Importance of Employee Benefits in HRM at Genentech and Zappos

This article discusses the importance of employee benefits in fulfilling the goals of HRM at Genentech and Zappos. It explores how these companies use employee benefits as a motivating tool to increase employee satisfaction and productivity. The article also examines the potential of incentive benefits in other organizations.

Human Resource Management

1. Describe the importance of employee benefits as a strategic
component of fulfilling the goals of HRM at Genentech and Zappos?
Every organization has a Human Resource department and the responsibility of the same is to identify
and fulfill the needs of human resources in the organization. There are certain areas where human
resource management needs to focus on like salaries of the employees, employee relations and creating
policies and procedures for welfare of employees. The main objective of HRM is to fulfill the goals and
objectives of the organization by doing proper performance. They always focus upon increasing
employee productivity. HRM is also responsible to create a healthy relationship with the employer and
management (Kasten et al., 2019). There are some other benefits for employees like bonus, sick leave,
retirement and flexible work arrangement. All of these help in motivating employees. Increase in
productivity is directly related to the satisfaction of the employees and HRM is responsible for this. It
assists every organization in relationship building with all the employees by providing them benefits and
understanding their needs. Employee benefits make employees happy and it lowers the employee
turnover rate. Employees start feeling loyal towards the organization. It has been observed that one of
the major reasons behind leaving the job is lack of requisite employees’ benefits. Employee benefit
programs are proved very helpful in retaining the employees and fulfilling the goals of Human Resource
Management (Satinoff and Teitelbaum, 2013). In Genentech and Zappos, Employee benefits played a
very important role as employees became satisfied and happy and it directly contributes in the
fulfillment of goals of the organization.
2. Explain how Genentech and Zappos use employee benefits as a
motivating tool?
It is known by both Genentech and Zappos that it is important to introduce benefits for the employees
in order to make them feel motivated (Ivancevich and Konopaske, 2013). These companies have
introduced different types of employee benefit programs to motivate the employees and make them

feel happy. Genentech realized that it is necessary to provide importance to the employees so they used
employee benefit as a tool to give respect to the employees because employees considers self- respect,
a very important factor. Genentech also provides healthcare as well as retirement benefits to the
employees. There is an option of unlimited sick leave that is also very important for employee’s
motivation because it can help employees when there would be any misshapen with any employee. Due
to all these factors employee motivation, confidence and productivity has increased (Fisher and Fisher,
2005).
The same happened with Zappos and it also started providing different benefits to the employees like
started throwing pajama parties and introduced the concept of nap room. All this proved to be very
helpful in providing motivation to the employees and increase the productivity. With the help of such
benefits like happy hours, an organization can easily make the employees happy and satisfied and their
happiness result in high efforts and growth of the organization. Zappos became successful in providing
motivation to the employees with the help of attracting employee benefits. It also found several
motivational aspects related to the employees by providing requisite benefits. It helped in controlling
employee turnover and creates a base of skilled employees.
3. Do you believe the incentive benefits such as those offered at
Genentech and Zappos can be used in other organizations? Why or why
not?
Incentive benefit plans play a very important role in increasing productivity and motivation of
employees (Ellig, 2014). Genentech and Zappos has also introduced incentive benefits and found that it
really works in exploring the potential of the employees so that their growth can be determined. By
these benefits, an organization can easily help the employees in being motivated and it also contribute
in the growth and development of the organization. Every organization possesses the same requirement
related to the behavior and needs of the employees, so there can be easy implementation of these
incentive benefits. Genentech and Zappos got the advantage of introducing incentive benefit plans and
it helped both the organization (Bratton and Gold, 2017). Incentive benefits are very much related to the
motivational factors of employees and it surely helps other organization to keep the employees
motivated at workplace. Employee motivation helps in increasing the productivity of employees and it
leads in fulfillment of goals and objectives in an effective manner. Incentive programs help the
employees in boosting the morale that is really important to enhance the productivity. It improves

teamwork and employees started working in an effective and efficient way. Such benefits increase the
level of energy among employees and they start handling challenging tasks in easy way. As there are
multiple advantages of such benefits, it helped both Genentech and Zappos.
References
Bratton, J. and Gold, J. (2017). Human resource management. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ellig, B. (2014). Long-Term Incentive Plan Combinations. Compensation & Benefits Review, 46(1), pp.10-
15.
Fisher, J. and Fisher, J. (2005). How to run successful incentive schemes. London: Kogan Page.
Ivancevich, J. and Konopaske, R. (2013). Human resource management. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kasten, S., van Osch, L., Candel, M. and de Vries, H. (2019). The influence of pre-motivational factors on
behavior via motivational factors: a test of the I-Change model. BMC Psychology, 7(1).
Satinoff, E. and Teitelbaum, P. (2013). Motivation. New York, NY: Springer.