Grabs Award For Third Straight Year

It's not a bad place to be if you're an aeronautically-minded student... but it's a really nice place to work if you have a family. For the third year in a row, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has been named one of Central Florida’s Top 100 Companies for Working Families. The ranking was announced at the Top 100 Awards Luncheon held August 3.

Compiled annually by the Orlando Sentinel, the Top 100 list is composed of 50 companies that have 249 employees or fewer, and 50 companies that have 250 employees or more. Embry-Riddle has 2,000 full-time employees worldwide, with 1,255 of them in Central Florida. Employers are chosen on the basis of their family-related benefits, work environment, communication network, and training opportunities.

Embry-Riddle’s newest benefit is a Monday-through-Thursday summer workweek. "We instituted the four-day workweek on a trial basis, and it’s proved very popular," said Irene McReynolds, Embry-Riddle’s vice president of human resources. "Employees enjoy having a three-day weekend to be with their families, and students use the extra day off to study. We’ll consider whether to make the summer four-day workweek a permanent benefit after we analyze the feedback thoroughly."

Under another new benefit, employees working an alternate full-time schedule of 30-39 hours per week are now eligible for personal-leave accrual and for tuition waivers for the employee, spouse or domestic partner, and dependent children.

Employees and their family members have access to an education at Embry-Riddle, through 100 percent waivers of tuition for credit courses and 25 percent waivers of flight lab fees. More than 30 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in aviation/aerospace, engineering, business, and related fields are available.

As a bonus, Embry-Riddle’s participation in a national tuition exchange program allows dependent children of employees to choose between 500 US colleges and universities to attend tuition-free. ERAU employees also receive 11 paid holidays each year, plus the business days between Christmas and New Years Day. Workers also accrue personal leave, which is used for vacation, illness, and so on, and increases with years of service. New employees earn between 12 and 18 days of personal leave in their first year of full-time employment.

Health insurance at Embry-Riddle includes medical, dental, vision, and retail and mail-order pharmacy coverage for employees and their families. All eligible employees who retire while covered by these plans are eligible for retiree coverage until age 65. Employees can pay for certain medical expenses with pre-tax dollars through a flexible spending account.

FMI: www.erau.edu