The ‘great resignation’ that came with the Covid pandemic has left many employees in a privileged situation. Shop around, chances are you’ll find someone desperate for help and willing to pay more than your current employer. Then you can politely ask your employer to match/beat those offers.

3 Tips For Negotiating For Better Benefits/Pay At Work.

Negotiations are best done when both parties feel like their needs are being met. human emotion plays a big role in negotiations. It’s not all hard calculations. Sometimes people will be more stingy simply because they think you’re awful.

1. Don’t go in guns blazing

When negotiating an employment situation, what do you care about most? Pay raise? More vacation? More autonomy? Remote work? Now think about your employer and what they care about most. Things, where you care a lot less compared to your employer and vice versa, are where you can make everyone happier. Everything is negotiable.

2. Find mismatched priorities between parties

The more prepared you can be understanding the positions and motivations of all counterparties the better. The more independent data you can bring to support your reasoning (e.g., industry pay comps, research on the tie between worker efficiency and workplace comfort, competitor actions, hard data as well as qualitative reviews showing your impact) the more convincing you’ll be.

3. Be prepared

<UL><LI>Post author
							By <a href="https://informationprime.wordpress.com/author/jamesadesanaya5407/" dir="ltr">James.O</a>						</LI></UL><figure><img width="679" height="452" src="https://informationprime.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/images-1.webp?w=679" alt=""></figure>Starting your first job can be a quite tricky experience, almost like the training wheels came off from your bike halfway through your journey, you are expected to miraculously know things like salary negotiations, pension calculations, interview skills, insurance many of which school did not prepare you for.Employee benefits are one of those things and my goal with this article is to give you a heads up, helping you to investigate your prospective employers, interview them and negotiate for better conditions. You won’t be needing those training wheels after all.If you have a question, suggestion or objection feel free to scold me in the reply section at the end of this post.<h2>What are employee benefits</h2>Picture this: You work as a writer charging $380 per article. I offered to pay you that $380 to work on my blog and to sweeten the deal I throw in two tickets to see Spiderman NWH. Just to make sure that you don’t reject my offer and go work on David’s blog instead.Those tickets are employee benefits and the purpose they serve is to ensure that I attract and retain top talents. Like you.<BLOCKQUOTE>Employee benefits are the various types of non-wage compensation that employers provide to employees in addition to their regular wages or salary options.</BLOCKQUOTE><h2>Examples Of Employee Benefits </h2><OL><LI>Health insurance &amp; Healthcare benefits</LI><LI>Vacation/personal days/sick days</LI><LI>Long-term and short-term disability</LI><LI>401K plans</LI><LI>Bonus plans</LI><LI>Stock options</LI></OL>Other examples of employee benefits are: Working hours &amp; leave, Food &amp; Beverage, Relocation and housing options, Tuition reimbursement and student loan repayment e.t.c<h2>Commonly used Employee Benefits Terms</h2>401K plans: The 401K consists of different investment vehicles in which you can elect to invest. They are usually separate and distinct from your company stock. A significant benefit of 401K plans is that you invest in them with pre-tax dollars. In other words, you don’t have to pay taxes on the dollars that go into them. However, you must use only dollars that you won’t need until retirement (there is a significant penalty for withdrawing the funds before you turn sixty-five). Another significant advantage of 401K plans is that companies will often match anywhere from 1 to 5 per cent of your gross salary. Deductible: A deductible is an amount of money that you are responsible for paying toward an insured loss. In health insurance, this is the amount you have to pay before the health insurance company begins paying up the claim amount.Co-payment plans: A co-pay, short for co-payment, is a fixed amount that you pay for covered medical services. The remaining balance is covered by your insurance company. Co-pays are typically lower for standard doctor visits than for seeing specialists.Coverage: Insurance coverage is the amount of risk or liability that is covered for an individual or entity by way of insurance services. Examples of insurance are auto insurance, life insurance, health insurance e.t.c<h2>Things You Should Know/Do</h2><UL><LI>Read your contract thoroughly</LI><LI>Make sure you understand your health benefits co-payments, deductibles, and coverage.</LI><LI>Understand the requirements behind Vacation/personal days/sick days: Is a doctor’s note needed for sick days? | If you don’t use your vacation days during the existing calendar year, do you lose the unused days or can you take them the following year?</LI><LI>Ask if Long-term and short-term disabilities are on offer and on what terms?</LI><LI>Find out if there are bonus plans and how does it work? | Do you need to be employed on the last day of the year or on the date a bonus is paid to receive it?</LI><LI>Make sure you fully understand the details of your stock option plan.</LI></UL><figure><img src="https://informationprime.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/images-21676119391347438426.jpg?w=739" alt="" srcset="https://informationprime.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/images-21676119391347438426.jpg 739w, https://informationprime.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/images-21676119391347438426.jpg?w=150 150w, https://informationprime.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/images-21676119391347438426.jpg?w=300 300w" width="580" height="326"></figure><h2>Assessing the Benefits that Come with your Job</h2>For most job adverts you’ll see there is usually no information on employment benefits neither will you find it on their websites. This makes choosing what works for you very hard but there are ways to go around this.<h3>1. Pre-application stage</h3>Before sending your application to your prospective employers you can assess what they bring to the table by:1. Using Glassdoor: <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm" dir="ltr">Glassdoor</a> has a section with reviews of employers on their websites. Looking through them you’ll find former employees who will talk about awesome and affordable benefits, others will complain about thin plans and high contribution and sometimes you won’t find a mention of employment benefits at all, however, looking through the reviews is still worth a shot as it can give clarity with regards to your prospective work environment.2. <a href="http://indeed.com/" rel="noreferrer noopener" dir="ltr">Indeed ratings</a>: similar to glassdoor above, indeed also provides reviews from employees on employers.3. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/login" dir="ltr">Linked</a><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/login" dir="ltr">-in</a>: A brilliant alternative to reading reviews on glassdoor and indeed is to look up old or former employees of your company on linked in and send them a polite message. If they had any negative experience they’ll most likely not want you to undergo the same fate. Private chats also ensure that you get honest and helpful opinions.<h2>2. During your interview</h2>Interviews provide an avenue for you and your company to assess each other. However, we usually neglect to make use of this opportunity and it becomes one-way traffic most times. Embrace the challenge, examine if the opportunity is what you need right now:You can sandwich employment benefits questions like:<UL><LI>What insurance benefits do you offer (e.g medical dental vision)</LI><LI>What percentages of premiums do you cover for employees? </LI><LI>What percentage of the premium do you cover for employees ‘dependents’?</LI><LI>What would my weekly deductions be?</LI></UL>Between other questions like<UL><LI>what makes your best employee stand out?</LI><LI>How long have you been at the company, and what do you think makes this company stand out from others in the industry.</LI></UL>You want to highlight your interest in the job while also getting the scoop you need. <h3>3. After you gotten an offer</h3>If you already have an offer, you can schedule a meeting with an HR representative and ask for clarifications regarding the benefits, if it’s not already clear from your contract. You can mix these questions with those from the interview above as they may suit your situation.<UL><LI>Ask what types of the plan(s) are offered (HMO, PPO e.t.c)</LI><LI>Then follow up with How do I find out if my doctor is in the Network.</LI><LI>Am I covered if I don’t stay in Network?</LI><LI>Is wellness care part of the deductible or is it 100% covered.</LI><LI>What percentage of medical bills are covered after the deductible is satisfied.</LI></UL><h2>Negotiating Better Benefits</h2>The ‘great resignation’ that came with the Covid pandemic has left many employees in a privileged situation. Shop around, chances are you’ll find someone desperate for help and willing to pay more than your current employer. Then you can politely ask your employer to match/beat those offers.<h3>Tips for Negotiations </h3>1. Don’t go in guns blazing: Negotiations are best done when both parties feel like their needs are being met. human emotion plays a big role in negotiations. It’s not all hard calculations. Sometimes people will be more stingy simply because they think you’re awful.2. Find mismatched priorities between parties: If negotiating an employment situation, what do you care about most? Pay raise? More vacation? More autonomy? Remote work? Now think about your employer and what they care about most. Things, where you care a lot less compared to your employer and vice versa, are where you can make everyone happier. Everything is negotiable.<BLOCKQUOTE>E.g You got approved for remote work but not as much of a raise as you’d hope? See if you can get a “remote work stipend” which likely comes from a different budget than salary. Frame the benefit as something that keeps you working efficiently (e.g., extra monitors, ergonomic chair, standing desk) while also reminding them of the lower operating costs that come with remote workers. Even if your company doesn’t have these benefits, your request may be the thing that spawns them into creation.</BLOCKQUOTE>3. Be prepared: The more prepared you can be understanding the positions and motivations of all counterparties the better. The more independent data you can bring to support your reasoning (e.g., industry pay comps, research on the tie between worker efficiency and workplace comfort, competitor actions, hard data as well as qualitative reviews showing your impact) the more convincing you’ll be.<figure><img src="https://informationprime.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/download8524484209730687754.jpeg?w=225" alt="" srcset="https://informationprime.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/download8524484209730687754.jpeg 225w, https://informationprime.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/download8524484209730687754.jpeg?w=150 150w" width="225" height="224"></figure><h2>Can you Use Employee Benefits To Fund Students Loan</h2>For Most private organizations it would be difficult to reach this agreement because they gain tax advantages for providing employer 401k matching and they would not receive those for putting money towards your debt. If they would do it for you they would also have to offer the same aid to your colleagues who may have similar issues. Therefore it is usually seen as unsustainable.However, if you work for the government it may be easier to reach an agreement but it may come with some of the following conditions:<UL><LI>They have to be federally recognized student loans</LI><LI>You have to prove the payments were being made.</LI><LI>You have to be working in a particular area to be eligible.</LI><LI>The payment goes straight to the lender after tax.</LI></UL>Expect your employer to impose similar restrictions.Note: The money you put towards your student loans will be taxed as opposed to 401k. The money that goes to your loan will eventually be lower than expected. Therefore you need to ensure that this tradeoff is worth it before you dive in.I leave you with some of the most popular abbreviations you’ll encounter on the topic of employee benefits:<UL><LI>AD&amp;D Plan — Accidental Death and Dismemberment Plan</LI><LI>AHP — Association Health Plan</LI><LI>ASG — Affiliated Service Group</LI><LI>CDHC — Consumer-Driven Health Care</LI><LI>EIN — Employer Identification Number</LI><LI>EAP — Employee Assistance Plan</LI><LI>EOI — Evidence of Insurability</LI><LI>FAVR — Fixed and Variable Rate</LI><LI>FICA — Federal Insurance Contributions Act</LI><LI> FITW —Federal Income Tax Withholding</LI><LI>HCR – Health Care Reform</LI><LI>HCTC – Health Coverage Tax Credit</LI><LI>HDHC – High-Deductible Health Coverage</LI><LI>HDHP – High-Deductible Health Plan</LI><LI>HMO – Health Maintenance Organization</LI><LI>HRA – Health Reimbursement Arrangement</LI><LI>HSA – Health Savings Account</LI><LI>POP — Premium-Only Plan</LI><LI>PPO Plan — Preferred Provider Organization Plan</LI><LI>PTO — Paid Time Off</LI></UL>

This tips show basic strategies to employ during negotiations at work.

Starting your first job can be a quite tricky experience, almost like the training wheels came off from your bike halfway through your journey, you are expected to miraculously know things like salary negotiations, pension calculations, interview skills, insurance many of which school did not prepare you for. Employee benefits are one of those things…

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

humanresources

Human Resources

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

<ul><li>Post author By <a href="https://informationprime.wordpress.com/author/jamesadesanaya5407/">James.O </a> </li> </ul>

Starting your first job can be a quite tricky experience, almost like the training wheels came off from your bike halfway through your journey, you are expected to miraculously know things like salary negotiations, pension calculations, interview skills, insurance many of which school did not prepare you for.

Employee benefits are one of those things and my goal with this article is to give you a heads up, helping you to investigate your prospective employers, interview them and negotiate for better conditions. You won’t be needing those training wheels after all.

If you have a question, suggestion or objection feel free to scold me in the reply section at the end of this post.

Picture this: You work as a writer charging $380 per article. I offered to pay you that $380 to work on my blog and to sweeten the deal I throw in two tickets to see Spiderman NWH. Just to make sure that you don’t reject my offer and go work on David’s blog instead.

Those tickets are employee benefits and the purpose they serve is to ensure that I attract and retain top talents. Like you.

Employee benefits are the various types of non-wage compensation that employers provide to employees in addition to their regular wages or salary options.

<ol><li>Health insurance & Healthcare benefits </li><li>Vacation/personal days/sick days </li><li>Long-term and short-term disability </li><li>401K plans </li><li>Bonus plans </li><li>Stock options </li> </ol>

Other examples of employee benefits are: Working hours & leave, Food & Beverage, Relocation and housing options, Tuition reimbursement and student loan repayment e.t.c

401K plans : The 401K consists of different investment vehicles in which you can elect to invest. They are usually separate and distinct from your company stock. A significant benefit of 401K plans is that you invest in them with pre-tax dollars. In other words, you don’t have to pay taxes on the dollars that go into them. However, you must use only dollars that you won’t need until retirement (there is a significant penalty for withdrawing the funds before you turn sixty-five). Another significant advantage of 401K plans is that companies will often match anywhere from 1 to 5 per cent of your gross salary.

Deductible : A deductible is an amount of money that you are responsible for paying toward an insured loss. In health insurance, this is the amount you have to pay before the health insurance company begins paying up the claim amount.

Co-payment plans: A co-pay, short for co-payment, is a fixed amount that you pay for covered medical services. The remaining balance is covered by your insurance company. Co-pays are typically lower for standard doctor visits than for seeing specialists.

Coverage : Insurance coverage is the amount of risk or liability that is covered for an individual or entity by way of insurance services. Examples of insurance are auto insurance, life insurance, health insurance e.t.c

<ul><li>Read your contract thoroughly </li><li>Make sure you understand your health benefits co-payments, deductibles, and coverage. </li><li>Understand the requirements behind Vacation/personal days/sick days: Is a doctor’s note needed for sick days? | If you don’t use your vacation days during the existing calendar year, do you lose the unused days or can you take them the following year? </li><li>Ask if Long-term and short-term disabilities are on offer and on what terms? </li><li>Find out if there are bonus plans and how does it work? | Do you need to be employed on the last day of the year or on the date a bonus is paid to receive it? </li><li>Make sure you fully understand the details of your stock option plan. </li> </ul>

Assessing the Benefits that Come with your Job

For most job adverts you’ll see there is usually no information on employment benefits neither will you find it on their websites. This makes choosing what works for you very hard but there are ways to go around this.

Before sending your application to your prospective employers you can assess what they bring to the table by:

1. Using Glassdoor : <a href="https://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm">Glassdoor </a>has a section with reviews of employers on their websites. Looking through them you’ll find former employees who will talk about awesome and affordable benefits, others will complain about thin plans and high contribution and sometimes you won’t find a mention of employment benefits at all, however, looking through the reviews is still worth a shot as it can give clarity with regards to your prospective work environment.

2. <a href="http://indeed.com/">Indeed ratings </a> : similar to glassdoor above, indeed also provides reviews from employees on employers.

3. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/login">Linked </a><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/login">-in </a>: A brilliant alternative to reading reviews on glassdoor and indeed is to look up old or former employees of your company on linked in and send them a polite message. If they had any negative experience they’ll most likely not want you to undergo the same fate. Private chats also ensure that you get honest and helpful opinions.

Interviews provide an avenue for you and your company to assess each other. However, we usually neglect to make use of this opportunity and it becomes one-way traffic most times. Embrace the challenge, examine if the opportunity is what you need right now:

You can sandwich employment benefits questions like:

<ul><li>What insurance benefits do you offer (e.g medical dental vision) </li><li>What percentages of premiums do you cover for employees? </li><li>What percentage of the premium do you cover for employees ‘dependents’? </li><li>What would my weekly deductions be? </li> </ul>

Between other questions like

<ul><li>what makes your best employee stand out? </li><li>How long have you been at the company, and what do you think makes this company stand out from others in the industry. </li> </ul>

You want to highlight your interest in the job while also getting the scoop you need.

If you already have an offer, you can schedule a meeting with an HR representative and ask for clarifications regarding the benefits, if it’s not already clear from your contract. You can mix these questions with those from the interview above as they may suit your situation.

<ul><li>Ask what types of the plan(s) are offered (HMO, PPO e.t.c) </li><li>Then follow up with How do I find out if my doctor is in the Network. </li><li>Am I covered if I don’t stay in Network? </li><li>Is wellness care part of the deductible or is it 100% covered. </li><li>What percentage of medical bills are covered after the deductible is satisfied. </li> </ul>

The ‘great resignation’ that came with the Covid pandemic has left many employees in a privileged situation. Shop around, chances are you’ll find someone desperate for help and willing to pay more than your current employer. Then you can politely ask your employer to match/beat those offers.

1. Don’t go in guns blazing: Negotiations are best done when both parties feel like their needs are being met. human emotion plays a big role in negotiations. It’s not all hard calculations. Sometimes people will be more stingy simply because they think you’re awful.

2. Find mismatched priorities between part ies: If negotiating an employment situation, what do you care about most? Pay raise? More vacation? More autonomy? Remote work? Now think about your employer and what they care about most. Things, where you care a lot less compared to your employer and vice versa, are where you can make everyone happier. Everything is negotiable.

E.g You got approved for remote work but not as much of a raise as you’d hope? See if you can get a “remote work stipend” which likely comes from a different budget than salary. Frame the benefit as something that keeps you working efficiently (e.g., extra monitors, ergonomic chair, standing desk) while also reminding them of the lower operating costs that come with remote workers. Even if your company doesn’t have these benefits, your request may be the thing that spawns them into creation.

3. Be prepared : The more prepared you can be understanding the positions and motivations of all counterparties the better. The more independent data you can bring to support your reasoning (e.g., industry pay comps, research on the tie between worker efficiency and workplace comfort, competitor actions, hard data as well as qualitative reviews showing your impact) the more convincing you’ll be.

Can you Use Employee Benefits To Fund Students Loan

For Most private organizations it would be difficult to reach this agreement because they gain tax advantages for providing employer 401k matching and they would not receive those for putting money towards your debt. If they would do it for you they would also have to offer the same aid to your colleagues who may have similar issues. Therefore it is usually seen as unsustainable.

However, if you work for the government it may be easier to reach an agreement but it may come with some of the following conditions:

<ul><li>They have to be federally recognized student loans </li><li>You have to prove the payments were being made. </li><li>You have to be working in a particular area to be eligible. </li><li>The payment goes straight to the lender after tax. </li> </ul>

Expect your employer to impose similar restrictions.

Note: The money you put towards your student loans will be taxed as opposed to 401k. The money that goes to your loan will eventually be lower than expected. Therefore you need to ensure that this tradeoff is worth it before you dive in.

I leave you with some of the most popular abbreviations you’ll encounter on the topic of employee benefits:

<ul><li>AD&D Plan — Accidental Death and Dismemberment Plan </li><li>AHP — Association Health Plan </li><li>ASG — Affiliated Service Group </li><li>CDHC — Consumer-Driven Health Care </li><li>EIN — Employer Identification Number </li><li>EAP — Employee Assistance Plan </li><li>EOI — Evidence of Insurability </li><li>FAVR — Fixed and Variable Rate </li><li>FICA — Federal Insurance Contributions Act </li><li>FITW —Federal Income Tax Withholding </li><li>HCR – Health Care Reform </li><li>HCTC – Health Coverage Tax Credit </li><li>HDHC – High-Deductible Health Coverage </li><li>HDHP – High-Deductible Health Plan </li><li>HMO – Health Maintenance Organization </li><li>HRA – Health Reimbursement Arrangement </li><li>HSA – Health Savings Account </li><li>POP — Premium-Only Plan </li><li>PPO Plan — Preferred Provider Organization Plan </li><li>PTO — Paid Time Off </li> </ul>

Employee Benefits: A Not-So Complete Guide To Getting What you Want

3 Tips For Negotiating For Better Benefits/Pay At Work.

1. Don’t go in guns blazing

2. Find mismatched priorities between parties

3. Be prepared

CURATED BY

CURATOR'S NOTE

Related collections

More like this