correlation with commitment were: employer-paid pension or retirement plans, employee assistance programs that provide individual counseling for personal problems, flexible work schedules, the freedom to choose benefits that best fit an employee's needs, and employermatched retirement savings plans. The five benefit offerings that ranked at the bottom of the list were prescription drug cards, long-term care insurance, vision insurance, dental insurance, and on-site or nearsite day care for children.
"Initially, it was surprising that employee assistance counseling ranked so highly," said David Stum, president of Aon Consulting's Loyalty Institute. "But as you look at the other parts of the study, you see that employees are more stressed out than ever, so those programs would be important," Stum said.
The employees surveyed tended to consider traditional benefits such as medical coverage t o be entitlements which they took for granted, according to Stum. For that reason, non-traditional benefits, such as individual counseling and flexible work schedules, do a more powerful job of retaining employees, Stum said.
The low correlation between commitment and provision of day care facilities is not a contradiction to the finding that management's recognition of family life is the factor most correlated with commitment, Stum noted. On-site day care is a specific service that is a priority only to a relatively small percentage of the workers surveyed, primarily those who would use it. But many employees, regardless of what type of family they have, want management to recognize the importance of their home lives.