Page 281 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

268B RE-ENGAGE

identify the benefits that most distinguish Vertex, I would say first
it’s the four weeks of vacation every employee gets from day one, and
next would be our child-care subsidy. The subsidy is available to De-
pendent care FSA Plan participants and is delivered in the form of
an employer match, which is up to $1,000 per year. We are the only
company in the Boston area or in our industry I know of that does
that. After those two, I would say our generous paid maternity and
paternity leaves, our Employee Stock Purchase Plan, and our medi-
cal and dental plans, where we rank in the 100th percentile of low
employee contribution rate.

Q: How would you describe your overall approach and philoso-
phy about benefits and employee well-being?
Kelly-Croswell: We want our employees to be focused on their
work and the very important mission that brought them here,
so our approach is to remove any obstacles that may stand in the
way of us delivering on our mission to transform lives with new
medicines. The other part of our philosophy is tied to our core
value of innovation—we want employees to be innovative and
we as a company want to set the example by offering innovative
benefits.

Q: In most companies it’s not easy to put new benefits in place.
Are you continuing to introduce new benefits?
Kelly-Croswell: Absolutely. We try to keep our fingers on the pulse of
what employees need. We have introduced several new benefits just in
the last three years. More than 50 percent of our workforce is in their
20s and 30s, and we know younger people value time off to have
a life outside work. All our employees work very hard and deserve
some discretionary time. We used to offer three weeks vacation and
four weeks after five years. In an executive meeting a couple of years
ago I suggested we go to four weeks from day one of employment, and
our CEO said, “Sure . . . let’s do it!” It was surprisingly easy to get
the policy changed. We had a focus group to gauge employee reaction,
which was extremely positive, then announced the new policy two