It is important to preface that I want to work for a large, established company. And when initially thinking about benefits, I was using the scenario for which benefits I would like Daimler Trucks North America to offer when Igo and work there this summer.
When initially thinking about the benefits that companies can offer that were most important to me, I thought of maternity leave, health insurance, and dental insurance. These seem fairly obvious as companies that I would want to work for would definitely have this offered to their employees. The lower half of my list included benefits such as educational assistance and paid holidays.
After going through the lecture material and the chapters, I wouldn’t say that my ranking necessarily shifted, but I definitely would like to add some type of retirement account to my top rankings. More specifically, I would prefer for my employer to offer a retirement account that is portable and my employer matches to some extent. I always knew how important it is to invest in your retirement; however, I didn’t fully understand exactly what the process entailed in doing so. In addition to adding a retirement plan into my rankings, I noticed that my top rankings include mostly all legally required benefits. I did not know –before these lectures– that health insurance and unpaid family and medical leave were legally required. I simply thought that they were benefits that companies choose whether or not to offer their employees.
One last observation that I had was that workers compensation was not in my rankings at all. While it is a legally required benefit, it is not something that I have really ever considered to be important to me. However, now after thinking about it, I realized that even though I am planning on doing a desk job for the rest of my life, there are still instances where I could get hurt in the office.
