Family Friendly Benefits

A challenge for organizations is to provide a work-life balance that keeps employees satisfied in their jobs, keeps them committed to the organization and helps attract and retain employees.  There are many different discretionary benefit options including paid absences, insurance, and retirement benefits. In the article listed below, one example of discretionary benefits is called family-friendly benefits (FFBs).

These benefits help employees balance work life and family life and include things like child care, elder care, fitness facilities, flexible work schedules dependent care, flexible spending, family leave, and telecommuting.

When designing a discretionary benefits plan, the organization should take into consideration what the competition offers, employee demographics, cost of the benefit and the value of the benefit to the employee.   

The most important aspect of implementing a discretionary benefits plan is communication. By communicating with employees at an early stage in the program development process, the organization can create buy-in.  The first step in developing the program is identifying whether or not the program is feasible to implement.  What are the potential costs?  How does it impact our resources? How will this affect employee attitudes/perceptions?  Do we have the IT resources required to support the system?  How will the administration of the new benefits plan differ from the existing plan? If the feasibility study indicates that the program will work, the initial plan information can be communicated to employees. 

The next step is planning the program and identifying and documenting the details.  This should include a structured communication plan that creates awareness and identifies a launch date.

During the actual implementation phase, employees enroll in the plan.  Once the plan is live, payroll and/or benefit corrections can be made.

Lastly, the plan must be administered and maintained on an ongoing basis.  It may be administered internally or by a 3^rd party.  The plan should be monitored and based on employee feedback, updated to add new benefits or remove unwanted benefits in order to keep the program desirable.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5430/is_200704/ai_n21286972/?tag=content;col1

Merit Pay and Performance Based Compensation

Merit pay is a performance based pay system whereby employees are paid based on how effective their performance is.  It is best known in the educational system but organizations also use this system in combination with performance appraisals to determine annual increases.

In the education system, it is believed that merit pay helps schools with lower socioeconomic status attract qualified teachers. It is also believed to help retention by rewarding high performing teachers with better pay increases.  Likewise, in organizations, employees with higher performance appraisal ratings will typically benefit by receiving a higher percentage of increase. 

Those that oppose merit pay believe that it lowers teacher morale because it creates competition between and among teachers.  They are also opposed the cost of time and resources to administer the plan.

According to Ed Lawler, an academic expert in Human Resources, money is a motivator to employees for the following reasons; employees attach a high value to pay, they believe good performance will result in higher pay, they have enough control over the job that their own efforts can have a material impact, and they believe that superior performance leads to more positive than negative results (e.g. more acceptance than rejection by coworkers).

I personally believe in the idea of a performance based pay system.  I think the following quote by Frederick Taylor, founder of the school of scientific management, sums it up perfectly, at least in my experience.  "The common tendency to 'take it easy' is greatly increased by bringing a number of men together on similar work and at a uniform standard rate of pay.  When a naturally energetic man works for a few days beside a lazy one, the logic of the situation is unanswerable. 'Why should I work hard when that lazy fellow gets the same pay that I do and does only half as much work?'”

It is my belief that people (employees) rise or fall to the expectations put before them.  If merit pay systems create competition, those that are willing and capable of rising to the challenge will and merit pay systems support this natural tendency.

Managing Employee Absenteeism

The article entitled How to Deal with Employee Absenteeism on the Employer-Employee.com website, discusses employee absenteeism as one of the most costly problems facing global organizations.  There are many reasons why people are absent including personal reasons, stress, or because they have difficulties with their boss.  Absenteeism is worse in organizations that have more than 500 employees.

When employees are absent, the organization suffers not only from the loss of the absent worker but from the ill effects on employees that are at work including employee burnout, turnover, poor morale, and workplace negativism.

Part of the problem may be a poorly documented or enforced absenteeism policy. In addition, many businesses do not have a good way to report, capture or measure absenteeism.  In order to manage absenteeism, organizations need to know who is off and why they are off.  Once you know this, you can plan more effectively.  

Organizations can address the problems of absenteeism by implementing an incentive program that discourages bogus absences.  Some examples of program incentives include the ability to ash-in unused sick days, bonus pay for every month of perfect attendance, free lunches, certificates of achievement, or scratch-off cards concealing prizes.

The incentive program should be appropriate for your company.   The article indicates that the duration of the reward program should be defined based on the company but that younger workers should be rewarded more frequently but based on the difficulty of the job.  Regardless of the details of the program, one way of getting buy-in from employees is to include them in the development of the incentive program.

http://www.employer-employee.com/absent.html