Municipal Government Benefits Practices and Personnel Outcomes: Results from a National Survey
Employee benefits are an essential and costly component of the compensation and human resources management system. This research effort surveyed 358 municipal governments on their employee benefits practices. The survey results clearly indicate that municipal governments are very competitive in terms of traditional benefits (health, pensions, dental coverage, etc.) as all 10 types, except for short-term disability, are provided by a majority of the responding municipalities and exceed private sector rates. Municipal governments lag behind the private sector in the deployment of key family-friendly benefits such as child-care, elder care, flexi-place, flex-time and job sharing.
State Government Employee Health Benefits in the United States
Employer-sponsored health benefits are an important but relatively understudied area in public sector human resource management. This study examines the choices that state governments make in the United States and the views of state human resource directors (HRD) on health benefits. Survey data, gathered from state HRDs in fall 2005, reveal several important findings: In terms of choices, the most common plan offered is the preferred provider organization (PPO); less than one third of states offer health benefits to nontraditional partners; health benefits improve employee satisfaction and the performance of the state government; and cost to the state government is the most important factor that affects choice of plan. There is not a high level of agreement on what strategies state government should pursue to reduce costs of health benefits; however, there is some agreement that premiums will be increasing in the near future.
The (Mis)Treatment of Men: Effects of Client Gender Role and Life-Style on Diagnosis and Attribution of Pathology.
Practicing counselors and therapists (N=47) were randomly assigned to view one of two versions of a videotaped simulation of a depressed White male client, portrayed by a professional actor. The tapes were identical except for the client's occupational and family roles, which were portrayed as either gender-traditional or nontraditional. During specified pauses in the videotape, the therapists responded verbally as if they were conducting a counseling session with a client, and their reponses were recorded