In the unfortunate situation where I need to reassess our company’s distribution of benefits, I would first rank each discretionary benefit by how valuable and essential it is.

In my opinion, the most insignificant benefits are all of the services. The services include transportation, employee assistance plans, family assistance, tuition reimbursement, and outplacement counseling. I believe that these benefits are not essential for the employee to maintain their standard of living and productivity while at work. Moreover, some of those services only provide value to the employees that use them, which is usually a small percentage of employees.

Next on the ranking, I would remove life insurance from the package. Depending on the type and size of the industry, life insurance may never be claimed by any employee, and therefore can be considered unessential and not valuable for many employees. Following this, I would remove paid time off that is not bound by legal statute, such as paid vacation time. Although it is not essential, many employees value paid time off and believe it to be a reward for their hard work. If this is removed, employees may feel neglected and overworked.

Moving to the most important benefits, and thus the least likely to be removed, retirement and health care. These are both essential and valuable for employees and will likely make or break an employee’s decision to continue working. They are usually considered equally as important as salary, as they can provide an employee assurance when times are tough and for their future.

The benefits various organizations offer will likely be different. What benefits are offered is contingent on a number of factors. As mentioned before, one of these factors can be the organization type. If the organization is in the construction industry where employees can be physically harmed easily, life insurance might be more important to employees. Another factor can be the size of the organization. After some research, I found that small businesses are much less likely to offer health insurance when compared to larger, unionized businesses (1). In addition, organizations with a high turnover rate, whether it is intentional or not, may elect to not give out benefits.

Compensation has a large impact on employee behavior as well. If the benefits package meets employee expectations, the employee will be satisfied and more willing to do great work. But, it’s important to keep in mind that some incentive plans built into the benefits package could lead to some unethical behavior in the workplace (2).

If the benefits package runs short, there could be consequences. Employee job performance and satisfaction will likely suffer, as they don’t believe their inputs are matched by the outputs.

Works Cited

(1) “Should Small Businesses Offer Big Benefits?” Trakstar Hire Blog, hire.trakstar.com/blog/should-small-businesses-offer-big-benefits#:~:text=One%20area%20where%20small%20business. Accessed 19 Feb. 2022.

(2)“Employee Incentives Can Lead to Unethical Behavior in the Workplace.” ScienceDaily, 2018, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181211122456.htm.