CAREERS NOW 06-18-08

Can You Get a Commuter Gas Allowance Perk?

DEAR JOYCE: My commute is 30 miles each way and the price of gas is killing my family's budget. What are the chances of getting my employer to pay me a gas-offset perk and how do I present the idea? - J.M.

Raging gas prices change everything in our way of life, eliminating carefully worked out margins of balance between employers and employees over the years.

A job-seeking friend tells me that she was the leading candidate for a job until she tried to negotiate for a small gas allowance to cover the cost of an excessive commute. The next day the hiring manager e-mailed her that the job had been filled.

A recent survey by staffing company giant Robert Half International (RHI) reports that 59 percent of professionals say their employers are doing zip about offsetting the rising cost of commuting.

Otherwise, 18 percent in the RHI survey say their employers have increased mileage reimbursement for travel, 17 percent report company-implemented ridesharing or vanpooling and 11 percent note that their employers provide telecommuting. (The survey is posted at www.roberthalf.com, click About Us, click Press Room, and click "Fueling Change.")

The RHI survey looked at companies big enough to hire help from staffing firms. Your chances of getting your employer to subsidize your commuting costs are still on the short side, especially if you work for a very small company, which itself may be financially teetering for the same reasons you are. Here are five tips to present your case:

1. Know the facts and your options. There's a slight chance your employer already has a commuter assistance policy; ask in a neutral tone. Try to find out if the company is on a sound financial footing - or struggling.

2. Gather a group to do the asking. Use the safety-in-numbers approach that helps protect your job.

3. Give something to get something. Brainstorm to come up with ways to effect savings in other operational areas of your business that will lessen or wash out the costs of a gas subsidy. Write a cost analysis proposal specifying your cost-reducing suggestions, as well as benefits to employers, such as showing the company is employee-friendly. This is negotiating 101.

4. Anticipate fall-back positions. When you meet resistance because your employer can't or won't share your gas pains, be ready to suggest alternatives, such as reshaping the work week to 10 hours a day, four days a week, or telecommuting a portion of the week.

5. Realize a raise for gas costs is rare. Another recent study, this one by the Society for Human Resource Management, says only 2 percent give cost-of-living raises prompted by gas prices to employees with long commutes. But 14 percent offer public transit discounts. (You can review this study at www.shrm.org; click on Press Room, click on Resource Center, click on SHRM Press Releases, and click on "Employers Using Benefits to Help Employees Fill the Tank.)

As for selling or garaging your gas hog and buying a used fuel-efficient car, good luck. Fuel-saving used cars, even those with high mileage and premium prices, are quickly snapped up. My job-seeking friend whose attempts to negotiate a gas perk killed her job candidacy, later decided to take cost-cutting into her own hands. After missing out on five advertised cars within minutes of calling the advertisers, she just paid $5,900 for a 2002 gas-efficient small car with 135,000 miles and in need of repairs. Luckily her husband is a former auto repair technician.

DEAR JOYCE: How likely is it that companies I apply to online will respond, at least to say they received my resume? - Y.R.

Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler, co-founders of CareerXroads, a recruiting consulting firm for major companies, yearly create a mystery job seeker who applies to the Fortune "100 Best Companies." This year's fictional mystery job seeker is James Knee Cricker who works in sales and is a Princeton graduate in entrepreneurial studies. Seventy-eight companies responded to Cricker, usually by e-mail with a letter advising "Do not call us. We will only call you if the job matches the skills on your resume." The other 22 companies maintained radio silence.

Read the whole interesting report, "CareerXroads 2008 Mystery Job Seeker: How Are Job Seekers Really Treated by America's 'Top' Corporations?" on www.careerxroads.com.

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