NATURE AND SCOPE OF STAFF
WELFARE
Definition
Staff welfare has been defined
variously writers. Armstrong and Mudis defined it as “item in the total package
offered to staff over and above salary, which increase their wealth or well
being at some cost to the employer. In the words of Yoder Ethel, “it is wide
variety of services provided by companies for staff families. But Nwachukwu
from his own perspective sees it as “addition entitlements given to staff by
management to supplement their wages.
Naylon and Torrington view it
as “a volumetric provision on the point of the staff. The definition adopted
for this paper however is that of French and several who define it “as
something of value, apart from agreed regular monetary payment of salaries and
wages given by an employer to a staff.
(M. Armstrong and H. Murlism A
Handbook of Salary administration) London: Koran page Ltd 1980, P. 140. Dale
Yoder, Ethat, Handbook of Personnel Management and Labour relations (New York:
Mcgraw Hill Book 10), 1958 p. 21 C. C. Nwachukwu Personnel management: Concepts
and situations. An unpublished research project, University of Ngieria, Nsukka.
Naylon and Torrington, Administration of personnel.
Staff welfare have been
commonly referred to as staff benefits or services. This distinction here is
that benefits are where direct monetary reward accrued to the individual worker
e.g pension leave pay and salary advance, while service involve no direct and
unidentifiable monetary benefits e,g staff club recreation facilities
arrangement of reception hall and Christmas parties, other yet refer to it as
fringe benefits.
As mentioned earlier, staff
welfare exists in all cultures, even during slave period and in all
organization and had existed at all time export that they take different shapes
and form and attract different names. It is in the recognition of their workers
need fulfillment functions that they are variably called welfare benefits,
welfare services, employee income, they are being referred to as supplementary
benefits, supplementary compensation or pay, and expenses, they are beginning
to be indirect compensation and non tax benefits.
2.2 NATURE AND SCOPE
Although the term staff
welfare, in itself implied a voluntary provision on the part of the employers,
the administration of the sate benefit schemes and certain legal requirements
concerning other benefit upon the employer.
In addition to such
obligations, however a large number of companies provide staff services for
which there is no legal requirement in the past, they used to be tury bits and
pieces of goodies that occasionally feel from the high table of paternalistic
employers, hence they are known to be fringe (i.e marginal) benefits.
2.3 GROWTH OF STAFF WELFARE
The growth of staff welfare
scheme has been tremendous particularly since World War II and apparently no end
is in sight. The expansion is world wide and so frightening that the scheme
have been “compared to the mythological animal that immediately grew two heads
when one was chopped off from nowhere, it was the leaved era of paternalism
that first saw a widespread adoption of such benefits as company housing and
company stores. This era did not last long as it fell into disrupt, supposedly
as a result of the employee’s/staff desire for industrial adulthood. Alter it
was a news era of new paternalism that developed after the depression of the
1930’s and the World War II.
Edwin B. Flippo: Personnel
Management (New York: Mc Graw Hill) 1971: p. 549, since then, government
legislations staff awareness, unions demand, among others have continued to
escalate the development and growth of these benefits.
REASON FOR GROWTH
Flippo in his book summarized
the sources of the rapid growth of such programmes as:
(i) Labour Union demands
(ii) Changed employee attitude
(iii) Government requirements
(iv) Competition that forces
other employers to mater benefits to attract and keep labour.
(v) Period wage control which
freeze wages but permit the offering of services as a substitute for wage
increases.
(vi) High company income tax,
deductible expenses items of recent, the package has grown hydroheaded in form
and monstrous in relative size and in apprehension, that it is beginning to be
called the “hidden pay roll”.
Managers and employers do not
play dominant role in administering all benefit and services and may not do
little more than to comply with prescribed public regulation. So, public policy
plays a leading role in expanding several important types of fringe provision.
It has long emphasized the advancement of economic security and qualified
benefits such as public pensions, pail vacations, industrial ill health and
accident.
Staff union on the other hand
has supported all of these public intentions and has in addition sought paid
sick leave, health and welfare activities increased payment to workers etc. the
unions have pursued these benefits with vigour for the best interest of their
members.
Even though managers and
employers may sometimes appear as opposed to all fringe they have invented and
advanced on their own. This is in recognition of the fact that many benefits offer
possibilities of implementing their policies to improve staff morale, to
encourage wide participation and understanding, to reduces absenteeism and to
assist staff in identifying their personal goals and interest with those of the
organization. Hence, employers have come to regard fringe benefits as costs of
production which are charged along with other firms of remuneration.
C. THE COST OF STAFF WELFARE
In many companies today, a
substantial proportion of the total labour costs concerns staff welfares, in
addition to basic wages or salaries. These benefits in the staffs view,
represent an extra income, additional security .
