Microsoft's Employee Benefits Package: Achieving the Goal - Essay Sample

Abstract

This memo is aimed at informing you that what is being handled and worked on here involves the steps taken by the Microsoft Corporation to come up with an employee benefits package so that they can retain their employees. It is again aimed at evaluating how this corporation has achieved its target through the steps taken.

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Secondly, the memo informs on the types of benefits which have been provided or rather put in place by the Microsoft Corporation in the United States regarding their employees. Shown are how the various kinds of benefits have resulted in the attraction of a high number of employees and how this has influenced their retention to work for this firm for a long time.

I hope that the information provided in this memo will help the reader identify and understand the various ways in which Microsoft Corporation has moved a step in developing the best benefits package for its employees and the outcome of this. This is also important in the case of any other company and or organization that would like to make use of the same method to retain their employees.

Introduction

Microsoft Corporation is a company that has been in existence for quite a very long time in the United States and has had several achievements in terms of gaining popularity and acquiring the largest market share in the world. This company is one of the oldest and best companies that deal with computer products right from the hardware products to software. From the time it was started up to the present day, Microsoft has gone through a lot of issues which have been solved in the most effective ways so that there exists an outstanding performance in terms of productivity of the computer software and hardware throughout the entire world. Another essential thing ensured through this one is a higher productivity rate of all these products and acquisition of the highest market share and competitive advantage throughout the areas in which it operates.

One of the most crucial things which had earlier on been a problem and in this case a burning issue in the operation of Microsoft is the inability of the firm to draw more and more employees to themselves and retain them as their workers for a long time. This case has not been there for this Microsoft Company alone but rather for nearly all the companies that run in the world. In the case of Microsoft, it was necessary to begin coming up with the most effective solution that would handle the problem of fewer employee attraction and retention in the company. Therefore all the appropriate measures had to be considered and put in place so that the company could get to a level in which employees felt the motive and attraction to work with the company not only for a short term basis but also for the longtime basis. In other words, a change had to be implemented that gave the employees in Microsoft a sense to stay and work for the common good of the company without leaving to other places in the name of looking for better jobs.

Identification of the Facts

Microsoft Corporation is such a big firm that it requires a lot of labor to be available if it has to succeed in its daily productions and any other kind of stuff which it does to get to the target it has in terms of doing business and competing effectively with similar companies in the world. Even though it is that firm that requires a lot of employees up to and including machinery for the daily tasks, over a long time, it had been struggling on how to obtain a large number of employees in this regard as many as the firm required. Most of the employees who went to seek jobs in the firm never took long before they left the tasks to other places claiming that they were going to look for the best places where they could work well (Laundon et al.). It is evident that when a large number of employees leave the organization and others are not willing to join; then it means that there is a problem with that particular firm. The result of such an instance is that the level of productivity of the organization will drastically go down and affect the profits of their firm.

These are some of the facts that explain what the problem was in Microsoft to the extent that the employees found no need to stay and work for this firm:

Lack of Good Retire Benefits

Microsoft had no excellent plan put in place that provided for the benefits to be enjoyed by the employees who worked in the company for long years up to retirement. Absence of the best benefits for such employees acted as a factor that demoralized most of the employees to quit working with this firm and search for a better place where they felt that they were going to acquire and enjoy all these retirement benefits after they had completed their working time there (Laundon et al.). Therefore, upon the realization that there was this problem, even the new employees who had just joined and started working for the firm would find this organization not to be an excellent place to work in and therefore the only best and applicable solution was to get suitable working environments that would offer them the best retirement benefits.

In addition, apart from the already employed and working personnel deciding to leave, the prospective employees were lost because they found nothing unusual to work with such a firm, and therefore they did not even want to start working with the Microsoft corporation but instead looked for the better ones which provided them with old age benefits after work and retirement. As a result, the level of production at Microsoft went down to adverse levels.

Lack of Good Health Insurance

All employees like working in the firms which provide for and care for their health. Health is a paramount consideration in any company that attracts and retains a large number of employees to work for that particular company. What it means by health consideration, in this case, is the provision of a right working environment that does not affect the health status of the employees negatively or on the other hand providing health insurance incentives for the employees. Regarding Microsoft and its employees, this has been the main factor that has led to the loss of many employees and the inability to attract more employees since no right insurance incentives put in place to take care of their health. Also, no prospective employees had the desire to ask for a job in the Microsoft Company since they felt that their health was not cared about (Bais). This was a significant disadvantage to the company itself since the lack of a sufficient number of employees to carry out the duties and or processes of the firm was a failure in the operation of the computer company,

Absence of Life Insurance Benefits

Life insurance, on the other hand, is another thing that employees consider so much in the firms they work with. Microsoft had not earlier come up with a strategy to provide their employees with life insurance so that in case anything happened and some of the employees lost their lives they would be compensated (Bais). Therefore due to this, the attraction of employees in this company and retaining them was not very possible. Most of them felt that their lives were not secure and that better places where their lives would be insured existed.

Poor Time Offs

Getting time offs in the Microsoft Corporation had been a big deal and not all the employees stood an excellent chance to get time offs from their daily jobs to go and either take rest or do other things that concerned their lives. Most of the times, when an employee qualified to get time off from the corporation, they were not paid for these time offs and the amounts they had not worked for during the time off would not be included in their salaries (Bais). This made most of the employees feel demoralized to a level that they did not want to continue working with this company anymore because of the reduced privileges given to them.

Unpaid Holidays

Another main concern that affected the work of most employees in Microsoft was the outstanding holidays that were given to them. Instead of the company offering holidays to the employees and paying them as usual, what used to happen was that the employees were not paid during the holidays and if so was to happen, these employees had to report to work as usual without having to recognize whether it was on holiday or not. Due to this problem, most of the earlier employees of this firm left due to the way the company used to pay then poorly even during holidays and others saw no sense to join the firm and work for it (Younge, and Marx). The production and profitability level of the firm had to go down first and thus it was not in a position to compete effectively with other companies that involved in the same activities like it.

Problems With Parental Leaves

The last fact that has over time been affecting the way the employees are attracted and retained at Microsoft is the leaves that the employees request. The main focus when it comes to the leaves that are required by the employees in the company is the parental leaves. It is important to note that most of the employees working at Microsoft are parents who need some good time to attend to the needs of their children. The inability of Microsoft as a company to give its employees the best parental leaves which are paid so that they can go and work on some issues concerning their children or even for pregnant employees to take rest made it impossible for the employees to stay (Younge, and Marx). Also, other prospective employees lost interest in the company and saw no reason to look for jobs in the company as they felt that the employees were not treated with the utmost consideration of what they deserve. Therefore due to this, the profits of Microsoft went down substantially, and competitors began like overcoming the company.

Discussion of Solutions to the Problems

Owing to the fact that the performance of Microsoft corporation had gone down because of the problems that affected the employees, there was a great need for the stakeholders of to come together and identify all the necessary and helpful measures which they could put in place to avoid the occurrence of a more adverse negative effects on the company's business. Therefore coming up with an excellent strategy to ensure that the enormous benefits packages were put in place so that more employees were attracted to the company and retained for a long time was the most crucial thing of all.

One important thing that was to be done by this benefits package was to offer a great deal of motivation to these employees and make them comfortable in their working environments so that they saw no sense of having to quit. Moreover, it was to draw more and more employees to Microsoft Corporation because of the excellent condition of working that existed. These are the benefits packages which the Microsoft company has been able to put in place up to the present day and which have helped in the realization of their dreams of having a lot of employees and increasing productivity. The employed benefits packages for the employees are;

Solution on Life Insurance

The main thing that the Microsoft Company had to do was to ensure that life insurance was provided for their e...