Designing a Benefits Package

Benefit packages are a very important aspect of employee compensation these days. Benefits can account for almost one-third of employee compensation and is becoming more and more prevalent. How can companies come to terms with the appropriate benefits they offer that also works with the needs of employees? This package must be designed to fit the company not only in cost but in quality. Since a benefits package is one-third of compensation, it needs to be on the up-and-up to retain employees and attract new talent. I read a piece of literature that discusses what goes into a package that encompasses both of these things. It provided three main questions to ask when designing a plan that works. (1) What benefits can the employer afford? (2) What benefits will best attract and retain your workforce? And (3) What benefit vendors provide a quality and consistent product today? By balancing these needs and answering these questions you should be able to find a plan that works for your company. It is also important to listen to your people and find out what they really want and to choose a plan that is in harmony with your company culture and bottom-line.

The full text can be found HERE if anyone is interested in reading further.

CEO Compensation

So we are all well aware that most CEO's yearly compensation is far more than necessary for a human to comfortably live. I recently read this Forbes article that breaks down compensation for CEO's at the top 500 American companies. This article was interesting because it showed the different systems each CEO was compensated with. Many CEO's make somewhat modest salaries with the large portion of their income coming from stock options. It was interesting to see the comparison between the best and worst CEO's for the cost. This was rated on a series of factors: Stock performance, performance compared to the S&P 500, the CEO's compensation, and the annualized stock performance over the persons tenure. It was interesting to see that Marc Benioff from salesforce.com was the number one, delivering a 41% annual return for shareholders! I recommend reading this article. It has some very interesting conclusions.