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Few Companies Assisting Employees with Gas Prices
Most companies have no plans to help employees -- either monetarily or through transportation-related programs -- as fuel prices climb ever higher.
U.S. companies are doing little to help their workers in these days of ever-increasing fuel hikes through offering carpool incentives, public transportation allowances, gasoline subsidies or alternatives to single-car commuting, experts say. Eight in 10 (81 percent) HR professionals said their companies have no plans to "help employees deal with high gas prices," according to a recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management. A few companies offer public transportation discounts (6 percent), organize carpools (5 percent), or have raised their mileage reimbursement, up to the IRS cap (6 percent), according to the survey of 456 HR professionals. Some additional responses -- among the 8.4 percent who listed "other" as ways their companies were helping employees -- included providing stipends for walking, riding a bicycle or taking public transportation to work. A few encouraged their sales forces to purchase gas-saving hybrid cars. "I'm dubious that businesses themselves will do a whole lot," says Patricia Mokhtarian, professor of civil and environmental engineering at University of California in Davis. Mokhtarian, a noted expert on travel behavior, says that employees who are "middle-class and up" will be able to afford the higher gas prices. "They can absorb $20 to $50 more per month. There are all kinds of ways to cope with it," she says. "They'll buy more fuel-efficient cars." It's the non-exempt, blue-collar workers who will feel the pinch, she says. Gil Gordon of Gil Gordon Associates, a Monmouth Junction, N.J.-based consulting firm specializing in telecommuting, says employers have reasons to stand pat. "The incentive for employers to do something is based on their belief that the problem is a lasting and serious one," he says. "What happens when the gas prices drop?" Gordon says the gas-price crisis isn't much different from anything else that makes getting to work difficult. "It's the same as bad traffic." In that situation, he says, employers expect their people to leave for work earlier or find alternative routes. In this case, they expect employees to budget their money so they can afford to take the hit. "When the cost of gas makes it so hard to get to work that it affects business," he says, companies may step in and help. Until then, he says, "It's like a bridge washing out." Jane Weizmann, a consultant with Watson Wyatt Worldwide in Arlington, Va., says she knows of just one employer -- a company located in a remote, mountainous area -- that is providing temporary wage increases to help its mostly non-exempt, blue-collar workers bear the brunt of the gas price hikes. Weizmann says the CEO sent a letter to employees thanking them for their efforts, acknowledging their pain and offering a wage hike until gas prices return to a certain level. The letter went out in the fall of 2005, when average prices topped $3 a gallon. Such plans, of course, risk backfiring if employees see them as an entitlement -- and then the employer tries to snatch it away. Clear communications stressing the temporary nature of the program -- and reinforcing the rationale behind it -- is a must, says Weizmann, who called the CEO's message "an outstanding communications component."
April 26, 2006 Copyright 2006© LRP Publications |
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