Compensation Blog

Blog #1

Compensation can motivate people in different ways when it comes to working. For many years, I worked at a movie theater that paid us minimum wage which was $8.25. The other stores around that same area would pay employees $13 or $15 as their starting wage. This led to a lot of people who I worked with to want to quit and go work somewhere else that was willing to pay them more. People did not want to work at the movie theater because the pay did not compare to the places around it. It was hard to encourage people to leave. A lot of our older employees who needed the money for bills, rent, their families, etc. would end up quitting because they were not making enough money. The wage they were being paid at the movie theater was not enough for them to live off of. They were motivated by the higher wages at other places to quit their current job and go work somewhere else. Even with people constantly quitting or struggling to get employees, the company was never really willing to change their starting pay. People lacked extrinsic motivation which did start to hurt the company. I also struggled with wanting to work there when I would see how much other people were making. This eventually did have an effect on why I could quit.

Blog #2

Original List:

• Health Insurance
• Paid time off
• Retirement
• Life insurance
• Tuition Assistance
• Discounts

Revised List

• Health insurance
• Dental/vision insurance
• Retirement plans/options
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Tuition assistance

There were not a lot of huge differences between my two lists. I think the main difference was I had never considered dental and vision insurance to be a benefit in a future job. As someone who needs glasses and contacts to see, it would be a great thing for me to have. They can be pretty expensive and it would be a good benefit that I now consider to be pretty important to me. Health insurance has always been something that I want as a benefit in a job, I consider it to be pretty important and it would be nice to have. Something else that has always been pretty important to be was planning for retirement. I want to start saving pretty much right away and knowing that jobs have good retirement plans would be something I would look into. That is something that would always been towards the top of important benefits. I always thought having paid time off would be something I really want. It still is, but I realized through class discussions that it might not be the first thing that I look at now. I do still want to get most my done earlier in the day and week. I always want a job that is going to offer good time off and vacation days, but I have found more important things to me.

I think something I will start looking more at when looking for jobs is the culture of the job. I feel like the culture of a company is going to have an impact on what kind of benefits it is offering. Time off and discounts are things that will depend on what the company is valuing. Through class discussions, I have learned how much more a company can offer than just its compensation plan, benefits can sometimes even be more attractive than a base pay.