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different benefits for recruitment
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different benefits for recruitment
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We have a waiting period of 6 months before offering holidays, vacations and health/dental benefits. Since these benefits are not required offerings, we would like to use a shorter waiting period to e
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different benefits for recruitment

posted at 6/24/2008 10:30 AM EDT
Posts: 94
First: 2/7/2008
Last: 3/21/2011
We have a waiting period of 6 months before offering holidays, vacations and health/dental benefits. Since these benefits are not required offerings, we would like to use a shorter waiting period to entice certain employees. We do offer them to regular FT employees and have waived the waiting period for some key EEs. We are not discriminating against a protected class, just having trouble getting certain employees. I'm concerned about morale if it is found out some EEs are being offered this and others hired earlier who are in the same position weren't. Are there legal implications as well? We are in CA. Is there a way you HR professionals have gotten around this?

different benefits for recruitment

posted at 6/24/2008 12:02 PM EDT
Posts: 3870
First: 2/12/2002
Last: 11/2/2009
Yes, you can offer different vacation/holiday benefits to new hires provided, as you note, there's no disparate impact on any protected class.

Health/dental benefits are a different matter. Your Summary Plan Description (SDP) will clearly define who is eligible and when. Deviating from that can have serious consequences.

However, you could do a couple of things. First, you could have the employee source her/his own insurance and pay the monthly bill (within limits). Or you could subsidize her/his COBRA payments if they're eligible from their previous employment. Or simply give a sign on bonus and be done with it.

The morale is a different issue. Special arrangements like these often have a tendancy to backfire. Even if you swear the recipient to secrecy, my experience is that you may as well publish it on the front page of the local newspaper. And then your other employees who've waited out the 6 month period will be unhappy and it certainly won't help employee perceptions of management's fairness.

different benefits for recruitment

posted at 6/26/2008 7:35 AM EDT
Posts: 94
First: 2/7/2008
Last: 3/21/2011
Thank you. Our plan summary does allow for key employees to start benefits immediately, but I still was worried about the impact on morale. I'd hate to get one employee and loose others. We did consider the sign on bonus as well as helping with the COBRA payments.
We do experience the occasional leak of information like this which I didn't think in my experience was unusual. Employees seem to talk more than I ever would. I just wanted some feedback to confirm my thoughts. Thank you.

different benefits for recruitment

posted at 6/28/2008 5:11 PM EDT
Posts: 2442
First: 2/12/2000
Last: 9/14/2011
If you wish to keep morale as high as possible then be transparent. Clearly define what the open key positions are so that everyone knows what is key and why they are key.

Morale will go down because employees without information assume there is someone arbitarily picking and choosing-Favoritism. You can eliminate alot that with transparency.

In fact you can put a "bounty" on filling these key positions by always paying a referral fee on a key position if someone internally sends you a candidate that is hired.

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