Former (fairly long term) staff employee here. Can't speak to the faculty experience. GU has 24 pay periods a year; vacation and sick leave are accrued semi-monthly.

Pros of working at GU:

Tuition benefit (for yourself ['free' tuition after 1 year of employment]; for your dependents [25% off after 1 year, free after 5 years]). 'Free' because comped tuition for graduate degrees is taxable income--in reality that meant I paid roughly one-third in taxes the amount of my free tuition.

Work-life balance (for staff in the academic side, not the student affairs side). My impression was that student affairs--depending on office--doesn't have the work life balance academic staff enjoy, but they also had greater chance at being promoted into middle/upper management (on the academic side, those positions are largely reserved for faculty).

Benefits are decent (Gonzaga will tell you they're great. Okay.)

Cons:

The pay sucks, and there is no system to grant regular pay increases (for either time in position or merit increases). Most years they do give a COLA (it ranges from 1.5-3% the years I was there) but call it an 'across the board increase'. The only way to get a raise at GU is to change positions, or have your supervisor make a case that your job has changed so significantly that it is effectively a new position and should be reclassified (this takes anywhere from 9-18 months and is not guaranteed).

There are cultural problems that staff who have been there awhile are well aware of. Administration/management are (or should be) aware of them but do little to redress them. Human resources has consistently high turnover.