Back-to-school benefits for employees

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Aug 29, 2007 by ALAN DESSOFF

Reflecting a national trend, large health care organizations are among the leading employers in Maryland in offering education and training benefits, from tuition reimbursement for pursuing higher education degrees to fees and expenses for professional development activities. A key reason they do it is to recruit and keep good workers.

At the University of Maryland Medical Center, qualified employees can be reimbursed up to $3,000 per calendar year for their tuition while they seek college undergraduate degrees and $5,000 if they are pursuing master's degrees. At both levels, the degrees must be related in some way to employees' jobs or to a hospital environment, says Charles M. Schevitz, UMMC's human resources director. About 370 employees used the benefit last year, reports Ann Hampton, the medical center's training administration manager.

Dependents of UMMC employees in certain job codes can receive up to $10,000 per academic year to use toward tuition, books and fees, and about 170 employees took advantage of that benefit for their dependents last year, Hampton says.

For continuing education, the most popular UMMC program, employees are reimbursed up to $500 for registration fees for conferences and seminars, other continuing education courses and professional dues. They also can use the money to cover travel and lodging for conferences and seminars in distant places. About 1,200 of UMMC's 5,000 employees used the continuing education benefit last year, Hampton says.

"From a recruitment perspective, the benefits are a great incentive, especially the tuition for dependents. It's a huge selling point for us," says Schevitz. Prospective employees "get a sense that one of our priorities is continuing education and helping them advance," Schevitz adds.

Employees who receive tuition reimbursement or continuing education benefits for themselves must commit to remain at UMMC for at least six months after the programs or courses end. The commitment is one year for employees whose dependents receive benefits.

Schevitz says he cannot directly relate the institution's education benefits to employee retention after those periods, but employees get the message that "we are willing to make the investment in you so you will stay longer."

At Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, employees receive similar benefits. Full-time employees can use up to $2,500 annually toward either an undergraduate or graduate degree, and part-time workers get $1,250. As at UMMC, degrees must be "relevant -- not for basket- weaving or something like that," says Nancy Lentz, director of corporate education and development. New employees also must complete a 90-day introductory period at Suburban before they become eligible for the benefits.

Suburban offers a wide range of other education and training options for employees "from the front line to the executive suite," Lentz says. In one program, "School at Work," employees can learn general communication and study skills that lead many of them to pursue associate degrees in health care disciplines at Montgomery College or other institutions. Lentz estimates that up to 95 percent of "School at Work" graduates currently are taking college courses.

Nationally, 75 percent to 85 percent of employers offer some form of education benefits, says John Zappa, vice president of learner services at the Chicago-based Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), which helps employers put education benefits together and manages programs for them. Tuition reimbursement programs have "held fairly steady" and some data points to a modest increase in funding for them over the last several years, Zappa says.

In a report issued this year by the Society for Human Resources Management, two-thirds of human resources professionals indicated that their organizations offered undergraduate educational assistance and about as many offered graduate educational support.

Ninety-six percent of HR professionals said their organizations offered professional development opportunities like seminars, conferences or courses. Those are among the most commonly offered of all benefits, according to SHRM.

But with a few exceptions, organizations with larger staff sizes are more likely than smaller ones to offer any given benefit, SHRM reports. Zappa agrees that education benefits "skew toward larger organizations."

He says employers that provide them do it for recruitment and retention, but also to "make employees more promotable or give them more mobility within an organization, because in the competitive world today, many organizations are constantly looking to re-deploy their work force."

Large employers in the health care, technology, pharmaceutical and financial services industries are among those investing in education benefits, Zappa says. As the Maryland hospitals demonstrate, "there is quite a bit" of investment in education and training in the health care sector because of its shortage of skilled workers, adds Amy Sherman, CAEL's associate vice president for policy and strategic alliances.