2025 Northwest Employee Benefits Survey Highlights!

Cascade is excited to announce that the 2025 Northwest Employee Benefits report is now available! This regional survey report is a great resource for benefits and policy data for organizations that want to ensure their benefits and rewards are competitive in today’s market.

Highlights of this year’s results include:

• Time-Off Practices
• For PTO (pooled) leave, an employee of one year earns an average of 121 hours of PTO versus 220 hours of PTO for an employee of thirty years. In this survey, time-off is split by employee tenure (1, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 30 year breakouts) for better scale comparisons.
• Life Insurance, Disability, and Retirement Packages
• 53% of participants do not offer short-term disability, a dip compared to last year’s 49%. For those that do provide short-term disability, 67% of organizations pay for short-term disability in full, a rise from last year’s 59%.
• Health and Welfare Benefits, including Vision and Dental Insurance
• A rise in medical spending accounts was seen for Health Savings Accounts (HSA) (32% to 35% in 2025), Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) (64% to 72% in 2025), and Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRA) (22% to 25% in 2025). For those providing HSAs, 73% provide an employer contribution compared to 60% in 2024.
• Compensation Benefits Practices
• The average annual base salary increase for 2024 was 3.7%, with 44% of respondents offering 4% or more this year. Make sure to participate in our Salary Budget Survey, out now, to get more detailed salary increases data.
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Practices
• 38% of respondents have a DEI strategy that is fully implemented, compared to 28% in 2024, 23% in 2023, and 18% in 2022.
• Other Policies and Practices
• The top additional creative benefits offered by participants include free food provided at the office (31%), workplace library (17%), gas reimbursement (14%), and week-long company shutdown (14%).

The survey consists of two final reports: A full report containing all participant information (95 participants), and a nonprofit report, containing nonprofit data only (50 organizations). These final reports are FREE to all member participants and are significantly discounted for non-member participants.

For more information about the survey, or to purchase the final report, please click here. A large thank you to all organizations that contributed to this survey and continue to make our surveys successful!