Best Employee Benefits

How do the benefits you offer to your employees stack up? What are the best employee benefits available? You may not be able to provide your employees with everything they would like, but these ideas from other companies might help you shape your plan.

Benefits are boring. Perhaps that's why we don't think about them all that much. But with benefits such as modular office spaces and wellness programs, human resource experts predict that will change in the future. Benefits such as standard pension plans will be replaced by optional perks, such as on-site day care or elder care that will draw the best employees and give them a reason to stay.

With so many fresh employee benefit options designed to capture and retain the best employees, benefits packages of the future could very well take the cafeteria approach, offering a choice of the creative along with standard benefits most employees would be happy to have. Here are a few of the best:

Here comes the ice cream truck. If you work for Harrah's Entertainment and you're having a bad week, it might lift your spirits to know the company-sponsored ice cream truck might show up any moment with cold treats on a hot, stressful day. Other employee benefits include a break room with wireless Internet access, plasma televisions and Microsoft Xbox game consoles, as well as employee drawings featuring chances to win prizes such as PlayStation game systems.

Benefits way beyond the basics. Google offers its employees medical insurance, retirement savings plans and a number of other standard benefits. It also has a class of "benefits beyond the basics," which include tuition reimbursement, charitable gift matching up to $3,000, and adoption assistance. Its "benefits way beyond the basics" include free lunch, dinner and snacks, an on-site doctor and a shuttle service, to name a few.

What young, single employee wouldn't thrive with on-the-job meals, ice cream on demand and PlayStations in the break room? Those benefits are great, but many employees have families that require some of the standard benefits still available through many employers. Those include:

Health insurance. Uninsured medical expenses, according to a 2005 study conducted by Harvard legal and medical professionals, were the cause of half of all American bankruptcies. While medical insurance may not be trendy or cool, it is still one of the best employee benefits to have.

Pretax benefits. A growing body of benefits have come of age with several programs that allow you to set aside money free of tax. These set-aside funds must be used for qualified expenses as defined by the statutes that created them. Still, the fact that you can reduce your tax liability using money you were going to spend anyway makes them one of the best employee benefits you might not be taking advantage of.

Flexible benefits plans. Dependent care reimbursement accounts and health care reimbursement accounts allow you to set aside funds for your choice of taxable benefits. Health insurance, vacations, retirement plans or child care are examples of benefits an employee is allowed to finance out of these accounts.

Health savings accounts. The health savings account (HSA) is the newest addition to pretax benefits. HSAs were created by the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 and are a hybrid of the flexible spending account and the IRA. These accounts are available to those who anticipate out-of-pocket medical expenses or high medical insurance deductibles.

However, they also can provide a method of tax-free accumulation of funds that may be used without a tax penalty for any purpose whatsoever after the owner reaches retirement age. Recent IRS notices have clarified that certain qualified IRA funds may be rolled over into a health spending account without customary early distribution penalties. Deposits to pretax accounts are taken from your income before it is taxed, reducing your tax liability. Only unused HSA monies may be rolled over into the next year.

Online training. Today, many colleges offer up-to-date online training with quality that rivals traditional classroom instruction. These classes provide a 24/7 opportunity for employees to fit continuing education into their busy lives.

Employee stock plans. Not all employees are entitled to stock plans, but, for those who are, it can be an excellent way to plan for future wealth. Lower-level employees will generally receive stock options or purchase rights. They will not own 100 percent of the stock value until vested, which usually involves staying with an employer for a certain amount of time. For upper-level employees, stocks are usually given as an award with rights of ownership that are either immediate or deferred.

Transportation benefit program. With the high cost of gas and parking, the offer of a transportation benefit is a timely one. Through these programs, employees can pay for their transportation to and from work using pretax dollars.

Now that you have a better idea of what benefits you might be entitled to, you might see your benefits package in a different light.