Awards There Are a Number of Key

Awards

There are a number of key takeaways that the prudent researcher of L.L. Bean and its company can discern from studying the way this particular organization approaches rewards and benefits. Foremost of these is the intrinsic value that it adds to an organization to have employees get rewards and benefits based on their participation and engagement with the company's goals. At L.L. Bean, those goals are a customer-oriented environment in which the values of the company are those which are valuable to the customers as well. Thus, employees must demonstrate that they are directly helping to meet those goals of L.L. Bean in order to qualify for the accordant rewards.

It also seems to be extremely beneficial (for both parties involved) to issue bonuses to employees based on their annual salaries. Although L.L. Bean literally spent millions of dollars in issuing such bonuses during 2006, it is critical to note that this practice galvanizes employees to not only perform the sort of work that gets them bonuses, but also the sort of work that increases their salaries so that they will get more substantial bonuses.

Additionally, it is worthwhile to note that L.L. Bean is one of the few organizations which, after globalizing and outsourcing some of its operations, appears to be taking pains to ensure that there is a similar reward system issued to its overseas laborers. Such a practice is rare and seemingly defeats the entire purpose of outsourcing -- which is typically to get products and materials for cheaper than one can domestically. Even though L.L. Bean is still reaping this benefit, its track record indicates that it is possible to do so and still issue rewards and decent wages to overseas employees. Again, the true value in this custom of the company's is that employees can help achieve organizational objectives when their performance is tied into the company's reward system.

The first recommendation that I have regarding the expansion of the benefits programs at L.L. Bean would be to afford health care benefits to its overseas employees in those positions that have been outsourced. Benefits is one of the top things that employees value about jobs (Reed 1). It is excellent that the company appears proactive in treating such laborers with a degree of parity in terms of their remuneration. Additionally, it should be noted that the rewards system that this organization utilizes is fairly exhaustive as it currently stands. However, to merely expand those benefits there should be full health benefits for overseas employees -- which is aligned with the company's core value of labor rights.

Another critical way in which this organization could broaden its benefits programs is to incorporate more cultural holidays and practices into its benefits programs. An excellent example of the sort of procedures it could adopt on a wider scale include the sort of holidays that it affords its employees in Japan. Moreover, it should follow the practice of administering the sort of benefits that are the most commonplace in particular companies in which it operates. It has done a good job of doing this in Japan (No author 7), and should continue to engage in this practice in other countries as well.