Discussion Topic

Concept and Brief Discussion:

International Employee Benefits

The benefits that employees receive depend a lot on the person and where they are from. With paid vacation, the US actually isn’t the best country to work in if you are expecting paid vacation because the work hours in the US compared to other countries is relatively high. In Germany, a worker on average works 500 hours less than a US employee. So if you value paid vacation then you might want to go to Germany and work. Also in the US employers don’t give much time off to their employees. HR really has to do their research when they employ workers in other countries. They can offer different benefits for different workers. It depends on the culture of the country and how they do things their.

Emotional Hook:

What if you came from a country that valued paid time off and worked in the US that doesn’t offer many days of paid vacation? Wouldn’t you think twice about moving jobs? If your family liked going on vacations because they were used to the paid time off then they would still want to go on those vacations. How would you be able to keep that same family tradition in a place that does not value time with family but they value hard work and getting the job done?

Key points to elicit in discussion:

Since in the US benefits are worth 30% of the total compensation of workers salary then HR can expect that benefits are worth quite a bit to US employees. In other countries they might not value certain benefits but just want to be paid money for their compensation. Foreign cultures also might expect more from the employer than the employer really wants to give out.

Facilitative Questions:

Would workers be more motivated to work for a company that values employee benefit or a company that pays out more money for the lack of benefits offered? Are workers more attracted to the larger salary or the larger amount of total compensation?