Nuon Chheang Eng

TFBS, MA scholarship student

Chapter 11 Employee Benefits
Case Study 1 Adobe’s Family-Friendly Benefits: An Unexpected Backlash

In this chapter, we will learn how to detect cost-effective strategies companies use to
develop benefits plans, to identify and explain the employee benefits required by law, to describe
the types of work-life benefits that employers may provide, and to describe the different types
of retirement programs and pension plans and the regulations related to them. To make sure of
what we have been studying, we will make a discussion through the case study about “Adobe’s
Family-Friendly Benefits: An Unexpected Backlash”.

Adobe Consulting Services (ACS), a provider of HR software application systems,

prides itself on the variety of benefits it offers employees. In addition to healthcare, pension,
and vacation benefits, the company also offers an attractive family-friendly benefits package
including flexible schedules, child and elder care assistance, counseling services, adoption
assistance, and extended parental leave. Unfortunately, in recent months, the company’s
progressive work/life policy has experienced a backlash from several employees, as the
following case illustrates, which will be discussed through 3 main questions below:

1. Do managers like Janis Blancero face a more complicated decision when evaluating
the personal requests of employees versus evaluating employees’ individual work
performance? Explain.

I do think that managers like Janis Blancero, director of marketing of ACS, do face a
more complicated decision when evaluating the personal requests of employees versus
evaluating employees’ individual work performance. The reason is because these managers
know that administering the organization's benefits program in evaluating the personal requests
of employees and evaluating employee’s individual work performance is both costly and time
consuming for the organization. For managers, they do expect employees to be productive,
motivated and fit that enable them to perform well in their jobs. They will not have a problem
for working flexibility requested by two or three employees but if they increase, it will become
a difficult and complicated problem for managers. As in the case, since Adobe has no formal
policy on flexible schedules and with the company’s growth in business combined with the
increasing workload of software account managers and the constant service demands of some
customers, Janis become complicate to grant all the time-off requests of her employees such as
Teresa and Dorothy a four-day work week, Juan's request to accommodate his morning and
afternoon training schedule, and Susan having to go on maternity leave. From all of these
requests, I think that Susan's request is legitimated because she is covered under the law to have
maternity leave, while the other employees’ request for extra accommodations like coming late
or leaving early are non-legitimated reasons, and I do not agree with these reasons also. For
Janis, she is be able to deny these employees’ requests because it will affects employee
performance and becomes very costly for the company in the long term since the company has
already offered an attractive family-friendly benefits package which includes flexible schedules,
child and elder care assistance, counseling services, adoption assistance, and extended parental
leave.
 2.a. Should Adobe establish a policy for granting flexible work schedules? Explain.
b. If you answered yes, what might that policy contain?

2a. From the case, I believe Adobe should establish the policy for granting flexible work
schedules. The reason is that the policy of flexible work schedules aims to increase work
performance, work environment and work motivation. Flexibility in working schedules can be
considered as a tool that removes the unwanted pressure from the employee, increases morality,
gives a chance to improve an individual's performance, and job satisfaction in a way, employees
can meet at work. However, since the company has not yet established a formal policy on
flexible schedules, this policy should be taken care of that employees will not take unfair
advantage of that and should not create or seem to create differences or give rise to conflicting
situations at the workplace.

2b. For this policy of granting flexible work schedules, I suppose it should contain some
guidelines and terms and conditions of job performance and employees’ assignments. The
guidelines or terms/conditions are necessary to ensure that employees are not taking any undue
advantage from the same situations or problems and also not compromising with work
requirements. This designed policy on terms and conditions should also include some parts that
deal with provision in case any employee fails to maintain its productivity at work even after
allowing flexibility and some evaluation or punishment tools to ensure standard and efficiency
of job performance for employees, who is granted for flexible work schedules.

3. If you were Janis Blancero, how would you resolve this dilemma? Explain.

Due to the case and as I am supposed to be Janis Blancero, I really feel shocked and hard
to deal with such problems. However, if the present case is about what she is faced with dilemma
related with flexible work schedule, I think following idea should be suitable to be suggested:

• I will set for scope or limitation of flexibility in case any employee is to be provided
the same.
• I might be planning for any contingency or on-time requirement that may arise in
case a benefitted employee is not available at work.
• I will look for the authentication and viability for flexible work schedules.
• I will also clarify to the employees that no compromise can be made at work if
employees are provided with such benefit.
• I will consider for the most possible grant and best suited option from both, employee
and employer's point of view, in case two or more employees seek such benefit at
same time