Behind Benefits and Culture Guide
At Etegent, we grow, we lead, we empower. We want our employees to flourish in life, enjoy what they do, and never stop learning. To inspire and support our team members to set big goals, our HR team and leaders set out to explore what perks and benefits we could offer. This year, Etegent unveiled an entire new set of benefits and an updated “Culture Guide” that documents these policies.
As part of this process, we also established a benefits committee – a group of employees that meet regularly with HR to let us know what we should consider as a company. This approach allowed us to take in feedback directly rather than wondering what employees would think? This was a collaborative committee that allowed us to bounce ideas off of one another, ask questions, and inform one another what else is going on in the market. Overall, we value input and feedback from our employees and want them to thrive in an environment that appreciates individual contribution, strips out the rigid barriers of antiquated rules and bureaucracy, and values original and innovative ideas. This committee was a prime example of that.
Prior to our recently formed HR team joining Etegent and our benefits committee that was formed back in 2020, Etegent enjoyed a very small-company family-like feel priding itself on invention, creativity, positivity, and respect. It was critical to our co-founders that as the company grew, we held onto these aspects of culture, and grew a set of benefits and perks that demonstrated our appreciation for our employees. The company originally did this by having perks such as free lunches, snacks, flexible hours, plenty of PTO, a competitive 401k contribution, casual dress and committing to providing autonomous and captivating work. Our leaders at Etegent understand just how crucial it is to acknowledge that adults are adults and can make their own decisions! It was critical that our perks and benefits demonstrated employee choice: choose what you wear, when you work, and how you’ll get your job done.
Eventually our company continued to grow and tripled in size over the years of 2017 to 2020. Our leaders desired to know – is what we’re doing enough? What else can we offer our employees? And that’s when the committee was created! Between 2020 and 2021, many new updates were made to our long list of perks. Here are just a few:
- We clarified our education reimbursement policy to allow for 100% tuition support for pursuing continuing learning opportunities. We also fund conferences, webinars, seminars, and certifications as learning is the backbone of our core area in research and development.
- We formed a permanent remote-work policy which allows employees to choose where they work – as long as it is in line with customer and other employee needs and goals. We also assist employees in purchasing items to enable them to work from home, such as desks, chairs, etc.!
- We implemented paid a parental leave policy to assist employees along their journey to either becoming a parent or growing their family. This leave provides 12 paid weeks for fathers and 16 paid weeks for mothers!
- We formed a paid military leave policy to better assist our service members who do so much to support our country.
- We added a marriage leave policy which grants three additional PTO days for those who get married.
Overall, our hope is that no one will ever have to miss important life moments because of work, because they are what matter most. In our updated Culture Guide release, we also included updates to our bereavement pay policy, which now allows for greater flexibility in the event of any lost loved one (including pets), a voting day policy which supports employees to take paid time off to go vote, enhanced health care options by providing full virtual healthcare support for no extra cost, and an incentive program that allows managers to recognize employees with on-the-spot bonuses.
We know our work is not yet done – we’re reviewing options for wellness, additional time off, and other assistance programs for our team members. We’re fortunate for each and every employee that joins our company and appreciate their dedicated work to serving our customers. The least we can do is do what’s best for them!