Fringe benefits in the human resources practices: An example of airport business

In recent years, the increasing competition due to globalization in the economy, also affects the labor market. While organizations try to survive in this challenging competitive environment, it is clearly seen that employees' perspectives of human resources practices changing as well. One of the HR practices which this change has been observed is compensation practices. Nowadays, in order to attract talented employees and build employee engagement, employers have to review their compensation packages. The purpose of this study is to reveal effects of the fringe benefits, which are one of the parts of the human resources practices, on perception and behaviour of employees in the sector of aviation, where qualified workforce is highly required. The fact that fringe benefits have not been considered sufficiently by the researchers, leads to insufficient consideration of employee's opinion regarding this subject. Therefore, by this study it was endeavored to reveal employees' perspectives regarding fringe benefits. Qualitative research methods were used in the data collection process of the study. In-depth interviews were conducted with 32 employees in total and 6 of these interviews were conducted within the scope of pilot interviews. The data have been interpreted through descriptive analysis. As a result of this study, it has been found that, fair providing of fringe benefits and planning them according to the employees' needs positively affects satisfaction coming from the fringe benefits. According to employee's statements, it has been concluded that, fringe benefits have an impact on worker engagement, motivation and job change decisions. Keywords: Fringe Benefits, Strategic Human Resource Management, Compensation, Rewarding Strategies, Aviation Sector