Crafting a Compensation and Benefits Plan: Looking Ahead in the Modern Workplace
Increasingly, technologically-driven businesses have become more and more reliant upon attracting top talent to gain a competitive edge. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the Google organization. Google’s Internet search engine is virtually synonymous with searching on the Internet itself. Google offers generous salaries and time off to its employees. It also offers many amenities, such as free food, medical care, dry-cleaning, fitness classes, and even buses from certain common location hubs in the surrounding area. This enable employees to remain focused on work as well as removes many of the inconveniences of modern life (Cain, 2017). To reduce stress levels about balancing personal and professional lives, Google even offers the option of allowing employees to bring pets to work and daycare (Cain, 2017).
Amazon has been taking the lead from Google, also offering catered lunches, subsidized gym memberships, and encourages team bonding by having on-site softball and basketball competitions (Cain, 2017). Amazon’s spousal benefits packages are not as generous as Google’s, as Google even offers to pay 50% of the salary of a deceased employee to the employee’s spouse for 10 years (Cain, 2017). But Amazon does offer tuition assistance and a discounted membership to the popular shopping website. In contrast, within the tech industry, Apple’s benefits are not nearly as expansive. Apple’s salary is competitive...
Its philosophy is that it pays employees enough that they should be able to afford its relatively pricey cafeteria food, if they desire to eat it (Lashinsky, 2012).
Employee Expectations
Despite the existence of companies like Google, overall, companies have been offering substantially smaller benefits packages. Employees are being offered less generous healthcare benefits packages and must manage their own 401K, if they company offers one at all (Cain, 2017). Pensions at private corporations are virtually a thing of the past. Employees still bring certain expectations to the workplace, even if there are fewer options to partake of transactional benefits. One benefit more and more employees seek is that of intrinsic benefits, or a sense of reward and feeling creatively invested in the company.
Many tech companies, by virtue of being on the societal cutting edge of products changing people’s lives, are able to honor this desire. “Millennials prefer organizations with flexible, creative work environments where they can be productive, motivated and make a measurable impact” (Bettencourt, 2017, par.1). But even non-tech companies can solicit employee input via surveys, provide leadership training, and encourage employees to offer creative input in a manner which can enhance both job satisfaction and company performance. All employees can come across insights which may help the organization in the long…
