Survey finds benefits are no longer fringe.

• Position: Interview with Employment Security Commission Dir. Robert Cottrell - Interview

Robert Cottrell is director of the Employment Security Commission's Labor Market Information Division. He has a bachelor's degree in history and political science from UNC Chapel Hill and has been with the ESC 21 years. Here, he discusses a recent ESC survey of more than 4,000 North Carolina employers to determine what benefits they offer employees.

BNC: How important are benefits for companies and their employees?

Particularly in the past few years, employees and employers have been looking at the total compensation package. That includes both wages and benefits, and I think there's been a very strong interest from employees. Employers have tended to respond to that.

BNC: What benefits are most common?

Paid holidays, paid vacation, medical benefits and life insurance or death benefits are the most common. All of those were offered by 70% or more of the respondents.

BNC: How do medical benefits break down?

Only 8% of companies said they didn't have any kind of medical coverage available. More than 29% pay the total employee cost for medical benefits, and roughly 60% share the cost with employees.

BNC: What is the cost of benefits for an average company?

On average, you're talking about 18% of total payroll being devoted to benefits, about 11% being devoted to medical benefits. So you're not talking about an inconsequential amount of money. We're saying, if the payroll is $200,000, say 10 employees at $20,000 apiece, then that's about $22,000 for medical benefits. So they are in the tens of thousands for a relatively small company. North Carolina has a large percentage of smaller companies.

BNC: Was there much difference depending on how senior the employee was?

Management sometimes earns vacation a bit sooner, that sort of thing, but overall there's not a great deal of difference. Generally, if a benefit was offered to any of the work force, it was offered to all.

BNC: What is a wellness program, and what does it achieve?

It can be a variety of things. It could be that individuals are encouraged to take an annual physical as opposed to waiting till they're sick to go to the doctor. It may be programs that talk to them about various health issues, educational programs on diet or exercise, those kinds of things - seminars on dealing with parenting. Anything that helps the employee stay well and stay in the work force.

BNC: Only about 2% of companies offer day care. Did you expect it to be higher?

We weren't sure, to be honest. Some companies...