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In this week's e-newsletter

Lighter side: Lunatic fringe benefits

by August 11, 2008 4 Comments

Some employees make great suggestions and ask perceptive questions about their benefits and pay. And then there are these folks:

According to GST Benefits, here are some of the wackiest suggestions employees have made on annual benefits surveys:

  • One employee asked for the company to install a wall-length aquarium filled with exotic tropical fish, saying it would help reduce stress
  • A college professor of Italian culture and European arts asked for the university to pay for his season tickets to the local opera and theater companies – and foot the bill for trips to New York to attend the Metropolitan Opera
  • Another suggested that the company pay bonuses in lottery tickets, and
  • a third asked if he could claim his three dogs as dependents and get doggy day-care reimbursed tax-free via the firm’s dependent-care flex account plan since he and his spouse had no “human children” with which to participate in the benefit.

On a more serious note, every once in awhile you hear tales of polygamist employees who attempt to claim benefits for multiple spouses. Most of these stories appear to be more urban legend than fact, but earlier this year in England there was a nasty controversy over whether people from certain Muslim sects could claim multiple welfare benefits for having multiple wives. 

  
 

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  • HR in Washington

    We once had an employee who said he could not attend the Christmas party and ask if he could receive what we would have paid for him to eat and drink in cash. We said no, obviously.
    On the same note, another employee once requested that we pay him the difference between what we pay for a family medical plan and what we pay for a single since he was doing us a favor by not having a family.

  • Pam L

    Speaking of lunatic benefits, would you know if there are corporations who provide monetary benefits to employees who do not take their company’s offered healthcare? For example, employees often opt for coverage thru their spouse’s employer but lose the benefit of their own employer’s compensation. First of all, is this really a ‘loss’ of benefits? The thought is if thusly compensated, they could use the cash toward their spouse’s plan or receive the ‘employee cost to the corporation’ in their paychecks.

  • Maire J

    To Pam L.
    We have implemented the program and it has worked well. Using Monthly 2007 figures: Employee Coverage $306.00 – Employee premium of $61.20/mo = $244.80 Employer was paying. We offered $100.00 per 2 week pay period if they show documentation of active coverage under another plan.

    The $100.00 is taxed, and reflects as a separate line on their stub. We save $44.80/month in addition to the cost increases at review / renewal if those staff were on our census. For our 2008 renewal, the savings will be even greater

    Employer cost: $2600/year for Waivers versus $ 2,937.69 for covered employees.

  • http://www.vmhc.org Judy Buckley

    I work for a non-profit and our Board voted years ago against this pay in lieu of insurance premium. We do get asked about it occasionally. We are in California and have seen double-digit increases in our insurance premiums for at least 10 years running. We can sometimes lower costs increases to below 10% by tweaking the benefits a little or sometimes by changing carriers. But, that is getting more difficult to do. In comparison to Maire’s plan, our HMO was $375.11 for 2008 and is increasing to $439.10 – that’s with choosing an option with a higher co-pay for employees and having them share in the premium difference. (As the old joke goes, we take that non-profit thing seriously!)
    I wonder what it costs Maire’s employees to get their own individual policy – I know here it is really expensive and the benefits usually less rich.