Discretionary benefits refers to those benefits, which are not mandated by law. The three components of discretionary benefits include paid time off, services, and protection programs. Paid time off is designed to pay employees when they take time off work for holidays, vacations, leave (personal, funeral, and sick leave), and jury duty. An integrated paid time off policy into a single paid off policy provides employees with the ability to schedule their time off without explaining reasons. An example of a paid time off include a sabbatical leave, where employees are offered time off with pay to take part in professional activities such as curriculum development or research projects. Volunteerism is also part of a paid time off programs that provides employees with payment as they take time off to support a specific cause (Martocchio, 2014).
Protection programs are designed to promote health of employees and provide family benefits. Generally, these programs offer protection against loss of income by some factors such as serious illness, disability, and unemployment. An example of a protection program include a disability insurance, which is divided into two forms, the long-term disability insurance and the short-term disability insurance. Long-term disability insurance offers benefits for the periods between six months to life. It usually encompasses permanent injuries and disabilities. Short-term disability insurance offers benefits for a six months or less and it covers recovery from injury, pregnancy, and surgery recovery time (Martocchio, 2014).
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Services provide employees with enhancements for things such as continuing with education or assisting with matters of the family such as daycare assistance. An example of a service benefit include a family assistance program where an employer assist employees with either elder or childcare. The program assist employees by offering care for a member of their family in order for them to continue providing productive work. Tuition reimbursement programs is also a type of service that provide tuition costs to their employees either partial or full time so as to foster continuing education to employees (Martocchio, 2014).
Example of an organization that effectively includes those benefits in its benefits portfolio include Teaching Strategies for Early Childhood. This organization is an employer that provides different discretionary benefits to their employees. Examples of the multiple discretionary benefits offered by this organization include tuition assistance programs, paid vacation leave, retirement plan, employee assistance programs, short and long-term disability, and paid maternity leave. However, the Teaching Strategies for Early Childhood does not provide paid leave for volunteerism or sabbatical leave (Black, 2015).
References
Black, M. (2015). Improving company production: the role of organizational incentives in enhancing employee discretionary effort. Journal of Student Research, 4(1), 130-135.
Martocchio, J. (2014). Strategic compensation: A human resource management approach (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
