Spokanes tight labor market, with the countys average annual unemployment rate at 5.6 percent in 2005 and 5 percent last year, hasnt spurred employers here to sweeten their benefit packages noticeably yet to attract the workers they need, say corporate benefit managers and personnel recruiters.


They say, rather, that any benefit upgrades being made here are part of an ongoing effort to stay competitive in the marketplace and to keep workers healthier and willing to work longer for their employers. They indicate those ongoing efforts likely will be sufficient to meet future employee-benefit needs, and employers probably wont become more aggressive in their benefit offerings whether the labor market remains tight or softens.


Furthermore, despite an increasing emphasis on employee benefits as health-care costs rise, wages remain the No. 1 reason why an individual takes a job, they say.


Tom Droz, owner of Manpower personnel operations here that place permanent and temporary workers in jobs in the Spokane area, says decisions by job applicants to accept permanent-placement positions are mostly salary driven. The people employed through the Manpower operations expect a basic level of standard benefits, but that expectation hasnt been pushed upward by the current tight labor market in Spokane, Droz says.


The funny thing about benefits is that the worker gets a raise, and it often doesnt cover the increase in medical premiums that occurs at or about the same time, so the sense among job applicants is that they gain more from higher wages than from improved employee-benefits packages, he says.


Terry Savage, owner of Value Logic LLC, a Spokane Valley appraisal firm with fewer than 10 employees thats routinely in search of additional skilled appraisers, says the small size of his company makes it difficult for him to offer an attractive benefits plan that also is affordable.


Faced with the option of offering higher wages or lower wages with benefits, Savage says the former option seems to suit the needs of his employees best.


Ted Blotsky, senior vice president of Associated Industries of the Inland Northwest, a Spokane nonprofit employers group, says that sweetening employee benefit packages is a sound business decision for many reasons, including improved recruitment and retention of workers. He says a trend toward offering better employee benefits has been going on here for three or four years, yet declines to comment on what, if any, impact the current shortage of workers has had on that trend.


Dan Suttner, director of human resources at Spokane-based Avista Corp., says pay is the biggest factor in attracting workers to Avista, although he stresses that employee benefits have heightened importance for utility-industry workers compared with workers in other fields.


He says the employee benefits package Avista offers is extremely important because the utility industry traditionally recruits employees for a career and experiences a very low turnover rate, and prospective employees critique benefit plans closely.


Suttner says Avista, as well as offering a long list of traditional employee benefits, has initiated two additional programs in the last year.


One involves the advent of health reimbursement accounts (HRAs), which give participating Avista employees more flexibility on how they pay for medical expenses than they would have if they were covered only by a traditional insurance plan and had no HRA, he says. An employee puts tax-deferred money into an HRA for an employee, who can only use that money to cover health-care expenses.


Mary Prince, Avistas manager of corporate benefits, says Avista plans to move in the future toward requiring a high deductible for the medical plans its employees choose from the options the company offers, but currently likes the flexibility provided by a reimbursement account, in this case the HRA, that doesnt require a high-deductible plan.


In the second health-related program initiated at Avista in the past year, employees can save up to $175 a year from their insurance premiums by complying with a company wellness program.


In 2005, Avista gave its employees the opportunity to pay for an optional life insurance plan, in addition to the basic company-paid plan, through which coverage could be extended to family members at prices that are more reasonable than if workers had to pay for family life insurance separately, Prince says.


Avista also allots $2,500 annually for each employee to spend for personal education purposes, and $2,000 per child to assist with legal fees incurred when Avista employees choose to adopt children.


Itron Inc., of Liberty Lake, offers an employee-benefits package to its 2,300 employees that includes elements similar to those at Avista, including higher dollar amounts than Avista sets aside for education-tuition and adoption assistance. Itron offers up to $5,250 annually for educational assistance and up to $5,000 per child in adoption benefits, says Kim Bridges, Itrons benefits administrator.


The company also conducts wellness fairs at its locations in Spokane, California, Minnesota, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and more than one-half of its employees participated last year, the first year the fair was offered, Bridges says. Bridges says participants in those wellness fairs are given personalized test results, charts of how their scores compare with national norms, advice on how to address noted health problems, and printed educational material in areas of health in which they might need help.


Bridges says confidential information gleaned from that annual fair, plus information gained from the companys online wellness program where employees can log on and get a $10 per month reduction in their health-care premiums, gives the company valuable information. She says Itron uses the data to determine additional training programs or classes, such as classes to help employees stop smoking, that the company can offer to its workers to promote better health.


Jared Serff, vice president of competitive resources for Itron, says the company is studying the possibility of offering a health savings account for its employees. He says such studies are in their infancy thus far, and Itron doesnt know at this time what such a plan would entail


He says in the second quarter of this year Itron plans to open a 3,000-square-foot wellness center at its 200,000-square-foot headquarters in Liberty Lake. Employees will be able to work out there during the work day, Serff says.


Contact Rocky Wilson at (509) 344-1264 or via e-mail at [email protected].