Discretionary benefits are essential for a company to have to keep employee morale up. The three main goals of using discretionary benefits are to provide protection, paid time off, and services that will enhance work and life experiences for their employees. Although discretionary benefits are helpful in retaining and attracting employees it is also one of the biggest costs that many companies deal with. Although most companies want to give as many discretionary benefits as possible it is not always possible so some must be eliminated in order to keep costs down. The first discretionary benefit that I would eliminate or at least cut back on is paid time off. I think that this would be one of the easier benefits to reduce but it is important to not completely eliminate all paid time off because that could significantly harm employee morale. I think by reducing paid time off for vacation days and sick leave would help reduce costs and a company could also replace these paid days off with unpaid vacation days. Another discretionary benefit that I would most likely eliminate would be tuition reimbursement. Although tuition reimbursement can be a significant part of a benefit package and promotes employees’ education it can be extremely costly for a company. There are other discretionary benefits that I think would be more important to keep like family assistance programs. When considering which discretionary benefits a company should have I think its important to keep in mind what the employees need most. If they have a large portion of employees with young children than a child care program would be extremely helpful and valuable to them. If a large portion of a company’s employees do not have a reliable type of transportation to get to work then it might be smart for them to offer transportation services. Offering transportation programs that help bring employees to and from the work place could not only boost employees’ attitudes but also encourage them to work harder and do better at their jobs. Overall, there are many factors to consider when deciding which discretionary benefits are most important to offer so it is crucial to understand the needs of your employees to know what would best support them.
