This guide is intended to provide a general overview of the principal laws that apply when an employer chooses to provide benefits for its employees. The purpose of the guide is to help employers communicate with their advisers more effectively about employee benefits and benefit programs.
Employee benefits (or simply “benefits” – the two terms are used interchangeably) take many forms, from simple holiday pay to complicated pension plans. This chapter introduces some basic terms and concepts that are useful for discussing and understanding a wide variety of employee benefits. This chapter also introduces the reader to some of the laws that apply to a wide range of employee benefits, without delving into the specifics of how those laws apply to particular kinds of benefits and without discussing specific legal rights and obligations that arise under employee benefit plans. Later chapters of this guide are devoted to particular types of benefits or to particular duties that come into play under the laws governing employee benefits.
The term “employee benefits” is commonly used to refer to various forms of compensation provided to employees in addition to wages. It is helpful to think of employee benefits in terms...
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