NH Companies Look to Perks to Keep Employees

Ed Popek of Kollsman walks by the company hangar at the Nashua airport.

Sound of plane door opening and closing.
He steps into the cockpit of a Mooney, a single engine plane.

PopekEngine: Turn the master switch on, prime the engine, have to put the throttle on, and we’re ready to give her a crank…

Engine starts and is running. Fade under.
Popek markets the commercial aviation products.

He received his pilot’s license last October, a feat he accomplished on his own time.

But not with his own dollars.

The company paid for it.

PopekAlwaysWanted: I always wanted to fly as a kid. I used to watch airplanes go overhead, and I’d identify what the airplanes were.

Popek is living out a dream. The company is getting something out of it, too:

Satisfied employees, like Popek, who can now turn lunch into an adventure.

PopekBurger: Fly somewhere, have a meal, and fly back. The proverbial hundred dollar hamburger, if you will. But of course, you have to pay for the cost and rental cost of your aircraft. That’s why they call it the hundred dollar hamburger.

Here’s how it works at Kollsman.

The company holds a lottery for its flight training program.

Once a year, they select five employees.

But down the road Kollsman plans to extend the benefit to its more than 600 employees.

McStravockBenefit: We see this as a benefit for them, and a retention tool for us.

Jack McStravock is Kollsman’s vice president of human resources.

He says the flight training allows people to better understand the company’s products.

McStravock: They learn terminology and other real-time interface, pilot interface, with the instrumentation we create.

It’s a plus for an aviation company to develop employees with piloting experience, but does this kind of perk really deliver a payback?

Yes, says Alice Buckner, a Human resources consultant in New Hampshire.

But not all ideas used to motivate workers are successful.

BucknerLeftOut: Particularly a recognition kind of event where you single out employees. Automatically, the other employees who don’t win somehow feel like losers.

As for the value of the ten thousand dollar flight training programs, Buckner says employers look at these expenses as a percentage of sales volume.

BucknerInvestment: You look also at investments that are made in keeping employees engaged, keeping everybody feeling creative, and like they’re part of an important mission. There’s a ton of behavioral research that shows that the level of excitement correlates to the profit.

Hypertherm in Hanover has 700 workers in the state, and plans to add another 100 this year.

To bring people on board, the company touts an egalitarian work culture.

Rusty Fowler, the benefits manager:

FowlerEquality: We don’t identify parking spaces for our vice presidents or senior leadership. In fact, our entire management team has the same workstation and office as the rest of the associates in the company.

Smaller companies want to make their workplaces more inviting, more playful and many concentrate on physical health.

Bitware in Concord gives massages once a week.

EnviroSense of Londonderry doles out cash to employees who meet their fitness goals.

And Harley-Davidson of Portsmouth provides a 500 dollar incentive to quit smoking.

It’s not clear if those companies are trying to keep employees or keep their health insurance costs down.

Daniel Griffiths is president of New Hampshire’s Society of Human Resource Management.

He says companies need to retain to employees with more than good wages.

GriffithsValue: There was a time people would get a paycheck and feel valued. That’s certainly not the case anymore. I know people who have left companies to get less money, but they feel more valued.

He says employers should be aware that younger workers are looking for something different than their predecessors.

The Gen-X and Gen Y-ers are not likely to work twelve hour days.

They don’t have the same commitment.

GriffithsGenX: They feel with technology today, they don’t have to work as hard. I mean, at 4:55, they’re walking out the door.

Griffiths points to Kollsman’s flight training package as a benefit that would be attractive to the younger professional.

Trouble is, according to the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, young adults are leaving New England at four times the pace of other states.

In New Hampshire, the unemployment rate rests at 3.5 percent.

If that trend continues, so likely will the creativity to find and keep good talent.

For NHPR News, this is Sheryl Rich-Kern in Nashua.