Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Retaining great employees can be a challenge, particularly during seasons of low unemployment.
Motivated employers offer tuition assistance programs to attract, engage, and retain the best and brightest employees.
I am an advocate for employer educational assistance because I benefited from such a program early in my career.
The healthcare organization I worked for offered a generous tuition assistance program that allowed me to finish an undergraduate degree.
Once I left corporate to pursue a calling to help a large ministry, that organization helped with the advanced degree educational costs.
Is Continuing Education Beneficial?
Going to school while working helped me translate the business principles I learned into real-life situations.
This made the experience applicable to the job and made me feel like I could contribute to the organization’s success at a higher level.
For churches, technology is changing rapidly. Keeping up requires a commitment to improving the skills of those who help the ministry.
Investments in employees’ skills can reap great rewards when they are thought through and administered with intentional care.
6 Things to Consider When Creating a Tuition Assistance Program
1. Program Goal
Churches have limited resources, so adding what can be a costly benefit, like educational assistance, needs to have a purpose.
As your personnel committee discusses the pros and cons of offering such a benefit, define the goal.
Is the goal to develop current employees for more responsibility, have staff learn the latest trends in an area of ministry, or simply focus on retaining workers?
For instance, as you work on a succession plan for your senior pastor, is there someone who could benefit from attaining a degree in ministry? Or do you have tech employees who might benefit from sound engineering or video production education?
Consider all ministry jobs and determine how you can support employees.
Use the SMART goal model and make sure you are specific about what you are trying to do and that you can measure your success.
Think about the goal and use that as the marker for the program.
2. Benefit Inclusions
You have decided to create this program, so now you need to define it.
You will have to determine what is included in the benefit and the dollar limit for the benefit.
For instance, will the benefit include the costs of books and other educational fees or simply tuition?
What is the maximum annual tuition the benefit will cover?
Is there a specific curriculum that will be covered?
These are all questions that employees will ask, so think them through and include them in the policy.
For instance, if the budget only allows $1000 per year per employee for education, write it in the policy so employees understand the financial boundaries.
3. Cost of Benefit
This is undoubtedly an expensive benefit, so you must ensure your church budget can absorb it as a church employee benefit.
Reach out to employees and try to determine who in the ranks would take advantage of a tuition benefit.
Not all employees will be interested in continuing education, so it might be a good idea to ask.
Also, try to determine the average participation rate. This will help you put a dollar on the annual cost.
For instance, if you have twenty-five employees, but only five have stated an interest, that will help you determine the participating rate.
4. Approval Process
As you create the policy for this benefit, think about who in the organization has the authority to review the application and do final approval.
Determine if it will be the business administrator, the personnel committee, or the employee manager.
For instance, if your church has an HR department, that might be a natural placement for the application process.
Just be sure there is consistency in practice.
5. Administration of Benefit
Most employee benefits require someone to administer them.
Whether explaining the tuition reimbursement policy, directing staff to required paperwork, or working with the accounting department to authorize the payment, there is undoubtedly an administrative side to this.
Make sure someone is responsible for overseeing the benefits process.
This responsibility should be written into the employee’s job description to ensure employees have a go-to person to help them access the benefit.
6. Benefit Policy
Write a tuition reimbursement policy to explain what is covered and to answer employee questions.
Think about things like:
- Will tuition be paid before a class is taken or reimbursed after an acceptable grade is received?
- What is the minimum grade required for reimbursement?
- What if the employee leaves employment while receiving the benefit?
- What percentage of tuition cost will be covered?
- What is the maximum tuition an employee can use per calendar year?
- What courses of study are covered?
- How long does it take to get reimbursed?
- How long is an employee required to stay employed after using the benefit?
- Is the benefit available to all staff or just full-time or salaried employees?
Gather your team and design your policy to reflect your organizational values, your compensation strategy, and your goal for the benefit.
This Is a Costly Benefit
No doubt not all churches have the resources to invest in a costly benefit such as tuition assistance.
However, if your ministry can, the benefit will help improve job skills and increase employee engagement and retention.
All of which are important to a growing and thriving ministry!
Fall Is Just Around The Corner
Summer is a great time to gather a team and create an employee tuition policy.
Use these short months to write the policy and inform employees so your staff can take advantage of this benefit this fall!
If you would like to see a sample tuition reimbursement policy and request form, you can access our growing library here.
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