Background Information
The Office Place is a new retail venture that is located in Omaha, NE that sells office supplies to retail “face-to-face” customers, online customers as well as to other businesses (primarily in bulk). Their strategy and mission is to sell their products at a deeply discounted price, while providing the best customer service experience possible. This strategy is primarily based on industry research showing that there is a growing dissatisfaction with the level of customer service from retailers. This start-up will eventually employ approximately 100 people at various levels and positions and all will be located in the Omaha, NE facility. The Omaha, NE job market tends to have lower unemployment rates and more job stability than in other areas of the country.
Phase I:
For this phase of the project, students will be conducting comparative research on benefit packages (as well as any other supplementary data, such as industry standards). The deliverable for this phase is to identify your comparison group(s), the justification as to why you chose the comparison group(s) that you did and a summary of your findings.
Phase II:
Based on your research, determine an overall benefits budget for “The Office Place” as well as components you are recommending for your employee base. The recommended approach for this assignment is to express the budget in percentages, including the various components that will make up your benefit package. For example, a hypothetical benefits budget is 25% of the total employee payroll and the breakdown is: 10% health insurance, 5% for dental insurance, etc. They key element for this phase is to ensure that justification and comparative data is provided to support and validate your recommendations for your benefit package. *The budget should include both mandatory and voluntary benefits.
Phase III:
Identify how will you evaluate the success of your benefit plans, including both quantitative and qualitative measures.
