Salary.com, the compensation experts, released the findings of its survey of companies across six states most affected by hurricanes during 2005, which shows that the great majority of employers retained their staff and their benefits and helped employees in other ways.
The Survey of Compensation Practices in Areas Affected by Hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma found many examples of comparatively good compensation news for employees working and living in these areas, while not minimizing the often devastating personal losses people throughout the region have endured.
Surprisingly, few layoffs or benefit cuts were cited -- just 5 percent of the companies reported that the hurricanes triggered layoffs or furloughs. Employee recruitment and retention was a problem for nearly 60 percent of the companies surveyed, while 39 percent of companies looked to hire additional employees.
Only 2 percent of the employers reported that they had reduced salaries/wages as a result of the hurricanes, 28 percent raised salaries/wages and nearly 72 percent kept salaries/wages at their existing levels. The vast majority of companies (95 percent) reported they were not reducing their previously planned 2006 salary increases. Some form of temporary living assistance has been offered by 33 percent of the employers, including free or subsidized housing, temporary cost of living subsidy, or free or subsidized meals.
To download a copy of the survey results, visit http://research.salary.com.
"We found surprisingly good news; employers stood by their employees and helped them following these unprecedented disasters," said Joseph Kilmartin, Salary.com's director of compensation. "With all the bad news about the effects of these disasters and the response to them, it's nice to see that so many employers did the right thing for their employees. The initial, dire predictions of layoffs and benefit reductions have not come true, according to the information we have analyzed."
The new survey investigated many aspects of pay and benefits in the six-state region most affected by the hurricanes. The 119 large companies surveyed employ tens of thousands of people in the area. These are among the significant findings of the survey:
-- Only 3 percent of companies affected by the hurricanes were forced to lay off employees. However, in organizations where layoffs did occur, on average 35 percent of the staff was laid off.
-- Only 4 percent of companies were forced to temporarily furlough employees. Those companies, on average, furloughed 50 percent of their staff.
-- Nearly 96 percent of companies surveyed intended to pay bonuses while only 4 percent had reduced the bonus amounts.
-- Within the 2 percent of companies forced to reduce salaries/wages, cutbacks of nearly 20 percent were given to hourly workers and 10 percent to salaried workers.
-- Nearly 16 percent of companies surveyed offered retention bonuses to employees averaging nearly $1,000 for hourly workers and nearly $800 for salaried workers.
-- Of companies that offered temporary living assistance to employees, nearly 9 percent offered it for more than a year, 46 percent for six months and 26 percent for one month.
-- Among the top temporary living assistance programs were: approved time off with pay from work to repair their homes or while the office/plant was closed, offered relocation assistance or work at a different facility within the same company, gave grants or low-interest loans, started an organization/employee fund or gave commission guarantees based on previous earnings.
-- Nearly 6 percent of organizations offered sign-on bonuses for new hires, averaging $1,700 for salaried employees and $300 for hourly employees.