Rewards
The Geico firm has family and life benefits, time off and leave, associate assistance program, health and wellbeing and their total rewards program as the main aspects of their benefits and rewards program. Time off and leave plus the family and life benefits package are characterized by flexibility because they offer holidays, paid vacations, FSA care for dependents, adoptions help, sick and leave, AAP, insurance plan (long-term care). The Associate Assistance Program has a free counseling session in person or on phone where they offer three calls. In their family and life benefits package they offer, baby shower programs, work-life programs, day care, referral for the old to care homes, counseling on stress, depression, finances, legal aid, as well as both financial and material assistance during times of hardships to the employees. Geico has tried to strike a balance between work and life and so they offer their workers time off and at work programs to ease the work experience (Nejolla&Korris, 2003).
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They further have a total rewards package where they insure the future of their workers by offering them an improved recruitment and worker retention program. Chapter two of the same book highlights this type of benefits package. Based on the Total Rewards Package offered by the firm, one can tell how much the organization is keen on the betterment of their employee’s lives. This is evidenced by the fact that they have health and well-being, financial security for employees and a balanced life in the rewards menu. They also have in their consideration employee’s perception of work and the places they would like work. The firm total rewards package also covers the ‘big picture’ and beyond in terms employee work place selection, sickness leave that encompasses recovery time, family care, employee’s personal investments care and life at work quality improvement (WorldatWork, 2007).
The same book speaks of an Associate Assistance Program in chapter 2 that sees reduction on costs of labor and turn over. This program emphasizes on employee support resulting to performance without stress in and about work. Work and life, baby welcoming, young and elderly care referral, stress, depression and financial counseling plus legal support and aid during catastrophes are seen in this AAP program. They help create a work and life balance for the employees therefore enabling them work without the feeling of wanting to quit their jobs or move to other jobs that offer such or more of those advantages. By doing this, Geico has tried to block external occurrences from contributing to poor performance at work. This saves them money and time in return; that would have been spent on new hires for replacement (Nejolla&Korris, 2003).
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The firm, Geico, understands the job market, its complications and the shortage in professionals and therefore has put in place measures to cater for employee’s needs and wants. Geico seems to have a clear understanding of this since they have in place measures and advantages for the retention of the talented workers. For this, they have the family and benefits in the AAP package which offers a heightened level of support to the employees which helps guarantee their loyalty to the firm. The benefits in the Associate Assistance Program cater for number of needs much of which seem to be tailored for women. Women make up the largest section of the talented works for this organization and this explains the orientation of the AAP package (WorldatWork, 2007). Health care, financial assistance and career advancement are the main components of the health and wellbeing package where the firm is meeting a number of worker’s needs. They have finance and retirement, education and training, amenities and perks programs for this category of needs. The packages are tailored for enhancing the profitability of the company. Teeth and eye care are the main advantages in the health and wellbeing programs. AAP on the other hand covers smoking, drug and alcohol help, stress and financial aid counseling as well as physical fitness and long term disability. They also have an education program which aims at improving the employee’s career wise and in their personal fields (Hojberg-Kraft, 2013). The future of the employees is looked into as they are provided a finance and retirement program in which they receive appetizing salaries, promotion on merit, profit awards and saving assistance to insure the future. The many educational and career development programs offered by Geico not only benefit the employees but also contribute to their input in company’s performance. In the amenities and perks package there is special benefits, services and discounts that saves the workers money and finances leading to joyful quality assured life. The package ensure that the company looks into employee’s needs, which in turn leads to the actualization of the company’s goals through the contribution of both the employees and the company’s management itself (Nejolla&Korris, 2003).
A strategy for ensuring Geico addresses all advantages.
For the company to address all the advantages there has to be effective communication ensure the advantages are well known and understood. As Gilbert and Cornish states, they have to integrate the advantages in their strategies especially the human capital which happens to be the ‘people’ business side. Beyond that, they should make teamwork a contributor to the meeting of the company’s goals and the needs of the employees. They also need to either outsource or bring a partial replacement employee to oversee the completion of work when a permanent employee is away on leave or time off. This will ensure that the needs of the employee are met while at the same time those of the company are addressed. Proper communication of the benefits is a continuous process that requires maximum time and attention. The concerned managers should therefore ensure constant interaction with the workers to find out their feelings about the packages and if they are well offered (Nejolla&Korris, 2003). The communication will strengthen competitive advantage by improving meeting of expectations as well as empowering and rewarding the employees.
Reward program fundamentals must be amalgamated strategically and then delivered effectively in order to ensure that the results are in line with the original objectives (Gilbert & Cornish,n.d.). Geico should have strategy that is similar to this one in mind during the process of developing their total rewards program. Their understanding of the human resource strategy, which involves employee selection, improvement, placement, motivation, and preservation management so as to help in working towards the Geico’s ideal business strategy. Gilbert and Cornish argue that firms should evaluate and effectively manage their cost of reward package in order to design more affordable and defensible packages. Effective management will help the firm identify the best choices as well as the best investment opportunities as demonstrated by the Geico’stotal awards package. The two authors also suggested that firms must pay careful attention not to mix up its reward strategies. The firm should deliberate the things they reward versus those that they need to reward (Gilbert& Cornish, n.d). Business strategies are always changing to adapt to the changing business environments, consequently a firm’s total reward strategy must be constantly reviewed also so as to make sure the two remain aligned.
Evaluate the effectiveness of the communication of Geico’s total rewards program based upon the Website’s descriptions of the benefits. Recommend two (2) areas for improvement.
The Geico’s total rewards program’s effectiveness founded on the firm’s website’s explanations of its benefits. These descriptions offer information about all the programs hence employees have a general idea of what those programs entail. ALC provides services that are focused on the necessity for short and well-defined, research andcommunication needs of given firms, legal and engineering (Nejolla&Korris, 2003). ALC services help the firms deal with issues relating to worker performance, grievance, or safety of their produce.Geicouses this information to its advantage in strategically designing a total rewards program that meets all the desires of their employees and potential employees..
Another area of Geico’s total rewards program improvement is the provision of a link under their benefit programs connecting them to social media and relevant blogs. The links should have information that will assist employees get the assistance they may require (Hojberg-Kraft, 2013). This will help the firm monitor and maintain control of the nature and consistency of messages shared on these sites thus enabling them to align the shared information with the firm’s strategies and objectives.
Assuming employees are unhappy with the current plan, offer two (2) improvements or changes to Geico’s total rewards program.
The two main improvements that can be incorporated into Geico’s total rewards program if their employees are not content with the firm’s existing plan include addressing the issues of contention with employees and put the necessary measures to effectively deal with those issues in place. Korris suggests that two or more improvements needs mean that a firm is in dire need forintervention. In such instances, the firm should develop a program that will help it express gratitude and praise its employees whenever they perform their duties exceptionally so as to demonstrate the firm’s commitment to improving the existing total reward program (Nejolla&Korris, 2003). Additionally, the firm may bring in a third party who can help resolve the conflict between the firm and its employees as well as help them in their journey of re-establishing trust. The firm should make a pledge to improve the current working environment for its employees. Terminating employees every time they underperform is not a viable solution, effective supervisory practices of employees is.
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