Fail-Safe Tips for Putting Together Benefits and Holiday Lists

We are nearing the end of all of the topics we need to talk about in the area of "administration" as the second of five areas that make up every business in the world. Soon we will be finished with the area of "administration" and will then give you an article that will allow you to grade yourself in the area of "administration," and find out how you are doing with regard to being somewhere on the low end of the "Stone Ages," or on the high end of "On the Cutting Edge."

The week's topic is "office benefits and a holiday list." Let's take each of these "administrative" topics one at a time.

Somehow you have got to make the fact your office staff has a package of benefits more noticeable. Most employees do not know that in addition to their compensation, they get another thirteen to fourteen percent of their salary in benefits they never have to pay any taxes on. This is a classic case of out of sight, out of mind.

I have always tried to have an attractive package of benefits for employees because I always have wanted to compete with those other firms who are getting high quality employees because of the compensation and benefit package they offer.

I never wanted any of the employees in my firm to feel they were second class citizens, or our law firm was a second tier firm. The fact that all of these benefits can be paid with pretax dollars both for the firm and for the employee, I believe was always an attractive concept. If you do not list all of these benefits and continually remind your staff of the benefits they are receiving, you will suffer from the problem of "what have you done for me lately?"

I have tried to make a list of the benefits and put it in our "office memo manual."

The list of paid benefits we have for our firm is as follows:
(1) Health insurance; (2) Health insurance for dependents; (3) Dental insurance; (4) Dental insurance for dependents; (5) Covered parking; (6) Free postage; (7) Free long distance phone calls; (8) Free office supplies; (9) Free cell phones; (10) Automobile allowances; (11) 125 plan; and (12) 401 K plan.

It has always been a tremendous benefit to have the law firm legitimately deduct whatever expenses it can, and be able to pass those on as a benefit to the employees that is non-taxable. A good example of this is the cell phone usage. I ask everyone be available 24/7 by cell phone so we can deal with client emergencies. Accordingly, I believe the cell phones are deductible to the law firm and not taxable to the employees. If there was any personal usage on the cell phones, it is simply ancillary to the request I have made that everyone be available by cell phone 24/7. Similarly, I ask that all of my employees have access to an automobile whenever they are at work. We are constantly sending people off to deliver items and pick up items for our clients. You never know when you are going to need to have a vehicle available, and so I ask all employees to have their cars available at work. At the end of each year we give our employees a 1099 for their personal use of their automobile and the rest is deducted by the law firm as a business expense and is non-taxable to the employee.

Let me make the following comments with regard to some of these other benefits so you can see how these are utilized in our law firm. Everyone gets health insurance, but if you do not want health insurance because your spouse has health insurance, we will give you some extra pay instead of that benefit. Additionally, if you need health insurance for your dependents, we will make that available to you, but again, that will impact the amount of pay you receive in some type of a debit from what you would normally receive as a gross salary. The same situation applies to dental insurance.

Parking has always been an issue, but I always believed the best thing to do was to simply pay it, it is a very small amount and it has always seemed to be a good benefit for the employees.

Free postage, long distance telephone and office supplies have always been an area I believe is helpful for employees, but is not too expensive. No one has ever abused the system that we know of, and we have been doing this now for over ten years.

A 125 plan is a great way for employees to utilize monies withheld from their checks to pay items with pretax dollars instead of post-tax dollars. We encourage everyone in our firm to do this. We have had a 401K plan for some period of time, but we found most people in our firm for some reason did not participate in it. If no one is participating in the plan, it becomes very cost prohibitive to maintain such a plan. The idea behind this column is to talk about these benefits in a generic fashion as opposed to getting into detail as to how to set one up and what are the pros and cons of such a plan.

Remember, it makes no sense for you to have these benefits if you keep it a secret and don't tell people about them. Additionally, you need to be reminding the employees periodically of the fact these benefits are supplied by the law firm and the law firm actually has to pay good money to supply these benefits to the employees.

One of the things I would also like to talk about in this topic area is the fact the law firm provides ongoing training and education for everyone in the office, not just Continuing Legal Education for the lawyers. Every chance we get, we are always sending our staff members to secretarial courses, administrative assistant courses, paralegal courses and other professional development courses. If you treat people like professionals, they will act like professionals.

We pay for memberships in the Missouri and Kansas Bar Associations, the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association, the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys, the American Trial Lawyer's Association and any other appropriate organization that members of our firm want to join. Additionally, we pay all legal malpractice insurance for our attorneys and pay for all the Continuing Legal Education courses that are needed in order to comply with the requirements in each state where our lawyers are licensed so they can maintain their license in that state.

Our firm also pays for lawyers participating in the Inns of Court and other trial training programs. Periodically we like to send someone off to an out of town trip that is all expenses paid for Continuing Legal Education of a more intense nature.

In short, if there is a reasonable benefit that is available, we try in every way we can to support the people in our firm with such benefits. In some cases, we ask that the individuals make an agreement with us that we will be reimbursed for such expenses if they leave the firm before a reasonable period of time. Just recently we had an in-house paralegal we had trained, but we thought could benefit from the program at Rockhurst University in paralegal studies. This person went to the program, got straight A's, and we paid for that person's tuition. The agreement was the person would have to reimburse us unless they stayed with us for two years after that person graduated. I thought this was a tremendous opportunity for professional development for this in-house trained paralegal and a golden opportunity for our law firm to have a more qualified staff member to serve our clients. What I am constantly looking for in these areas is a "win-win situation." If the continuing education is good for the individual, it will clearly be good for the law firm!

One area of employee benefits that is not written out is to be sure any firm activity that has anything to do with office business gets paid for by the law firm. Administrative breakfast and lunches are paid for by the firm. After work, happy hours are also sponsored by the firm. We have a concept in our law firm that states "find the people in your law firm doing things right and celebrate it!" Don't ever miss an opportunity to tell people in both words and actions how much you appreciate them and how much you are doing for them.

We have a similar philosophy with regard to firm holidays. Our concept is "if we are going to work hard, we better take some time off when we get a chance!" Thanksgiving is always a four day weekend and this year, the Christmas holiday is four days and the New Year's holiday is three days. Always try to take advantage of natural sets of circumstances that present themselves so people can get a requisite amount of time off. Time off with their family and friends on holidays is very beneficial.

I have always had the philosophy of closing the office on any national, state or banking holiday. Not only is this good for the staff and attorneys, but it is pretty darn important that you take some time off yourself to recharge your batteries and to be able to come back "rearing to go!"

We set up a holiday schedule at the beginning of every year so there is no mistaking exactly what we are going to be doing with regard to holidays. I believe one of the things we could state without any reservation is one of our philosophies has always been "work hard and play hard!"

Next week's topic is office overtime, compensation time, sick days, vacation days and a tracking systems for the same. If you office operates on a "time clock" system, I think you will find our system very interesting because we are the opposite of that concept. In particular, I will show you a diagram I picked up recently at a seminar that tells you exactly how to determine if everyone on your team is playing as a team player. At this seminar, I put everybody on this diagram and low and behold the people who were problematic literally leapt off the page and slapped me in the face. Within a short period of time, the opportunity presented itself to have these people leave the firm, and I want you to know there was a communal celebration. Well that should be enough to peak your curiosity about what I am going to say next week!

Talk to you next week!

Jim Wirken is a civil trial attorney and the Chairman of the Board of The Wirken Law Group in Kansas City.