Anna Ricci’s Compensation Blog

A specific situation that involves compensation was when one of my good friends was deciding between two different jobs post-college. He was stuck between one that made a lot of money but wasn’t his dream job and one that was less money but was something he was more interested in. The biggest reason that compensation was one of the main factors was in his base pay and benefits. Based on the expectancy theory, my friend also decided that the job that paid more would give him more experience to propel his career forward and help him succeed more in the future. Now, six months into the position, my friend knows that the 12 hour days he’s putting in, working about 80 hours a week, isn’t getting him as far as he thought. Working graveyard shifts hauling dirty floor mats and driving delivery trucks were not in the job description. However, his self-efficacy was high because he is a very determined person who thinks he can do anything he puts his mind to. He challenges himself every day to do new things within his job and ends up burning himself out very quickly. He is still happy with the job he chose because he knows that he is making good money and that was his most important deciding factor for his career. 

“4. Expectancy Theory – Psych 484: Work Attitudes and Job Motivation.” Confluence, https://wikispaces.psu.edu/display/PSYCH484/4.+Expectancy+Theory.

Blog Post #2

My initial list is:

1. Child care
2. Retirement options
3. Paid time off
4. Health insurance
5. Life insurance
6. Tuition assistance
7. Worker’s compensation

My revised list is:

1. Retirement options
2. Health insurance
3. Child care
4. Paid time off
5. Life insurance
6. Tuition assistance

As someone who is looking forward to having children in the future, I decided to place child care as my most important benefit because having that option would be something that I would like to have as an employee. Retirement options were my second choice because I think being able to provide for your future self is very important and is something that I am already doing at my current job. Paid time off was my third because I find a lot of value in traveling and going places when I can and would love to have the option to do so with paid time off from my employer. I placed health insurance fourth because in the future if I were to have a spouse who works as well, there would be the possibility of having his insurance instead of one from my employer. Life insurance, tuition assistance, and worker’s compensation wrap up the final three as being not as important as any of the other options because especially for tuition assistance, I already have one degree and am working towards my master’s so, having tuition assistance wouldn’t be necessary for my future career. 

After diving into the lectures, I revised my list because I came to the realization that having retirement options is the most important aspect of benefits for me. Also, health insurance is now my second choice because not only are you legally bound as an employer to provide health insurance to full-time employees, there are so many options and ways to have health insurance. Child care is still high on my list for the same reason as the first list. All of the other options are relatively the same as well. Finally, I decided to remove worker’s compensation from my list because whatever the career I end up in, there is a very good chance that it will not be dangerous or have the possibility of me getting hurt on the job.  

Organizations chose specific benefits for various reasons. Specifically, if they want to hire a certain type of person (without being discriminatory) or if the type of job the organization has is focused around specifics. For example, event planning (where you might need worker’s compensation for injuries), construction, office-based jobs, or jobs that are mainly outside would all have different specific benefits that are centered around the organization’s jobs and goals. When it comes to focusing on hiring certain kinds of people, if an organization wants to hire younger people, tuition assistance might be a good option to highlight in a job posting or if an organization wants to hire people with children, child care is another option to highlight.

Sources:

Week 7 lecture on legally required benefits

Week 7 lecture on health insurance

Week 7 lecture on designing and administering benefit programs

Jones, Kerry. The Most Desirable Employee Benefits. Harvard Business Review Digital Access. April 15, 2017, 2-6.