Ajax Inc. being a small but growing company have a young and dynamic team with a

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Ajax Inc. being a small but growing company have a young and dynamic team with an average age of just 29. Its an age where individuals find themselves engaged in other aspects of life as well in addition to work. This includes maintaining healthy relationship with their spouses, spending time with their children, taking care of their ageing parents and other errands of life. Although, Ajax currently offers several benefits to their employees like:

Inspite of all these benefits, employees are often found to be migrating to the customer’s or client’s company which is a point of concern for Ajax. In the recently conducted focus groups with the employees, following concerns and suggestions were noted:

As a general perception, employees are often stuck in the dilemma of working to live or living to work. Employees at Ajax do not have any complaints with their life in the company, be it work culture, learning opportunities, salary, work, etc. But, as an employer, it is also the duty and responsibility of Ajax to incorporate employees’ feedback in the employees benefits program and make changes to provide employees with better flexibility at work and an improved work-life balance, so that they do not consider migrating to other companies that provide them with the desired work environment. Ajax can consider following changes to the Employee Benefits Program:

Providing Flexible Work Timings

Providing flexibility in work timings is the most basic facility that an employer can provide to its employees that enables them to achieve work life balance. Employees can choose their work timings in accordance with the other commitments in their personal life. Employees who are parents of young children might want to start their day as early as 7 am as they drop their kids to school. Starting the day early, they would be able to finish the work on time so that they can pick their children from school and spend the rest of the day with them. There are other employees who prefer staying awake late and therefore, they can begin their day little later, may be around 11 am so that they can stay and work late in the office. Having employees to choose their work timings gives them great satisfaction as they are able to take care of their personal life as well.

Providing Alternative Work Schedules

Work schedules typically varies from organisation to organisation. A commonly adopted work schedule is to work 5 days a week, 8 hours a day from Monday to Friday. Being a small company with only 100 employees, Ajax can try making modifications to the work schedules and think of alternatives that offer more flexibility to employees. Some other alternatives that Ajax can consider is having a 4/10 work week where employees work for 4 days in a week, 10 hours a day and still completing their 40 hours work week. The four days at work will be followed by three days off. This type of work schedule can have multiple benefits. Since, employees will be spending 10 hours in office, they can be more attentive and productive at work. Also, since they will be commuting to work in non-peak hours, leaving early from home and leaving late from office can help them avoid rush and traffic. A major benefit of this work schedule is that by having 3 consecutive days off, employees can plan their travel and short holidays more efficiently, giving them an opportunity to spend time with their families.

Providing Options to Work From Home

Telecommuting is the most common phenomenon that can be observed in many organisations. With advancement in technologies, people can now work from anywhere, at anytime, as per their convenience and can still achieve the similar results at work. Applications that make use of cloud-computing, video conferencing, and virtual meetings can enable employees to work from a place of their choice. It can be from home, from a coffee shop or from any other place apart from their cubicles. The choice of working from anywhere is the best employee benefit that any employer can offer to its employees. Not having to compulsorily commute to office everyday and spending 8 hours in a closed cubicle work wonders in improving employee productivity and their retention in the organisation.

Providing Long term Financial Security

Ajax can think of options that provides employees a sense of long term financial security. These can be short term and long term investment plans, offering retirement plans, life/health/medical insurance policies, etc. By having not to worry about the financial aspects, employees loyalty towards their employers increases and they get the feeling that the organisation care for them and their families. Financial security enables employees to be more free and focused at work and results in increased productivity.

If Ajax is able to successfully incorporate the above discussed benefits in their employee benefits programs, most of the concerns of the employees like flexibility, work-life balance, financial security, etc, will be addressed and they will be able to strike a balance between their personal and professional life. Their increased quotient of happiness and satisfaction with Ajax Inc. will also increase their loyalty with the organisation and therefore, it will stop them from migrating to client’s and competitor companies.

Explanation / Answer

Ajax Inc. Fringe Benefit Case Assume that you have recently been hired as the HRM Director of a small (100 employee) but growing, privately-held eight year old software design company. Your employees are, on average, relatively young with an average age of 29, and the average length of service with Ajax is 4 years. Your customer base is almost exclusively comprised of large, well-established, publicly-traded companies who offer a comprehensive but “traditional” benefits package. Most of your employees have at least a bachelor degree; several have a master degree, and three key director-level employees have their doctorate. Some employees are interested in or currently working on enhancing their education in the IT or management fields. Learning is prized within Ajax. Pay (direct compensation) is generally slightly above the median of the market, and you rarely hear concerns about base pay issues. Your employees are generally loyal, love their work and like the company and its culture. They are genuinely interested in helping the company succeed. But, a nagging concern is always the potential employee migration to a customer’s company. You have a limited budget to make benefit changes without making other reductions in overhead costs, pay, staffing growth to support strategic initiatives, etc. The company currently offers the following benefits (annually):

• Employee contributions (only) to a 401-k • Two weeks of vacation, starting one year after date of employment. After 5 years, vacation time increases to three weeks.

• Five sick days – to be paid for the time; employees must provide a doctor’s note

• Medical coverage, one HMO plan, paid 50%/50% by the employee and the company

• Ten paid holidays, following the federally-recognized schedule: New Year’s Day, MLK Birthday, President’s Holiday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day.

You recently held focus groups with employees to get their perceptions, feedback, and suggestions on the benefits offered. The groups provided their concerns with flexibility, work/life balance, long-term financial security, and affordability of benefits. Consider the company’s employee demographics, culture, and type of business, what benefit plan design changes would you recommend? Provide a brief rationale and the pros/cons for each recommended change.

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