Incentive Pay and Benefits Packages Essay

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HR professional can use in order to determine incentive pay within the workplace is connecting incentive pay with the performance of the employees. Setting up benchmarks helps the organization assess performance in the employees. If an employee's performance exceeds the placed benchmark, then that employee receives additional pay or incentive pay. Providing incentives to the employees allows for potentially higher sales and/or productivity as employees know where to rise up to in order to gain that particular incentive (Boyer, 2011, p. 285).

A simple example of this is setting up a sales goal and having sales associates receive a $100 bonus if they reach the sales goals for that month, or even doubling commission for anything sold past the sales goal amount. That way hard work is rewarded and the company gets more sales done each month. The goals can also be adjusted according to the skill level of the sales person along with the incentive amount.

The second method one can use to determine incentive pay is by means of assessing the impact of decision-making in managers. Managers are a vital part of a company/organization. If a manager decides on something that proves useful to the organization, then he/she should be compensated for it depending on the overall output and profit made during any given period. This ensures the company maintains good managers on board, and also directs managers to aim for choices that will help the organization instead of help themselves.

To represent this more, the example of the sales team and the sales manager will be applied. The sales manager will be given a list of individual sales goals that can then be distributed to his/her sales associates according to their experience and skill level. If the manager assigns the right goals to the right sales associates, and the goals are met, the manager can then be given additional compensation or even a perk like a trip or an award of sorts.

2.

Businesses provide employee benefits in order to possibly recruit better, more skilled employees. However, regardless of intention, businesses must have certain employee benefits included by law. The other kinds of benefits are an option that are set up to compensate employees as mentioned before. The first main employee benefit that is mandatory by law are social security taxes. Every, single employer has to pay Social Security taxes equal to the rate their employees pay.

The second is unemployment insurance. Businesses must pay unemployment insurance taxes. Although this may not be mandatory for all businesses, like those that hire freelancers, it for those that do not, especially government jobs (Ek Spector, 2015). This means the business has to register with the state's workforce agency. A third is workers' compensation. Most businesses have to carry Workers' Compensation Insurance coverage. These are the general things to consider when it comes to potentially mandatory employee benefits.

Some states like California, New Jersey, New York, and Hawaii require that businesses provide partial wage replacement insurance coverage to any eligible employee for injury or sickness that is non-work related. Leave benefits although generally not required by federal law are provided by employers as part of an overall benefits and compensation plan. Such leave benefits include jury duty, sick leave, bereavement/funeral leave, personal leave, and vacation/holiday. One particular instance where employers must provide leave is under the FMLA or the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The FMLA entitles an employee of a business/organization to have 3 months or twelve weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave during any twelve-month period for three main reasons.

1. When an employee experiences a birth and has to care for or place into foster/adoption a child.

2. The care of a spouse, parent, or child/any immediate family member that has a serious ailment/health condition.

3. Care for an employee's own grave health condition.

FMLA requires the maintaining of group health benefits during an employee's leave as if the employee was still there working. Any private company that has fifty or more employees must have this kind of leave put in place and FMLA applies to all public employers.

3.

Optional benefits are great for retaining and recruiting employees (Giancola, 2012, p. 294). From packages that include healthy lunches and car fare, some benefits are better than others. Four benefits that a business could adopt that would generate greater interest from perspective employees and more satisfied current employees are acupuncture and physical therapy, working from any space an employee chooses in an office, free meals, fitness centers.

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These tend to have a general similar appeal. That is because they offer implementation of three similar concepts: wellness, mental health, and physical health. These concepts not only promote the general well-being of an employee, but also promote a higher level of productivity and stability within employees, that usually means profit gains for business that employ such benefits.

Free meals and fitness centers are great because they promote wellness in employees. When a business can control what an employee eats by providing a healthy, well balance option, as well as giving an option for exercise, the employer is giving the employees ways to stay healthy and reduce stress. By removing the additional expenses of joining a gym and buying healthy food, the employee can focus more on what is important for the company, which is higher productivity and better customer service.

Acupuncture and physical therapy goes along with the concept of physical health. People become stressed from work. They may get injured or suffer a strain. These benefits help people physically feel better from a medical standpoint. FUSE or "the FUSE (Flexible User Shared Environment) program, where employees can sit and work wherever they want in the corporate headquarters" (Stanger, 2015), is a way for employees to choose where they want to work. This helps with mental health as it gives some power an autonomy to the employee.

4.

Communicating benefits plans to prospective or current employees can be difficult if not done right. There are several general techniques most businesses/organizations apply in order to highlight the big picture of a benefits package. Now the first approach that employers take is explaining benefits offered by the company to all employees without concern for an employee's job level. While this is an efficient way to get a general base of benefits information out to every employee in the company, it does not help spell out additional benefits for employees higher up in the company. Still, it is an essential way to communicate because it outlines what everyone gains in the company in terms of benefits.

The second is assigning a precise dollar value for said benefits. "Employees often overlook the value of benefits like company-sponsored life insurance, retirement contributions, and expense reimbursement. It's critical to include these benefits on a total compensation statement so employees can see the full value of working for your organization" (Benefitfocus, 2015). When employees see the real life value of what they will receive in terms of benefits, they can better decide if the company is worth being in, compared to one that does not give a monetary value. This is helpful, however, it can also keep prospective employees from joining if they see the total value as less than what they desire in a company.

By including intangible benefits in the benefits communication techniques, employees see what cannot be measured necessarily by numbers. Wellness programs for example although have some monetary value, are not necessarily desired for their potential money savings, but rather for the quality they can offer an employee working in a business. While this is helpful, it can also detract people from paying attention to the benefits package as some may see these kinds of benefits as useless.

General techniques often do not take into consideration the needs and desires of particular demographics within a company. For example, if a company has many women in it and they plan on having children, they may want a benefits package that provides more maternity leave versus a gym membership or employee discounts. Tailoring benefits packages around the kind of employees found in the business can help attract and retain employees.

Another thing to consider is making the communication easy to understand and access. "Unfortunately, the total compensation message often goes unnoticed or underappreciated by employees who may not understand what they are reading. Benefit and compensation terms can be complex topics, and employees may not be given an organized statement that makes sense to them" (Tess C. Taylor, 2015). Having a clear bullet point list that employees can access via online is a great way to get employees understanding what kind of benefits they can get if they work or continue to work for a business. More importantly, providing it in an easy to read and understand language makes employees more interested in reading it and retaining the information provided. It is one thing to explain verbally a total benefits package. It is another to actually give written, color-coded information that.....

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