Workplace

We want Verizon to be a great place to work. We hand our people the tools to manage their futures. In return, we offer challenging and satisfying careers.

To be successful, Verizon depends on the skills, values and commitment of its people. We provide competitive wages along with progressive health and benefit packages. We invest heavily in training and development and hold ourselves to very high standards of performance.

Training & Development

Verizon’s total training investment for 2008 totaled $344 million, and our employees dedicated 11.7 million hours to training — 200,000 more hours than in 2007. The vast majority of training was in the areas of customer service, management development, and the broadband, mobile and IP segments of our business.

Better Health

In 2008, Verizon provided $3.7 billion in health care benefits, covering 835,000 employees, retirees and their dependents. Our approach to health care is to empower people to better manage their own health by giving them more and better information.

Three years ago, we introduced the Verizon HealthZone, an online resource for health information for employees. Enrollment rose to nearly 28,000 by the end of 2008.

Verizon Wireless’ Healthy Babies program for expectant mothers encourages pre- and postnatal care. For those who remain enrolled through delivery, the program provides incentives toward lactation pumps and lactation consulting. More than 1,500 women enrolled in the program in 2008, which provided more than $73,000 in incentives.

Work and Family Balance

Our work-family policies are designed to put the tools for managing their lives in the hands of our employees. For instance, Verizon employees logged 37,500 hours in Backup Care benefits in 2008 — the equivalent of nearly 13 work years that employees would have otherwise had to use as vacation, personal or sick days.

Verizon’s employee assistance program, VZ-LIFE, provides resources for dealing with personal problems and challenges. On average, employees contact VZ-LIFE by telephone more than 3,000 times a month and log on to the Web site, verizon.com/life, nearly 50,000 times per month.

Our adoption assistance program provides up to $10,000 for expenses incurred during the adoption of a child.

Verizon supports employees who are called to active military duty with one of the best military-leave programs anywhere. The company pays the difference between an employee’s military pay and Verizon pay for up to 36 months. The company also continues medical, dental, vision and group life insurance for those employees and their dependents.

Safety

• Verizon continued to see improvement in our safety measures in 2008. We were, however, saddened to have three work-related employee fatalities in 2008.

• Any loss of life is unacceptable, and we continue to take our responsibility for employee safety very seriously. Across Verizon, safety performance results are routinely analyzed to identify areas of risks, for which targeted plans are designed and implemented.

• Significant emphasis is also placed on increased safety training, work observations and
  communications, with special focus on high-risk work operations.

In 2008, we began rolling out an online enhanced, company-wide safety and environmental compliance system. Implementation is targeted for late 2009.

Safety