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A review of the benefits literature suggests a variety of motives regarding new employer initiatives. Mayer (2019) reported 50 examples of organizations' decisions to enhance their employee benefits offerings. Among them was Anthem Inc., which gave employees a $1,000 boost to 401(k) accounts, and CVS Health, which added to its paid parental leave and absorbed the annual increase to employee health premiums that would normally have been passed to workers. These companies were sharing the savings due to tax or other legislative changes (Mayer 2019). The enhancements to employee benefits extended beyond the sharing of cost savings due to legislation. Aflac increased its 401(k) match, made a one-time contribution and added hospital and accident insurance to its company-sponsored benefits. It designated the additions to benefits as strategic company investments. Benefitfocus instituted an employee stock program awarding a single restricted stock unit with an additional share every three years under the auspice that it will influence employee retention and engagement. Carhartt instituted a student-loan debt relief benefit with an eye toward attracting and retaining employees (Mayer 2019).
These five examples are just the tip of the iceberg of new employer initiatives for the design and funding of employee benefits. Mayer (2019) provided 45 additional examples. One common thread among many of them was that they were predicated on regulatory actions, labor market demands or strategic initiatives. The most often cited reasons included tax changes or savings due to legislation, recruitment and retention of employees, consistency with organizational values, culture or practices and helping employees achieve a work-life balance to support better performance. Another common thread among all of them was that the justifications were not grounded in strong evidence of strategic efficacy but were more reflective of responsiveness to constituent input or logical market reasoning.
Publicly available robust research studies and findings to support evidencebased decision making for the development of benefits strategy is sparse. Much of what we think to be true about employee benefits and their outcomes is based on a small body of research dating from the 1980s, which was equivocal in its findings at the time. The strongest of this research focused on pension systems and employee responses to them, which emphasizes how much the world of employee benefits has changed in...