Tuesday, October 19, 2021
How to Know If Your Benefits Offer Is the Total Package
www.businessinsider.com: Anytime you head into a job interview, you're probably more than ready to dive into a salary conversation. By the time you're sitting across the table from the hiring manager, you've read all the advice, you're armed with stats + industry information + a whole lotta confidence… But are you ready — really ready — to discuss the benefits?
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This article comes at a perfect time as we just had a class where the senior manager of benefits for CMU talked to us about professional benefits. With this, we learned all about what to look out for in terms of healthcare, dental, vision, and other benefits. There was so much I had not thought about. From networks to workers compensation, there is a lot of nitty gritty details that you need to think about before you start working for a company. The biggest take away from both class and this article, in my opinion, it is to learn to negotiate and advocate for yourself. Companies are often willing to work with you when it comes to benefits. And when push comes to shove, you have to be willing to say that if you can not work something out, that is not a company you may want to be working for.
Benefits packages are hard to navigate… it is something that should be taught in school rather than being considered taboo. But of course, it has to do with money and so no one talks about it. Everyone knows the basics of what is considered “good” benefits; healthcare that includes at least medical, dental, and vision in addition to things like a 401(k). But this article addresses some things that may seem less obvious at first like offering flexible schedules and paid sick days. Ideas like these can bring up larger issues like longer and paid maternity/paternity leave or even universal healthcare. These are things that someone might overlook while comparing job offers. But in the long run, these are things that will affect your well-being in addition to your job performance. I have learned to look carefully at my benefits before accepting a job. And honestly asking my parents what they think of the benefits because they are wise and I pass most things by them.
I really like the idea of applying a dollar value to what the company is offering you because that means you can easily compare it to the actual salary value as opposed to comparing apples and oranges. The other time I’ve seen this used is that (as morbid as it is), Penndot assigns a dollar value to each potential death on a state road of $1 Million. This means that when they do a study of road safety they can figure out how much money it makes sense to put into a project to fix a street to make it safer. They basically figure out if it could potentially cause a death or more, and then are willing to spend that many millions of dollars on repairing it. It does make sense to take serious consideration of the benefits because really good health insurance is a must and the employer really should offer dental and vision.
I think this is something most theater artists completely overlook due to the number of us who will end up working as freelance artists and gig workers. It is not possible to get health insurance from a company you are hired to work on one show for. More and more of us are looking for steady jobs though and being educated about what you should be asking for is important. Additionally, negotiation is of some benefits is still possible with gig work mostly through unions. Good benefits, especially vacation time, is more important than salary in my opinion. I know all of this is important, yet I fear that I will be too scared to negotiate out of fear of losing the offer. I think a lot of us feel desperate given how hard it can be at times to find work, but negotiation is still important so that we do not get taken advantage of and continue to contribute to a culture where that is normal in our industry.
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