benefit

Sonia Gonzalez

   Providing healthcare for our employees is of utmost priority. It is our duty as the Human Resource team to protect our employees and give them appropriate benefits. When it comes to distributing healthcare, there are several human resources challenge that we face in particular. First and foremost, healthcare costs are skyrocketing. With the escalating costs of healthcare and other benefits, we are having trouble finding ways to manage health coverage costs with the overall benefits program. It has come the time we start to reassess and redefine how we distribute our healthcare plans.

Along with increased costs, there is an issue with age distribution. As we know, people live longer as the generations advance, so we have increased demand for health services among aging populations. Older employees become increasingly concerned about their healthcare benefits as those healthcare services become more relevant to them. They are at higher health risks due to their age, and therefore, with the growing population of aged employees, healthcare benefits are in more demand and far more crucial than before, and unfortunately, it will cost a lot. That is why people make their decision based on the types of benefits that companies have to offer.

The company that I research is Amazon. Amazon cares for the best employees by giving them many benefits that can have performance work more beneficiaries. Like other companies, amazon pays meager cash compensation even though it makes up for this through services. This company is an upward communication since Amazon cares about the feeling and the opinion of their employees. It also has horizontal transmission, where the employees share information and resolve conflict to have a better place and productive work and has an innovative culture. It is a very flexible company for workers with work schedules. The perks of being an Amazon employee are in the benefits. Amazon work with full-time employees, part-time employees, and even seasonal employees. Amazon’s compensation strategy is highly competitive compared to the compensation strategies of competing firms. While collaborating with people who have great expertise in multiple areas, the company offers a wide variety of benefits to that employee who are regular and full-time United States employees. The services given to Amazon employees are aim at facilitating growth and development. The company has medical plan options for flexibility purposes and so that employees can choose the medical plan that is best suited for them and their families. Amazon also provides a network of support as part of its benefits package. This support network aims to show that they care about the employee’s wellbeing both at work and away from work. The support benefits network is provided free of charge to the employees to make their lives better. Amazon pays its employees significantly lower than other tech giants such as Google. The company rakes in a large number of profits annually, and that employees who are aware of these financial records expect a bit more in terms of compensation. I talk about Amazon because I research this company. I read about Google and compare it with Amazon, and the best company to work for is Google. 

Three benefits appeal to me. The first benefits are tuition assistance programs which pay up to $12,000 per year. I believe further your education is the key to success in the company. The second benefit is the 20% time policy. Google gives their employees the chance to go out and invest their time into a project. It is a learning experience with something else that will spark creativity within the company. You never too old to learn more about the company. It turns out a lot of the side projects have turned into something much bigger. This will saves money. The free rides work for me; I don’t have to deal with the subway transportation being so over crowed and the smell is unbearable. I will also take the lower rate, which lowers the tax brackets in the long run. Zappos also has benefits programs that you don’t want to turn down. I believe these perks are sustainable because they will add to costs in the net profits in the company.

References 

” Amazon: Benefits” 

http://www.glassdoor.com/employers/blog/5-ways-address-gender-pay-gap-company/

http:// www.amazondelivers.jobs 

http://www.aboutamazon.com

In our last couple of Units of class we have learned about compensation for employees and all the different ways that we, as employees can be paid for our work. The obvious one that comes to mind when we think of compensation is money. Of course money is extremely important for pretty much everything in the modern world and it is definitely a necessity, there are other ways that we can receive compensation for our efforts in the workplace. While there are companies that just give you money for the work that you do, some companies go above and beyond in terms of what they offer to their employees for their efforts. While researching companies for this assignment, one such company I found that seems to go above and beyond for their employees is IBM.

IBM, which stands for International Business Machines, is a multinational technology company. They sell computer hardware and software and they also do research and hold many different patents such as the ATM and the Hard Disk Drive.  I went to IBM’s website and headed over to the Benefits page where I found a brochure for all the benefits that IBM offers to its employees, and there are a lot. Companies are now trying to figure out ways to help out their employees not only with money but their careers and their lives as a whole.  I am just going to write out the names of the different chapters of the brochure just to show you how many different benefits there are, and remember these are only the chapter headings, so there are subdivisions of more benefits for each of these headings. The headings are: Healthcare Choices, Prescription Drug Benefits, Mental Health Benefits, Vision Choices, Dental Choices, Flexible Spending Accounts, Healthcare Coverage (after you leave IBM), Life and Disability Benefits, Capital Accumulation and Investment, Time off, Family and Personal Services, Covid-19 Support, Other IBM HR Programs, Career Development Programs, IBM Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs.

  So as you can see IBM offers a lot of different types of benefits. I am going to highlight just a few specific ones that I personally find appealing.  I am not even going to cover the healthcare options that IBM offers because there are just so many and I think so many people would appreciate the different options that IBM provides not only for you personally but for your family as well. Not only do they provide great healthcare while you work for them but they also will help you with your future healthcare needs after you stop working for them, at least for a certain period of time, and will also satisfy requirements of COBRA. Other benefits include legal assistance when needed, a 401(k) Plus Plan, Investment Opportunities, Stock Purchase Plans, and one that I think would help me is IBM MoneySmart.  IBM MoneySmart is a programs that provides financial education and planning which is designed to help their employees ‘get smart” about their personal finances. They also provide discounts at more than 80 other partners and Student Loan Refinancing.  Another one that may be appealing to soon to be parents is that they offer 12 weeks of paid Parental Bonding Leave for any and all parents of a newly born or newly adopted child.  There are so many more benefits that they offer that are really great as well and it would take way too long to talk about all of them.  I personally think I would take a small pay decrease if I was able to have access to all of these benefits, but at the same time I don’t need ALL of them. If there were any option to pick and choose which ones I do want and balance out salary and benefits, that would be ideal.

When researching whether or not these benefits pay off in the long run, I kind of encountered mixed results.  I found a couple articles stating that benefits such as these increase productivity and morale, while there were other research papers that stated that workers just wanted money and benefits didn’t really effect productivity of workers. There was one research paper I found, and I couldn’t read most of these research papers without paying money or doing some long process, but I was able to read the abstracts.  One paper stated in the abstract “employee benefit programs have greater impact on work‐motivation than on productivity; monetary benefit programs are most highly valued by both executives and workers; there is a cognitive gap between management and worker on the importance of employee benefit programs; different genders have different benefit demands; unmarried employees, more than married employees, perceive that employee benefits have a greater impact on job performance. Employees with different education levels and positions perceive different employee benefit impacts; and employee benefit programs have greater influence on younger employees′ job performance.” Basically that different people have different needs, and different benefits will effect people differently based on what they want and need. I think that there are a lot of people who would appreciate benefits when offered to them, but may not need them and just prefer a higher salary.  I definitely think benefits are important for motivation, but I think if its going to be sustainable the employees needs to make the choice for themselves about what they want and what will make them work harder and better.

Sources:

Ajose, B. (n.d.). Employee benefit and its effect on employee productivity. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://www.academia.edu/25932687/employee_benefit_and_its_effect_on_employee_productivity

Hong, J., Yang, S., Wang, L., Chiou, E., Su, F., & Huang, S. (1995, December 01). Impact of employee benefits on work motivation and productivity. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09556219510098064/full/html

IBM benefits. (2021, February 09). Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://www.ibm.com/us-en/employment/benefits/

Oden, P., By, P., & Oden, C. (2018, May 07). Employee benefits and its effect on employee productivity. Retrieved April 11, 2021, from https://www.projecttopics.org/employee-benefits-and-its-effect-on-employee-productivity.html

IBM BENEFITS BROCHURE : https://www.ibm.com/us-en/employment/benefits/assets/2021_IBM_Benefits_and_HR_Programs_Summary_v2.pdf

Benefits Writing Assignment

In the modern-day workplace, Fortune 500 companies (especially those in big tech) are consistently looking for ways to compete for top talent. Besides the ever-competing salary contest, benefits and most of them nontraditional; are actually becoming the big thing that sets companies apart. Employees in the top of their field are actively seeking these benefits. According to career site Glassdoor “more than half (57%) of all workers say perks and benefits are among the top things they consider when deciding whether to accept a job, and almost 80% of employees say they would prefer new benefits over a pay raise.” Organizations are changing their operations to incorporate these new benefits by hiring personnel who specialize in managing their employee’s experience. These are roles outside of the traditional HR jobs every company has. An example would be “Sr. VP People Operations” at Google that was showed in the Unit 9 Lecture. This may be a job title that other large companies have and at Google it may also function in an HR capacity. But what I believe makes it different is the focus on the employee experience communicated in the video and the analytics they use to measure the effect on productivity and employee happiness that all of these benefits the company gives actually has. The lecture video gives an example where the VP tells the news reporter that a purple wall in their workplace has garnered a negative response and will probably not see it popping up in other work environments. Usually one would think that besides a general color theme set up in a work space, that feedback on a single purple wall would not be something a company would even spend time on. This shows the strategic investment nature of this type of modern management; and their employees notice. Some of these “nontraditional” benefits include: one paid year of maternity and paternity leave to new parents (Netflix), six days of paid volunteer time off a year + $1,000 a year to donate to a charity of the employees choice (Salesforce), covering of costs for egg freezing and fertility assistance (Spotify), an annual stipend of $2,000 to travel and stay in an Airbnb listing anywhere in the world (Airbnb), death benefits – the surviving spouse or partner of a deceased employee receives 50% of their salary for the next 10 years (Google), free intern housing with shuttle service to and from work with a monthly housing stipend of $1,000 (Facebook), $4,000 in “baby cash” to employees with a new born (Facebook), on-site health and dental centers + laundry services (Facebook). This is only a few of the nontraditional benefits that are popping up in the modern economy, I listed many of Facebook’s benefits because they are the company I chose to research.

I’d have to say the benefits that appeal to me personally are the shuttle service to and from work with monthly housing stipend of $1,000, the $4,000 in baby cash and the on-site health, dental, and laundry services. To me they seem like benefits I could easily see myself using and having a real value add to my experience as an employee. Not worrying about transportation to work is absolutely awesome and having health and dental at work allows me to save taking time off from work because these services are immediately available. Plus who wouldn’t love getting $4k in cash to help with a new baby? I presume you will want all the money you can get in that situation! I would seriously consider taking a lower pay rate to gain the benefits I prefer because there is value that to me is worth perhaps the difference in paycheck. Not every career decision is made for money; long term happiness is key as well.

In my limited research on Facebook, the nontraditional benefits provided by Facebook in addition to the working environment, management transparency, and community; earned Facebook No.1 on Glassdoor’s 2018 best places to work list. This annual ranking is achieved using employee reviews which show how satisfied employees are with their employer, CEO, and other key work environment attributes. Facebook as a big tech company is in a highly competitive recruiting space as they compete against the likes of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and other Silicon Valley giants to recruit the best and brightest. Nontraditional benefits allow them to set themselves apart from the pack and bring people onboard for the long term. I believe these perks are sustainable by these companies due to their high net profits and global reach. These perks I presume must add a high dollar cost to the companies benefits cost per employee. But in the big tech industry, innovation, creativity and getting to the next big thing before everyone else is key to your firms’ success. All of those stem from your workforce and their ingenuity. This makes the perks an underlying strategic investment by the company in creating the best work environment possible to recruit, retain, and foster the next generation in products and services.

References

• Author: Arthur Wilson Marketing Manager at Workstars. With a background in digital strategy, et al. “20 Companies Leading the Way When It Comes to Employee Perks and Benefits: Workstars.” Employee Recognition and Engagement Blog, www.workstars.com/recognition-and-engagement-blog/2019/11/13/20-companies-leading-the-way-when-it-comes-to-employee-perks-and-benefits/.

• Gillett, Rachel. “7 Reasons Facebook Is the Best Place to Work in America and No Other Company Can Compare.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 7 Dec. 2017, businessinsider.com/facebook-best-place-to-work-in-america-2017-12.

• Gillett, Rachel. “Free Food May Become a Thing of the Past in Silicon Valley – but There Are Plenty of Other Incredible Perks Companies like Facebook and Google Offer Their Employees.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 29 July 2018, www.businessinsider.com/incredible-perks-companies-like-airbnb-facebook-and-google-offer-their-employees-2016-2#counseling-and-consultations-for-employees-and-their-dependents-at-southwest-30.

 Attached in word doc form too.

Benefits Writing Assignment

Here’s where assignments students submit for our Unit 9 Assignment will appear. If your post is not appearing in this section, you may have forgotten to add a Category to your post. Go back to your post and click “edit” to add “Benefits” as the post category.