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Lifestyle Benefit Programs
Imagine working for a company that arranges to have your dry cleaning picked up and delivered to you. Imagine that this same company can arrange for someone to go out and buy a birthday gift for your child, niece, nephew or grandchild. This company can also arrange for someone to wait on the telephone for hours and grab those hard-to-get concert tickets for you (personally, I’ve got a yen for Eric Clapton concert tickets). Imagine what it would be like to work for a company like that.
Easy to Implement
Lifestyle benefit programs are relatively easy to implement and surprisingly no-cost or low cost to the employer. For example, here in the northeast there is a chain of dry cleaners called Zoots, and they pick up and deliver dry cleaning for FREE. Don’t have a Zoots in your area, talk to your local dry cleaner and see if he’d be willing to pick up and deliver your employees’ dry cleaning on a weekly basis.
Negligible Cost/FREE
If you’re a self-employed human resource consultant, designing and implementing lifestyle benefit programs for your clients could be a huge, value-added service you provide to your clients, especially those small or micro businesses. Do you have startup companies among your clientele? Employee-paid benefits can be the answer. There are many companies that provide medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance at group rates without an employer contribution. 401(k) plans can be instituted without an employer contribution too. Some of these plans may require administration fees, which can be rolled into the cost to the employees, but hey, the administration fees are negligible compared to what an employer would have to pay if he used traditional benefit plans.
Perfect Timing
I realize that with the job market the way it is now, there’s no motivation for employers to even think about benefit plans, never mind implement them. In today’s job market, employers can cut back on benefits and not worry about employees jumping ship. What you and I, dear HR consultant, know is that the job market isn’t going to be this sad forever. It will bounce back, and employers will be competing for workers again. If they want to be competitive in that job market, employers will have to beef up the benefits they cut back, or they’ll have to find another way to lure candidates. Imagine how perfect your timing will be, if you can suggest a lifestyle benefit program all ready to roll out. If you do the work now, while things are slow, you’ll be at the ready when the time is right.
Lifestyle Benefits Resource
Want to know more about lifestyle benefit programs, or want help designing a lifestyle benefit program for your clients? Contact me at hrva@extra-assist.com. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have or to send you my one-page document with tips for designing a lifestyle benefit program.
What do you think about a lifestyle benefits program? Got your own ideas for lifestyle benefits, let everyone know by leaving a comment to this blog posting.
=>Donna Caissie, the ExtraOrdinary HR Assistant
Writing Tips for Virtual Assistants, Bloggers, Human Resource Professionals & Everyone Else
Did you know that how you present yourself in writing, as well as what you write about, affects your image? If your writing is riddled with typos, misspellings, bad grammar, incorrect word usage, etc. then the image you portray of yourself is less than professional. If you want to be taken seriously by those who read what you write, then you want to write without obvious errors.
Is Proofreading is Out of Style?
It’s not hard to write like a professional. All it takes is a little proofreading. The problem is that, thanks to technology, proofreading is out of style. Before everyone had a computer, most writing was proofread by a secretary, administrative assistant or a publishing house’s proofreader or editor. You didn’t need to proofread what you wrote because a secretary, administrative assistant, etc. would proof it for you. They also made the necessary corrections. Your grammar’s not up to par? No problem; the secretary will fix it. Don’t know your “to” from your “too”? No problem, the secretary does, and she’ll fix that for you too. Mistakes in grammar, incorrect word usage, spelling errors, typos and incorrect capitalization and punctuation were caught by the secretary, administrative assistant, etc.
Typos, Misspellings & Incorrect Word Usage, Oh My!
With the advent of the computer, word processing programs and spell checking software, everyone can write and self-publish a book, a blog, an ebook or whitepaper or just comment on someone else’s blog. Unfortunately, many of these writings are so riddled with typos, misspellings, incorrect word usages, etc. that one begins to despair about the quality of education our citizens are receiving.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a grammarian, but I do take the extra steps necessary to eliminate obvious mistakes.
Technology is the Culprit
After chewing on the subject for a while, it began to dawn on me that the problem wasn’t that people are uneducated and/or illiterate; the problem was that people were relying on technology to correct their mistakes. Instead of proofreading their writing before publishing/submitting/posting, they were running them through a spell checker and assuming that the spell checker would find everything that’s wrong. As any professional virtual assistant (VA) can tell you, that’s not so. (Sorry, but I had to slip that in there; it’s an important keyword for me.) LOL!
Spell Checkers Alone Won’t Cut It
A spell checker doesn’t know the difference between to, too and two; their, there and they’re; here and hear; your and you’re; whose and who’s; and a rash of other commonly misused words. Spell checkers won’t find grammatical errors unless you tell (set) it to find grammatical errors.
Tips for Professional Writing
So that your writing always portrays you well, here are some writing tips that will help you look like a professional in everything you write.
- If English isn’t your native language and you’re writing for an English-speaking audience, hire someone to proofread everything you write.
- If English is your native language and you’re writing for an English-speaking audience, proofread or hire someone to proofread everything you write.
- Don’t just rely on spell checking programs; spelling checkers don’t find instances of incorrect word usage. They don’t find all misspellings, and they don’t find all typos. Proofread as well as spell check.
- Set your spell checking program to check grammar too.
- If you’re going to blog, write articles, write ebooks, whitepapers or reports, invest in grammar checking software.
- After you’ve spell checked, grammar checked and proofread, put your writing aside for ten minutes, and go do something else.
- After the ten minutes is over, go back to your writing and proofread it one more time, or ask someone else to proofread it for you.
Now you’ve done everything (short of hiring someone to do your writing for you) in your power to make sure your writing portrays you as a professional and not a hobbyist.
