Day 4 - Question of the day

There's none for ages, then two come at once.

Questions of the day that is...
The first a simple, "how do I do this in SQL", the other "how do I create the correct type of access database file for my labeling application". Obviously, these were sorted out in a matter of minutes, but they asked me, that's what is important.

It's all starting to kick in now, I'm starting to get use to where most things are, and can deal with some of the simpler queries, ie. can you arrange for this new starter to be added to the intranet, etc...

We had a employee benefits (elements) meeting this morning (2 hrs), pretty interesting, about benefit elements we may want to add to our already strong benefits package.

• BUPA Cash Plan - ie. Optical/Dental/Oestopathy/Chiropractor/In-Patient... + 20 other benefits [ before Tax & NI ]
• DENTPLAN Cash Plan - purely dental benefits at a higher value than the BUPA Cash Plan [ before Tax & NI ]
• Discounted Mobile Phone+Tariff [ before Tax & NI ] ie. N95 + 750 mins and unlimited text for about £20 a month.
• Buy and Sell Holidays - to and from the company [ before Tax & NI ]
• Discounted High Street Vouchers - buy £10 @ £8.50
• Share Incentive Programmes - Buy Co Shares [ before Tax & NI ]
• Stakeholder Pension - you put 3% of wages, Company put the same as you rising up by 1% every 6 month to 7.5% of wages against your 3% over next 2 year [ before Tax & NI ]

Basically most of these, they will take out of your gross pay, and you pay Tax and NI on the balance.

I'm only interested in only a few, probably the BUPA cash plan, the discounted mobile phone+tariff, the buy and sell holidays and the Stakeholder pension, even then I may not opt in for all of these at the moment. [[sssh... keep the cash]]

The BUPA cash plan is in addition to the BUPA Healthcare Plan that comes as part of our normal benefits.