New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado
When you think about a craft brewing company in Colorado, you might think about hipsters playing ping pong and drinking free beer after a long shift. But this award-winning company – named Outside Magazine’s Best Places to Work and one of the Wall Street Journal’s Best Small Businesses – goes beyond the usual employee perks. Instead, New Belgium Brewery Company has built a culture based on bikes, fun and giving back.
To start with, the company is 100% employee-owned, which can inspire better collaboration and motivation since everyone is pulling for the same goals. According to the National Center for Employee Ownership, employee-owners are much more likely to have access to an array of benefits at work, including flexible work schedules, retirement plans, parental leave, and tuition reimbursement.
New Belgium is also a Certified B Corporation. B Corp is an initiative from B Lab, a non-profit that serves a global movement of people using business as a force for good. The rigorous process for seeking B Corp certification includes reviewing metrics regarding worker ownership, compensation and benefits, management and worker communication, training and education, work environment, and occupational health and safety.
New Belgium has built something exceptional. And it really comes as no surprise since cofounder Kim Jordan had a background in social work before starting the company in 1991. She believed that work could be fun and fulfilling and went about creating a culture that supported that belief.
With all of these good things happening at this brewing company, I wanted to learn more about the company’s remarkable culture and employee benefits. So I spoke with Shauna Cobb, Director of Human Resources at New Belgium and came up with my top five reasons to work for them:
1. Service Awards
When companies invest in employee years of service award programs, it has a positive effect not only on retention but also on engagement, culture and employee wellbeing. New Belgium links its service award program to the company’s culture and beliefs. The program is done well – it truly delights employees, plus creates a strong bond with the company.
Employees receive rewards at different milestones:
- Year One – limited release Fat Tire Cruiser bike
- Year Five – an all-expenses-paid trip to Belgium to learn about the company’s history and culture
- Year Ten – four week paid sabbatical
- Year Fifteen – $1,000 travel voucher
- Year Twenty – six week paid sabbatical
- Year Twenty-Five – Another trip to Belgium!
According to Shauna, the sabbatical has a lot of significance behind it. “We really ask our coworkers to go and check out. And that was very purposefully done. We think it’s good for coworkers to check out. It’s a good thing for us to do as humans to just go and be for a little bit. We should have opportunities to be able to leave the business and know it’s going to be fine and there are people there who can take care of it.” As an extra bonus, employees can add up two weeks of PTO to their sabbaticals.
2. Community Support
Since 1991, New Belgium has donated more than $26.6 million to help solve the world’s most pressing challenges. The company encourages volunterism by offering rewards for giving back. It matches volunteer hours one to two: employees receive one hour of paid time off for every two hours spent volunteering – up to 40 hours of PTO. In addition, if an employee participates in a volunteer vacation, New Belgium gives them up to $500 towards travel. Funds can be used for travel, lodging or other fees.
3. Onsite Medical Clinic
According to research from the National Business Group on Health, more than half of large employers have an onsite clinic near one of their offices and another 11% are considering adding them by 2020. While many large employers offer worksite clinics, it’s not as common with smaller companies like New Belgium, which has 688 employees. The worksite medical clinic provides employees with high-quality, low-cost and easily accessible healthcare services. Employees can even effortlessly pick-up common prescriptions.
Shauna says the clinic is one of the things their employees love best about working at New Belgium. Mainly in part because they absolutely adore Doctor Patti, the physician who has run the clinic since 2015. “Having the clinic onsite has benefited us in so many different ways. As a self-insured company it’s great that Dr. Patti can do a lot of preventative medicine - for example getting people in for annual exams and catching things early,” said Shauna.
4. Robust Wellness Program
To encourage employees to be healthy, 100% of employees’ insurance premiums are covered, as are preventative care visits to naturopathic doctors, acupuncturists, and chiropractors. New Belgium also encourages employees to get outside with what they call “The Garage,” which allows employees to rent things like stand-up paddleboards, tents, and sleeping bags.
New Belgium also gives an employee the flexibility to choose wellness activities that fit their interests. Each employee gets wellness bucks (up to $200 per year) that they can use to help fund gym membership, activity trackers, race entry fees or club sports. In addition, the company also has an onsite gym, fitness classes, smoking cessation, cooking class, monthly massages, and wellness challenges.
5. Paid Caregiver Leave
A growing number of employers are expanding their family leave policies and offering paid leave to employees who are caring for an aging parent, an ailing spouse or other loved one. This year, the HR team begin discussing maternity and paternity leave opportunities but decided to expand the reach. “At New Belgium, we’re really all in this together, so we try to build benefits that all our coworkers can take part in. So what we rolled out is called Paid Caregiver leave and it’s not just designed for when you first have a child, but for those moments when you have to care for a spouse with a serious health condition or your parents,” said Shauna.
“At the heart of everything, I feel like we genuinely do care about all of the people who work here. And we want that to show. In the benefits we offer, in the culture we have, how we treat each other every day, how we show up in the world and we engage with our customers. It’s super important,” says Shauna.
Thanks to the premium New Belgium places on its employees' happiness and overall wellbeing, I think it’s easy to see that this craft brewery does truly care, which is what makes it one of the best places to work in the country.
