As you may have noticed, posting around here has been a little sparse lately. This summer I’ve traveled quite a bit visiting 6 different states (which is an accomplishment living on the west coast) and 4 countries. Part of it was for pleasure and part of it was business. So pardon the hiatus.
As an aside to all of this travel, I am getting a crash course in International Benefits and learning how to expand into a new country as well as benchmark benefits in existing non-US countries. A portion of my travels took me to India for 10 days. One of the interesting things that I learned there was about the prevalence of benefits that would not even be considered in the US:
- Covering one’s parents on the employee’s health plan. This is common in India among software & services companies and needed if you want to attract good seasoned professionals whose parents are out of the workforce.
- Payday Advances/Loans provided through the company. This benefit which would seem somewhat heretical in the US is often used in India when someone is purchasing a home or getting married. 1-2 months salary is advanced to the employee and then it is paid back over 3-4 months – or longer. This is often used as a retention tool.
- Office “servants”. This one is a bit bizarre for most US employees to comprehend. There are people in the office who bring drinks and snacks to your desk. You want a glass of water? It gets delivered to you. They often know what the employees like and will have a coffee ready for them upon their arrival to work. They also tend to do some housekeeping around the office as well.
More posts to come on the benefits and challenges of working in an international and multicultural environment.
But I wanted to make sure that you all knew that I had not forgotten you. Additionally, I have been doing a significant amount of HR technology work and compensation work so I may start branching out a little here and there to add in a post or two on those topics as well.
No related posts.
