When choosing a job, benefits are critical to your decision. Some companies offer better health care while others include free gym memberships. A few of the most popular businesses such as Google offer free food to employees. Benefits can make a difference in a job with an otherwise lacklustre salary. When weighing a job offer, you must make a simple determination. Which job benefits matter most to you?
Flextime
How much of your workday do you spend on your commute? Your travel time is the worst part of your day since you can’t enjoy it, but you don’t make money doing it. Flextime gives employees the opportunity to take more control of their daily lives.
With flextime, you won’t work traditional hours. Most jobs require an employee to start at 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. and then leave at 5 p.m. each weekday. For someone who has a 20-minute commute each way, that’s 200 minutes wasted every week. When a company allows flextime, an employee can work a set of four 10-hour days, reducing their wasted commute time by 40 minutes.
Some businesses allow 12-hour days. In such cases, an employee works four days one week and three days the next, ultimately performing the same 80 hours of job duties. From the employee’s perspective, they’re commuting only seven days over two weeks instead of 10, saving them two full hours of drive time. The full benefits of flextime depend on the length of your commute.
Quick Performance Appraisals
A benefit that can make a huge difference in your career earnings is the quick performance appraisal. Generally, a strong job evaluation from your supervisor leads to a raise. Even if your company doesn’t follow this industry trend, plenty of helpful tips exists for how to leverage a great performance review into more salary.
Once you know the techniques to employ, each employee review can be an opportunity to increase your salary. Some businesses do them on an annual basis. In such cases, you can earn more money only once a year. A company that performs quarterly reviews would quadruple your opportunities to raise your annual income.
Expense Accounts
Will your job require much travel? Is your commute to work longer than normal? Will you have to drive to many customer meetings, using gasoline and placing extra miles on your vehicle? Businesses have to address each of these employee concerns. One of the optimal solutions is the expense account.
How does an expense account work? The company will either give you a corporate credit card or ask you to track your monthly business expenses. When you have a credit card, you simply pay for expenses as they arise. On business trips, you’ll have a daily amount that you can spend on food and other unavoidable costs. Some companies are more generous in their terms, although you need to understand the basic rules of expense accounts.
Tracking expenses requires a bit more effort. You need to note how many miles you drive to your various meetings as well as any occasions where you have to buy meals for clients. The business will reimburse you for these bills, but you’ll have less money now. Company credit cards are obviously better than tracked expenses since you don’t use your own money.
Health Guides
Smart businesses understand that healthy employees are more productive. That’s why they build benefits packages to improve the well-being of their staff. While working for a company such as Amway, for example, an employee can take part in programs such as Optimal You. This Amway program helps people increase their level of fitness and lose weight. Health guides such as Amway’s alert workers to good nutrition and dietary practices.
When companies offer this benefit, they’re banking on a long and productive relationship with an employee. Someone who lives a longer, healthier life costs the company less in terms of healthcare and insurance. More importantly, the benefit to workers is that their work-life balance improves the overall quality of life, something more valuable than any amount of salary.
These benefits are only a small part of a large list of potential sweeteners that businesses offer. Only you can decide which ones matter the most, but you now have a better idea of the advantages of each one.
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