Should You Aid Employees at the Pump?

Don't be surprised if your HR director comes to you suggesting ways to help employees survive sky high gas prices. And if you weigh the costs of some of those methods against the cost of lost productivity due to financial stress -- and increasing absenteeism as workers try to save money by calling in sick -- you might find it will help the bottom line to spend some money on relief efforts.

While most businesses aren't subsidizing employee commutes, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), about one in four are stepping up to the plate. And they're using a wide variety of methods to address the problem, depending on corporate culture and company size.

USA Today reported that PAN Communications, a Massachusetts public relations firm passed out $50 gas cards at a weekly staff meeting. The newspaper also reported that Nazdar, a Kansas printing company, is allowing employees to work four ten-hour days instead of a five-day work week.

Large employers, such as Microsoft, are making large capital expenditures to help its workforce. The Wall Street Journal reported that last September the company added a bus system with five routes that service some 3,700 employees; the buses run as far as 21 miles from headquarters. Since then it added 11 new routes to transport another 2,300 employees. The company also leased several large suburban office complexes which will allow around 7,000 people to work closer to home.

Increasing the ranks of telecommuters, providing company vans, and organizing and incentivizing car pools are widespread solutions for addressing high gas prices, but companies that aren't cash-strapped believe that the best solution is the simple one: provide a cost of living increase to employees. However, according to SHRM, the most prevalent move employers are making is raising the rate of mileage reimbursement for employees who use their cars for company business to the maximum amount allowed by the IRS -- which only helps certain employee segments, such as salespeople.

Gas prices aren't likely to head south any time soon. At least not soon enough to help employees who are just making ends meet, which makes it unlikely they will give 100 percent on the job. Companies that offer some kind of relief may be helping themselves as much as their workers.