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ZWEIG GROUP’S 2020 POLICIES, PROCEDURES & BENEFITS SURVEY REPORT Zweig Group surveyed AEC industry firms on their workplace policies, benefits, HR staff composition, HR operating expenses, and other important workplace issues and challenges. Firms of every size, type, and region of the country completed the questionnaire. A separate survey focusing on travel reimbursement collected responses from firms as well. The results of both these surveys were tabulated and analyzed for this publication. This publication also includes a collection of articles and interviews from successful AEC firm leaders on what workplace policies, procedures, and benefits have helped their firms run smoothly. The results of this study will help you benchmark your AEC

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firm in all areas related to benefits and compensation. The 2020 Policies, Procedures & Benefits Survey Report of AEC Firms provides you with industry statistics on policies and procedures, so you can support your policy decisions with hard data. Use the 2020 Policies, Procedures & Benefits Survey Report to: ❚ ❚ Ensure your firm’s benefits and policies are competitive with industry norms to help you recruit and retain employees. ❚ ❚ Identify HR operating expenses that you can – or can’t – afford to cut. ❚ ❚ Benchmark your firm’s medical, dental, and life insurance packages. ❚ ❚ Support your firm’s paid-time-off and other policies with hard data on industry norms ❚ ❚ Find out if firms are projecting benefits increases and make sure your budget aligns with the industry ❚ ❚ Get data on HR directors’ typical backgrounds, education, roles, and compensation. The key to growing your firm and reaching your strategic goals often rests with the quality of your employees, and the quality of your firm’s policies, procedures, and benefits is critical to hiring and retaining a top-notch workforce. The data presented in the 2020 Policies, Procedures & Benefits Survey Report is broken down by firm type, size, region, and other important factors, so you can make accurate comparisons between your firm and others.

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JAMIE CLAIRE KISER, from page 1

1200 North College Ave. Fayetteville, AR 72703 Chad Clinehens | Publisher cclinehens@zweiggroup.com Sara Parkman | Senior Editor & Designer sparkman@zweiggroup.com Christina Zweig | Contributing Editor czweig@zweiggroup.com Liisa Andreassen | Correspondent landreassen@zweiggroup.com

examples of great emails that our project managers sent to clients and diagrammed why this communication was effective. Not only did this call attention to a job well done, it also provided multiple examples of “voices” and communication styles, which is important for less-confident project managers and writers as they find their own way to convey information. ❚ ❚ This is an important time to ask your colleagues, clients, and stakeholders how their own capacity has changed since you’ve started working together and how their communication needs have shifted. Even if you’ve worked together for years, you’ve never worked under these circumstances. Asking this question will give you the insight to better engage with someone whose engagement is important to you while extending some much-needed graciousness in the process. ❚ ❚ Communicating your own needs and capacity shifts – and energy drains – is just as important. For example, one consequence of the videoconference onslaught for me has been a completely abysmal lack of control over my email inbox, so I’ve asked co-workers to help me out a bit by sharing the urgency level of the email or needed response time. The real tip for great communication is to build a culture of trust and collaboration so people – internally and externally – feel comfortable and secure in sharing information and asking questions. And once you execute on all of this and work intentionally to constantly learn how to better communicate with your company, rest assured that you will still receive lower scores than you want to receive in your employee satisfaction surveys for communication, and don’t for a minute give up learning how to improve. JAMIE CLAIRE KISER is managing principal and director of advisory services at Zweig Group. Contact her at jkiser@zweiggroup.com.

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Email: info@zweiggroup.com Online: thezweigletter.com Twitter: twitter.com/zweigletter Facebook: facebook.com/thezweigletter Published continuously since 1992 by Zweig Group, Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA. ISSN 1068-1310. Issued weekly (48 issues/year) $250 for one-year print subscription; free electronic subscription at thezweigletter.com/subscribe © Copyright 2020, Zweig Group. All rights reserved.

© Copyright 2020. Zweig Group. All rights reserved.

THE ZWEIG LETTER MAY 25, 2020, ISSUE 1346

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