Things started going downhill gradually in 2009 when the current CEO took charge. He convinced us there was an immediate need for benefit cuts (elimination of $500 Flexible Spending Account contribution; switch to a cheaper medical insurance provider with staff experiencing severe decline in service quality; removal of holiday on Friday after Thanksgiving even when funding goals were met or exceeded; removal of backup daycare service with Bright Horizons Child Care; re-characterization of sick leave).
Two more benefit changes that will be effective January 2015:
1. All employees except management will lose their private offices. This is not a big deal for employees at other companies. However for LMI staff this was a generous offering that made us feel appreciated.
2. In September 2014 a reduction of 5% in retirement contributions was announced. This brings LMI's contribution down from 12% to 7%. That is still quite good compared to industry norms. This needs to be viewed holistically: LMI's base salary was lower compared to our competitors'. However LMI more than made it up with all the generous benefits listed above. When those benefits are also reduced employee satisfaction becomes a problem.
It is admirable that employees are still willing to strongly support LMI despite the recently announced benefit cutbacks. There is only one problem: sacrifice is only expected from the rank-and-file. Officer compensation has skyrocketed since the current CEO took charge in 2009.
Where is the proof? As a not-for-profit, the IRS requires LMI to submit Form 990 that breaks out major expense categories. One of these categories is officer compensation. All this is public information.
Glassdoor doesn't allow links to be provided in reviews. LMI's 990 forms can be viewed at Foundationcenter dot org as PDF documents. The following are the page numbers for each of the FYs: Page 26 for FY09; page 27 for FY10; page 27 for FY11.
There was a shocking increase in FY10: officer bonuses went up by over 2,000% (that is not a typo). Compensation decreased slightly in FY11 for them.
This is a terrible message from management to the employees. Nobody is advocating socialism but shared sacrifice would be much appreciated. Especially for a not-or-profit, officer compensation seems astronomical. As comparison, MITRE's CEO (admittedly an FFRDC) made over $1 million in FY11. However their funding level was over $1 billion. LMIs funding in FY11 was $207 million and the CEO made $636,000.
So while staff have been lulled into believing their bonuses have increased by approximately 3-4% over the years, it has come at the price of heavy benefit cuts and steep increase in executive compensation. How is that for a fair trade?
