{"id":1244,"date":"2007-10-18T08:39:58","date_gmt":"2007-10-18T13:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/10\/companies-offering-voluntary-benefits\/"},"modified":"2007-10-18T08:39:58","modified_gmt":"2007-10-18T13:39:58","slug":"companies-offering-voluntary-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/10\/companies-offering-voluntary-benefits\/","title":{"rendered":"Companies Offering &quot;Voluntary&quot; Benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We just lost a strong candidate at one of our customers this week because the company&#8217;s offer did not contain a well-defined benefits package.&nbsp; That always hurts.&nbsp; Now this morning I read the CareerJournal.com article titled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.careerjournal.com\/salaryhiring\/hotissues\/20071018-mincer.html?mod=RSS_Career_Journal&amp;cjrss=frontpage\" target=\"_blank\">Firms Increasingly Offer &#8216;Voluntary&#8217; Benefits<\/a>.&nbsp; I haven&#8217;t heard of this trend, but it is most intriguing.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>A growing number of businesses, large and small, are offering employees so-called voluntary benefits ranging from pet insurance to homeowners insurance to help with house closings and estate planning.<\/p>\n<p>The signature character of these voluntary benefits is that employees pay for them, but at a discounted rate obtained by the employer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Medical insurance will always be the top benefit for employees, but this offering is an excellent idea for creating a different package.&nbsp; These items will stand out in a candidate&#8217;s mind even though they are employee paid benefits.<\/p>\n<p>If I am already paying for some of these items and get get a better deal through my employer, I view that as a tangible, valuable asset.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Employees often don&#8217;t appreciate free benefits, Mr. Thompson said, especially if they are benefits they don&#8217;t use. However, workers &#8220;value having a whole shopping cart of benefits that they can select from,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I can foresee many small-sized companies taking advantage of this trend too.&nbsp; In case you are looking for some ideas:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Some of the most popular benefits include supplemental life insurance, group homeowners insurance and auto insurance, and critical-illness insurance, which pays a lump sum when someone is diagnosed with a serious illness.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We just lost a strong candidate at one of our customers this week because the company&#8217;s offer did not contain a well-defined benefits package.&nbsp; That always hurts.&nbsp; Now this morning I read the CareerJournal.com article titled Firms Increasingly Offer &#8216;Voluntary&#8217; Benefits.&nbsp; I haven&#8217;t heard of this trend, but it is most intriguing. A growing number of businesses, large and small, are offering employees so-called voluntary benefits ranging from pet insurance to homeowners insurance to help with house closings and estate planning. The signature character of these voluntary benefits is that employees pay for them, but at a discounted rate obtained by the employer. Medical insurance will always be the top&hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/10\/companies-offering-voluntary-benefits\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20,16,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-compensation","category-hiring-salespeople","category-trends"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-k4","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":840,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/04\/increased-pay-or-better-benefits-that-is-the-question\/","url_meta":{"origin":1244,"position":0},"title":"Increased Pay or Better Benefits?  That Is The Question.","author":"Lee Fratzke","date":"April 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"So which is more important to employees, pay or benefits (specifically health benefits)? In last week's Workforce Management's newsletter, a nationwide survey was recently conducted by the National Business Group on Health that asked 1,619 employed people that specific question. They found that employees in the U.S. consider their health\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Compensation&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Compensation","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/compensation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":815,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/04\/an-indirect-cost-of-turnover\/","url_meta":{"origin":1244,"position":1},"title":"An Indirect Cost Of Turnover","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"April 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"We at The Hire Sense have been focused on employee retention this year. Pretty smart of us, I know (especially when the national unemployment rate is 4.4%). Michael at Hidden Business Treasures pointed us towards the Herman Group's Trend Alert e-newsletter and I received my first one this week. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Retention&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Retention","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/retention\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1156,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/08\/benefits-are-a-benefit-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1244,"position":2},"title":"Benefits Are A Benefit","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"August 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I think many Gen X'ers like myself grew up in the era of $10 copays and the assumption that health benefits were required of employers. Now that I am older and dealing with grey hairs, I have learned the truth about that topic. One thing we try to stress with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Compensation&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Compensation","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/compensation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1090,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/07\/candidates-are-discussing-benefits-earlier\/","url_meta":{"origin":1244,"position":3},"title":"Candidates Are Discussing Benefits Earlier","author":"Derrick Moe","date":"July 26, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I remember 5-6 years ago we would consider a benefits discussion from a sales candidate a bit of a red flag. If the candidate was asking about benefits early in the process, we became suspicious that they were looking to retire on the company's payroll. Oh how times have changed.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Hiring&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Hiring","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/hiring\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":501,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2006\/12\/are-employees-satisfied-with-their-compensation-benefits\/","url_meta":{"origin":1244,"position":4},"title":"Are Employees Satisfied with Their Compensation &#038; Benefits?","author":"Lee Fratzke","date":"December 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"In Segal Sibson's 2006 survey of employee satisfaction, employees responded that their overall satisfaction with their benefit plans was droppiong. Satisfaction with their pay level dropped from 66% in 2000 and 2003 to 55% in 2006. In terms of benefits, I was surprised to see that healthcare benefits didn't have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Compensation&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Compensation","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/compensation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":314,"url":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2006\/09\/why-salespeople-leave\/","url_meta":{"origin":1244,"position":5},"title":"Why Salespeople Leave","author":"Lee Fratzke","date":"September 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"An interesting article ran in last week's Selling Power Newsletter for Hiring & Recruiting titled \"Why Do Salespeople Leave?\" According to Compensation Resources, Inc. (CRI), obtained turnover statistics and trends from a broad range of industries and company sizes. The results indicate that both voluntary turnover and overall turnover have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Compensation&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Compensation","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/category\/compensation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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