Benefits Administration

Most Popular Employee Benefits

Benefits represent about 40 percent of a worker's total compensation and are important sources of personal and financial stability for today's workers, according to a 1997 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey.

Demographic changes since the 1950s have made benefit programs especially attractive for employees. More families have both partners working. In 1995, for example, 61 percent of married women participated in the workforce, compared to 41 percent in 1970, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. "As a result, employees will increasingly ask employers to help them balance their work and personal lives," according to the SHRM survey.

The most popular benefit programs, according to survey respondents:

Health care benefits
Life insurance is offered by 96 percent of respondents' organizations; 91 percent provide dental insurance and 87 percent offer prescription programs. Nearly every organization offers some type of health insurance. Fifty-five percent offer medical flexible spending accounts and 44 percent offer health care premium flexible spending accounts. Another 43 percent have wellness programs with resources and information for employees and health screening programs.

Leave benefits
Ninety-four percent said their organizations offer paid vacations, 91 percent offer paid bereavement leave and 86 percent offer paid sick leave. Nearly 60 percent offer paid maternity leave and 48 percent offer paid personal days.

Family friendly benefits
Dependent care, flexible spending accounts and flextime are the most widely offered. Nearly 60 percent of the survey respondents said their organizations offer flexible spending accounts; 46 percent offer flextime.

Personal services benefits
Nearly all organizations (96 percent) provide professional development opportunities such as seminars, conferences and courses and 81 percent offer educational assistance. In addition, 83 percent offer casual dress days and 57 percent provide automobile allowances or expenses.

Financial benefits
Nine-out-of-10 employers provide on-site parking, 90 percent have payroll deduction programs and 86 percent have direct deposit programs. In addition, 68 percent offer defined contribution retirement plans, 49 percent offer defined benefit retirement plans and 60 percent offer membership to a credit union.

Housing benefits
Nearly 60 percent of organizations offer relocation benefits to accommodate initiatives to expand nationally and globally.

Business travel benefits
The two most common business travel benefits are paid long distance calls to home (70 percent) and permission for employees to retain earned airline frequent flier miles (69 percent).

Flexible Hours
Cash is king, but flexible schedules, telecommuting, on-site day care or more personal time carry a lot of value with many people, according to a Hudson survey of 10,000 U.S. workers.

Even though nearly three-fourths of workers are satisfied with their pay and benefits, more money, followed by better health care benefits, would make them happier, the survey found. Offered a choice of unconventional benefits, however, most would select a more-flexible work schedule (33 percent) or additional family benefits (22 percent)— including parental leaves and personal days—over supplemental insurance (16 percent) and job training (13 percent).

“People are more interested in having a well-balanced life,” Hudson’s managing director of compensation and benefits, Peg Buchenroth, said in a press release. Click here to read the rest of the article.

Recognition
Quite simply, employee recognition is the act – formally or informally – of acknowledging a job well done. Everyone appreciates it when their hard work garners notice, and a recent survey confirmed that fact: a majority of respondents reported remembering praise and recognition received at work long after other events and milestones had faded from memory.

And yet, there is often a disconnect between managers, who believe they are recognizing performance, and front-line employees, who feel their hard work goes unnoticed. That "recognition gap" occurs largely because many companies have no codified process for regularly recognizing good work and don't incorporate a mix of the three types of recognition, day-to-day, informal and formal.

ABOUT SHRM The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the leading voice of the human resource profession, represents the interests of more than 83,000 professional and student members from around the world.