The Discretionary Benefits You Should Eliminate First

Companies are constantly faced with decisions on what they should offer for its discretionary benefits for its employees. These decisions are tough because funds necessary to keep up the benefits become more and more costly each year. Discretionary benefits are put into three categories that include protection programs, paid time off, and services. Protection programs involve disability insurance, life insurance, and retirement. These protection programs don’t do much at the time you are working but when needed at some point later on they are very valuable. Paid time off allows for employees to have a good work and life balance by being compensated while not being at work. The last category includes services like employee and family assistance, tuition reimbursement, and even transportation services. These service discretionary benefits seem like extra luxury benefits.

So after some background information about the three categories of discretionary benefits I truly believe it is pretty clear and obvious on which benefits need to be first eliminated and lastly eliminated. The category of service benefits needs to be the eliminated first because it is all really nice to have but none of it is needed. It’s a really nice gesture to provide family assistance for employees for families that are struggling but a company that is in a tough financial situation doesn’t need to be spending money on this. There is many more important areas the money can be and should be going The 2nd category of discretionary benefits that should be eliminated is the paid time off. Yes having a work and life balance is important but not a must have for a company that is struggling with funds. Paying employees for time they are not working is nice for the employee but as for a company it is costly. The last category to be eliminated would be the protection programs. In my opinion these are really what matters. If something happens to you and lets say you become disabled those few days of PTO will not even be of interest anymore. You will want to have that disability so you can still support your family. Yes you may go years and years and never need the disability insurance and PTO and other benefits may sound much more attractive. At the end of the the protective programs are much more important. For a company they should look to preserve its discretionary benefits in this order when funds are limited and benefit areas need to be dropped.