Top Work Benefits for Executives

What are the top work benefits executives get in corporations? Here is our list:

1. Healthcare Benefits: Top Health Care plans include: Health Spending Accounts (HSA’s) to pay for less covered programs in the health plan such as dental and paramedical costs . For exampleglasses may only be marginally covered in a health plan. A health spending account(HSA) offers a dollar amount that is not a taxable benefit to the employee and is fully tax deductible for the employer. For employers who offer HSA’s, funds in the spending account can be used to reimburse executives for healthcare expenses up to the dollar amount of the HSA.
2. Wellness Programs: An example of wellness options include benefits offered by Medcan or Cleveland Clinic . These programs offer preventative care such as annual health assessments, state of the art diagnostics, screening from genetic services, and to day to day maintenance. These type of wellness programs allow the employee to identify health issues before they start and provide follow-up treatment for the employee.
3. Top Up Insurance Plans: There is typically a gap between traditional benefit packages for the average staff member and a plan that would cover an executive at the company. Based on income and lifestyle, the average life, disability, and critical illness plans offered would not sufficiently cover executives employed at the company. In such cases, an executive top up plan would be offered to executives to bridge the gap to make up for the lack of disability, life and critical illness benefits available to them by the current plan being offered by their employer.
4. Retirement Benefit Packages: Less than 40 percent of employed Canadians have a pension plan. The two most common types of retirement benefits are defined contribution and defined benefit plans. Because of the guarantees associated with a defined benefit plan only 4 percent of employers offer defined benefit plans at this time. For the executive, both benefits are inadequate as neither plan addresses pension maximums for employees with income over $100,000. The plan ideally suited to executives attempting to save for retirement is a Retirement Compensation Arrangement. Retirement Compensation plans offer supplemental pensions or savings plans for a company to attract and retain their key employees.
5. Stock Options- Tied to a company profits, Stocks options allow key employees to have a stake in the company’s profits. Stocks options may allow employees to buy shares at a favorable price below market value ( the strike price) or may also offer the employee a number of shares per year based on hitting specific targets outlined in the employee’s employment contract.
6. Car Allowances-Employers can lure key employees with either a car allowance( a specific monthly amount used to pay for the use of a car, a driver, or through a lease that would offer a range luxury cars on behalf of the key employee. Additional funds can also be offered for maintenance and parking.
7. Other Perks- Perks are over and above the benefits outlined and tend can range from, gym memberships, access to travel points accumulated on a company credit card, access to a country club or exclusive membership, event tickets, gym on site and other specialized benefits specific to the company’s culture. Fully integrated paternity and maternity leave programs are also becoming popular so that both parents can share child rearing burden, especially if the key employee is the higher income earner. Offering onsite childcare or emergency supportive care is becoming increasingly popular as well.
8. Time Off- Paid sabbaticals, flexible work schedules and the opportunity to work from home offer employers the ability to attract key employees who are looking for a more reasonable schedule. These policies assume they have been at the company for a period of time( usually 5 years) and they produce results and meet deadlines.
9. Professional Services- Compensation for executives can often be complicated . Access to professional services such as an accountant, financial planner, estate planner or other professional services is a sought after perk.
10. Corporate Housing- This include amounts related to apartments or housing maintained by the company for use of an executive while travelling. Funds to pay for travel range from a dollar amount, that can be paid with a company credit card when the employee is on a short trip, or a choice of a paid apartment in a sought after neighbourhood for longer trips.

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