RokkinCat recently hired a couple new people! While discussing benefits we were given the feedback: “You should do a better job advertising that.” So in the spirit of sharing how we run, we’re happy to share our current list of benefits.

You may notice this resembles BaseCamp, and that’s not a mistake. We love how they operate and look to them for inspiration often.

Salary

We pay at the top 25th percentile for each role at Milwaukee salary levels, regardless of where an employee lives. We’d like to move the needle on this further, but it’s what we feel comfortable with right now. We monitor this annually and adjust accordingly.

Insurance

We offer Health, Dental and Vision Insurance through UnitedHealthcare. RokkinCat covers 75% of the premium and employees cover the remaining 25%.

401k

We offer a 401k through Guideline. They have super low fees and integrate with our payroll provider Gusto. We currently do not offer a match.

It is common for companies to match when “high earners” contribute more than the others. Unbalanced contributions can lead to a non-compliant 401k plan. Two ways to be compliant are:

• keep your contributions in balance (this is what we do)
• offer a “safe harbor” match.

Most 401k providers encourage matching — they suggest that keeping everything in balance is very difficult. We believe that providers are biased since they earn significantly more with fees. Maintaining contribution balance is manageable for us and better for the size of our company. Guideline helps a lot with this.

Location

Work wherever you want! Move cities, keep your job. Live near the office, but still prefer to work from home? Go for it.

Vacation and Work

RokkinCat offers 1.5 weeks of paid vacation per quarter to use at your discretion. In addition, we offer paid holiday for the 9 legal holidays in the state of Wisconsin. These do not roll over unless you explicitly ask to use them later in the next quarter. This is a guideline, so if you need a couple extra days, no problem, just ask.

We implemented this system because people weren’t taking enough times for themselves in the previous “unlimited” vacation system.

Hardware/Software

Whatever hardware, software, or services you need to do your job are always 100% on us. No red tape, no questions asked.

Employee Liquidity Pool

If RokkinCat is ever sold or part of an IPO, tenured employees will be eligible to receive a portion of 8% of the value of the company. That 8% would be divided into units, based on the number of employees we have at the time. People who were RokkinCat for less than 1 year would receive 0 units, someone employed 1 year would receive 1 unit, and so on, until you’re fully vested at 5 years for 8 units.

Profit Sharing

This system is based on two questions at the end of every year…

Was RokkinCat Profitable this year? If yes, then is our savings goal of 2 months runway of expenses met? If yes, then pay out 10% of profits to employees, and 10% to partners.

We have a system based on tenure to encourage people to stick around.

Other Stuff

A couple informal values we have at RokkinCat are strongly encouraging everyone to keep working hours below 40 per week. We strongly encourage people to not use Slack during vacation.

We encourage people to maintain a work life balance and celebrate each other’s accomplishments. We include employees in nearly every major decision, inviting employee “representatives” who seem enthusiastic about the plan. We encourage experimentation and a process of constantly reevaluating our business.

We’ve gone through a half dozen iterations of these benefits, looking to other companies we admire or consider peers. Our handbook is in GitHub and employees are encouraged to make changes and start discussions on ways we can improve our business.

If you have any questions, reach out and I’d be happy to grab a coffee or chat.