Compensation: Donatos’ Benefits Focus on Quality of Life

To remain cutting edge, Donatos Pizza has created an advisory council to help them analyze all benefits, including nontraditional ones.

By Monica Rogers, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 4/1/2006

Like many in the restaurant industry, Todd Young used to burn the candle at both ends, didn’t eat healthy, and got through the day on caffeine and nicotine.

Then Young, director of operations for the Indianapolis market of Donatos Pizza, participated in Full Engagement, a pilot wellness program the chain is testing to help managers perform better by addressing health from a whole-person perspective: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Coming through the program, Young says he has “more energy, better focus, sharper thinking and more emotional stability.”

And there’s been a business boon as well. Young’s district was one of two companywide that achieved Donatos’ Gold Standard level of performance for sales increases, profitability, internal operations, guest feedback and, most notably, management turnover. “That decreased over 40 percent from 2004 to 2005,” says Young, a phenomenon he partially attributes to the “healthy relationships developed going through this program together.”

Chief People Officer Sandee Pritchard is not surprised. She says the program—one of Donatos’ many nontraditional manager benefits—is its best effort yet in shaping a people-focused culture that creates results.

Now that the control group has completed the program, Donatos is trying to streamline the training so it can roll it out.

Other nontraditional benefits include employee-assistance plans, legal assistance, tuition reimbursements, car allowances, dining discounts, health-club memberships, domestic-partner benefits, adoption assistance and day-care flexible-spending accounts, some of which are available to hourlies, too.

To remain cutting edge, Pritchard and team have created an advisory council to help them analyze all benefits. “We’re looking at what we have, asking if it’s what we should have, whether we’re marketing things well enough and evaluating possibilities for new initiatives,” she says.

The company plans to market its employee-assistance program better and is looking into offering English-as-a-second-language classes and pet insurance. “But the key thing is trying to figure out how to reach out and touch individual needs, rather than just offer blanket benefits for the median group,” Pritchard says. “That’s important to people.”

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