Perk up

What is clear from most corporate benefit plans is that baby boomers are best motivated by bottom-line cash bonuses, health care coverage or 401(k)s. But what is more interesting is that a greater number of their children, employees who today are under 40, would prefer to be rewarded with more time off and recurring incentives than straight cash. And if these extras blur the line between their professional and social lives, even better.

Some Baton Rouge companies are finding innovative, not to mention effective perks that may help keep employees happier, healthier and longer.

In this modern life lived publicly, the era of the BlackBerry and FaceBook is for many about maximizing time outside the office combined with a self-imposed interconnectivity. It’s about wanting to be the same person on the clock as off. Young professionals today want to be passionate about more than their paycheck and their work. They want be passionate about their workplace, and they want to balance life before 5 p.m. with life after.

As Marilyn Moats Kennedy, a business consultant and expert on intergenerational corporate relationships, puts it: The younger “buster” generation has a strong love/hate relationship with work. “Boomers will choose money over any other incentive,” she says. “[Those in their 20s and 30s] will talk about money, but they believe in under consumption as a way to control their lives. Companies need cafeteria-style benefit plans since one size does not fit all. They should be testing perks on an ongoing basis.”

According to Inc. magazine, company culture and unique perks are playing a larger role in recruitment than ever, and with unemployment low, competition for top employees is white hot. Likewise, Baton Rouge firms are doing unconventional things to boost morale and attract the best and brightest.

Take for example Lamar Advertising’s recent “Office Party” in the middle of what was an otherwise typical Friday for the agency. In a scene that recalled the TV show’s “Movie Mondays”—if only the fictional paper company had a plush, expansive media room and party-planner Angela ordered sandwiches from Maxwell’s Market—Lamar bought lunch for its entire marketing department and organized a showing of the previous night’s episode of NBC’s The Office on a large projection screen.

The idea was simple but inspired: Have the entire team bond over lunch by getting them to laugh together.

Ironically no one in the pop culture sphere is more unwittingly in tune with this philosophical trend than The Office’s hapless regional manager, Michael Scott, played perfectly by Steve Carell. As cartoonishly dysfunctional as he and his Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch can be, Scott at least attempts to meet two needs that young professionals now seek in greater numbers than their parents ever did: a casual work environment that fosters strong relationships and more time away from the office.

For laughs the series flips this paradigm on its head by having 20-something Ryan “The Temp” play the traditional baby boomer role, and 40-something Scott the energetic work-o-phobe. Tapping into this generational shift must be at least partly responsible for the popularity of the series among 18- to 34-year-olds. The Office showcases the frustrations and quirks of Corporate America and speaks their language while doing it.

Perks are like tipping. Here’s how some local businesses refuse to leave their employees feeling stiffed.

Suitable allowance. MidSouth Bank provides employees with a 50% subsidy on those sharp threads the company requires. A $750 annual allowance means the employee can spend that much on work clothes and get reimbursed $375.

Beer me. Zehnder Communications serves its thirsty employees an iced cold one every Friday at 4:30 p.m.

Rock on. Fresh Salads+Wraps pays for half of each employee’s YMCA dues and hooks them up each month with free iTunes cards to download their music of choice to play at the Main Street Market restaurant.

Vacation, baby. Baton Rouge General Medical Center gives parents an additional three vacation days annually if their child is born at the hospital, and provides free massages and aromatherapy sessions to all for quarterly wellness days.

Case closed. Kean Miller lets all partners who hit the 10-year mark take a three-month sabbatical.

Kneed it now. Planche Politz Ledet brings in a massage therapist every week during tax season to keep its CPAs calm while crunching numbers.

Perks like the “Office Party” are a regular occurrence at Lamar, where management often springs for Raising Cane’s chicken and other free, communal lunches. The agency’s Corporate Boulevard headquarters houses an ultra-modern kitchen and dining space that looks more like a Santa Monica hotspot than your typical break room. These swanky digs are open to employees at any time, even off the clock if they inform their department head and sign a waiver. For companywide events, Lamar takes pride in taking big-budget Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day parties to the next level. CEO Kevin Reilly’s goal, says executive assistant Shannon Perry, is not only rewarding employees, but also relating to and motivating them.

After The Office ends and his recharged employees file out still quoting funnies from the show, Chief Marketing Officer Thomas Teepell pauses. “We didn’t get here overnight,” he says.

Beyond having more fun on and off the clock, there is something egalitarian about the enterprise of keeping employees happy in unorthodox ways. For one thing, the sentiment seems to be appreciated just as much as the perk itself. To this end, Baton Rouge-based Newtron Group custom built two deluxe camps on Grand Isle and bypasses management to give lower-level employees first dibs.

“The field people get first crack at these facilities,” says Duff Schempf, Newtron Group’s vice president of marketing. “Executive personnel cannot reserve one of the camps if a field person has reserved it.” The Newtron Group has been out in front of this trend for 20 years, having offered its staff an on-site racquetball court and workout facilities since the mid-1980s.

But thanks to a new “Fit at Work” program, Amedisys has to be considered another industry leader in promoting and rewarding employee health.

Besides offering workers a book-buying program that has resulted in a fast-growing library with everything from industry-specific texts to self-help books to popular novels, the home health care provider holds fitness screenings and twice-weekly jazzercise, yoga and body-sculpting classes in a large training room. Fees for the lunchtime and after-hours classes run about $25 a month, but consistent participation can really pay off. Exercising eight times a month makes one eligible to win raffles for flat-screen TVs and gift certificates to healthy restaurants and sporting goods stores. Those who prefer working out at a gym simply have their Amedisys “Fit at Work” card marked to receive the same credit. About 150 of the company’s 450 corporate employees participate in the program. It is often the first thing new employees ask about.

“People are talking about it,” says Renee Haydell, an Amedisys marketing specialist and “Fit at Work” board member. “So many have lost weight and lowered their blood pressure. You know, heart disease is the nation’s No. 1 killer, and offering programs like these, I think, sets an example in the community.”

Most significantly, Haydell says, the fitness program has built strong cross-departmental friendships that would not have developed otherwise at such a large firm. Now that is a company perk you do not have to be Michael Scott to appreciate.