Employee welfare is a Human Resource management practice that strives to ensure the overall wellbeing of the employees using various measures and practices.
Definition of Employee Welfare
The whole field of welfare is one in which much can be done to combat the sense of frustration of the industrial workers, to relieve them of the personal and family worries, to improve their health, to offer them some sphere in which they can excel others and to help them to a wider conception of life.
Prof. H.S. Kirkaldy
Such services, facilities and amenities which may be established in or in the vicinity of undertakings to enable the persons employed in them to perform their work in healthy and peaceful surroundings and to avail of facilities which improve their health and high morale.
International Labour Organization
Welfare work covers all the efforts which employers take for the benefit of their employees over and above the minimum standards of working conditions fixed by the Factories Act and over and above the provisions of the social legislation providing against accident, old age, unemployment and sickness
N M Joshi
Employee Welfare laws in India
There are many laws trying to ensure employee welfare among nations. India is no exception. Here, we have laws in different categories which are listed below.
- The Factories Act, 1948
- Maternity Benefit Act,1961
- Payment of Bonus Act, 1965
- Employees’ Provident Fund Scheme, 1952
- Employee State Insurance Act, 1948
- Industrial Disputes Act, 1947
- The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013
Benefits of Employee Welfare
There are a large number of employee benefits. This is not about organizations and employees only, this is about the overall social and economic growth of a country and a society. Better the working conditions, better the economy.
These benefits come under two categories broadly. First is the one where the government has made a provision to organizations to ensure some basic necessities for the employees, this is called statuary benefits. Then there are some benefits which are not compulsory but companies are willing to share these with the employees. This non-obligatory, willful benefits are called non-statuary benefits.
Statuary benefits
- Clean drinking water
- Seating arrangements
- Neat and clean washrooms
- Proper lightings
- Changing rooms, if the work involves such activities where clothes may get wet or dirty
- Leaves
- Medi-claim, Insurances
- Prevention from sexual harassment
- Maternity and paternity leaves
Non Statuary benefits
- Health checkups
- Tours
- Timing relaxations
- Training and seminars
- Employee referrals