I believe that the various events that each company had been holding due to the coronavirus pandemic have probably been adjusted so that they are not held at all. Celebrations vary by company, such as company trips, founding anniversary events, and meals to break the fast with employees. Recently, I've heard of a request from a labor union that says, ``It's inevitable that we can't hold an event, but we have the budget to pay for it, so please return it to our employees.'' What do you think of this logic?

[Is welfare benefits a right?]

First, you need to check your work regulations or collective agreement to see how the relevant welfare benefits are stipulated. I think the most common stipulation is something as simple as ``The company will hold an event to commemorate its founding in October of every year.'' I don't think it states that "employees have the right to attend commemorative events." In other words, although it is stipulated by regulations to hold foundation commemorative events, employees do not have this as a right. In addition, the welfare benefit Kesejahteraan Karyawan is ``a non-monetary remuneration that a company provides to its employees in addition to their regular wages/salaries (from Wikipedia)'', which shows that it cannot be converted into money. In order to increase employee loyalty and retention, companies provide benefits other than wages, such as insurance, pension plans, travel, and events.

[Where is the trick?]

However, it is not that the company does not want to do something that is always available, but if you look at it from the perspective of currently difficult to implement, it is easy to imagine that there will be a surplus in the budget. On the other hand, the company's business performance has deteriorated due to the coronavirus pandemic, and even if you want to reduce costs even a little, you can't simply say that you have a surplus in your budget. However, doing nothing can also lead to employee dissatisfaction. It's easy to think of a way to allocate a portion of your budget and provide an additional allowance along with your wages, but it's not very cost-effective. Because you don't know what will become of the money, and it will hardly be remembered. Even more so if it is paid along with wages. If you have the same amount of money, I think it will be more memorable if you buy something like a shopping ticket. Or, since I'm an Indonesian employee who loves spending time with my family, I might be happy to have a nice meal delivered to my home, or give out a voucher for a trip back home that I couldn't make due to the coronavirus pandemic. Or how about distributing mobile wifi routers that are useful for working from home and that your employees will also enjoy? Only a few employees have Wi-Fi contracts at home. Most employees use their mobile phones to connect to the Internet. We recommend that you consider ways to give back in some way, rather than using the entire budget, from the perspective of whether it will be useful for work or whether it will make your employees happy.