PROFESSOR PRINCE’S ESSAY ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION BY GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL ONLINE
August 2024 — “Benefits Washing,” written by Professor Samantha Prince, was accepted for publication by Georgetown Law Journal Online. The article is slated for publication in December 2024/January 2025.
Employee benefits typically make up 24 to 26 percent of an employee’s compensation, so they are not “extras.” Companies know benefits are important to jobseekers and all too often engage in what Prince calls “benefits washing” — a practice where companies provide vague or misleading information about their employee benefits in an attempt to make them sound better than they truly are. Benefits washing has become problematic because applicants decide where to work based off information from the internet, like company websites and job postings.
In her essay, Prince outlines the three main ways that benefits washing occurs — detail omission, attention deflection, and manipulative deception. She also provides numerous real examples of each benefits washing type.
Benefits washing harms stakeholders: 1. It impedes decision making; 2. It takes advantage of individuals’ human brain capacities; 3. It puts a company’s reputation at risk; 4. It causes economic harm for those who fall prey to this manipulation; and 5. It inflates ESG ratings. “Governmental intervention is warranted else we rely on a legal fantasy that companies will cease benefits washing just to do the right thing.”
This essay complements Prince’s other work, Benefits Transparency, where she has called for more transparency through mandatory disclosure. Both this essay and that article focus on 401(k) plan details (including vesting schedules) as the primary examples due to plan variances across employers.
Professor Samantha Prince is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of Legal Analysis & Writing at Dickinson Law. She has a Master of Laws in Taxation from Georgetown University Law Center and was a partner in a regional law firm where she handled transactional matters that ranged from an initial public offering to regular representation of a publicly-traded company. A significant part of her practice was in employee benefits including retirement plan design and operation. Her expertise from practice has fueled her research enabling her to become an expert on 401(k) vesting schedules, employee benefits transparency, and gig work. In practice, most of her clients were small to medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs, including start-ups. Professor Prince brought her practice knowledge to the law school and established the Dickinson Law entrepreneurship program. She is an advisor for the Entrepreneurship Law Certificate that is available to students, and is the founder and moderator of the Inside Entrepreneurship Law blog.