Question

• Salary is one form of compensation. Benefits and incentives are other forms of compensation. Benefits and incentives can range from flex time to paid time off, health insurance, bonuses, and commissions. Providing benefits can be very expensive for companies to provide.

• Identify the three most important benefits you look for in a company? Explain your answer.

• Compensation is often tied to evaluation. Select the best method to use for evaluating employee performance. Identify and describe this method?

Answer 1

There are many benefits provided by organizations when you join. Health care, life insurance, paid time off, workplace flexibility, Child care reimbursements, performance bonus, and pay raise are few of the benefits that employees today look at before joining an organization. Personally, the three most important benefits I look at are:

- Health insurance: As it has been pointed out correctly by many "Health is wealth". With health issues comes hospitalization, which can be very stressful, both mentally and financially. Having good company-provided health care or insurance gives you a sense of relief.
- Life insurance: Life is unpredictable and with the kind of lifestyle we pursue these days it is not wise to have no back up for well being of your family. Insurance plays an important role in making sure that your family is looked after financially if any unforeseen incident happens to you. Having a well laid out insurance coverage by your employer gives you that added relief. Also, the fact that corporates can get good deals for any insurance, may it be health or life insurance is an added advantage you get.
- Paid and Standard time offs: Regular and timely breaks are very important for your mental health. This can be achieved only when you have a standard and paid time offs by your employer. Also, there are events such as childbirth or family emergency or health issues that can force you to take time offs. Having a standard process to avail time offs is one of the most sort after benefits that people look for.

Evaluating employee performance is normal and plays an important factor when making business decisions such as pay hike, bonus, lay off decision, etc. There are many methods an employee is evaluated. I have listed out a few of the methods below:

- Bell Curve Appraisal method
- Self Assessment Method
- Checkpoint Appraisal method
- Peer-reviewed appraisal method
- 360 Degree Appraisal
- Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS)
- General Performance Appraisal

Out of these evaluation methods, the best one as per me is the Checkpoint Appraisal method as it has self-assessment and manager assessment included which gives employees an overall picture of what his performance has been for a particular period. In this method instead of having one yearly review, employees would have 4 reviews within a year. They would create short term quarterly goals which would be assessed by both managers and employee. This method includes a year-end self-evaluation and final evaluation from the manager. As an employee, you can tell what you have achieved in that particular year as you have the details available through quarterly reviews. This makes the discussion transparent and direct to a point where you are aware of your performance and what to expect from evaluation. You are then able to discuss your compensation benefits in more detail based on your achievement of goals and market standards.