These two industries have the worst employee benefits
While many workers focus on the size of their paychecks, employment benefits affect everything from job satisfaction to personal and financial health.
Employees in high-paying industries like information technology report being generally content with their benefits -- think of Google's free gourmet food and commuting shuttles -- according to a new study by Glassdoor. But the employment site found that two sectors are striking out when it comes to benefits: retailers and restaurants.
Both industries are known for their ranks of low-paying jobs, such as clerks and waitstaff, who may be making minimum wage or just above that line. Many of those jobs don't come with benefits. But Glassdoor found that the workers who do receive benefits, such as health care, give poor marks to the plans their companies provide.
"Employers in these fields don't offer much in the way of benefits, but what we had never studied before was the quality of benefits for those who were offered them," said Glassdoor chief economist Andrew Chamberlain. "Even for the retail and restaurant workers who are lucky enough to get benefits, they reviewed them very poorly, so it's a double whammy."
That's not likely to change anytime soon, Chamberlain said. Good benefits typically go hand-in-hand with workers' bargaining power, something that's lacking in both the retail and restaurant industries. On top of that, automation is increasingly entering those industries, such as touch-screen menus at restaurants. As a result, workers in these segments stand to lose even more ground.
But workers in retail and the food industry can take some steps to improve their benefits, Chamberlain said.
"Sometimes people will ask me what can I do if I'm in this field. What we tell people is you can use information to make yourself more powerful," Chamberlain added. "If you are interested in benefits, there are companies like Trader Joe's and Costco where you can find benefit packages if you want them."
Workers in all industries can also negotiate for better benefits, although that's difficult when it comes to company-wide plans such as health care coverage or retirement accounts. But other aspects of a job, such as telecommuting or receiving transportation subsidies, may be negotiable, Chamberlain said.
"The very best piece of advice is to come armed with the facts," he said. "If you have information about, 'Here's a similar company offering this and it improves engagement and it's not that expensive,' that's the way to negotiate."
Below are industry rankings based on employee reviews of their employers' benefits, on a scale of 1 to 5 stars.
1. Finance: 3.72
2. Information technology: 3.68
3. Manufacturing: 3.64
4. Education: 3.61
5. Health care: 3.44
6. Business services: 3.37
7. Retail: 3.11
8. Restaurants, bars & food services: 2.73