Human Resource Management In Singapore - The Complete Guide, Volume C: Employee Benefits

Book excerpt: 'Human Resource is our most precious asset. Progressive HR enhances human capital. Regressive HR depresses it. HR practitioners are entrusted with heavy responsibility. They must equip themselves with the knowledge and skills so that they could multiply the human capital under their care. This HR management series is timely. It is written in the Singapore context guided by our local employment laws and tripartite guidelines and standards. I commend the authors for their endeavour to produce such a first.'Lim Swee SayFormer Minister for ManpowerFormer Secretary General, National Trades Union Congress'Human Resource is a critical enabler. Good or bad HR can mean the difference between an organisation succeeding or failing. At the individual level, HR impacts an employee's job fulfilment and quality of work life. This is particularly important with a changing workforce profile made up of more professionals, managers and executives. This HR series is a useful compendium of HR fundamentals and lessons drawn from real-life cases. The authors have distilled lessons from their decades of HR practice and poured their insights into it. Overall, a useful and practical guide for any HR practitioner and a laudable contribution to the HR community in Singapore.'Patrick Tay Teck GuanAssistant Secretary-General, National Trades Union CongressHuman Resource Management in Singapore — The Complete Guide covers a wide spectrum of human resource management topics in five volumes: Employment Management, Work and Remuneration, Employee Benefits, Performance and Development, and Employee Conduct and Relations. In every chapter, the WHY, WHAT and HOW are presented lucidly. The books are a must-have GPS for any human resource practitioner in Singapore. Students, academics and bosses into human resource management as well as overseas human resource practitioners will also find the books helpful and instructive. Volume C on Employee Benefits brings readers through a wide array of employee and leave benefits, both mandatory and discretionary including medical, dental, transport, insurance, overseas posting incentives, long service awards, flexible benefits and more. Employee benefits do much to convey an organisation's total employee value proposition. The design of benefits requires astute judgment; in showing empathy for employees' needs, it must also be deliberate and purposeful to steer employee behaviours and incisive to exact a return for the organisation. Installing a new benefit is easy; unwinding one is less straightforward. Are benefits being appreciated? What are the potential abuses? Are there better and more cost-effective solutions? Are flexible benefits or the clean wage system the way to go? These will be discussed to help readers gain insights into the realm of employee benefits.