Month: February 2021

What are discretionary benefits? According to Career Minds, discretionary benefits are employee benefits that are not mandated by law. A lot of benefits are a companies competitive advantage to stand out and be chosen over companies that don’t offer a good benefits package. Some discretionary benefits that are not mandated by but are a nice perk are the following: Paid Time Off, Sick time, Health/Medical Leave, Medical Insurance, Life Insurance, Dental Insurance, Retirement match for 401(k)s, Flexible Spending Accounts, Health Saving Accounts, Paid Holidays, Education Assistance.

Mentioned above are only some discretionary benefits that employers voluntarily offer to their employees. If the HR department of my company were ever asked to eliminate some over our discretionary benefits to meet budget, then their would be a lot of hard decisions made. When deciding which benefits to keep, the company has to ensure that they are still maintaining a competition advantage while maintaining their budget

Out of the list I mentioned above, I would suggest the HR department only keeping five of them. To begin, Medical Leave is highly suggested to keep because it protects employees from keeping their job while they are away. In addition, offering a retirement program to employees is a good way to motivate them to stay long-term. Similarly, offering vision, dental, and life insurance are highly recommended to offer not only competition but to retain employees as well. PTO is a nice perk to have if the budget allows it however could be left behind. In addition, I would consider eliminating Paid Holidays, Education Assistance, Health Savings Account, Flexible Spending Accounts, and Sick time to save on costs.

https://blog.careerminds.com/discretionary-benefits#:~:text=Discretionary%20benefits%20are%20employment%20benefits,insurance%2C%20and%20prescription%20drug%20insurance.

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When searching for the perfect company to review and decide what pay the structure would work best; either person-focused pay or job-based pay, I thought Google would be an interesting choice.

I say this because I think in some circumstances, I think some of the jobs could be one or the other. I think this because some of the lower foundational, entry-level job positions at Google would work best using job-based pay. Lower entry-level positions don’t require a whole lot of skill and could easily be replaced the next day if needed. People that are typically on the foundational level of the company demonstrate high levels of job performance and lower levels of skill.

 On a different note, one of the lead software engineers is one of the top reasons why Google is profitable and is continually creating new ideas for the company, then that could potentially demonstrate a person-focused pay structure. This style of pay structure can be
really helpful in paying those higher-skilled employees that are extremely valuable to the company. These kinds of employees in a company like Google typically have a lot of creative freedom, which is where having a person-focused pay structure can be really helpful in determining the amount the company wants to compensate the employee for their work. In this scenario, skill-based pay and pay-for-knowledge could be how they demonstrate competency.

Throughout the text, it highlights the U.S. Department of Labor Competency Model, which is extremely helpful in identifying areas that could use either person-focused pay or job-based pay. At the top tiers in “Occupation Related”, where Google would begin to utilize the person-focused pay for all of the software engineers and marketing managers because they are able to have more creative freedom. Those that have more creative freedom, the less likely the job is to align with a specific job description, which is where person-focused pay would be favored over job-based pay