From the "Because Thats How We Have Always Done It" Department:

I was talking to a corporate recruiting Director the other day and he related a very interesting story. How many times have you taken a new job only to find out that your benefits do not start until the following month or maybe even 30 days after your first full month? It's obnoxious and I have never heard a good reason for this.

It turns out the Directors team had identified a high value candidate and made him an offer. This candidate, being of keen insight, inquired as to when benefit coverage started and as it turns out, company policy was that it begins 30 days after your first full month. If you start on April 10, then your benefits begin on June 1st. Of course you can pay $900 per month for COBRA in April and May if you absolutely must, but what a hassle.

The candidate asked a simple question: "Why?"

As it turns out, our hero, the Director, is a man that is very interested in the "why" of things. We should all be as interested in the "why" as we are in the "how". He called the HR person (I was going to say underling, but I resisted). He asked: "why do we make people wait for coverage?

The answer is that is someone were to start and then leave within a month, it creates an administrative burden and it ends up costing a few hundred extra dollars. Well it is easy to imagine the sort of person that would be intensely concerned with additional paper work and fees but if you are imagining such a person, you are not picturing the Director:

"in the last 2 years, how many times has that happened?"

"once"

The Director then called the benefits broker and asked if there was any reason they could not make the benefits start on the very first day of employment? Aside from a little extra paper work, there was no reason.

The broker went on to say that about 32% of their clients had their benefits setup to start immediately because they saw it as essential to their talent strategy. The Director had the policy changed on the spot so that all new employees would have coverage on their very first day.

The Director then called the VP and told him that he had made this policy change and the VP said he had always wondered why people had to wait.

85 minutes after the candidate had asked the question, the policy had been changed. The Director had the Sr. Recruiter call the candidate and let him know the good news. The offer was accepted on the spot.

The next time someone asks you "why", ask yourself if you really know the answer.