Employee Welfare

Employee welfare is a term including various services, benefits and facilities offered to employees by the employers. The welfare measures need not be monetary but in any kind/forms. This includes items such as allowances, housing, transportation, medical insurance and food. Employee welfare also includes monitoring of working conditions, creation of industrial harmony through infrastructure for health, industrial relations and insurance against disease, accident and unemployment for the workers and their families. Through such generous benefits the employer makes life worth living for employees.

Importance of Employee Welfare
As a business, you have to provide various benefits to ensure your employees' welfare. While this may increase your business expense and negatively affect your bottom line, looking after your employees will benefit you in other ways.
Compliance:

As an owner, you are required by law to provide certain benefits for the welfare of your employees. You may have to match the Social Security taxes your employees pay and obtain a worker's compensation insurance policy. If you terminate an employee, you may have to funds to extend his health insurance.

Hiring and Retention:
The benefits an employee receives from his employer for his welfare are often a significant reason why he decides to accept a job offer. As such, providing employee benefits allow you to compete with other businesses to recruit and retain qualify employees. If other employers offer better benefits, good employees may choose to go there.

Employees Motivation:
By providing a plan that's good for employees' welfare, you show them that you value them. This can help make them feel welcome and happy in your company, motivating them to work harder. If your health plan has wellness coverage and preventative care, employees are more likely to stay healthy, cutting down on absenteeism and sick days.

Employees' Well-Being:
For companies that have a large base of employees working under stressful conditions or living away from family, it is important to look at fostering personal happiness and professional growth. Investing in employees pays dividends in terms of higher productivity and greater loyalty

Company Image:
Providing a good employee welfare plan reflects well on your business, building a good company image. It may even earn you some press coverage, giving you free publicity to improve awareness among potential customers. This may boost your sales and increase your profits.

Features of Employee Welfare

• Employee welfare is a comprehensive term including various services, facilities and amenities provided to employees for their betterment.
• Welfare measures are in addition to regular wages and other economic benefits available to employees under legal provisions and collective bargaining.
• The basic purpose of employee welfare is to improve the lot of the working class and thereby make a worker a good employee and a happy citizen.
• Employee welfare is an essential part of social welfare. It involves adjustment of an employee's work life and family life to the community or social life.
• Welfare measures may be both voluntary and statutory.

How to Develop an Effective Employee Welfare Program

• Conduct employee surveys to understand their needs and expectations
• Indentify key areas of building skills and engagement and facilitating trainings for the same
• Propose solutions for personal upkeep, family uplifting and future security
• Create opportunities for greater synergies between the management and employees
• Conduct impact assessments and feedback surveys

Employee Welfare Schemes 
Organizations provide welfare facilities to their employees to keep their motivation levels high. The employee welfare schemes can be classified into two categories viz. statutory and non-statutory welfare schemes. The statutory schemes are those schemes that are compulsory to provide by an organization as compliance to the laws governing employee health and safety. These include provisions provided in industrial acts like Factories Act 1948, Dock Workers Act (safety, health and welfare) 1986, Mines Act 1962. The non-statutory schemes differ from organization to organization and from industry to industry. 

Statutory Welfare Schemes

The statutory welfare schemes include the following provisions:

1. Drinking Water: At all the working places safe hygienic drinking water should be provided.
2. Facilities for sitting: In every organization, especially factories, suitable seating arrangements are to be provided.
3. First aid appliances: First aid appliances are to be provided and should be readily assessable so that in case of any minor accident initial medication can be provided to the needed employee.
4. Latrines and Urinals: A sufficient number of latrines and urinals are to be provided in the office and factory premises and are also to be maintained in a neat and clean condition.
5. Canteen facilities: Cafeteria or canteens are to be provided by the employer so as to provide hygienic and nutritious food to the employees.
6. Spittoons: In every work place, such as ware houses, store places, in the dock area and office premises spittoons are to be provided in convenient places and same are to be maintained in a hygienic condition.
7. Lighting: Proper and sufficient lights are to be provided for employees so that they can work safely during the night shifts.
8. Washing places: Adequate washing places such as bathrooms, wash basins with tap and tap on the stand pipe are provided in the port area in the vicinity of the work places.
9. Changing rooms: Adequate changing rooms are to be provided for workers to change their cloth in the factory area and office premises. Adequate lockers are also provided to the workers to keep their clothes and belongings.
10. Rest rooms: Adequate numbers of restrooms are provided to the workers with provisions of water supply, wash basins, toilets, bathrooms, etc.

Non Statutory Schemes:
Many non-statutory welfare schemes may include the following schemes:

1. Personal Health Care (Regular medical check-ups): Some of the companies provide the facility for extensive health check-up
2. Flexi-time: The main objective of the flextime policy is to provide opportunity to employees to work with flexible working schedules. Flexible work schedules are initiated by employees and approved by management to meet business commitments while supporting employee personal life needs
3. Employee Assistance Programs: Various assistant programs are arranged like external counseling service so that employees or members of their immediate family can get counseling on various matters.
4. Harassment Policy: To protect an employee from harassments of any kind, guidelines are provided for proper action and also for protecting the aggrieved employee.
5. Maternity & Adoption Leave – Employees can avail maternity or adoption leaves. Paternity leave policies have also been introduced by various companies.
6. Medi-claim Insurance Scheme: This insurance scheme provides adequate insurance coverage of employees for expenses related to hospitalization due to illness, disease or injury or pregnancy.
7. Employee Referral Scheme: In several companies employee referral scheme is implemented to encourage employees to refer friends and relatives for employment in the organization.