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Dear Workforce How Can We Lose Benefits While Remaining Competitive

Carefully. Take all you like, but make certain not to leave any voids.
November 15, 2000
Related Topics: Benefit Design and Communication, Dear Workforce, Benefits

Dear Workforce:

Our company provides vacation pay prior to an employee’sactual vacation. If an employee is scheduled to take vacation during the week ofOctober 9, we would pay that employee on October 5.

The policy is a pain to process, because we have to manuallyadjust paychecks. We would like to discontinue the practice, but are nervousabout taking away an existing benefit. We would like to stay competitive withother employers, and do not want to eliminate the program if other employersoffer it as well.

-- Shelley

A Dear Shelley:

We know of no other companies that offer this generous program. If yourcompany wishes to scrap the program, but not leave a void in its place, here aresome options:

  1. Change policy making employees eligible for vacation time effective fromtheir date of hire so time begins to accumulate right away.

  2. Offer up-front weeks when hiring. For example, if your policy is toprovide 2 weeks after 1 year of service, give an additional week availableimmediately upon hire. The employee then has three weeks during the firstyear.

  3. Allow employees to run vacation time in the negative.

Whenever you withdraw a benefit, you will disgruntle any number of employeesno matter what you do. By offering something in its place, the loss can bepackaged as a "benefits improvement" and perceived less as atake-away.

SOURCE: Work/Life Benefits, Cypress, CA.

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