I think we know, well go ahead, make the distinction. What are you distinguishing between formal and informal benefits?

Courtenay (11:46): So let's talk about the financial wellness piece. That's an easy one. They may have someone that you can talk to that comes along with your retirement plan, for example. Or maybe you call the plan’s record keeper to have your financial questions answered. Maybe it's a formal program onsite where they come every other month and present different topics. And also one-on-one counseling, maybe as a third tier of that, maybe you have access to software or budgeting software like You Need a Budget or something like that where you get that for free being a benefit of being an employee there. So, from “this comes along with,” or “occasionally we do these types of programming” to something that's more formal where it's obvious that they are paying for a third party to provide something for you.

Tony (12:38): Okay. You mentioned life insurance. Is that a common one? Is life insurance common?

Courtenay (12:44): Yeah, I would say that that's a pretty common one, either for the nonprofit to sponsor and to pay for a basic benefit. Those are usually very inexpensive on the employer side to have a group life insurance program. And it may not be a ton of coverage, so it may be up to $50,000 or $100,000 or something like that. And then the employee often has the ability to buy up. So if you do have other people that depend on your paycheck, that could be a really cost effective way to get extra coverage through work.

Tony (13:18): And depending on what level you're working at, you might have different degrees of death benefit. So the CEO might have a half a million dollar policy?

Courtenay (13:26): That could be possible. 

Tony (13:33): What about vesting for these? The period you have to wait before certain benefits become active.

Courtenay (13:43): So yeah, there's two ways. Oh, really I think what you're getting at is eligibility. How long somebody has to wait before they can enroll in the program?

Tony (13:51): Yeah. Oh, is it eligibility, not vesting? Yeah. Okay. Thanks for that.

Courtenay (13:53): Vesting is more like portability. For your retirement plan, for example, they may give you an employer contribution or employer match. And if you left the company right away without having been there very long, your employer contributions might not all travel with you -- they might not all be yours to keep. There could be a vesting schedule and you earn ownership of it over time. But with eligibility, yeah, it's all over the map. I've seen it be as soon as day one when you're hired. I've seen it be staggered. So certain benefits kick in at certain times, your health insurance starts first, but maybe your retirement isn't until you've been there for one year. I'm seeing more and more employers trying to make that easier from an administrative burden. And also for employees who just want to know how much is going to be missing from their check by the time they put their own contributions in. So I'm seeing that come down as far as the amount of time it takes to be eligible for these types of programs. And also less of the staggering, like, well, you get the health insurance this month, you get the retirement this month, you get the life insurance this month, that sort of thing.

Tony (15:03): Is it fair to include remote work among benefits? I mean, it's not a formal package, like a nonprofit would hire an insurance company to provide life insurance, but is that a fair conversation to have when you're talking about benefits?

Courtenay (15:21): Absolutely. Absolutely. We're seeing employees asking for it. It is going to depend on the employer and the flexibility and the amount of work and the type of work that you're doing for them. But it's always good to ask, where does this work need to take place? But there's also the other component of how much does your team need you to be around and how do you use the Facetime strategically within your organization to help people's careers grow over time. Because a lot of times when we're talking to an employee, it's usually about finances and they're disgruntled a lot of times and it doesn't have anything to do with their compensation as much as just the work environment or not feeling like they have a career path. And so being able to attract and retain the talent that you want, benefits are really important. But also, how do we do work now after coming out of COVID, that's a really big question to answer. How does workflow work? How does work get done? How do people get to move up in their career at your organization?

Tony (16:25): And I understand your point in terms of the remote work, it varies, but are you seeing trends? Are you seeing a willingness to allow a couple of days a week out of an office, but maybe not full-time or, where are you seeing employers settling around the virtual work question?

Courtenay (16:46): Well, it's still kind of all over the place, but I would say that there's a much higher willingness to…I guess if I have to choose a trend, it would be two days offsite, three days on, or vice versa, at least coming into the office twice a week. Those are probably the most common that we're seeing now.

Tony (17:04): So if you're asking for more than that, you might not be aware that you might be outside the norm and you may not get it.

Courtenay (17:13): Yeah.

Tony (17:14): Okay.

Courtenay (17:15): At this point in time. I think we’ll see next year's trend will be different, probably.

Tony (17:21): Okay, fair enough. Yeah, absolutely. August of 2023. And in terms of negotiating, what are employers spending on average on benefits in terms of percentage of salary? I used to hear an employer adds 30% for benefits, 30% of the direct cash, they should expect to add another 30% per employee. For this bundle that you talked about, is that still roughly fair that your employer was spending about another third of your salary on benefits or is that out of date? 

Courtenay (18:04): No, I think that's probably pretty close. That's a great estimate anyway. If you have employers listening who are trying to make those plans, that's a really good number to aim for. And yes, with nonprofits, everybody's trying to stay under that 20% number for the financial reporting and whatnot for overhead expenses. And so that also comes into play, too, with how nonprofits want to divide the pie out for their overhead.

Tony (18:31): Yeah, I have a lot of trouble with that overhead number. Those overhead restrictions, people are not overhead! People are arguably your most valuable, critical required resource. That's not overhead. That's why we have benefits, not overhead, like the hardware on the doors -- that's overhead. Well, we got to replace a latch on the door…that's overhead. We're not latches and doorknobs. 

Courtenay (19:06): 30% number is a pretty good one to aim for. 

Tony (19:08): 30% is fair. Alright.

Courtenay (19:10): Yeah. Another thing that where we see employers fall short sometimes, and employees should take this into consideration, is a total compensation statement. Because a lot of times employers are not necessarily rolling back the curtain on how much these types of programs cost. And so it's important for an employee to know how much extra is being spent, what's really in their compensation package. These are valuable benefits and they are worth money. So when you're comparing maybe one job offer against another, having that total compensation statement or just even an estimate gives you more information about the value of your benefits package.

Tony (19:55): Yeah, that's fair, right? You want to know the total. I mean, it's certainly part of total compensation. It's as much as an additional third.

Courtenay (20:07): But back to my original comment about how it's important to have in your mind what types of benefits are important to you. The other part of that is using them because if you say that an employer matching contribution is important in your 401K or 403B plan, and then you don't contribute enough to get that match, that's compensation you are literally leaving on the table!

Tony (20:31): Yeah. That's such a big mistake. Yeah. Leaving money on the table. What's sort of typical now in terms of matching? Back in the dark days of my career when I was an employee – I can't be an employee anymore. I would be a terrible employee for anybody! But back then I used to have this very generous one at a university where I think if we contributed 5%, the university contributed 7% or 7.5% of my salary. So, of course I put the five in because you want the max, right? There's another 7.5% of your salary, approaching 10% added to your salary each year by your employer. So those were the early 2000s. Yeah, those were late 1990s and early, very early 2000s. So what's more typical now in terms of a match in a retirement plan?

Courtenay (21:27): Well, let's start with how common a match, or what we call a non-elective contribution, is. That’s a thank you for breathing, here's money in your retirement plan. That is very common nowadays.

Tony (21:38): Wait, I'm sorry. What's very common? Non-elective, what is that?

Courtenay (21:42): Either a non-elective amount or a match. Non-elective is where you're just receiving -- they're just giving you 3% into your retirement account or 5% or something like that. So, what you described a minute ago was having to put something in to get something.  You see it both ways and it's very popular for the employer to be making a contribution. So that's one thing to consider is, is this a good benefits package? If you are getting an employer contribution in your retirement plan, that is a step in the right direction to say yes, these benefits are decent.

Tony (22:16): And so while we're on that, I'm going to dig a little deeper on that. We'll come back to the broader point, but what's a sort of a typical non-elective contribution? Like 1% to 3%, what are you seeing?

Courtenay (22:30): Yeah, so I actually pulled this data just in case from the Plan Sponsor Defined Contribution Survey from 2021. Well 2021, 2022. So what's most common on the smaller side of the nonprofit, endowment, foundation group is somewhere around 15% usually gives less than 3% on a non-elective. The next most common one is to give between 3% and 6%.

Tony (23:09): And what percentage of that, what percentage of the market is giving between 3% and 6%?

Courtenay (23:14): So for a non-elective contribution, it is about, 30% are giving exactly 3% in the smaller space, and then the 3%-5% is 15 to 25% depending on what organization size. So those are the most common. Once you get above that 5 to 7% mark, it just drops off completely.

Tony (23:45): So it sounds like roughly 50% are giving between 3 and 6%. Is that right?

Courtenay (23:54): Yeah. Well, I'll call it in that range.

Tony (23:56): Three to six or is it three to five, three to six.

Courtenay (23:59): It's 3% to 6%, yeah.

Tony (24:00): Okay. So roughly 50% are giving 3 to 6% all. So if you're getting 3 to 6%, again, that's a nice solution. Very competitive. Even at 3% you get an additional 3% added to your salary. Yeah. Okay. So now let's go back. All right. I just wanted to drill down on what it's looking like. So now your bigger point was something that I don't remember now because I made you digress. It's okay. You have a lackluster host. I promised we'd go back, we will. 

Courtenay (24:35): So well, if you want to know what the most common matching contribution is…where you put money in to get it matched by the nonprofit.

Tony (24:38): I drilled down on the non-elective. Thank you. I knew one of us would remember. Okay, so matching. What do those numbers look like?

Courtenay (24:46): So matching is more popular. More organizations offer a match than they do the non-elective and the matching space, you'd see that 4% is the most common.

Tony (24:59): What is it?

Courtenay (24:59): 4% is the most common. And then the next most common match after that would be 6%. 

Tony (25:06): So how much do you have to contribute to get that, is it one for one typically?

Courtenay (25:10): It’s probably one for one, yes.

Tony (25:12): Okay. So you contribute 4%, they contribute another four.

Courtenay (25:19): Yeah. Well, if you give one, they match you one all the way up to 4%. So if you're putting in four, yeah, you get the full match.

Tony (25:25): So I think it's smart to do the 4% because your employer will give you the max, whatever your max happens to be, if they will match it. If they'll go to 6%, look, you're getting more than a 5% increase in compensation, not direct cash compensation. It's in your retirement plan, but they're still taking money out of their pocket and putting it into yours.

Courtenay (25:48): Retirement is a long way away. Most of the time you're going to need to save, between 10 to 15% is what we always recommend, because that usually gets most people mathematically on track for retirement. So if you're coming in and you're putting in four and they're putting in four, you're almost there. It's nudging you in the right direction.

Tony (26:08):  They get to about halfway. You're at 80%, you're about halfway.

Tony (26:11): Alright. Okay. So I want folks to know if their benefits are crummy, if they suck, I want people to know that they maybe can negotiate for more. I mean, if you're at a nonprofit and you're looking for a raise and your employer says, no raise, we don't have the cash. Well what about the benefits? Can we tinker with the benefits a little? The match is now 4%. Well, they may have machinations to go through. Their plan may not allow an increase, but there are other benefits. We're not talking only about retirement. You could start negotiating around your healthcare plan or your disability or the life insurance or the transportation stipend or the tuition reimbursement or the parking or the student loan debt repayment. So if your employer says, no, no raise this year. Well, can we tinker with the benefits a bit? Right.

Courtenay (27:05): How about ask for your birthday off?

Tony  (27:08): It's a holiday. Exactly. We didn't even talk about days off. Thank you. That's a great one. What are standard days off? What should we be getting? What does it look like?

Courtenay (27:18): All over the place! Unfortunately, I don’t have really good statistics on all of that, but I would say that the longer that you’ve been in an organization, the more vacation days you typically earn. That’s a trend that we see, walking in having no longevity with the company, you're going to get far less. And we are seeing a trend towards just days off versus having to specify is this a sick day? Is it a vacation day? So, giving a little bit more flexibility about the combination there. There's also the ability to accrue hours as your longevity increases, like accruing eight hours over this period of time. If you've worked this long, you get this many vacation days, that sort of thing.

Tony  (28:03): There's also a carryover. What are you allowed to carry over from year to year right? Hopefully you're not losing vacation time or days off. Please, please don't lose. I mean it's paid time off.

Tony  (28:16): So that's another, and since you said the birthday, that's right in line with what I was thinking in terms of negotiating. Alright, I can't get a raise. Can I get an extra week off next year? That's a week of unpaid time. I mean paid time that you get to take off, that has value. That's valuable. You're working one week less for the same amount of money because the employer said no raise for next year. So you can negotiate around time off.

Courtenay (28:46): One of our very creative clients decided that -- you mentioned the time off that expires -- and so they allowed people to instead who are going to lose it, be able to take that, turn it into cash and put it towards their student loans. That was a creative way that they helped them out. Now there are some tax implications to that but overall that was a nice gesture, for sure. Don't lose everything. Don't lose these days. Get some cash value for it.

Tony (29:21): Right. So that was income, I guess they had to report that. They had to report that. Correct? That transfer as income.

Courtenay (29:27): Yeah, they did. 

Tony(29:28): Alright, so be it, days off. If you can get an extra week off next year, you don't have to report. That's not a taxable event. An extra week off, but you're working one week less to get the same amount of money. So consider that a raise, right? It's a raise.

Courtenay (29:46): Yeah, absolutely.

Tony (29:46): We work less days for the same amount of money. I got a raise. So be creative about your negotiating. Don't just accept, oh, okay, no raises next year, fine.

Courtenay (29:57): If you're talking about leadership, too, we've had some of our clients that are trying to attract new executives in either CEO, CFO, HR, CHRO, that sort of thing. There is another benefit…

Tony (30:11): Wait, we have jargon jail on nonprofit radio, right? Big time jargon and jail. CHRO,  what the heck is that?

Courtenay (30:18): Chief Human Resources Officer.

Tony (30:19): Oh, alright, well, it blew past me. I’ll bet I'm not the only one. Alright, CHRO. Alright, you're out of jail. You're out of jargon jail.

Courtenay (30:26): Thank you. Thank you so much. So when you're trying to attract that talent and those people, there's not as many of them and they're hard to find and they're hard to retain. And so that's where we've seen some pretty creative negotiation, as well. I don't know who's listening and if they're in that type of leadership role, but being able to negotiate, well help me pay off my grad school loans. If I stay around, in three years then I get $10,000 towards that loan. Or, if I want to save more for my retirement, I'm trying to play catch up because I've had a long career, but I haven't been as good a saver as I should have been and would really like to have a 457b plan and be able to have extra money going towards my retirement. Now the 457b is a really important nonprofit benefit because they're the ones that get to have it. It can only cover about 10 to 15% of the total population of the employees that are there. But it's basically a way to save more for retirement. Now, the funds are at risk. If the nonprofit does go out of business, it'd be subject to creditors. But if you're the one who's helping run it, make sure that doesn't happen. Right?

Tony (31:40): We're on the employee side. So a 457B is not a very common benefit or it is common?

Courtenay (31:47): Not all the time. No. It seems to be forgotten by many nonprofits. So if you are an employee who's walking into a situation where you have access to one of those, that's a pretty forward thinking organization.

<<Sponsor break: Episode sponsored by Donorbox>>

Tony (34:35): What kinds of details? I mean we've talked some about the details like vesting versus…eligibility. Thank you. Yeah, so what other details should we be drilling down about 'em? So we talked about retirement planning a good bit, but what other detail-type things like devils-in-the-details, which should we be thinking about?

Courtenay (34:59): I think you should be thinking about ease of use and getting help. I think those are two important parts. So, when you get a whole bunch of benefits that are thrown at you, do you really want to sit there all day and read? No. You want it to come with a person or you want it to come with at least a chatbot or something to help answer questions. Everybody's different. They're going to use benefits slightly differently. And so, it's important for you when you're choosing between your different healthcare packages or your different offerings, to be able to have somebody that you can ask. So ,I think that that's a very important thing to be looking for is, who's going to help me make these decisions.

Tony (35:41): Yeah, support.

Courtenay (35:42): Yeah, that is support. Yep. So I think support is very important.

Tony (35:47): And are you meaning support in the nonprofit or support from the provider that offers the life insurance or the disability, et cetera?

Courtenay (35:56): I would say it could come from either way, but probably more commonly from the provider.

Tony (36:01): Okay. From the provider.

Courtenay (36:04): But hopefully when the nonprofit has chosen these types of benefits, they've figured out a way to get help to their employees. That's a big cultural difference. I think that if you are looking at your benefits package, your compensation package, the offer that's coming to you and you see that they have the ability for you to talk to people to help you make decisions, that's going to tell you a lot about their culture right there. That they care about you as an employee. So I think that's very important.

Tony (36:32): And the other was ease of use.

Courtenay (36:35): Ease of use. So how do they put all these disparate systems together? Your benefits package is not going to be provided by the same provider. Do you have a website where all of the documents are housed? Do you have videos on one page? Is there a portal? What makes your life easier? Do you have to go to six different phone numbers if you need to get help or you need to submit a claim or you have a question answered about something? So how has the nonprofit put this together to make it easy for you to access it? That counts for something.

Tony (37:14): For sure. What about other benefits that you might be able to negotiate for, things we haven't talked about? Like, little special things that you've seen that folks might be able, like I said, able to wheedle their nonprofit or their potential employer. One of two situations might be at a nonprofit or it might be weighing offers now or in the future, weighing competing offers. What are the things have you seen folks, I hesitate to say, get away with, but get access to that might not have been offered in the first round?

Courtenay (37:56): So if they have the ability to ask for a Health Savings Account, there's only certain types of health insurance policies that go with it. -- the HSA eligible programs. It used to be called high deductible, but that's kind of a misnomer when you start to do the cost analysis. But the thought is that you can put money aside into the HSA, that money can stick with you throughout your time. You can continue to fund it. You can use it to pay your healthcare expenses. You can keep it rolling until you get to retirement and use it then. It's a triple tax-free benefit. So, it's tax-free going in -- it comes out pre-tax from your check. It sits in there. It can grow. It can be invested. That's all tax deferred or never to be taxed if you take it out for healthcare reasons, it comes out tax free. So that's an awesome benefit. If they haven't considered it, you could try it and you're saying I want more benefits. That's one of the ways that you might be able to negotiate, maybe after you're already employed there or something to be looking for. So that's a really nice benefit if you want to use it, it's a great option. And we don't see that everywhere still. That’s still special.

Tony (39:07): That's the HSA, the health savings account. Is that the same as flex? Flex Spending?

Courtenay (39:12): No, Flex Spending is a really nice benefit, but that's the “use it or lose it.” So you have to use it within the calendar year on certain types of expenses. The HSA, you'd never lose it. You can use it to pay for healthcare expenses and there's a list of them on the IRS website that is always being updated, but you just keep rolling it forward. So…you can accumulate a pretty darn good balance in there.

Tony (39:37): And the flex spending you have to use within the year. What else? Pardon me?

Courtenay (39:43): Yes. I said that's also a nice benefit to have the FSA.

Tony (39:47): Okay, HSA. What else? What else?

Courtenay (39:49): 529 College savings plan.

Tony (39:52): Having that. Yeah, 529. Yes. Explain that. I've seen those. What do those look like?

Courtenay (39:57): Sure. So that's going to be for folks who have kids, more than likely, however, it's for education, so it really could be for anybody. If you want to start saving something for going back to grad school or something like that later in life, it's money that is set aside and it grows without any tax implications as long as you use it for education expenses down the road, then it comes back out tax-free. Employers technically could make a contribution to it if there's access to that, so that could be something. And it's really designed to help with school of some sort. So that could be private K through 12 schools, room and board, tuition, things like that, also, higher education, like I was saying before, more of the undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Tony (40:54): So that can be for anybody. That can be for yourself. Children, it could be grandchildren, nieces, nephews. And…

Courtenay (41:01): You can change the beneficiary. So if you have somebody who doesn't go to college and your family and you want to use the funds, you can just change the beneficiary to you. So there's a lot of flexibility with it. It's a nice tool that can be used in several ways, but mainly you do pretty well if it's for education.

Tony (41:20): All right. And those are the 529.

Courtenay (41:23): So having a payroll deducted 529 plan, it comes straight out of your check. It's real easy. There's also, and like I said, the employer can make a contribution to the 529. That would be extra special. So that could be something maybe.

Tony (41:38): Okay. So then you know, have an exemplary package.

Courtenay (41:42): Yeah, that's not common.

Tony (41:43): …Exemplary 529 plan if your employer is contributing a percent or two to it. Right. Okay. This is, we want to know, do our benefits suck? Are they middling or are they exemplary? It's important to know. You want to know where you stand. 

Courtenay (41:58): That’s right. Also on the subject of education, the tuition reimbursement, I think I mentioned that earlier. A lot of them will have a tuition reimbursement program. You could also look at, will they pay for certificates for certain skills or conferences or other types of things that help you with your career long-term, make you a more valuable employee?

Tony (42:19): Professional development! Is there a budget for professional development? Can I get more professional development dollars? No, there's no raise this year. No raise for next year. Alright, well how about professional development? Can I get $2,000 to go to a conference?

Courtenay (42:32): Yeah, I think it's perfect. Right? That's a great way.

Tony (42:35): Or to use some other way. I was just thinking of conferences. People are trying to get out more now that we can, but can I get some professional development money? Okay. It's great. Courtenay, what else? What else?

Courtenay (42:49): Well, I want to point out that that's kind of a win in both directions. If they go and get a certificate that makes them a more valuable employee to the nonprofit, that's a win-win for everybody, right? You've got more skills. They've got more skills that you have. 

Tony (43:02): CHRO, the CHRO should recognize that. Right?

Courtenay (43:06): Exactly!

Tony (43:06): Our CHRO should know it. Go ahead.

Courtenay (43:10): Other student loan programs, like a student loan payback program would also be extraordinary on the list of benefits. So if they're going to give you $50 a month towards your student loan or something like that, that's a big deal. That's a huge deal, as a matter of fact. 

Tony (43:24): Meaning it's kind of rare.

Courtenay (43:26): Yes, it's rare and it's super helpful because if you think about just looking at how your debt works and paying off extra every month, it reduces the life of the loan. It saves you massive amounts of interest payments over the life of the loan. So, that's one that we really like. Now there's mixed feelings, of course, about student loans and should they be wiped out? That's been kind of…

Tony (43:57): There's a political side to it. Yeah, because there are populations who never, can't afford college or higher ed…

Courtenay (44:05): But at the end of the day, it's an attraction and retention tool. So, I think employers should consider it.

Tony (44:11): Right, right. Okay. Okay. Anything else we could be negotiating for if we feel our benefits are on the lackluster side or you exhausted it? If that's it, that's okay.

Courtenay (44:25): I think lunch and learns on different topics are probably another good one. Could you bring in a speaker about X, Y, Z? That's kind of an easy one for employers too, if you want more knowledge, if that's what you're after, have somebody come in and speak on a certain topic or negotiate a discount for us for X, Y, Z product. So we've seen that happen sometimes where even if it's just the coffee shop next door and you get 5% off or something, that's nice.

Tony (44:55): Oh, something local. Something local. Alright.

Courtenay (44:58): Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, if you think about it, I mean, most nonprofits are heavily involved in their local area, so can they leverage that to also provide more benefits for their employees?

Tony (45:09): Okay. Okay. Excellent. Think on the local level too. Alright. What else do you want folks to know about, again, of course, from the employee perspective, maybe ways of negotiating or, what else would you like folks to know about?

Courtenay (45:29): Well, I think when you go to negotiate, it's always important to recognize the benefits, the compensation, all of that is going to vary based on how large your employer is, their budget, the different constraints that they may have from outside, where they're located. So, it's important to remember that you want to have the value conversation about how you're a valuable employee and that's why you're asking for these additional benefits. I think that's an important thing to remember, because it's easy to say yes to an employee who's very valuable. It's kind of a no-brainer.

Tony (46:15): You need to make the case, you need to make the case of your value. Whatever value it is you bring. Expertise, experience, doesn't have to be formal education, I'm not talking about that necessarily. Just what's your value as an employee, not just what do you do, but what do you bring that somebody else can't bring?

Courtenay (46:40): Yeah. Or what great work have you done that's made things a lot easier for everybody? Or what are you bringing to the table? Because when we're in conversations with folks, you remember that I do corporate retirement plans and so when we're talking with people, a lot of times it's centered around their money and “Well, I just need to make more.” And it's like, well, okay, but don't forget that they're employing you to do a job and so they have an easier time when your performance reviews are great. So that's just something to keep in mind of what moves the needle, what's important to the organization, what fits within their culture when you go to ask for things. So, I think that's important to think about. And also, if you're comparing two benefits packages, we have clients that just can't afford to do amazing things, but they do good things and the opportunity to work there is still great and the culture is great. And even though you may not make as much money in the long run, the experience that you get or the cause that they serve is worthwhile. And so I think that's one extra level that for-profit entities and for-profit employees don't have to think about as much because a lot of the nonprofits really do make a great difference and they're a different type of work environment. So that's also something that has value to it that I don't think we think about sometimes.

Tony (48:06): Yeah, absolutely. True, right? The benefits are just one component, one variable among many. When you're weighing whether you want to stay working where you are or whether you're considering different options that you may have a couple of different offers. The benefits are just one variable and certainly the quality of the work, the culture, equity issues, those are all variables, as well. Alright, how about we leave it there then, you feel okay?

Courtenay (48:43): I do. Do you?

Tony (48:44): I do, but I'm not the expert. You are.

Courtenay (48:48): Fair enough.

Tony (48:49): Expert feels good? Alright. Courtenay Shipley, you'll find her on LinkedIn. You'll find her company at retirementplanology.com. Courtenay, thank you very much for sharing your expertise. Thanks a lot.

Courtenay (49:02): Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Tony (49:05): My pleasure.

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