Employee Benefits: Training, Education, and Wellness Programs
This paper examines two modern employee benefits — training and educational opportunities and wellness programs — as strategic tools for attracting, motivating, and retaining talent. Drawing on examples from Starbucks Corporation's College Achievement Plan and Verizon Corporation's Health and Wellness program, the paper illustrates how each benefit increases employee productivity and loyalty while presenting administrative and legal challenges. The discussion is grounded in the "total rewards" framework and references relevant legislation, including the Affordable Care Act and HIPAA. The paper concludes that the advantages of both benefits clearly outweigh their implementation costs.
- Introduction: Overview of modern HRM benefit strategies
- Training and Educational Opportunities as an Employee Benefit: Starbucks tuition plan boosts skills and loyalty
- Wellness Programs as an Employee Benefit: Verizon wellness program reduces costs, raises productivity
- Conclusion: Total rewards of education and wellness benefits confirmed
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What makes this paper effective
- Uses concrete, real-world corporate examples (Starbucks and Verizon) to ground abstract HRM concepts, making arguments tangible and credible.
- Balances discussion of benefits and challenges for each program, showing analytical fairness rather than one-sided advocacy.
- Consistently connects each benefit back to a central thesis — that employee well-being and company productivity are mutually reinforcing.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively applies the "total rewards" framework (Chen & Hsieh, 2006) as a unifying theoretical lens, using it to evaluate both training/education and wellness programs across multiple dimensions: talent attraction, employee loyalty, and productivity gains. This technique of anchoring diverse examples to a single theoretical framework demonstrates disciplined academic argumentation at the undergraduate level.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a clear four-part structure: a brief introduction stating the thesis; a body section on training and educational benefits illustrated by Starbucks; a body section on wellness programs illustrated by Verizon; and a conclusion that synthesizes both examples and restates the core argument. Each body section follows a consistent pattern — define the benefit, give the corporate example, identify challenges, then affirm the net value — giving the paper a disciplined, parallel organization.
Introduction
A modern HRM consultant must be aware of the array of possible employee benefits. The modern trend is away from traditional notions of benefits and toward benefits that enhance the lives of employees and their productivity for the company. Two of the many possible modern benefits are training and educational opportunities and wellness programs. As specific examples will show, despite the several challenges of implementing such benefits, the rewards for both employees and the company are clear.
Works Cited
Chen, H.-M., & Hsieh, Y.-H. (2006, November/December). Key trends of the Total Reward System in the 21st Century. Retrieved June 14, 2014, from search.proquest.com:
Quick, D. (2013, September 2). Verizon invests in health of employees. Retrieved June 14, 2014, from www.postandcourier.com:
Simon, T. M., Traw, K., McGeoch, B., & Bruno, F. (2007, Summer). How the final HIPAA nondiscrimination regulations affect wellness programs. Retrieved June 14, 2014, from search.proquest.com:
Starbucks Corporation. (2014). Starbucks College Achievement Plan. Retrieved June 14, 2014, from www.starbucks.com: http://www.starbucks.com/careers/college-plan
U.S. Department of Labor. (2014). The Affordable Care Act and wellness programs. Retrieved June 14, 2014, from www.dol.gov: http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/newsroom/fswellnessprogram.html
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