Benefits Smorgasbord Attracts Workers

 

Traditional benefits plans, which emphasize medical care and life insurance, no longer have what it takes as far as today's workers are concerned, concludes an Administrative Management Society survey. Instead, such extras as preretirement counseling, alcohol abuse counseling, and career planning advice are gaining popularity.

One method of keeping up with the changes in the American work force is the flexible, or "cafeteria"-style, benefits plan, which allows employees to choose, from a given list, those benefits most suited to their needs. Thomas E. Wood of Hewitt Associates, an Illinoisbased consulting company, reports that flexible plans are becoming more popular nationwide. Although cafeteria plans can be expensive to institute, says Dallas L. Salisbury, executive director of the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C., they provide another way to motivate small business employees and reduce employee turnover.

P.M. Haeger and Associates, a Chicago-based multiple association management company, is in the process of implementing a cafeteria-style benefit plan. "Our work force is quite diverse," says president Phyllis Haeger. "No two individuals, when given a chance to put together their own benefits plan, came up with the same options."

Haeger's employees, 90% of whom are women, put tuition reimbursement number one on their lists. Other choices ranged from vision and hearing care and professional association membership to child care and legal fees.

Incorporating a cafeteria-style benefit plan may also prod a chief executive into thinking about his management style and the kind of atmosphere he wants for employees. "If you haven't done that kind of thinking," Haeger says, "it's very difficult to have a coherent benefit plan."