Employee Benefits Cut in Recession

As if the pay-cuts and wage-freezes of the past few years have not been hard enough for workers to endure, the grinding recession and its seemingly-endless aftermath also have forced (or enabled) managers to take a hard look at the benefits granted to employees. This new accounting regime is resulting in significant cuts to perks and payouts, including some things to which many workers had become accustomed. IT professionals are seeing everything from health care to bonuses to relocation expenses, along with niceties like hotel mini-bar expenses, scrutinized, reduced, and even eliminated. That’s according to a new survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, the highlights (or lowlights) of which we address in this slideshow. Corporate earnings have recovered nicely since the darkest days of the economic crisis, but corporate spending remains extremely tight; a lack of new business investment has drawn the most scrutiny in a stimulus-hungry market, but cutbacks to existing budgets tell part of that profit story as well.