“Employers grant such benefits to increase the loyalty of their employees. They either have a competitive salary system; they do not want to increase the expenses related to the salary package, and complement this with non-salary benefits, or they just think in terms of low costs, preferring to allocate such a benefit to their employees, instead of a salary increase,” the HR Manager of SC Piritex SA, Catalina Caciulan, said.
Sorin Faur, HR Manager of BDO Romania, said that costs related to medical subscriptions are lower than their net equivalent in salary terms, due to fees and taxes that accompany salary costs. “To give RON 100 net to an employee, a company has total costs of RON 184 (gross salary + the company’s taxes, as an employer). It is difficult to say, due to these multiple combinations of factors, with no specific indications, how much a company can save. Anyway, [savings] are substantial, often of 50 percent or more,” Faur said.
The official of BDO Romania added that the standard value of the acquired service can be the subject of a massive discount, “because the company purchases a large number of service packages, compared to the nominal price available to an individual buyer.”
Another advantage for the company is that, depending on the firm’s negotiation skills, the payment deadlines for the acquired services can, more or less, be extended, with a significant impact on the enterprise’s cash flow. Salaries must be paid on a monthly basis, while such services can be paid on a quarterly basis, a few months after their actual delivery.
