Posts Tagged ‘Benefits’

Unemployment Benefits Extended: Good News But A Band-Aid Solution

The unemployed received some good news today – Congress passed legislation to extend unemployment benefits to people who have been out of work for six months or more, and President Obama later this afternoon signed off on the bill. This means that the 2.5 million people whose benefits expired at the beginning of June will be able to receive retroactive payments, and a total of 5 million Americans will be eligible for payments through December 31, 2010.

How will the benefits extension impact the economy and those unemployed job seekers?

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Obama Extends Benefits for Domestic Partners of Federal Employees. How Does Your Company Rate?

President Obama signed an order Wednesday afternoon that extends dependant care rights and other benefits to the partners of gay federal employees. That means the federal government has joined the increasing number of employers across the country who provide equal benefits to domestic partners (which are often unmarried opposite sex or same sex partnerships) of their employees.

With this step forward for government jobs, we were curious which private-sector employers offer domestic partner benefits. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) provides a list of private companies that offer such – more than 8,600 businesses are listed. HRC reports that in 2008, 39% of Fortune 1000 companies and 83% of Fortune 100 companies offer partner benefits. For example, Expedia (Fortune 699; 3.4 Company Rating) offers comprehensive health benefits to: opposite-sex spouses, same-sex partners and opposite-sex partners. To top it off, the benefits package at Expedia is frequently noted as a ‘Pro’ among the company reviews on Glassdoor. In fact, close to 20% of Expedia company reviews favorably comment on the benefits offered by the organization.

While Glassdoor is not on the Fortune 1000 list – yet – we were disappointed there wasn’t a public list to promote our domestic partner benefits and figured there ...

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Movie Magic? Netflix Reports Profit

Amidst today’s regular news reports of home foreclosures, sinking corporate profits and high unemployment rates, Netflix breaks away from the pack and posts a quarterly profit increase of 45 percent this week.

So what’s the “secret sauce” that has this company doing so well in a down economy? Well, maybe many people are foregoing trips to the movie theatre and are instead watching DVDs on their couch, but you won’t get a detailed economic analysis from us. What we have seen from the Netflix reviews on Glassdoor.com is that Netflix is mixing their own recipe for success in creating a great work environment. The company is known as a great employer in Silicon Valley and currently has an overall rating of 4.1 on Glassdoor.com with a slightly higher rating of 4.4 at the company’s headquarters location in Los Gatos, Calif.

A culture rich in collaboration and teamwork is one key ingredient to the company’s great work environment, according to many employees. Here’s what an Netflix Engineering Director had to say:

Netflix is a great place to work with an extraordinary group of people – There’s no micro managing here and everyone is allowed to take responsibility for their own projects. There’s an amazing ...

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