00:02
The first part of this question is asking us to take a look at the advantages and disadvantage to both employers and employees of having these types of employee benefits.
00:12
So starting off for the employers, one advantage of having these soft benefits is that employees are staying at work and they're going to socialize with each other through a lot of these soft benefits.
00:22
And so employees bonding will perform a stronger, stronger committed team.
00:28
People are going to be more attached to your particular workplace when they're all going to the gym together.
00:32
Or if the children are going to the same child care.
00:35
And so having these employees working together, that gets you some more employee commitment, and that's going to have a more dedication to your company.
00:43
It also incentivizes people to stay at work longer.
00:46
And so if somebody's working on a work project, but they're just kind of feeling done for the day, but they can go play ping pong or something for a few hours, then they might stay at work longer and then just go back to the computer when they're done with that.
00:58
Or maybe they want to stay in time for dinner.
01:00
So they're going to be working longer hours, and so that's more labor that you're getting for the same paycheck from your employees.
01:07
And then for the employee, this could also give you a lot more fun at work because if you have these softer benefits, like having a gym on campus or you can give yourself a massage break or have a fancy restaurant meal that's for free, then that's going to make you enjoy your work day more.
01:24
And so it definitely is a perk to have some of these benefits there.
01:27
And depending on the specifics, this could even give you a better lifestyle because if we're talking about the gym, or there's one job i was considering that had a free pilates membership that you could do as part of the job, then these benefits will give you a better overall lifestyle.
01:45
So even if the pay itself isn't amazing, if it gives you access to this really high quality lifestyle, that might make the job more work.
01:53
However, there are also some disadvantages to having soft benefits as opposed to just pay.
01:58
So for example, for the employer, it costs more.
02:01
And especially because you can't tell people, hey, your paycheck is x amount more, you have to instead spend that x amount on all of these different benefits and hope that the cost pays off.
02:12
It's also an additional effort to organize how this money is going to be spent.
02:17
And so that's an investment of time and resources that the company would have to expend.
02:22
And on the employee side, given that the company is using up some of their resources in order to put towards these soft benefits, for each individual employee, these benefits, these benefits might not be relevant for them.
02:34
And so these soft benefits might be not how you'd personally want to spend your money.
02:39
And so as a result, maybe these benefits don't mean a lot to you.
02:43
Maybe you can't have the restaurant food because you have food allergies.
02:46
Maybe you don't have kids yet so the child care is relevant...