McDonald’s Corporation, one world’s leading foodservice retailers, gives away scholarships worth $5,250 in tuition assistance for its McOpCo full-time Store Manager Trainees, Certified Swing Managers, and Department Managers, or General Managers. Not only managers, McDonald’s also has work-related scholarship programs given to employees who maintain a performance rating of “significant performance” throughout the course.
Fidelity, an American multinational financial service, also jumped on the bandwagon by providing work-related scholarship programs to its full-time employees with at least six months of service. Employees in Fidelity can apply tuition reimbursement for up to 90 percent of certain costs, up to $10,000 per year. Eligibility is subject to manager approval and the coursework must be at an accredited college or university and with work-related major.
How about you? Are you ready to follow the trend?
Competitive salary and a solid health plan are great to lure talents to work in your company. However, it might not be appealing enough in today’s increasingly competitive global talent market. More and more talents are joining companies with expectations to develop professionally. Seeing this growing trend, leaders are turning to offer scholarships as an employee benefit, tuition assistance programs, or other education-related benefits in order to attract top performers.
See also: Employee Benefits: Can Creative Benefits Make Up For Lack Of Cash?
In fact, most individuals are seeing the significance of education. Higher Education survey showed that 84 percent of Americans individuals claim that higher education is very or extremely important to get ahead in life. Meanwhile, their Asian counterparts stated that attending higher education is worth the struggle and effort. This indicates that education is far greater than a competitive salary or health plan program.
Apart from the willingness to pursue more education, providing scholarships as employee benefits can help a business strive and thrive in today’s changing higher-ed landscape. According to OSAC, there will be an unexpected outcome when giving this very benefit. Scholarship benefit also plays as a long-term investment, as well as is a good program to show employees and their families that your company really supports its employees’ welfare and wellbeing.
It is easier to propose your line executives to start the program. Yet, the execution might be challenging, especially if your company is just scaling its business. Thus, if you are ready to start and want to expand your company’s offering to be more competitive, you have some scholarship options to implement within your workforce. These options are proposed by Anne Tergesen at the Wall Street Journal.
Option #1 Collaborate with a community foundation – This option allows a donor to fund scholarships for any amount and criteria. This option is ideal for small businesses or communities that focus on scaling.
Option #2 Standalone foundation – This offers a great deal of control over spending and scholarship selection. However, this option might take longer to manage and is not as tax-friendly as the previous option.
Option #3 Collaborate with university and/or college – You can propose university director for collaboration to provide scholarship for your employees. Or, you can also make a donation to a school or university but this second idea means only students of the school benefit from your foundation and not necessarily your employees.
Option #4 Develop a scholarship program with nonprofit administrator – There are a number of nonprofit across the nation providing scholarship and tuition program outsourcing, for example, Aviva or Australia Awards. Outsourcing scholarship programs help your company set up award criteria, scholarship amounts, and other details.
Read also: HR Study: The Evolution of Employees Benefit
