Employees Benefits: Opportunities and Productivity

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Table of Contents

Legal Environment and Total Rewards
Basic Benefits Offered
Paid Holiday, Vacations and Sick Leaves
Health Insurance Benefit
Challenges Associated with Offering Benefits
Repeal of Unemployment Compensation Act
References

Legal Environment and Total Rewards

Competition for employees has always been on the rise. Each and every employer wants to hire and keep that experienced, talented and dedicated employee that will be instrumental in delivering quality towards the achievement of the company’s goal (Chapman, & Kelliher, 2011). In this paper, I am going to look at several employee benefits that provide great opportunities to increase their productivity. The advantage of these benefits is that the employee gets satisfaction, less likely to quit, and at the same time, can be more committed to their work. What are the basic benefits that business is able to offer to their employees?

Basic Benefits Offered

The law stipulates that you need to allow your employees to leave for an electoral process and national duties either in military or jury. These are salary, hourly pay, piece-rate payment, whichever applies to the business. The employer is required to provide their employees with retirement benefits and disability benefits. The government expects employers to act accordingly in reference to the FFML (Atkinson, 2009).

Other benefits apart from these are not required or stated in the law. However, the normal practice has been that firms have come up with other benefits outside the law margins to remain competitive. Such benefits are discussed below.

Paid Holiday, Vacations and Sick Leaves

This is one of the benefits that employers have for a long time now used to attract and keep their employees. This benefit is given, especially during the national holidays, New Year Day, Christmas festivities, and other occasions. Other employers also allow their employees a few days off to attend religious functions and occasions like funerals (Davis, & Blaskovich, 2012).

Health Insurance Benefit

There are a lot of benefits that can be provided by employers, but Health insurance is for sure the most enviable of them. With constantly rising health cover expenses, this benefit is to keep your employees motivated. In setting up this benefit, there are several options that an employer can reach out to. The available options include the traditional indemnity plan where an employee visits their preferred health care provider, and sums incurred are later reimbursed (Isenberg, 2006).

The other approach is managed care. There are two forms involved, Health Maintenance (HMO) and Preferred Provider Organization (PPO). HMO healthcare workers and health facilities used must be under HMO. On the other hand, the patient pays a minimum of $10 to 20$ in one visit, and the rest of the amount is paid by the insurance company. The other health insurance plans are self-insurance and Archer Medical Savings Account (Isenberg, 2006).

A practical example is the Microsoft Corporation, which profusely offers its employees paid maternity and paternity leave, unlike other companies. 3M assists its workforce socially by helping them lose weight, quit smoking, and manage stress (Business Journal). Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer, offers its workforce up to 12 fully paid vacations (Simon, Traw, McGeoch, & Bruno, 2007).

Challenges Associated with Offering Benefits

Though they are an incentive tool to the employee, they are a burden to the employer. The rising cost of health has put pressure on employers giving their employees this benefit. This has made most of the small businesses withdraw the health benefit (Chen, & Hsieh, 2006).

In conclusion, an employer that uses employee benefits is at a greater advantage than the other who does not include such added advantages. As we have seen, these benefits can go a long way retaining best employees in the firm as well as achieving the intended goals.

Repeal of Unemployment Compensation Act

Under this act, eligible workers are entitled to benefits when they lose their employment due to faults not committed by them. This act has enabled workers to have a soft ground, which they land on as they try looking for another job. Essentially, there have been different categories of people who have benefited from this Act. On the other hand, employers have been on the receiving end. They have all along bore the cost of paying to the insurance firms.

This has reduced their profit margins and consequently led to the collapse of small businesses, which form the majority of the employers. In order to protect the interest of such businesses, it is of paramount importance that this Act is repealed. This is a viable option as it gives insurance firms the opportunity to solely offer such a product. Withdrawing this benefit also cushions small employers who are ‘infants’ in business. It will be an incentive to other businesses to come up as the cost of opening and running will relatively decrease (Kovac, 2005).

The law mentions a number of circumstances that add up to the eligibility to receive this particular payment. These are inclusive of people who lose their jobs to disasters, such as ex-service men and federal employers (Kovac, 2005). As it has been already mentioned, this law needs to be repealed and in its place, come insurance players. They will carry out the same services but will be an employee based not employer based. This will allow individual employee to choose a particular products in terms of premiums to be paid. Therefore, allowing flexibility on the part of the employee will be ensured.

References

Atkinson, W. (2009, November). Filling in around the edges. HRMagazine, 54(11), 55- 58.

Chapman, J., & Kelliher, C. (2011). Influences on reward mix determination: reward consultants’ perspectives. Employee Relations, 33(2), 121.

Chen, H., & Hsieh, Y. (2006, Nov/Dec). Key trends of the total reward system in the 21st century. Compensation and Benefits Review, 38(6), 64-71.

Davis, C., & Blaskovich, J. (2012). Enterprise risks, rewards, and regulation. The Journal of Applied Business Research, 28(4), 563 – 579.

Isenberg, S. (2006). Coordinating dual health insurance benefits. Ear, Nose, & Throat Journal, 85(9), 584.

Kovac, J. (2005). Revisiting Total Rewards. Workspan, 48(1), 73.

Simon, T. M., Traw, K., McGeoch, B., & Bruno, F. (2007, Summer). How the final HIPAA nondiscrimination regulations affect wellness programs. Benefits Law Journal, 20(2), 40-44.

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