Posted by Mike Smith :: May 8, 2008 @ 11:15 am

When we think about the benefits offered by employers, insurance (health, vision, dental, life, and disability), retirement plans, and flexible spending accounts are probably the first things that come to mind. Those are great benefits that should be taken advantage of, but another that should not be overlooked is the availability of employee discounts.

Employee discounts offer a real possibility to save on products and services that we are already using. Signing up for new expenses just to get a good deal isn’t necessarily a good idea. Depending on your employer, employee discounts can range from non-existent to savings on a wide array of products and services. Many times, the best discounts are on the products produced by your own company.

The topic of employee discounts came up because I recently renewed my cell phone contract. By working with the sales rep for my company, I was able to get a 20% discount on my service as well as any accessories for my phone. While I was tempted to go with a more expensive plan, which would have ended up costing around what I pay now, I opted instead to keep my current plan level and truly benefit from the 20% discount. I have the most basic plan, so this discount is only saving me $8 a month, but that’s still worth the 5 minutes of my time to take advantage of it. Employees with more expensive plans could save as much as $68 a month for a family plan with lots of minutes.

Discounts aren’t limited to cell phones at my company. Others include everything from cars, movie tickets, restaurants, health clubs, personal loans, computers, dry cleaning, travel services and much, much more. There are well over 150 discounts available.

Granted, not every company is going to have such extensive discounts as mine, but many very well may. If an employee discount can save you some money, it’s surely worth a trip to your human resources department to see what they have to offer. Every dollar you save through your company’s employee discount program adds to the value of working for them.