The Advantage of Parental Benefits.

 

Employers should continue to grant extended benefits coverage to. It is to the advantage of each company, its employees, and society as a whole for employers to provide such much-needed benefits as paid maternity leave, health insurance, and day care facilities to those employees who need them.

The employee benefits that a business provides can affect the new employees it attracts, and the performance, retention, and happiness of current employees.   However, a company’s choice to offer certain benefits affects more than simply the bottom line.  Making decisions that benefit society can be one more way in which a business fulfills its role as an important part of the community it resides in.  Improvements in that society, in turn, benefit the corporation. By supporting the roles of parents in our society, a company helps create a supportive, productive environment for its employees with children and helps ensure the next generation is healthier and happier.

A. Parental Benefits Packages

      1. Health Care for Children

 

In the United States, employers are the primary source for much-needed health care. Therefore, a parent’s employer is often the sole source of coverage for those under 18. Some States do provide plans to children unable to get health coverage, especially those raised in low-income families. However, a change in the current system might well exclude children who do not qualify under low-income plans, and would otherwise overburden a State’s limited resources.

Providing health insurance to children also impacts the company more directly by reducing employee absenteeism. Health coverage encourages diagnostic and preventative care, reducing the amount of time a parent has to miss work to care for a sick child. Therefore, providing not only insurance but a comprehensive health plan is in the best interests of the company and society.

      2. Maternity/Paternity Leave

 

Providing extended paid maternity and paternity leave also benefits both the company and society. An extended maternity leave allows a parent to fully care for a child early on, and allows the mother to recover fully from giving birth. It also allows the mother time to begin breast feeding her child, a process which may take some time and effort to begin properly. Thusly, maternity leave may prevent future health problems.

Since the weeks after the birth of a child are an important part of his or her development, extensive parental leave also offers a psychological benefit to the child. This yet again provides an advantage for the company by reducing the chances that a parent will be distracted or miss work when returning after the birth of a child.

      3. Day Care

 

Lastly, providing day care has repercussions on both the company and society. On-site day care has the benefit of being a more efficient means of caring for a child than home care. The child is in a social environment, which may help during his or her development. Furthermore, the parent is given more opportunities to interact with his or her child, during the commute and on breaks. If the child becomes distressed or upset, it is easy for the parent to visit his or her child quickly, and comfort her, instead of having to leave the workplace.

The benefits to society are also present in the simple fact that mothers are typically the primary caregivers. The effect of less support for parents inevitably enacts more of an impact on women than on men.  Withdrawing maternity leave and childcare benefits will often dissuade women from returning to the workplace after having a child. By offering women a meaningful choice, we can help ensure that the next generation is raised by women who are happier and more fulfilled.

Having such benefits across the board will result in more women in the workplace, more women in positions of authority and leadership, and more female mentors for the next generation of working women. Providing a ‘critical mass’ of female executives and other employees will help dissipate the ‘boy’s club’ mentality of some companies that can act as a barrier to women in the workforce. The few women that currently occupy these positions do not provide this critical mass; their presence often does little to change the social tenor of the boardroom.

    4. Other Aspects

 

The benefits to businesses in small communities are amplified by the effect these policies will have to future generations of workers.  Children that grow up healthier and happier are more likely to excel in school and reach their true potential.  When these children enter the workforce, they will ensure that the company is drawing future employees from a better pool of applicants.

Additionally, many childless workers will someday be parents. In this sense, the holistic effect of the parental packages will benefit them.  Co-workers who currently have children will continue to contribute to the packages after their children leave home, and will help support the children of these employees at a future time. In the long-term, many employees will benefit from a scheme that focuses on families and the welfare of our nations’ children.

Therefore, it is in the interest society and of each business’ bottom line that they continue providing benefits packages to parents. It will result in the retention and promotion of more female employees, the ability to draw potential employees from a larger applicant pool, and more productive workers. It will also help the future of our nation by providing future generations with health and psychological benefits. This will be one of many ways in which businesses realize their responsibility to the community as a whole.

 

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¹ It is important to note that these are distinct from the cafeteria plans mentioned in Section 125 of the US Tax code, which refer to employees using their pre-tax salary to buy their own benefits. Here we are referring only to benefits paid for directly by the company.
 

Café or the Cafeteria? Childfree in the Workplace

by Teri Tith, The Purple Woman

Childfree Blogger & Founder of Purple Women & Friends

http://purplewomenblog.blogspot.com 

Should employers continue to grant extended benefits coverage to parents and decline to transition to “cafeteria” plans that set a single dollar amount for each employee? 

We have to appreciate what we have in this country, the good ol’ U.S. of A., and one of those things is a free marketplace. Burgeoning entrepreneurship is a sign of a healthy economy. This well spring is the direct result of a healthy middle class, the size of which is also an indicator of a strong economy and a happy populace. Macro-economist would agree but it’s hard for most of us to get the bigger picture. We all prosper when our economy prospers, and prosperity is not tied to what hand-outs our employers give us. 

I am a Democrat, trying to develop Republican sensibilities. Now that liberals have won back both House and Senate, majority leaders and their followers have a responsibility to listen to the other side. Republicans have morphed into religious fanatics lately but they remain true to their true pro-economy, capitalist core. It is even more important to develop the ability to dialogue and come into the conversation open-minded. If we really feel like socialists at heart, we should move further north. 

When I first heard about Ms. Ciaccio’s project and her stance, I cringed because telling a corporation how to take care of its employees feels a bit heavy handed. I look forward to the dialogue she stirs up and applaude her for doing so. Here’s my take and you are free to disagree with it: 

I think we, the childfree, need to take responsibility for our own choices. We decided (or accepted) our status, and regardless the reason, we should not expect compensation for phantom children. The Achilles Heel of the argument that Ms. Ciaccio puts forward is that in fact we should have extra disposable income since we don’t have extra mouths to feed. As an employer, it is proper to take care of your employee and his or her family. This argument will not find a sympathetic ear with the great masses of parents who outnumber us by the way. The U.S. tax code already allows employers to offer pre-tax spending options for unreimbursed medical and caregiving expenses, be they child or elder. That is available to us all equally. 

If we advocate that a company provide equal value in benefits to each employee, where would that money come from? Profits would be the first thing a board or business-owner would move to protect. Head count and salary would be the likely target, so would the company picnic and the ironically, the company-sponsored cafeteria. The proposal is called a “cafeteria plan” of packaging benefits, in which each employee gets one a voucher for the same amount with which they can pick and choose from a benefits plan.  

Put on your business-owner hat for a moment. Look at your total cost per employee. Parents cost more for businesses so heavily weighting their bennies to families with kids, yet, which employee gets promoted? Unfortunately, the odds are that the guy telling jokes at the water cooler, the married man, yes, one who has the right number of kids probably does. Oh, and the tall people. So many subjective factors come into play, rather than job performance, but I would bet that all business owners look at employee cost when making staffing decisions. They have to or they wouldn’t be in business.  

So, why would childfree want to advocate to make themselves more expensive and less attractive in the workplace? Instead we should shed some light on what a bargain we are, always filling in for the ones who have to dash home for a child’s activity. Use it to our advantage. The cafeteria plan would impact women in the workplace most directly. Many talented working women are also mothers and if employers were forced to offer equal benefits for all employees chances are some of theirs will go away. The economic impact to the business would be too great for it to turn out otherwise in reality. 

Ms. Ciaccio, if you want to eat at the cafeteria, go ahead. Our co-workers who have kids are probably eating lunch a sack lunch at their desk. I’ll take my compensation in dollars and cents, and eat across the street at the café with my extra disposable income, and only sign up for as much health coverage as I need.

Ms. Tith is right, we are dealing with an open marketplace.  I do agree that each employer should make the decision on their own, based on what is best for the company—a heavy-handed approach is not our best strategy.

However, it is m perspective that the inequalities between differing compensation are not a result of an impartial, informed decision by each employer.  It is based on assumptions stemming from the past –assumptions that are no longer true.  The advent of the childfree is recent.  Prior to that, workplace benefits equalized over the long term, since most childless employees would eventually bear children.  With this understanding, providing benefits to parents was generally fair.

 

An employer should not be strong-armed into changing policies, but they should be making these decisions from an informed perspective—one that takes into account the fact that an increasing number of employees will never have children, and that an increasing number of these childless employees feel slighted.  I think it is likely that employers are merely unaware of this.

 

Furthermore, we will not be more expensive to employers - a cafeteria plan would simply make us cost the same.  Since childfree workers tend to work longer hours, we would typically still cost less per hour than parents would.  As each employer would be adopting this policy specifically to attract childless workers, it is likely that they would already recognize this fact, and unlikely that it would make us less appealing as potential employees.

 

However, some of Ms. Tith’s points remain—it could very well result in less compensation for working mothers and/or less monetary compensation for all (see below)  As to the first point—it may well result in fewer women in the workplace;  an unfortunate result of women’s choices, and the societal trends that persist that make men less likely to share equally in childcare.  While this is unfortunate, why should it be the childfree, the very people who are not causing this situation, who suffer?  As to the latter point - I would say that the actual effect on salary would be minimal (since the childless are still a minority) but that even if it were costly—that is the price you pay for basic fairness.

Response

 

 

 

Response:

 

While I acknowledge throughout the essay that these benefits are important for society, the plan I am advocating would not withdraw them.  It would merely make such benefits part of the choice of parenting, and not a subsidy paid by childless workers.

Contrary Perspectives

Childfree Issues : Cafeteria Plans

Equal Pay  for Equal Work