In this activity, students explore the different types of paid and unpaid employee benefits offered by employers, as well as costs of those benefits. They begin by brainstorming the types of benefits that attract employees to jobs and consider how businesses use benefits to attract employees. Students learn about several kinds of benefits and the costs of providing them. They use this knowledge to create “benefits cards” and work in pairs to negotiate benefits packages.

“Too big to fail” is a popular phrase in business, but what exactly causes a once-thriving company to fail? In most cases, there is not a single answer to this question because several factors often contribute to driving a company to the brink of going out of business or actually pushing it over that edge, as students will discover during this activity.