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belinda
27-03-2009, 09:45 AM
Morning All,

I would like to start looking at Employee Benefits we can offer our employees, that of course will not cost the company any money (if possible).
Can anyone provide me with any ideas/links etc on employee benefits that we can provide employees.

Thanks

michaelakassar
28-04-2009, 05:59 PM
Hi Belinda,

Unfortunately most benefits will incur some costs, however you might want to investigate the following:

Purchased Leave: Under this scheme, the employee is paid for 48 instead of 52 weeks in the year.

In return for this, they have their normal 4 weeks Annual Leave per year, plus 4 weeks pre approved Leave without Pay. This gives them a total of 8 week's leave per year.

Deferred Salary: Under this scheme, the employee is paid 80% of their salary so they can take one full year of paid leave upon completion of their fourth year of service.

You also might like to try changing your Bereavement Leave so that the employee is automatically entitled to 3 days of Sick Leave on the death of a family member in addition to the 2 days Bereavement Leave, as it usually takes most of us 1 week to arrange funerals etc before returning to work (most are not really fit for work during this time anyway).

To ensure these are implemented properly you need to ensure your policies/procedures are updated to reflect these new conditions. Make sure that your policies spell out all terms and conditions. Additionally, you will need to get your employees to sign a form in order to join the 1st 2 schemes, as the employee will be sacrificing part of their salary.

Hope this helps.



Cheers
Michaela

kevinh
29-04-2009, 07:52 AM
The most welcomed benefits or concessions I know of are flexibility in working hours and the ability to work from home. It's not an easy thing to implement but you will end up with much happier and possibly more productive employees.

The snag is you need to have the right people on board who will use this in a mature responsible way.

Regards,
Kevin

lukohr
30-04-2009, 11:04 AM
Hi Belinda,

Employee benefit is one vital motivational factor for all employees.. there are many type of benefits.. as like michaelakassar said Benefits incur few cost.. Leave, Salary, Work envrionment and many more..
first let we know what is your type of business, what are the group of employees, total number of workforce..

from that we can give some worthy tips..

thank y.

belinda
01-05-2009, 04:24 PM
Thanks everyone for the tips so far.
The company I work for is a Engineering/Manufacturing company, and range from Software Engineers (lots of IT people) Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Supervisor and Leading hand on the shop floor and back office related positions. We have approx 100 employees.

Stephanie1979
04-05-2009, 03:04 PM
Hi Belinda

Try contacting some of the Private Health Insurance providers - some offer lower private health insurance rates for corporate members - initially it takes some time to set up but the relationship is between the employee and the insurance agent (no payroll deductions are necessary) - employee benefits by getting cheaper health insurance.

Another option - do you have a corporate travel agent that you book your travel through - quite often they will have a staff leisure travel offer ie: cheaper accomodation, flights.

Hope that helps.
Steph

michaelakassar
04-05-2009, 05:04 PM
Hi Belinda,

Here are a coupe more suggestions for your employee benefits.

At my organisation we have just brought in a Christmas Savings Club, where people can nominate a specific amout of money each pay to put away until Christmas.

The other thing I have implemented is an Employee Assistance Program, where employees get 6 counselling sessions free per year at the cost of the organisation (we pay $100 per session). Any additional sessions are paid for by the employee.

Make sure you shop around, as I found that the prices vary enormously between service providers. At the end I chose Reationships Australia, as they charge ony a small yearly admin fee (about $500 I think), and that meets all our needs, incuding monthly reports. They are also a not for profit org and the people there are very easy to deal with.

Hope this helps.


Cheers
Michaela

Moz
04-05-2009, 09:25 PM
The other thing I have implemented is an Employee Assistance Program, where employees get 6 counselling sessions free per year at the cost of the organisation (we pay $100 per session). Any additional sessions are paid for by the employee.

Michaela

Michaela, what sort of counselling?

Moz.

michaelakassar
04-05-2009, 10:11 PM
Hi Moz,

My apologies for not clarifying my earlier post.

An Employee Assistance Program provides counselling to employees if they are experiencing difficulties in either their personal or professional lives.

Issues can include but are not limited to relationships, parenting, family matters, drug/alcohol issues, grief etc. Sometimes workers may wish to go to counselling if they have work issues but want to speak to a third party.

When an employee wishes to use the service they ring the counselling provider to make an appointment. As the service is confidential they are not required to advise their employer.

There may also be situations where a manager feels that a worker may be experiencing problems that are affecting work performance, and therefore can inform them about the service. However you need to be extremely careful here, as the employee may not feel comfortable with this approach.

The service provider should give you statistics each month so you know how many people are using the service, and in some cases, which locations.

Employee Assistance Programs can be very beneficial, as they provide the opportunity to seek assistance from a qualified person in a descrete manner. The organisation can also benefit as the employee's issues will have a lesser impact on work, as they are given appropriate strategies to manage them. Additionally, employees feel that the organisation is looking after their well being by providing the service in the first place.

Hope this helps.


Cheers
Michaela

lukohr
05-05-2009, 12:48 PM
Belinda,

While seeing your post it shows majority of your company's workforce is Software Engineers, for such type of employee group you can provide as like EAP (Michaela opinion), Introducing Employee Referral Bonus scheme, Some organisation provides benefits like Physical and mental fit classes (Meditation, Yoga, Physical warm-up, Stress Management classes).

Many people offering discounts while your employees representing through your company name in the way of Corporate concessions like Holiday pack, Medical Insurance, other recreational centre like fitness centre, Swimming pool, Café etc. for that you need to have a discussion with such providers.

Some company provide Interest Free Loan for some important days like Christmas, that fixed amount will be deducted as equal instalments from their payments (need to be more careful from some employees who will avail the loan and quit with out repayment, for this you provide only for eligible employees whose settlement is with employer like leave encashment, etc)

Most of the IT professionals will update their skills by doing some Certification tests from Oracle / Sun etc. for those examinations they need to pay fees. In such case if they go through employer referral they will get discount in their examination fees. It’s surely helpful for IT professional employees. Moreover you no need to spend a single $ for this. Only need to go and speak to particular test centres with your company letter.

All the best Belinda.

rozza23
14-04-2010, 06:13 PM
Hi Belinda,

here are some suggestions, I hope these are still relevant, as this was posted almost a year ago...

I came across this link which talks about the psychology of employee motivation, its a great article that talks about little things you can do to motivate your employees for free The Psychology of Employee Motivation (http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Psychology-of-Employee-Motivation&id=739860)

You can set up an Employee Benefits group online at Myzerr.com. Similar to Facebook, it is a social network for discounts and is free. The idea is that you invite local businesses to give discounts to your employees. It is easy to use and all the tools are there to help you set it up.
Myzerr (http://www.myzerr.com/groups/create_community)

hope this helps,

Roee

belinda
15-04-2010, 01:52 PM
It is never too late for a response for Employee Benefits. I will have a look at the websites you suggested. Thanks

AlexT
15-04-2010, 05:38 PM
Excellent lot of information here - many thanks to everyone for their contribution. I think for smaller employers it is even more important to offer extra benefits as they often can't afford to compete on salary with the bigger guys.

MyCarBudget
17-09-2010, 05:00 PM
There are lots of employee benefits providers in the market place. Many will offer you some form of discount program that may or may not cost your company anything. These discount programs provide access to online shopping and entertainment etc. Essentially they are very similar to reward programs associated with credit card facilities.

The other side to employee benefits is salary packaging. Super, laptops and cars. Again there are lots of companies that offer these services also. The cost to you may be FBT or some admin time based on how you wish to run the program.

AndrewBlake
10-05-2011, 11:01 PM
We have designed a rewards model which is built on motivation strategies that modify employee behaviour and the cost of the model goes to the employees.

Jallz
27-06-2011, 12:43 PM
Hi all

My company is looking at implementing insurance benefits for employees. Can anyone advise what type of insurance benefits are common for Australian employees? Thanks.

Cottoneyes
28-06-2011, 08:43 AM
Hi Jallz,

I wouldn't class insurance benefits as being too common as yet, however the number of companies offering them is increasing.
Most common is the company going into partnership with a private health company to offer a slight discount on Private health insurance to their employees, generally around the 4% mark. Sometimes a further discount can be offered if there is a direct deduction from the payroll to the health company, however this is becoming less common. Note that the 4% in my opinion is the same as most insurance companies offer for taking out a policy on a direct debit basis, so I doubt there is any real benefit to the employee.
Other insurances that occur in larger organisations is Salary continuance insurance and Total and Permament Disability (TPD) or Death insurance.
Most common policies under the salary continuance insurances is to pay 75% of the employees salary (up to an automatic acceptance level (AAL)) after a qualifying period of 2 or 3 months, for a period of 2 years or until the age of 65 on the better policies.
The TPD or death policy typically will pay 6 times the annual salary up to the AAL if the employee is medically deemed unable to work at all, or dies.
There are lots of insurance companies around that offer both of these insurances, usually combined together as a package. I've known most companies to engage an Insurance broker to go to the market and find the best deals for them.

Jallz
28-06-2011, 06:28 PM
Thanks for the information :)

Our company currently provides optional term life and disability insurance to our employees through their superannuation - but we realize that the take-up rate has been very low throughout the years. So was wondering if we should implement group insurance for such since the employees do not view it as that important.

We are also looking at providing standardized health plans for all employees & their partners, something like group health insurance, partly in hope of achieving cost savings (employees currently buy themselves and we reimburse them). Any views on this?

If there's anyone who have experience in this area, recommendations are also welcomed =)

MyCarBudget
19-07-2011, 09:00 AM
Maybe a start could by your default Super Fund. All of the major Superannuation/Insurance companies offer Group level Life/TPD cover. At one company I worked for we all have a $50,000 death cover, paid for by the company.

Try AXA or NAB (Norwich Union) they can assist with investigating how it would work and what it might cost.

Here at FleetPartners we have an arrangement with NIB who offer staff a discount as mentioned in an earlier post on health insurance. Try NIB as a starter and see if they offer it as a service.

Shine
19-01-2012, 08:32 PM
Hi Belinda,

If you are still looking for ways to provide employee benefits to your employees I have a solution that may be of interest to you.

We provide an Employee Benefits Program that includes:
* Debt management
* Superannuation and retirement planning strategies
* Life insurance and income protection review and recommendations
* Monitored cash flow/budget management
* Investment advice (shares, managed funds and direct property)

This program is at no cost to the employer and is only implemented for an employee if they feel we can add value to their position.

I am happy to discuss further if you wish.

Regards,

Damian Dunell

johnandle
21-01-2012, 12:38 AM
Hello

In return for this, they have their normal 4 weeks Annual Leave per year, plus 4 weeks pre approved Leave without Pay. This gives them a total of 8 week's leave per year.

Deferred Salary: Under this scheme, the employee is paid 80% of their salary so they can take one full year of paid leave upon completion of their fourth year of service.

You also might like to try changing your Bereavement Leave so that the employee is automatically entitled to 3 days of Sick Leave on the death of a family member in addition to the 2 days Bereavement Leave, as it usually takes most of us 1 week to arrange funerals etc before returning to work (most are not really fit for work during this time anyway).

Thanks

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MichelleOslon
15-05-2012, 05:19 PM
Celebrating a holiday, festival or birthdays at the workplace construct positive fellow feeling and team spirit, which results in increased employee motivation. Such practices if implemented properly help better your business and build strong relationships.