The 9 Essential Skills of Human Resources Management – How Many Do You Have?
Originally posted by Stephen Bruce on https://hrdailyadvisor.blr.com
By Jay Schleifer and Steve Bruce
When we interview a potential new hire, HR professionals assess the candidate against a list of key skills and personal characteristics needed for the job. Let’s turn the tables and see what that list of key attributes would look like for an HR professional.
In no way is our list authoritative, but it is the opinion of people, including BLR® Founder Bob Brady, who’ve spent decades meeting with HR professionals, supporting their goals, and reporting their achievements.
You may agree or not with our assessments, but either way, we’d like to hear about it via the “Share Your Comments” link at the end of the article.
That said, here goes:
HR Management Key Skill #1: Organization
HR management requires an orderly approach. Organized files, strong time management skills, and personal efficiency are key to HR effectiveness. You’re dealing with people’s lives and careers here, and when a manager requests help with a termination or a compensation recommendation or recognition program, it won’t do to say, “I’ll try to get to that if I have time.”
HR Management Key Skill #2—Multitasking
On a typical HR day, an HR professional will deal with an employee’s personal issue one minute, an intermittent leave question the next, and a recruiting strategy for a hard-to-fill job the minute after. And that’s to say nothing of social media, wage/hour, engagement, retention, and a whole host of other things, every one critical to someone.
In HR, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. Priorities and business needs move fast and change fast, and manager A who needs someone hired doesn’t much care if you’re already helping manager B who needs someone fired. You need to be able to handle it all, all at once.
HR Management Key Skill #3—Dealing with Grey
A surprisingly large percentage of the issues HR managers face are in “the grey area.” Is it discrimination? Is it harassment? What’s a “reasonable” accommodation? How far over backward do you have to lean to approve intermittent leave? HR managers have to be able to act with incomplete and “best available” information, and they have to know when to seek the professional help of colleagues, attorneys, and other experts.
HR Management Key Skill #4—Negotiation
Along with grey comes the need to negotiate—there are often two or more opposing views, and the successful HR pro can find an acceptable middle ground. Remember, the goal of negotiation is to end up with two parties that are satisfied with the outcome, and that’s not often easy to achieve.
HR Management Key Skill #5—Communication
HR professionals have to communicate up to management, over to managers, out to potential employees, and down to all levels of current employees. And they have to do it in writing, while speaking to large and small groups and, increasingly, through social media. They have to be convincing, caring, and believable.
HR Management Key Skill #6—Discrete and Ethical
HR professionals are the conscience of the company, as well as the keepers of confidential information. As you serve the needs of top management, you also monitor their actions toward employees to be sure that policies and regulations are followed. You need to be able to push back when they aren’t in order to keep the firm on the straight and narrow. Not an easy responsibility!
Of course, you always handle confidential information appropriately, and never divulge it to any unauthorized person.
HR Management Key Skill #7—Dual Focus
Employees expect human resources professionals to advocate for their concerns, yet you must also enforce top management’s policies. The HR professional who can pull off this delicate balancing act wins trust from all concerned.
There are times you must make decisions to protect the individual and other times when you protect the organization, its culture, and values. These decisions may be misunderstood by some, and you may catch flak because of it, but you know that explaining your choices might compromise confidential information. That’s something you would never do.
HR Management Key Skill #8—Conflict Management and Problem Solving
News flash! Everyone doesn’t always get along with everyone else. High productivity demands that people work together at least civilly. HR has to find ways to allow that to happen. And that’s to say nothing of the myriad other problems that hit HR’s in-box—you can’t be effective without problem-solving ability.
HR Management Key Skill #9—Change Management
Most companies today are in a constant state of flux. Task forces, matrices, and teams spring into being, do their jobs, and disband as others form. Hierarchies have been squashed, and companies have four or five generations working side by side. A lot of people are freaked out by what’s going on. HR has to help everyone cope with the constant changes.
Nine Skills, But Also One Caveat
“HR is a creature of, and serves, the business strategy,” Brady says. “It’s important for HR people to know what that strategy is and what makes the business tick so the approach to HR can be tailored accordingly.
“Never think of HR in isolation,” he advises. “Because if HR professionals think of themselves as ‘just HR,’ that’s what the rest of the organization will think, too.”
Did We Get It Right?
How about our 9 skills? Do you have a different list? Please share it in the comments below. (This article was updated Thursday, August 22, 2013 9:40 AM).
Gen Xers post biggest gap in life insurance coverage
Originally posted September 23, 2013 by Margarida Correia on https://ebn.benefitnews.com
What people say doesn’t always align with what they do. Such is the case with life insurance, a study commissioned by New York Life finds.
According to the study, most Americans don’t buy enough life insurance to secure the level of protection they say they would want for their families if they were to die. The average American registered an insurance shortfall of $320,000.
Generation Xers posted the biggest gap of any age group. Although average Gen Xers said they would want their life insurance policies to cover $708,996, they purchased only $260,000 in coverage, creating a coverage gap to $448,996. Millennials and baby boomers, in contrast, had gaps of $370,744 and $267,016, respectively.
The gap has widened substantially for Gen Xers since the financial crisis. From 2008 to 2013, the amount of life insurance coverage they have in place fell 35% to $260,000 from $400,000. The gap impacts more than half (56%) of Gen Xers, according to the study.
“Gen Xers have been severely impacted by the economic downturn and the gap is a clear indication of what is at risk. Gen Xers, who may be focused on financial obligations that have to do with their children, their home, planning for retirement and maybe even taking care of their elderly parents, are lacking a foundation of financial protection that life insurance provides,” says Chris Blunt, president of the Insurance Group at New York Life.
The study is based on two separate surveys, both of which polled 1,000 Americans age 25 and over with dependents and annual household incomes of at least $50,000. One survey was conducted online by The Futures Company from April 24 – May 1, 2013. The other was conducted by Greenwald & Associates via telephone in May 2008.
’Tis the Season for a Slice of Wellness Training
Originally posted November 29, 2013 by Chris Kilbourne on https://safetydailyadvisor.blr.com
At the beginning of this year's holiday season, take a moment to remind your employees that good nutrition is important to good health. Use the video in today's Advisor as a concise and fun way to drop nutrition reminders in among the holiday festivities.
In order to get the nutrition they need every day to stay healthy, employees must develop and maintain healthy eating habits. Here's a video that takes a light-hearted approach toward providing facts about nutrition and the important employee wellness topic of having healthy eating habits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv66ItR_F24&feature=player_embedded
I'm sure you’ve heard that good nutrition is important to good health. But how?
Well, good nutrition helps you in many important ways. For example, eating healthy food helps to prevent diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure and maintain a healthy weight.
In order to get the nutrition you need every day to stay healthy, you must develop and maintain healthy eating habits. Unfortunately, many Americans have very unhealthy eating habits.
Healthy eating means eating three nutritious meals a day, consuming reasonable portion sizes, limiting intake of fat, sugar, and salt, snacking sensibly between meals, avoiding fad diets, and balancing calorie intake with physical activity.
Proper nutrition depends on a well-balanced diet that includes carbohydrates, fiber, protein, and some unsaturated fat. Carbohydrates give your body the energy it needs to function effectively all day. Carbohydrates are found in fruits, vegetables, bread, cereal, pasta, rice, and milk and milk products. In fact, 45 percent to 65 percent of your daily calorie intake should come from carbohydrates. You also need about 14 grams of dietary fiber for every 1,000 calories you eat. Protein is another essential nutrient, and you should get 10 percent to 35 percent of daily calories from proteins.
Most Americans eat more protein than they really need to stay healthy. Protein is found in meat, poultry, fish, eggs, nuts, milk and milk products, grains, and some vegetables and fruits.
Some protein-rich foods such as meat are also high in fat and cholesterol. To keep healthy, you should consume less than 10 percent of your daily calorie intake as fat. Most of your fat intake should be unsaturated, as opposed to saturated, fat. Saturated fat is found in foods such as high-fat cheese, high-fat meat, butter, and ice cream.
Nuts, vegetable oil, and fish are good sources of poly- and monounsaturated fats.
Health experts also say you should consume less than 300 milligrams of cholesterol a day. Cholesterol is a fatty substance found in animal-based foods such as meat, eggs, and whole milk.
Sugar is found naturally in foods such as fruits, vegetables, and milk and milk products. Some foods include added sugar, and these foods are less nutritious than foods containing only natural sugar. To keep healthy, try to avoid added sugar, which provides no nutritional value and also contributes to tooth decay.
Also, remember that fluids, vitamins, and minerals are part of good nutrition, too. You need about eight glasses of water or other low-sugar fluids a day.
Finally, even though you've got a lot of great choices here in your fridge, I'm sure you eat out sometimes. When you do, remember to make healthy choices. Restaurant or takeout food can be high in fat, sugar, and salt, and low in required nutrients. When you eat food prepared outside your home, try to pick lower-fat foods, choose smaller portions, go broiled or baked instead of fried, order a vegetables or salad, and skip dessert.
For more information on nutrition, visit www.blr.com. Here you’ll find lots of information on wellness. BLR® specializes in employee training, so be sure to check out all of their employee wellness training resources as well as other training topics.
Why It Matters
- Giving your employees nutrition information can help keep them healthy and on the job.
- Healthy employees will cut down on your sick leave costs and your healthcare insurance expenses.
- Healthy employees who are eating the right balance of nutritious foods are more likely to be more productive as well.
- The bottom line is that a healthy amount of wellness training can provide a healthy return on investment for your organization.
Employers pushing hard for lower 401(k) fees
Originally posted December 05, 2013 by Dan Cook on https://www.benefitspro.com
Just as they are combing through health plans looking for cost-cutting opportunities, so are employers trimming the fat off employee 401(k) plans. However, in general, they are attempting to do so without sacrificing investment quality. Plans with lower fees have become popular, as have those that offer participants more options, some of which combine lower fees with solid returns.
All of these observations come to us fresh from an Aon Hewitt survey of 400 defined contribution plan sponsors. Their plans cover more than 10 million employees with a total of $500 billion in retirement assets. These sponsors were asked about their retirement benefits strategies, plan designs and investment structures.
When last asked about such matters in 2007, just more than half of the respondents said they were working to reduce fund or plan expenses. This time around, more than three-quarters said they looking for ways to cut such costs.
The most common methods for doing so were switching share classes to less costly alternatives (62 percent) and swapping out funds for lower-cost alternatives (50 percent).
The survey identified lower fees are the No. 1 reason for choosing fund options. Other top factors included historical investment performance and fund investment process. Once powerful factors such as name recognition and availability in public sources were no longer seen as priorities.
“One of the most direct ways to increase participant balances is to increase their returns, which can be done effectively by decreasing investment fees without sacrificing investment quality,” said Rob Austin, director of Retirement Research at Aon Hewitt. “Even small changes in 401(k) fees can have a significant impact on employees’ nest eggs over time. For example, decreasing fees from 1 percent to 0.75 percent per year has the same effect on a typical participant as contributing an additional 0.50 percent of pay. This ultimately translates into thousands of dollars more in retirement savings.”
Other highlights from the Aon survey:
More than 90 percent of employers offered non-mutual fund alternatives — such as collective trusts and separate accounts — in their 401(k) menus, compared to 59 percent in 2007.
44 percent chose these alternatives as their primary fund options in 2013, compared to just 19 percent in 2007.
30 percent offered plan participants emerging market funds this year, compared to 15 percent in 2007.
14 percent offers participants short-term bond funds, compared to 8 percent in 2007.
Another trend spotted by the survey: Large increases in the index approach were found in mid-cap equity (59 percent in 2013 vs. 42 percent in 2011), intermediate bond (53 percent in 2013 vs. 42 percent in 2011), and international equity (50 percent in 2013 compared to 31 percent in 2011).
Nuts for longevity: Daily handful is linked to longer life
Originally published November 21, 2013 by Allison Aubrey on https://www.npr.org
Nuts might be loaded with fat but evidence suggests they could help you live longer. A diet study found earlier this year that a diet with daily portions of nuts and olive oil reduced the risks of heart attacks and strokes. Recent evidence found that nuts can help control appetite, which could reduce weight gain.
Americans have not always been in love with nuts.
Think about it: They're loaded with calories and fat. Plus, they can be expensive.
But Americans' views — and eating habits — when it comes to nuts are changing. Fast.
There's a growing body of scientific evidence that's putting a health halo over supermarkets' expanding nut aisles.
Earlier this year, a large diet study concluded that people who eat a Mediterranean-style diet supplemented with daily portions of nuts and olive oil have significantly lower risks of heart attacks and strokes.
And just last month, more evidence emerged that snacking on nuts helps control our appetites, which may stave off weight gain.
Now, a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that people in the habit of eating a daily handful (a 1-ounce serving) of nuts are more likely to live longer compared with people who rarely consume nuts.
"The preponderance of evidence suggests a health benefit [from eating nuts]," says researcher Charles Fuchs of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.
To isolate the association between nut consumption and lifespan, Fuchs and his colleagues combined data from two long-term studies that include about 76,000 women and 42,000 men.
The participants in the study completed food frequency surveys every two to four years over several decades. They answered all kinds of questions about dozens of different kinds of foods, including how many servings of nuts they consumed.
"What we find is that regular nut consumers have about a 20 percent reduction in all-cause mortality" over the course of the study, Fuchs says. This includes lower death rates from heart disease and cancer.
Now, since death is inevitable for all of us, here's another way to think about the findings: Men and women who were regularly munching on peanuts or tree nuts like almonds, pecans and walnuts in their 30s and 40s when the study began were significantly more likely to reach their 70s, compared with folks who didn't eat nuts.
So how could a daily handful of nuts possibly be so beneficial? Fuchs says it's not entirely clear.
"What we think nuts do is that they affect metabolism," he explains. Prior research has shown that nuts help us feel fuller, faster. And nuts also help control blood sugar.
Fuchs says if nuts lead to a sense of satiety and help people eat less, many of the other benefits may follow. This could "reduce the risk of diabetes and also reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease," he says.
Of course, this study does not prove a cause and effect between eating nuts and living longer. The design of this type of long-term, observational study only enables researchers to establish an association — a link.
Going forward, researchers want to try to better understand what might explain this link. They want to know more about how the combination of beneficial plant compounds and minerals — such as magnesium, fiber and protein — found in nuts may be influencing the body.
With all the good news about nuts in the news, experts who track food trends say more Americans are eating them.
"Nuts are in the perfect spot right now," says John Frank of Mintel. The market research firm estimates that sales of nuts and dried fruit in the U.S. will grow from about $7 billion in annual sales in 2012 to over $9 billion by 2017.
Nuts check a lot of boxes that young adults are looking for: They're high in protein, they're easy to grab and eat on the go, and they're a natural, plant-based food.
"I'm a vegetarian, so nuts are an important part of my diet, for added protein," shopper Emily Williams told me as she added nuts to her shopping cart at a Trader Joe's in Washington, D.C.
Many grocery stores' expanding nut aisles now include lots of variety — everything from dark-chocolate-covered almonds to spicy, Asian-flavor-infused nuts.
And Frank says millennials love the variety. Young adults aren't just snacking on nuts — increasingly, they're tossing them in salads and sprinkling them in yogurt and cereal.
One note about the NEJM study on nuts: The major part of the study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. The researchers also accepted a grant from the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research and Education Foundation to cover the cost of analyzing the data.
"The [nut] council approved the grant without any knowledge of the results," says Fuchs. And there was an agreement that the researchers would have reported the findings no matter what the results showed.
IRS Finalizes Rules on Additional Medicare Tax
Originally posted December 02, 2013 by Michael Cohn on https://www.accountingtoday.com
The Internal Revenue Service has released the final regulations for the 0.9 percent Additional Medicare Tax that was imposed as part of the Affordable Care Act.
The final regulations that were released last week more or less adhere to the proposed regulations that were released last year for the Additional Hospital Insurance Tax on income above threshold amounts, usually referred to as the Additional Medicare Tax (see Tax Strategy: Proposed Guidance on Medicare Contribution Taxes). The tax took effect on January 1 of this year and applies to wages, compensation, and self-employment income above a threshold amount received in taxable years beginning after Dec. 31, 2012. The threshold amounts are $200,000 for single taxpayers and $250,000 for married filing jointly (or $125,000 for married filing separately) taxpayers.
The IRS also released final regulations last week on another tax that was included in the Affordable Care Act, the 3.8 percent Net Investment Income Tax (see IRS Releases Final Rules for Net Investment Income Tax).
The 0.9 percent Additional Medicare Tax applies to wages, railroad retirement compensation, and self-employment income over certain thresholds. Employers are responsible for withholding the tax on wages and Railroad Retirement Tax Act compensation in certain circumstances.
The only major change from the proposed regulations that were issued last December is that the proposed regulations had provided that if the employer deducts less than the correct amount of Additional Medicare Tax, it is nonetheless liable for the correct amount of tax that it was required to withhold, unless the employee pays the tax. The proposed regulations also provided that if an employee subsequently pays the tax that the employer failed to deduct, the tax would not be collected from the employer.
The final regulations, however, further say that an employer is not relieved of its liability for payment of any Additional Medicare Tax that is required to be withheld unless it can show that the tax has been paid by the employee. Employers will use Form 4669, “Statement of Payments Received,” and Form 4670, “Request for Relief from Payment of Income Tax Withholding,” the same forms used for requesting federal income tax withholding relief, to request relief from paying Additional Medicare Tax that has already been paid by the employee.
The final regulations also amend the proposed regulations to comply with the formatting requirements of the Office of the Federal Register.
However, the IRS rejected a number of requests from various people who had commented on the proposed regulations. One commenter had expressed concern about the impact of the regulations on the small business and individual taxpayer community. The commenter disagreed with the IRS’s conclusion in the proposed regulations that no regulatory assessment or regulatory flexibility analysis were required because the rulemaking was not a significant regulatory action and would not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.
A 1993 executive order requires agencies to prepare a regulatory assessment for "significant regulatory actions" and economically significant regulations, that is, regulatory actions that are likely to have an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more. The commenter contended that the skills equivalent to a junior associate accountant would be needed to comply with the regulations. The commentator further argued that, assuming a junior associate reasonably bills for services at the rate of $100 per hour, and using the estimated annual reporting or recordkeeping burden for these regulations of 1.9 million hours, the estimated annual effect on the economy would $190 million.
However, The Treasury Department and the IRS said they did “not agree with the commenter’s assertion that all individuals and entities subject to the regulations will require the services of an accountant. Many employers utilize payroll service providers that are equipped to comply with these regulations and that will include Additional Medicare Tax as part of the payroll services they provide. Other employers and individuals will be able to comply with these regulations without assistance by following the instructions that accompany tax forms and by utilizing other information provided by the IRS. Therefore, neither the proposed regulations, nor these final regulations, are significant regulatory actions within the meaning of E.O. 12866, and a regulatory assessment is not required.”
Final mental health parity regulations have arrived
Originally posted December 02, 2013 by Jessica Webb-Ayer on https://hr.blr.com
The Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury (Departments) recently released mental health parity final regulations that implement the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA).
The MHPAEA applies to most employers with more than 50 employees and is designed to provide mental health parity by making sure mental health and/or substance use disorder benefits offered by health plans are equivalent to the medical/surgical benefits the plans offer.
The U.S. Congress passed the MHPAEA in October 2008, and in February 2010, the Departments jointly issued interim final regulations to aid employers and group health insurers in implementing the MHPAEA’s requirements. The new final regulations are not a whole lot different from those initial regulations and mainly just provide new clarifications on various issues.
Classification of benefits
The interim final regulations made clear that parity analysis must be conducted on a classification-by-classification basis and divided benefits into the following six classifications:
- Inpatient, in-network;
- Inpatient, out-of-network;
- Outpatient, in-network;
- Outpatient, out-of-network;
- Emergency care; and
- Prescription drugs.
The new final regulations retain those six classifications, but they do allow plans and issuers to divide benefits furnished on an outpatient basis into two sub-classifications:
- Office visits (e.g., physician visits); and
- All other outpatient items and services (e.g., outpatient surgery, facility charges for day treatment centers, laboratory charges, and other medical items).
The final regulations also provide that if a plan (or health insurance coverage) provides in-network benefits through multiple tiers of in-network providers, the plan may divide its benefits furnished on an in-network basis into sub-classifications that reflect those network tiers. However, such tiering must be based on reasonable factors and without regard to whether a provider is a mental health or substance use disorder provider or a medical/surgical provider.
Other clarifications
The mental health parity final regulations also provide other clarifications. For example, they:
- Make minor, technical changes to the meaning of the terms “medical/surgical benefits,” “mental health benefits,” and “substance use disorder benefits;”
- Clarify that a plan or issuer is not required to perform the parity analysis each plan year unless there is a change in plan benefit design, cost-sharing structure, or utilization that would affect a financial requirement or treatment limitation within a classification or sub-classification;
- Remove a specific exception for “recognized clinically appropriate standards of care” regarding nonquantitative treatment limitations (NQTLs);
- Add two additional examples of NQTLs: (1) network tier design and (2) restrictions based on geographic location, facility type, provider specialty, and other criteria that limit the scope or duration of benefits for services provided under the plan or coverage;
- Add a new section that addresses claiming an increased cost exemption under the MHPAEA;
- Add more examples throughout the regulations to help plans and issuers understand the provisions.
Effective dates and FAQs
The mental health parity final regulations are effective January 13, 2014, and they apply to group health plans and health insurance issuers for plan years beginning on or after July 1, 2014. Until then, plans and issuers must continue to comply with the interim final regulations.
Along with the new regulations, the Departments also published another set of mental health parity FAQs, which request comments on whether and how to ensure greater transparency and compliance.
Mental Health Parity Resources
- Topic Analysis: Healthcare Insurance
- Benefits Complete Compliance
- Administration to issue long-awaited mental health parity regulations
- Affordable Care Act and mental health: Are employers ready?
- Topic Analysis: Healthcare Benefits
Obesity drives up workers’ comp claims
Originally posted November 21, 2013 by Dan Cook on https://www.benefitspro.com
Obese employees make more workers’ comp claims, and they make costlier ones than non-obese employees.
That conclusion was drawn by Lockton Companies based on its review of several independent studies on employees with high health risks (including obesity, smoking, high blood pressure and limited physical activity) and workers’ comp claims.
The Kansas City, Mo., provider of risk management, insurance, and employee benefits consulting services cites three studies that, when taken together, paint a troubling picture, especially of the impact overweight workers can have on workers’ comp claims.
Lockton says that wellness programs, properly designed and implemented, can address this situation by helping obese workers lose weight. But Lockton doesn’t offer any stats on how effective wellness programs are overall in combating obesity.
Still, the studies cited offer food for thought.
The University of Michigan Health Management Research Center studied Xerox Corp. employees and confirmed that “employees with high health risks tended to have the highest workers’ compensation costs.”
Xerox was an early proponent of wellness plans. The UM followed employees for four years and reported that “workers’ compensation costs increased for those employees whose health risks were increasing or high already (e.g., smoking, physical inactivity, hypertension, high cholesterol, and life/job dissatisfaction).”
Lockton also refers to a 2010 study by the National Council on Compensation Insurance which more closely correlated obesity with workers’ comp claims.
The data “showed that workers’ compensation claims that included the obesity comorbidity diagnosis incurred significantly higher medical costs than comparable claims without the high health risk. NCCI also discovered that claims for employees identified
as “obese” almost tripled from 2000 to 2009 from 2.4 percent to 6.6 percent,” Lockton said.
Lockton then cites a more recent NCCI study testing whether “the lost-time duration of obese claimants is a multiple of non-obese claimants.”
It was.
“According to their findings, obese claimants incurred medical costs 6.8 times higher than non-obese (as defined by body mass index), were twice as likely to file a claim and an indemnity duration that averaged about 13 times higher,” Lockton summarized.
What Lockton suggests is that companies take the following steps to empower their wellness plans to really help employees address chronic health issues:
- Proactively engage HR and employee benefits to better understand the scope and breadth of existing corporate wellness initiatives, as well as how the organization is tracking the effectiveness of those programs.
- Determine how your insurer and/or third party administrator is capturing data on comorbid factors in workers’ compensation claim files and how that information can be incorporated into effective analytics.
- Collaborate with internal safety, health, and environment professionals (if applicable) to discover how best to integrate employee wellness with workplace safety.
“Effective corporate wellness initiatives have shown to be successful in not only reducing the duration of lost-time workers' compensation claims,” said Lockton's Michal Gnatek, author of the report, “but also in promoting healthy behaviors that potentially inhibit unsafe or inattentive workplace behavior.
“Risk managers and claims professionals should be adding employee wellness to the available arsenal of weapons to combat increasing claims.”
The benefits part-time employees can offer your business
Originally posted November 26, 2013 by Abiramie Sathiamoorthy and Janelle McKenzie on https://www.smartcompany.com
When you Google the topic of hiring part-time employees some interesting opinions come up. There seems to be a perception out there that part-time employees aren’t as committed as their full-time colleagues based on the number of hours they’re willing to work. This is something that we couldn’t disagree with more!
It’s as if the fact that they work less hours means that they have less to contribute, which is as ridiculous as it sounds. What’s more ridiculous and unfortunate is that some employers actually buy into this theory. There seems to be a big perception versus reality gap here.
To begin with, putting in face-time at the office doesn’t necessarily equate to commitment. How many of you know of that one employee who seems to be busy doing a whole lot of nothing for most of their day? And then how many of you know of that other employee who comes to work and works like a machine for three out of the five days during the week? Who do you think is more committed to their job?
Surely it makes more sense to measure the commitment of an employee based on the quality of their output and their overall performance rather than the number of hours they work.
Part-time workers in actual fact are as productive (and perhaps even more so) than their full-time colleagues because they have less time to get everything they need to get done, done! For them, time is genuinely precious so they really make the most of it.
Lately, the topic of parents, in particular mothers, returning to work has come up quite a bit in our circle of friends and ex-colleagues. This particular demographic make up a large portion of part-time employees in the workforce. Try telling a part-time employee who has a family to take care of that he or she is not as committed to their job as a full-time employee and they’ll probably tell you where to go!
And fair enough. If a parent is going to make the choice to continue working after having a family, then trust us, they’re committed to the job! The decision is never an easy one so making it requires a lot of commitment in itself – the commitment to make sacrifices and accommodations throughout the other facets of their life just so they can continue to work and pursuit their career.
With that in mind, just because an employee chooses to work part-time doesn’t mean that they’re not equally as ambitious and don’t have career goals like every other employee. It’s a shame that they can be so easily overlooked for promotions and/or special projects. For part-time employees it’s just as important to still have those career conversations with your managers and make your career ambitions known. Nothing wrong with still dreaming big!
We’re not saying that it’s always easy to accommodate part-time employees, particularly in roles with greater responsibility, but it can definitely be worth it. Assess the individual like you would any other full-time employee – on their capability and performance rather than the number of hours they can put into the job.
Benefits that part-time employees can bring to a business:
Help manage wage costs: If you have to pay overtime rates to your existing full-time employees, which are often at a much higher rate, hiring a part-time employee to take on the additional workload at an ordinary base rate can help reduce wage costs significantly. Similarly, if the workload of your operations doesn’t necessarily justify a full-time resource, hiring a part-time resource instead is an obvious solution.
Improve the retention of talent: Sometimes, full-time work simply isn’t an option for many workers, including key talent within your business who have to change their hours due to changing circumstances that come up in life e.g. parents who have childcare responsibilities. A lot of great talent can be lost from a business if there aren’t any options for them to continue to work on a part-time basis.
Access to a greater talent pool: We all know how challenging it can be to find the perfect person for a particular recruitment need. Extending your search to a part-time pool of talented candidates can significantly help.
Greater flexibility: Part-time employees allow for your business to have greater flexibility when it comes to meeting the demands associated with peaks in your operations. Being able to schedule part-time workers around your operational needs presents a key advantage to managing your labour.
Don’t believe the hype that part-time employees won’t contribute as much, have less to offer or aren’t as committed to seeing your business succeed. From the part-time workers we’ve been speaking to, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
2013 rise in employer health costs lowest in years
Originally posted November 20, 2013 by Dan Cook on https://www.benefitspro.com
Is it the lull before the storm?
Employers, it appears, worked hard to hold down health plan cost increases this year. A Mercer study released Wednesday reported that the increase — just 2.1 percent over last year — was the lowest hike since 1997.
But don’t count on another new low in 2014.
Employers told Mercer they expect health plan costs to jump 5.2 percent next year if they keep on looking for – and finding -- ways to restrain health costs.
If they chucked all those efforts, employers say, the increase next year would be more along the lines of 8 percent.
Let’s not rain on the cost-reduction parade quite so quickly. Employer health costs have been reined in of late, and the efforts should be recognized.
The best performance came from the employer group represented by those with 10 to 499 employees. Their costs nudged up just 1 percent this year over last. Even large employers experienced just a 3.7 percent increase — still lower than the overall 4.1 percent increase in 2012 vs. 2011.
Part of the reduction in cost came from the increasing popularity of high-deductible health plans for employees, the study said. Consumer driven health plans are now entrenched in the workplace and offer savings to employers. As the study said:
“Nationally, enrollment in CDHPs rose from 16 percent of covered employees in 2012 to 18 percent in 2013. This is the same portion that enrolled in HMOs. In the Midwest, CDHP enrollment is now more than double that of HMOs (27 percent compared to 10 percent). CDHPs are an important option for employers looking for a low-cost plan to make extending coverage to additional employees more affordable. The average cost of coverage in a CDHP paired with a tax-advantaged health savings account is 17 percent less percent than coverage in a PPO and 20 percent less than in an HMO.”
Employers also point to wellness plans as contributing to lower costs, although most can’t quantify the contribution.
As Mercer’s Julio A. Portalatin, president and CEO, said, “The good news is that employers have already taken decisive action to slow cost growth so they will be in a better position to handle the challenges ahead. But the impact of the ACA on enrollment levels remains a huge question mark.”
Employers pointed to the uncertainties of the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as drivers for next year’s anticipated uptick.
They expect to be providing coverage for more workers in 2014 as the PPACA kicks in, which will add to their costs. “Next year, because of the individual mandate (contained in the PPACA), it is likely that fewer employees will waive coverage for themselves and more will elect dependent coverage – although the extent of the change is difficult to predict,” the study said.
Tracy Watts, Mercer’s national leader for health reform said “there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to enrollment.”
“A big question is how many employees will enroll for the first time, given that the tax penalty for not obtaining coverage is relatively small. But an employer might wind up covering more dependents if others in the area have made changes to discourage their employees from enrolling dependents,” she said.
Other highlights mined from the Mercer data:
- In 2015 employers, more large employers are going to be required to offer health coverage to workers. Among all large employers, 32 percent say they expect to be affected, while 48 percent of large wholesale/retail companies say they will have to offer coverage.
- Fifty-five percent of respondents said they now include same-sex domestic partners as eligible dependents.
- Twenty-three percent of large employers vary the employee contribution amount based on tobacco-use status or provide other incentives to encourage employees not to use tobacco. That’s up from 19 percent in 2012. Among employers with 20,000 or more employees, 46 percent now use an incentive.