Question

As a recent college graduate, you are excited to start the search for your first career position. You have already started interviewing for opportunities as a management trainee. You have been fortunate to have two interviews so far, and you identified several other companies to apply to at a recent job fair. From what you have learned, it seems that the starting salary for a job as a management trainee in your area is about the same at all companies. Therefore, you know that salary isn’t going to differentiate one job offer from another. It will, of course, be important to understand the work environment and future career opportunities at a given company as you compare offers. As you think back to some of the career-search seminars you’ve attended, you remember that you should also compare benefit offerings.

As you look through the Web sites of the companies you have applied to, you quickly see that there are lots of different benefits plans offered. In fact, as you look at this information, you start to become concerned that comparing benefits is going to be a challenge. You think that you need to have a better understanding of the value of different benefits when you consider the total compensation you would receive from a company. You decide to start by more closely looking at the benefits offered your current best prospect, which is a position at a large established corporation where you interviewed last week. You pull up the careers page on the company Web site and find a chart that lists the benefits offered.

• Old age, survivor, and disability insurance
• Medicare
• Employment insurance
• Workers’ compensation
• Family and medical leave
• Health care
• Dental insurance
• Employee assistance program
• Tuition reimbursement
• Defined contribution retirement plan
• Vacation days
• Holidays
• Sick days
• Defined benefit retirement plan
• Accident, Death & Dismemberment
• Family and Personal Services
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Post-Employment Medical Coverage

• Staff Canteen                                                        

As you review the chart, you aren’t sure what you should pay attention to and what will make a difference in evaluating an offer. You think about lists that you’ve read on other company’s Web sites and think that other companies seem to offer benefits plans very similar to this one. At this point, you think that maybe benefit offerings don’t really make a difference. You decide you need to learn more before you go much further in the interview process. If the benefits information provided to you is unclear, you know you should be prepared to ask questions. The future is exciting, but you know that once you receive an offer, it is an important decision that you should make with full information.

Required:

Answer the following questions:

1. If two different companies list the same benefits offerings, should you assume that the values of the benefits are the same?
2. What are some benefits offered from this company that you should find more information about in order to fully understand a job offer from the company? Why?
3. Why don’t all companies just offer the same benefits?
4. With your present status, would consider a change of preference for some benefits in the nearest future? Support your answers with relevant literature
5. List five benefits you consider important to you now and the reasons?

Answer 1

1) if two companies list the same benefits, should you assume the value of the benefits are same?

The answer is “No”.

A study from the “U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation” found that half of twenty to thirty year old’ (56%) concurred that a quality advantages bundle impacts their selection of managers and 63% state that advantages are a significant explanation in remaining with a business."

Examples of Benefits

• Healthcare (Medical, Dental, Vision)
• Paid time off
• Maternity/Paternity leave
• Life insurance
• Retirement savings or 401(K)

When choosing these benefits, it might look similar but once you take a closer look you might find the difference of these benefits, different companies offer might differ bands of benefits.

When an employee gets that mandatory paperwork going with their new medical insurance approach, it'll be considered secured with the insurance jargon. The employee has to remember that the numbers, breakdowns, and providers for your coverage will be policy-specific, however here's a glossary of the fundamental vocab you should know:

Premium: This is the yearly/monthly fee an employee pays for health insurance coverage. This is also monthly or quarterly deduction from the employee’s paycheck. The employee basically only pays a percentage of the full premium to the health insurance company, and usually it is the employee covers the rest—often three or four times what the employee is putting in. So, one should be careful while choosing this premium option.

Deductible: This is the total amount for an employee, as a patient, will have to pay to cover their healthcare costs before the insurance company starts paying. Their deductible will likely be intimated as an annual amount. Higher deductibles usually come with very lower premiums, and vice versa. This is another important factor to consider while choosing the benefit. These might look similar

HMO: Stands for Health Maintenance Organization, one of the two significant options for managed-care health insurance through your employer. The members of HMOs receive as a comprehensive health care, usually under one roof and for a fixed cost. If an employee participate in an HMO, usually a Primary Care Physician serves as his first point of contact for health concerns, and the employee need a referral from the HMO person in contact, so as to see special issues inside the HMO network or to have any diagnostic services secured by the insurance agency. If the employee somehow needs specialist treatment, tests, or x-rays outside of the HMO, then they would be liable for the full expense of these administrations. So, this has to be carefully considered since some benefits might make these x-ray scans free as well, a wise employee would choose the provider who offers these for free

PPO: Stands for Preferred Provider Organization, the other fundamental choice for managed care. PPOs work by getting a contract of healthcare providers to establish their "preferred network". These plans offer a higher level of adaptability than HMOs, as no referral is needed to see specialists, and there is usually range of choices among doctors in many regions of medication specialties just as among emergency clinics and pharmacy areas. Likewise, while visiting an out-of-network provide may even now cost the employee more, most PPO approaches will give some coverage to non-network services. So, this is a main benefit loophole which an employee might have to take a closer look.

Dental and Vision: These areas of healthcare basically come with their own, separate policies with their own terms, so as an employee don’t necessarily expect to have free range when selecting an optometrist or dentist most of the employers may not even provide these kinds of insurance. So, it is always wise to choose the company who provides a best dental insurance.

2) What are some benefits offered from this company that you should find more information about in order to fully understand a job offer of a company?

From my point of view, I consider two main benefits to be considered, but has to be taken a closer look. They are,

• Tuition reimbursement
• Unemployment insurance

Tuition Reimbursement: Tuition reimbursement is something that many employers don’t offer. It Is considered as a way to pay back employees for education expenses. Those employees who choose to participate still have to pay out of pocket for the courses they take. When the course is completed by the employee, the employee can get back some or all of the tuition expenses. This has to be considered, because as a young employee, if one wants to improve in his career rapidly, he needs to complete a course which would help them to climb the career ladder. So, when a company offers this can be considered as a gift. But the things which are to be considered are,

Program of study: Some programs may not apply

Cost: Companies usually have a threshold limit for sponsorship

Grade point: Some companies would have kept grade point threshold to pay back the fees. So, this has to be considered

Unemployment insurance:

Even though this company provides unemployment insurance, there are two things to consider, there are two different kinds of costs to consider.

Primarily, it is the direct cost which pays out benefits to the laid off workers. In most states of the US, this money comes from a tax on employers. Companies pay a certain amount of money into an unemployment insurance trust fund, based on the strength they have, their attrition rate, and the current tax calculations. That trust fund then provides the money needed for benefits. This is the easiest way an employer can receive benefit through this unemployment scheme

The second cost has to do with the risk that unemployment benefits that could actually increase with the unemployment. This might be a bad idea if a company follows this strategy of unemployment insurance.

3) Why don’t all companies offer same benefits?

There are reasons some behind this, some of which are explained as below,

Diverse needs: Some employers traditionally haven’t considered the idea of same benefits options as which large companies provide. Considering their small teams, they consider including people from a range of age bands, Health and family situations. The “one-size-fits-all” benefits plans basically available have made it difficult to meet those diverse needs. And some small businesses don’t want to take on this effort and the cost of offering a plan to their employees will appreciate.

Financial concerns: Some business owners consider—particularly predication of cost in long term is a big concern. They also want to avoid making a commitment to employees they can’t sustain. They might sometimes be confused on what amount of cost-sharing might be fair, the most effective method to propose the topic of sharing costs to their employees and how to assist them with understanding the estimation of their benefit program in their overall compensation.

Expertise gap: In contrast to large organizations with sizable HR divisions, the individual decisions on benefits choices at a smaller organization is usually the proprietor. This person may have no foundation or mastery in HR, not to mention, even an understanding of general group insurance.

Administrative issues: Many benefits, usually benefits like 401(k) policies are difficult to create. They usually come with instructions that are very time consuming, challenging to understand. The administrative work alone can be overpowering for some entrepreneurs who regularly shuffle various obligations all through their workday and don't have the opportunity to figure out a great many heaps of IRS paperwork to startup a new 401(k) plan.

4) yes with present status, we can  consider a change of preference for some benefits in the nearest future

in case of growing old

depending upon Old age, survivor, and disability insuranceand medicre

present situation

Employee assistance program

Tuition reimbursement

5)

Healthcare (Medical, Dental, Vision)

Paid time off

Life insurance

Retirement savings or 401(K)

sick days

according to my knowledge this benefits are now important because

at present situation health care and paid time of should taken

and life insurance because life is uncertainity some benfit shoud recieve on behalf us

sick days should be taken