Employee Benefits

Employee benefits are the extra support that employees receive from an organization other than the pay. Employee benefit programs were introduced in the mid of 20^th century, when trade unions started to emerge organizations start to introduce benefit programs to diminish impact of unionism (Vicky, n.d.), companies wanted to reduce the conflicts and employee turnover, so they came up with different types of employee benefits. Not only that, companies introduced many employee benefits to attract the talents and increase the job satisfaction as well (Virgin Pulse Wellness Glossary, n.d.). 

And following are some of the benefits that an employee is entitled in the modern day.

Social Security and pension plans: Social security is a fund that is paid by the employer and sometimes a portion from employee’s salary also deducted and paid to the authority which will be accumulated and redeemed after the retirement. And the pension is a compensation that is paid monthly by the government or by the employer to cover the expenses after retirement (Friedberg, 2019).

Health Insurance: Many companies give health insurance for their employees to let them work worry free about their health and most of the organizations give health insurance to the dependants of the employees as well (Minnesota State, n.d.).

Free Day Care Service: Organizations offer this service to enable the employees to work freely without worrying about their babies and they think this will reduce female employee turnover.

Flexible Hours & More Vacation Time: Certain organizations offer flexible hours to retain the talents and sometimes they are allowed to work from home as well. More vacation time lets the employees to relax after a hectic work schedule, by this employers aim to achieve productivity through job satisfaction (Virgin Pulse Wellness Glossary, n.d.). 

Paid Leaves & Paid Time Off (PTO): Such as maternity leaves, paternity leaves and sick leaves are accounted as paid leaves to facilitate the employees and in certain organizations employees are offered paid time off for social events such as protests. 

Bonus & Profit Shares: In order to appreciate the employees’ commitments throughout the year, companies pay yearly bonuses or profit shares.

 Source: Harvard Business Review - The Most Desirable Employee Benefits

References

Friedberg, B., 2019. Retirement Plans: Pensions vs. Social Security. [Online]
Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/040116/retirement-plans-pensions-vs-social-security.asp
[Accessed 11 June 2019].

Minnesota State, n.d. Types of Employee Benefits. [Online]
Available at: https://careerwise.minnstate.edu/jobs/benefittypes.html
[Accessed 11 June 2019].

Vicky, n.d. Employee Benefit Programmes: History, Growth and Types of Benefits. [Online]
Available at: http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/employee-management/employee-benefit-programmes-history-growth-and-types-of-benefits/60365
[Accessed 11 June 2019].

Virgin Pulse Wellness Glossary, n.d. Employee Benefits. [Online]
Available at: https://www.virginpulse.com/employee-benefits/
[Accessed 11 June 2019].

Personnel Management (PM) & Human Resource Management (HRM)

Personnel Management 

Personnel Management was the traditional way of managing the workforce, in the early days before human resource management, personnel management was the term used for how to manage the people in an organization. In personnel management employees are considered as a cost to the organization and they were dealt as a tool for the organization’s operation (Surbhi, 2018).

Human Resource Management

HRM has a wider view of how to manage people and it was evolved from personnel management to fulfill the short comings of PM (Surbhi, 2018), which accounts people as resources and HRM is improved version of PM in treating people well by understanding the benefits of doing so and HRM plays a main role in strategic planning of the organization (Armstrong, 2006).

According to Armstrong (2006), below are the similarities and differences between Personnel Management & HRM

Similarities Between PM & HRM	Differences Between PM & HRM
Personnel Management Strategies & HRM Strategies are part of business strategies	HR Specialist are considered as business partners not just as managers
Line managers are in charge for managing their subordinates while getting the support from the upper management	HRM considers line managers as HR policy implementers as well
Similar in training people to get their maximum, which benefits both the people and the organization and respecting people by considering their needs	HRM gives more importance to managing organizational culture and commitments
Mainly focussed on finding out the best fit for the organization's need and training and placing them for the suitable positions	HRM focuses more on strategic fit and integration as well
Similar techniques are used in selection process, performance management, training and rewarding	HRM considers employees as a resource/asset not as a cost

And I have distinguished Strategic HRM and HRM in one of my previous blog posts (What is Strategic Human Resource Management?), there you can see that SHRM is evolved from HRM and SHRM has wider view regarding the organization’s goals and objectives so it is clear that SHRM evolved from HRM and HRM evolved from Personnel Management. Even though people and their behaviours are almost stay rigid, concepts and way of managing people changes/evolves time to time.

References

Armstrong, M., 2006. A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. 10th ed. London: Kogan Page Limited.

Surbhi, 2018. Difference Between Personnel Management and Human Resource Management. [Online]
Available at: https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-personnel-management-and-human-resource-management.html
[Accessed 11 June 2019].

Types of Employees and Employee Engagements

There are three types of employees, they are Engaged Employees, Not Engaged Employees and Disengaged Employees (Front Line Leadership, 2018).

Engaged Employees – these employees put their maximum to their work while being happy with the work or the organization and they are passionate towards their job.

Not Engaged Employees – these employees are sometimes happy with the organization or job but putting less efforts with regards to their work, doing only the works that are requested and their expectation is end of the day pay. 

Disengaged Employees – these are the ones who are unhappy with the organization, detached to their job and spreading the negative impressions about the organization. Even though they are doing the minimum with regards to their work, they stay for a long time by plotting against the successful employees who would be moved to higher positions (Front Line Leadership, 2018). 

And there are three types of employee engagements as well, they are engaged to the job, engaged to the organization and engaged to the colleagues (Vance, 2006). 

Engaged to the job – there are some employees who love their job and very much attached and highly results oriented, these people love to see the results of efforts and this motivation leads them to be engaged to their jobs. And another factor of job engagement is better pay, some people stay with the organization because of the pay and the pay motivates them to be engaged to the work.

Engaged to the organization – there are people who are engaged to the organization due to many reasons such as organization’s reputation, employee recognition, luxurious working place and improved work-life balance. Some people prefer these factors than a good pay. We can see below survey which shows what is most desired benefits by employees.

 Source: Cicero 2015 research - Employee performance: What causes great work?

Engaged to the colleagues/supervisor (Front Line Leadership, 2018) – some people are truly committed to their colleagues sometimes to the supervisor, attracted by his/her leadership style and charisma. In addition, this is highly seen in organizations, which has a very friendly culture.  

References

Front Line Leadership, 2018. The Three Types of Employee Engagement. [Online]
Available at: https://www.frontlineleadershipprogram.com/Blog/ArticleID/18/FrontLine-Leadership-The-Three-Types-of-Employee-Engagement
[Accessed 10 June 2019].

Vance, R., 2006. EmployeeEngagement andCommitment. Alexandria: SHRM Foundation.