Do you work for an organization where you can avail of benefits such as meals cooked by professional chefs or onsite massages, free meals, sports facilities and the like?
– If you are not among the lucky few, what benefits does your package include?
– Are you making use of all your benefits?
According to this article from the Wall Street Journal, employees are “throwing away $52.4B in unused vacation time” and US employers are liable to an amount of $224B for employee vacation time!!
It is interesting to note that flexible timing, work from home and more vacation options were next in line as the most desirable employee benefits after insurance!!
And women in particular seemed to desire these 2 benefits more so than men!
It is interesting to note that the percentage of women who desire unlimited vacation time is 47% compared to 33% of men.
Now think about if this is true for you.
What benefits truly appeal and matter to you? And Why?
The need for work-life balance seems to trigger these needs for flexible work hours as well as more or unlimited vacation times.
Why do women feel this need more than men?
It seems to appear from the data that women take on more than they should, are striving for more and have more things to handle from both a personal and professional capacity, thereby feeling the need for some form of work-life balance.
On a side note: Ironically, these same women are underpaid than their male counterparts leading to Equal Pay/Gender Wage Gap campaigns and initiatives.
Here is an exercise for you: My Employee Benefits Analysis
1. Make a list of all the benefits you are entitled to at your organization – formal and informal ones, tangible and intangible ones.
2. Identify the ones you make use of.
3. Assess the impact of the ones you identified :
– is it making a difference to you?
– would it matter if that benefit was taken away from you?
– what else would be desirable to you?
4. Of the ones that you are not availing of, which ones could you start using and which ones do not add value to you?
5. Can you replace the ones that are not adding value to you with either cash or a different benefit? For example: if you get $200 a month towards gym membership directly credited to your gym but you do not go to the gym, is there a way to get the cash instead to spend on healthy foods etc?
6. Have a conversation with your supervisor about what you discovered and express your needs.
Write back and let me know what you discovered in the benefits analysis exercise.
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