Greater Reading Chamber Commerce Quarterly Fall 2017 - 13

GreaterReadingChamber.org

As the US economy slowly recovers from the Great Recession, employers find themselves in a position to bolster their
workforce with new talent. With the ever-increasing cost of healthcare, many companies struggle to increase their wages,
and to offset that, executives and owners have developed innovative benefits packages and perks to attract the cream of
the crop. LinkedIn is rife with articles about attracting top talent to your door. Ping pong table? Check. Office kegerator?
Check. Electric toothbrush stipend? Check. Some of these may sound ridiculous to you, but each example is plucked from a
different employer's blog. More practical examples may be flextime and work-from-home options, extended paid parental
leave, or a differential for that tough-to-find second shift mechanic.
As the unemployment rate continues to drop, the challenge becomes more and more difficult. In this employees' market,
what are Berks County businesses doing to find the right person for the job?

Russ Curtier,
President,
Pro Max Fence
Systems, Inc.

No, I think the recession had impacted everyone
in the same manner. I believe it forced everyone
to evaluate their expenses and cut unnecessary cost.
Companies that did not do that did not survive.

Yes, the skyrocketing health care costs have made
it increasingly harder to offer the same level of
coverage while offering a competitive wage. Money
spent on those cost increases could be money given
to employees in the form of wages.

We tend to offer as much overtime work as possible
to our employees. It gives us the ability to stay
on top of our schedule and work load without
hiring on new staff as well as offering additional
income to current employees.

We stay aware of the market we serve and what
others in the same market are doing. Our goal is
to always offer the best compensation to maintain
the top level of employees which in turn will help
the company succeed.

Andrea J. Funk,
CEO,
Cambridge-Lee Industries LLC
The recession and impact to commodity (copper) prices over the past 3 years put significant negative pressure on our earnings, which drove us to forego a cost of living wage
adjustment in 2015. However, because we believe our greatest asset is our employees,
we have continued to offer our employees very comprehensive benefits at an employee
cost that has remained significantly better than market. Through their hard work and
dedication, we have successfully crossed through this trough, and are now enjoying a
turnaround in market conditions with a pickup in volumes and commodity prices in
2017. Despite the financial impact of economic cycles, we believe our fair wages and
generous benefit package help us to demonstrate the value we place on our employees
and competitively attract and retain a high performing workforce.
Our cost of healthcare benefits has significantly increased, with Cambridge-Lee seeing
a 29% increase in cost/employee from 2013 to 2016. We strongly believe employees
should be compensated fairly, and so we have not allowed this to impact the wages we
offer incoming employees, and have instead absorbed the majority of this $1.5M/year
cost increase in our earnings.
In addition to fair wages and generous benefits including healthcare, 401(k) with company match, and paid time off, Cambridge-Lee offers many non-traditional benefits.
These include tuition reimbursement and wellness programs. In addition, we also
have a Cambridge-Lee Cares Committee, which organizes monthly employee events,
including bus trips to local cities, train rides, picnics, parties, car washes, meals, Easter
Egg hunts on campus, baseball and hockey games, amusement park trips, and an annual
Christmas party for our employees' children at a movie theatre with Santa. We like to
use community support activities to build teamwork and comraderie, and CambridgeLee supports the time and cost of our United Way campaign and volunteer activities
at the United Way Day of Caring, and other community drives, dinners, fundraisers,
and events such as delivering Meals on Wheels to homebound seniors together.
We have kicked off a major initiative working with an outside consultant to undertake
a competitive market analysis of the compensation package we offer all our employees.
To do this effectively, we first needed to update every employee's Job Description (JD)
across the organization in a consistent and accurate manner. We are now using these
JDs so inform the market assessment and establish salary bands and career ladders.
Continued on page 14
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Greater Reading Chamber Commerce Quarterly Fall 2017