Compensation and Benefits Plan
Companies welcome employees to their organizations through job proposals that should set the tone for a good working relationship. Companies spend tremendous amount of time and resources seeking and attracting high quality talent and people who will hopefully contribute to the long-term success and future growth of the organization. Compensation and benefit packages can be strategic tools that reflect an organization’s commitment to the employee. They should be designed to meet the candidate’s needs and expectations to ensure acceptance. This paper represents a job proposal created by our team for the position of Senior Reliability Engineer at Medtronic, Inc. Various resources and websites were utilized to create a competitive package consistent with Medtronic’s high standards and company policies. Our team included justification of the chosen strategy and also identified potential obstacles and forms of resistance that could impede implementation of the package being offered.
Background and Mission of Medtronic, Inc.
Medtronic, Inc. was founded in 1949 as a medical equipment repair shop and has grown into a multinational company that has transformed the way debilitating, chronic diseases are treated (Medtronic, 2012). Its mission is to contribute to the human welfare through application of biomedical engineering in the research, design, manufacture, and sale of instruments or appliances that alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life. Every employee worldwide receives a Medtronic medallion from senior executives as a reminder of the honor and responsibility they have in fulfilling the company’s mission (Medtronic, 2012).
Job Description for Senior Reliability Engineer A Senior Reliability Engineer is a valued position at Medtronic, Inc. requiring a high level of education. He or she has a tremendous amount of responsibility and must have at least five years of experience working in the engineering field. Presented below is the job description for the Senior Reliability Engineer created by our team from a thorough job analysis.
Company Medtronic Diabetes
Location USA-CA-Northridge
Job Type Full Time - Regular
Exempt/Non-Exempt Exempt
Shift First
Travel Percentage less than 25%
Experience Required 5 years
Education Required B.S. in Engineering, Science, or a Mathematical Discipline

Position Description:
Be a technical leader for the initiation and development of world-class Reliability Program at Medtronic Diabetes for medical device product lines. Responsible for performing reliability activities, such as Ongoing Reliability testing, Physics of Failure, Reliability Growth, and Demonstration. Ensure accurate, timely independent evaluation of product performance, and safety prior to market release or clinical studies.

Position Responsibilities
• Prepare, review, execute, approve reliability growth and demonstration test plans/reports for the introduction of new product designs, and enhancement/evolution of current product designs.
• Perform root cause failure analysis and troubleshooting (mechanical and electrical) for current and new products undergoing reliability and validation testing.
• Develop final assembly and sub-assembly/component test plans for HALT/HASS for current and new products.
• Create new test equipment and methodology to evaluate, predict the reliability of new products and existing medical devices on both system level and component level.
• Acquire knowledge of new product, participate in team meetings of new product development, and contribute to the design reviews by identifying reliability issues and providing design improvement recommendations.
Skills/Competencies
* Skilled in developing product validation plans, and executing reliability testing, including report generation.
* Excellent communication skills, verbal, and written, ability to write reports clearly, and concisely.
* Ability to work closely with other members of the team and independently.
Desired/Preferred Qualifications
• Advanced degree in engineering
• 6+ years related experience
• Experience in medical device industry
• Certification in Quality or Reliability Engineering
• Be able to think outside the box to solve complex problems
• Work in a cross-functional team
• Experience with Safety Assurance Engineering
• Adept at various computational modeling packages (e.g., FEA, CFD, SolidWorks, PSpice) Physical Job Requirements:
• Walk, sit, stand, crouch, kneel, stoop, and crawl. Use hands and fingers to reach.
• Must be able to travel by various modes of transportation (car, plane, train, bus, or taxi)
• Ability to safely lift up to 10 to 25 pounds with no assistance.

Compensation and Benefits Plan Employees are the heart and soul of Medtronic, Inc. and the organization works hard to help employees find satisfaction and a sense of well-being in their lives. Named in 2009 as one of the world’s most admired companies by Fortune Magazine, Medtronic offers a compensation and benefits package that goes beyond industry standards. The company creates employee plans unique to the individual and considers economic factors, skill level, responsibility, educational background, and prior experience. The total benefits package includes:
• Health care plans: dental, medical, and dental with domestic partner coverage.
• Vacation, holidays, bereavement, sick leave, and compassionate leave to care for terminally ill family member and military leave.
• Flexible spending accounts: dependent and health care.
• Insurance: life, accidental death, short-term, and long-term disability.
• Retirement plans: 401K, personal investment, and pension plans, employee stock purchase plan.
• Employee assistance program, work-life resources, including adoption, and eldercare assistance. The salary compensation offered by our team for the position of Senior Reliability is $120,000. The median value listed for a senior level engineer on salary.com is $88,000 (2012). The salary range for biomedical engineers in Los Angeles, California is $63,600 to $135,000 (CareerOneStop, 2012).
Justification for Chosen Approach In strategic business planning, there are several considerations for the design of compensation and benefit packages. The pay system is an integral part of strategy formation that can be used flexibly by Medtronic, Inc. Our team considered the economic factors, skill level, responsibility, educational background, and prior experience for a senior level engineer. We took a “lead-the-market” approach since Medtronic is a world leader in medical innovation and technology. The company wants to attract, retain, and motivate talented and exceptional individuals that will help the company maintain its competitive advantage and world-wide reputation. Offering a “cafeteria” style plan, the employee is able to pick and choose the options unique to his or her needs. Medtronic is committed to ensuring the satisfaction and well-being of its employees and the plan is reflective of the company’s mission and objectives.
Basically, the proposal represents a comprehensive, competitive, package designed for the individual employee.
Obstacles or Resistant
In consideration of Medtronics, Inc. mission statement, the compensation and benefit package for the Senior Reliability Engineer position is inclusive of the basic components which consist of security and heath, payments for time not worked and employee services. According to Casio in Managing human resources: Productivity, Quality of Work Life, Profits, “recruitment is a form of business contest that is fiercely competitive.” The recruitment process could create several obstacles or resistance in the recruitment process. The compensation offer is over the median salary according to Salary.com, by hedging the market will attract those individuals who have the required experienced for the position. However, this may cause competitiveness in the market-place and costly to Medtronics, Inc.
In addition, the cafeteria-style approach benefit plan can be difficult for employees to design their own plan because there are so many benefit choices. Strong communication, counseling or computer-based decision support systems will need to be provided to accommodate the employee with options to design their benefit plan. (Cascio, 2010) This can be time consuming and overwhelming for the employee and costly for the employer.
Conclusion
While it is important to design the most comprehensive compensation and benefit package for the Senior Reliability Engineering position at Medtronics, Inc., our team found it most important to design a competitive salary that was representative to the company’s reputation and mission statement. Additionally, the cafeteria-style approach to choosing benefits would allow direct communication between the employer and employees that leads the way to a closer working relationship.

References
Medtronic. (2010). Citizenship Report. Retrieved from http://www.medtronic.com/2010CitizenshipReport/total-employee/compensation-benefit.html
Monster.com. (2012). Retrieved from http://jobsearch.monster.com/search/reliability-engineer_5?where=California
Salary.com. (2012). Reliability Engineer III. Retrieved from