Beaumont Hospitals

Winning years: 2008, 2006, 2005, 2004
Industry: Hospitals/Health care
Location: Royal Oak, Mich.
Website: www.beaumonthospitals.com
2008 Rank: 19

Highlights of 2008 Winning Strategies

Although Beaumont does not have a formal phased-retirement program, the hospital works individually with employees who want to reduce their work hours or to transfer to less demanding jobs. The Beaumont Alumni program keeps retirees informed about employment opportunities, special rewards, and discounts. Twenty-nine percent of Beaumont employees are age 50+.

Additional Policies and Practices:

Recruiting: Beaumont’s Human Resources Department contacts retired employees about work opportunities. In addition, the hospital participates in AARP job fairs that are held in the community.

Workplace Culture/Continued Opportunities: Beaumont offers full- and part-time employees the following learning and development programs: tuition reimbursement, in-house classroom training, online training, certification classes, and local and regional seminars and conferences. Employees must work 20 hours per week to be eligible for the tuition-reimbursement program, the certification classes, and the seminars and conferences. During the past 12 months, 100 percent of Beaumont’s employees have participated in at least one of the training opportunities, with an average of nine hours spent in training.

Beaumont collaborates with local universities on producing refresher courses for nurses. The hospital celebrates long-service anniversaries with announcements, parties, awards, and gifts.

Responding to employee requests, the company has made numerous changes to benefits, including: combining separate hospital newsletters into one, cohesive newsletter; enhancing the hospital’s intranet to make it more user-friendly; and launching OneVoice, which gives employees a way of electronically submitting ideas and concerns to management.

Employees gain experience by working on temporary assignments in other departments and on team projects. Accommodations have been made for employees with special needs, including job reassignments through transitional-duty positions and adjustments to work stations to meet specific physical needs.

Benefits/Health: Full- and part-time employees working 20 or more hours a week receive individual and family medical coverage, individual and family prescription-drug coverage, individual and family vision and dental insurance, individual and family long-term care insurance, and short-term disability. Employees working at least 40 hours a week receive long-term disability.

Retirees under age 65 and 65+ receive individual and spousal medical and prescription-drug coverage, individual and spousal vision and dental coverage, an employee-assistance program, and individual life insurance or other death-benefit coverage. New hires are eligible for all of the benefits upon retirement.

Beaumont offers employees flexible-spending and health-savings accounts to help cover out-of-pocket health care costs. In addition, the company funds retirees’ supplemental accounts and extends certain hospital and pharmacy discounts to employees and their dependents.

Benefits/Financial: Beaumont offers a 403(b) plan with an employer match and a cash-balance plan to its full- and part-time employees. All new hires are automatically enrolled in the plan, and employees age 50+ can make catch-up contributions to their 403(b) plans. Employees receive financial-planning information from staff members, from the firm that administers their retirement plans, and from external financial-planning experts.

Beaumont offers short-term time off without pay and long-term leaves of absence without pay to allow for caregiving.