How to retain good employees? Make them feel valued.

Training industry reports that U.S. companies spend $161 billion on training development every year. Read this blog post to learn how you can make employees feel valued.


Trucking as an industry is not known as being woman-friendly, but Volvo Truck wants to change this and recently completed a landmark Women in Leadership experience for selected women employees.

For Volvo, retaining female employees is a strategic objective and demonstrating the potential for women to advance and move into leadership roles is key to keeping women in the company. The six-month Women in Leadership program demonstrated that the company valued the participants, just by inviting them to the program.

“Being nominated was like winning something,” said Volvo employee Tyletha Hubbard. “It felt good to know that I was considered a key talent in the organization.”

All people like to be recognized as valuable to their organizations. This principle holds for men, women, ethnic minorities and people of different generations who appreciate employer-provided training and development. What better way to show an employee that they are needed and that they have a place to grow and move up?

Training and development is big business. Training Industry reports that US companies spend $161 billion on it annually. But it’s also a cost-effective benefit to provide your employees. Classroom programs can reach dozens at a time for a flat fee. And then you can add back the valued gained from having a more effective workforce.

Training can address the hard skills of the job or the soft skills of interpersonal relations and emotional intelligence.

In the benefits industry, you’re constantly explaining complicated products that are often fraught with emotion and stress, e.g. health insurance. Presenting benefits plans to clients in a competitive bid is a high-wire act for most salespeople. So, training that focuses on presentation skills, public speaking and body language can give your firm a competitive edge, while building a more confident workforce.

When starting up a training initiative, presentation skills are a great “101” course to include. Most people don’t get it in school and most people need a lot of help with it. Not only does learning about presentation skills and interpersonal communication help people sell better, but it also helps them “read” other people better and interact more effectively with coworkers.

Presentation skills training is a cornerstone for further development. People who have better interpersonal communications tend to do better in higher level training and, generally, better outcomes in all of their work experiences.

Team building, decision making and leadership development are learning experiences that can also “show the love” from the organization to the employee, while also improving the performance of the firm. The term “learning organization” has become a positive goal for many companies, as a means of becoming more effective through better employee engagement and opening new opportunities within the company.

At Volvo, there is a practice of allowing employees to move laterally from department to department in order to learn new skills and keep work interesting. Its Women in Leadership program encouraged staff to think and talk about what job they might want to try doing next. The policy invites workers to be open about their goals and understand that there’s always a place for them. Contrast this with feeling like you’re in a dead-end job.

And this is where HR and training can team up.

A recent study by Right Management revealed that, when asked,  68 percent of employees say they really want to talk about their careers with company management. There’s even an HR term for it: career conversations. But these conversations are not happening very much.

According to the Right Management white paper, “Only 16 percent of employees indicate that they have ongoing career conversations with their managers and about their career.”

It turns out most people get their career conversations from managers, colleagues and family. When a promising young manager starts wondering about where her career is going, she might seek out advice from her workmates of parents, but not human resources.

Why not integrate career conversations with training? It’s a golden opportunity for your human resources team. Most training engagements include personality assessments and feedback that help participants better understand themselves and others. Also, training often concludes with some sort of “what’s next” discussion or action plan about how to use what’s been learned.

A career conversation that follows such focused introspection will be better informed and will benefit from the afterglow of learning.

It’s well documented that financial compensation isn’t always the main factor that keeps people from leaving a company. Andrew Chamberlain, an economist with Glassdoor recently wrote about this in Harvard Business Review.

“One of the most striking results we’ve found is that, across all income levels, the top predictor of workplace satisfaction is not pay: It is the culture and values of the organization, followed closely by the quality of senior leadership and the career opportunities at the company,” writes Chamberlain. “Among the six workplace factors we examined, compensation and benefits were consistently rated among the least important factors of workplace happiness.”

Not feeling valued by management can become an incentive to exit even if it means taking less money in the next job.

Training, development, continual learning experiences and career conversations are proven cost-effective ways to show employees that they are unique individuals who are needed by the organization.

SOURCE: Warrick, D. (29 November 2018) "How to retain good employees? Make them feel valued." (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.benefitspro.com/2018/11/29/how-to-retain-good-employees-make-them-feel-valued/


7 Steps to Running Better Meetings

A recent Accountemps survey revealed that office workers spend 21 percent of their time in meetings and feel that 25 percent of it is wasted. Read this blog post for seven steps to running better meetings.


We love to hate meetings. We groan about how annoying they are. We crack jokes about how much time gets wasted, about bureaucracy run amok.

But it’s not really a laughing matter.

Poorly run meetings can sap the lifeblood out of an organization. Not only are they mentally draining, but they can leave staff disengaged and demoralized, experts say.

On average, office workers spend 21 percent of their time in meetings and feel 25 percent of it is wasted, according to the results of a recent survey of 1,000 employees by Accountemps. One of the top complaints was that meetings are called to relay information that could have been communicated via e-mail.

Managers are also dissatisfied. In a Harvard Business School study last year, researchers found that 71 percent of the 182 senior managers interviewed said meetings were unproductive and inefficient, and 65 percent said meetings kept them from completing their work.

Fortunately, leaders can help improve how meetings are run. Indeed, their behavior is critical to achieving better results and a more positive outlook and engagement from employees, according to a 2017 study published in the Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies. In an earlier University of North Carolina study, researchers found a link between how workers feel about the effectiveness of meetings and their job satisfaction.

Other studies have found that dysfunctional communication in team meetings can have a negative impact on team productivity and the organization’s success.

What happens in these gatherings is a reflection of the workplace culture, experts say.

“It gets down to identity and performance,” says J. Elise Keith, co-founder of Lucid Meetings in Portland, Ore., and author of Where the Action Is (Second Rise, 2018). “The way in which an organization runs its meetings determines how it views itself.”

“Bad meetings are almost always a symptom of deeper issues,” Keith notes in her book.

Unfortunately, many business leaders don’t receive adequate training on how to manage or facilitate meetings, she says. “I believe that a lot of leaders have bought into the idea that poor meetings are inevitable.”

Here are 7 steps to making the time employees spend together more meaningful:

1. Prepare. Are you clear on the meeting’s purpose? What is your desired outcome? How will you achieve that?

More prep time is typically devoted to senior-level meetings compared to those held for individuals in lower-level positions, says Paul Axtell, a corporate trainer and author of Meetings Matter (Jackson Creek, 2015). He says that executive get-togethers are more effective “because people take them seriously.”

2. Limit the number of participants. The most productive meetings have fewer than eight participants, Axtell says. A larger group will leave some disengaged or resentful that their time is being wasted.

3. Send an agenda and background material in advance. If you want a thoughtful discussion, give your team members time to think about the problem or proposal that the meeting will focus on, he says.

4. Start and end on time. Don’t punish people for being punctual by waiting on late stragglers to get started. At the same time, it’s best not to jump right to the heart of the discussion in the first few minutes, Keith says. Provide a soft transition that will help those coming from other meetings to refocus.

5. Make sure all attendees can participate. One common complaint about meetings is that a few people tend to dominate the conversation. Call on other individuals to share what they think, Axtell says. Who is most likely to hold a different view? Who will be most affected by the outcome? Who has institutional knowledge that might be useful? Think about who to draw out on specific topics as you prepare. You’ll collect more ideas and leave participants with a more positive experience.

To feel good about work, people need to feel included and valued. “That means you have a voice and are allowed to express your opinions,” Axtell says.

Because you’re a leader, your views already hold more weight. If you share them too early, you may discourage others from presenting alternate perspectives. Focus on listening, and stay out of the discussion as long as you can, he says. You might learn something.

Avoid PowerPoint slides or other technology if it’s not required for an agenda item. They tend to shut down dialogue, Axtell says.

A surefire way for leaders to alienate participants is to use up most of the meeting time presenting a proposal and leave only a few minutes for questions and comments, Keith says. When people do speak up, thank them for their contributions. And use their ideas, she says.

6. Keep a written record. Posting the meeting agenda and taking notes that everyone can access will help keep participants on track. Unfortunately, many organizations fail to do so, Keith says. The written record ensures that faulty memories or differing interpretations don’t lead people down the wrong path. Are the notes detailed enough to allow you to tackle the action items days later? Are the deadlines reasonable? Be realistic. It doesn’t help the team to accept a giant list of action items that it likely can’t complete, she says.

7. Follow up. What percentage of the action items get completed by the deadlines? If you don’t achieve 85 percent, participants’ sense of effectiveness breaks down and they may disengage, Axtell says. Most groups complete just 50 percent to 60 percent.

“Whether you pay attention to them or not, meetings are in fact where your teams and your people are learning how they should behave and what they should be doing,” Keith says. “So identify the specific types of meetings your organization needs to run. Find great examples of how to run those meetings. You shouldn’t have to invent it. And set up a system that people can use successfully to become the organization that you want to become.”

SOURCE: Meinert, D. (30 October 2018). "7 Steps to Running Better Meetings" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/1118/pages/7-steps-to-running-better-meetings.aspx/


4 best practices for implementing a gamification-based compliance training system

Many employees may dislike and even disengage when their employer mentions implementing training sessions. Continue reading to learn how implementing a gamification-based training system can help improve employee engagement.


For most employees, compliance training is the Brussels sprouts on the kid’s plate of working life. Everyone knows it’s good for you — one mistake could lead to violations, accidents, reputation issues and maybe a not-so-friendly visit from regulatory body officials — but most workers turn up their noses and disengage when it’s time to dig in.

Considering that merely a third of American workers report feeling engaged at work as it stands, anything that makes matters worse is dangerous. Why risk inflaming indifference — not to mention spending money for on-site instructors — with dull-as-dry-toast workshops?

A far better bet is to embrace technology and go virtual. Of course, online-based compliance training won’t guarantee heightened participation or enthusiasm unless they have one specific aspect: gamification.

Gaming elements can turn any virtual compliance training learning management system (LMS) into an immersive experience. ELearning compliance training participants can enjoy customization and flexibility while getting up to speed on the latest rules, guidelines and protocols. With LMS gamification, HR managers and chief learning officers can cultivate and retain top talent. Best of all, it’s far easier to get buy-in for a robust LMS system with badges, bells and whistles than it is to make a pile of Brussels sprouts disappear from a toddler’s tray.

What exactly is so exciting about game-based learning? In essence, the process prompts active and immediate participation because of extra motivation in the form of rewards. Whether it’s badges or points, these features make eLearning interesting and enjoyable.

In one study, workers who enjoyed themselves retained concepts 40% better than those who weren’t having fun. As you might guess, this is what game-based learning is all about. Engaged employees who rapidly earn rewards are less likely to make errors, so they naturally increase a company’s bottom line and lower the likelihood of compliance fees and penalties. Plus, according to research from TalentLMS, 87% of employees report that gamification makes them more productive.

Merging gamification with training makes plenty of sense. It’s also easy to build a gamification-based compliance training LMS by following a straightforward LMS implementation checklist.

1. Identify your training goals and gaps. Before you can find the best LMS for your needs and move forward with an implementation project plan, you need to spot the inefficiencies of your existing compliance training program. For example, your strategy might not facilitate real-world applications. Knowing this, you would want a compliance training LMS that bridges gaps and imparts practical experience.

2. Discover what motivates and drives employees. Employee gamification only works when employees are properly incentivized, so find out what motivates your team based on their backgrounds and experience levels. Whether a task is challenging or boring, people respond better when they are internally driven to succeed.

Do you need an intuitive LMS with a personalized dashboard? Are the introverts on your team more driven by badges and points than by a sense of competition? Conduct surveys to gauge expectations, and try to follow a 70:20:10 model of training amplified by gaming to foster experimentation and collaboration.

3. Choose the right rewards for desired outcomes. With the plethora of LMS choices on the market, you can select from rewards and mechanics that lead to the exact behaviors and criteria you desire. Want employees to achieve safety online training certifications? Reward “graduates” with points after they have displayed their proficiency. Reinforce favorable behaviors without punishing workers who lag behind. Carrots are far more effective than sticks.

4. Invest in a feature-rich, gamification-supported LMS. Your LMS should not only be user-friendly, but it should also be a portal to game-based learning support and an online asset library. Ideally, your gamified learning platform should include themes and templates that allow you to design visually appealing rewards without reinventing the wheel. Just make sure you have game-based reporting on your side, which makes it simple to track employee performance, completion rates, and other LMS metrics.

Implementing a gamification-based compliance training strategy requires careful budgeting, planning, and analysis. Once you find an LMS platform that delivers the features you need within your price range, you’ll be on your way to mitigating risks and retaining superstar employees. And thanks to gamification, everyone can have a little fun along the way.

SOURCE: Pappas, C. (10 October 2018) "4 best practices for implementing a gamification-based compliance training system" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.benefitnews.com/opinion/4-best-practices-for-implementing-a-gamification-based-compliance-training-system?brief=00000152-14a5-d1cc-a5fa-7cff48fe0001


8 Benefits Of Measuring Employee Engagement

Are you measuring your company’s employee engagement? Measuring employee engagement helps companies attain real results and solve problems before they get worse. Read on to learn about the eight benefits of measuring employee engagement.


Employment engagement matters to achieving company success and developing employee skills and talents toward future goals. Happy employees equal a happy and prominent company. However, outdated traditional surveys used to measure engagement fail to reflect how modern employees operate and what they most desire and need to succeed.

Measuring employment engagement in real-time helps companies achieve real results, just as the importance of measuring finances and sales regularly do. Here are eight benefits of measuring employee engagement — much like taking your company's work culture temperature.

1. Solve Problems Before They Worsen

When you have a deadline, what can you do with issues that only now reveal their consequences? You have to deal with the issue quickly, and that often means putting a tourniquet on the problem and moving on. When you keep checking the temperature, you address issues — and their roots — before escalation occurs.

Problems only get big when you let them. Don't wonder why your employee retention and sales suddenly plummet.

2. Employ Empathy and Build Trust

Both employees and leaders need ongoing feedback to keep growing and improving. Make feedback a two-way process and communication that also stems naturally out of conversation and connection. Ongoing, open feedback allows leaders to pose better questions — especially those that relate to the company mission and vision.

When leaders ask good questions and connect, they build trust among employees and workflow improves as a result.

You may think your human resources department handles the human side of things, and that's that. However, thinking that way leaves your company out in the cold. It creates a negative communication gap between leader and employee, leading to #1 and risking you losing a talented individual.

Employ empathy and get the whole story when you see a struggling employee, whether their obstacle is personal or work-related. Everyone is human.

3. Make Morale #1

When employees disconnect, engage them in a meaningful conversation. It doesn't have to last the whole lunch hour — even a brief chat to check in will show you care. You’ll learn more about your employee's concerns, as well as their promise for the organization.

Make morale a top priority in your company, and you will reap the rewards. Productivity increases and you retain employees longer when their morale moves upward.

4. Share Insights Transparently

Back to those metrics. Use the analytics reports regarding workforce trends and finances to motivate your mission and, thus, your employees. Your employees need to be an active part of positive change-making. Employees feel more involved and valued when they know how and why they contribute to an organization and seeing the results drives them to push even harder.

5. Opportunity for Improvement

Surveys provide a snapshot of employee activity and thinking in a single moment in time as they struggle to think up thorough answers and complete the questionnaire to get back to work — or select variations of seven to nine on a 10-point scale to get it done. What does that measure exactly?

Snapshot surveys provide results that develop game plans months down the road. You can also measure social activities and interconnectivity at work to increase the ability to find meaning at work.

Encourage employees to keep track of their thoughts and feelings weekly and speak up. Better measurement tools — especially employee-preferred ones — increase opportunities for improvement and engagement.

6. Take Action When it Matters

Leaders can take action in small, cost-effective ways to engage their employees and improve morale, such as through conversation and opportunities to balance work and life.

Around 99 percent of meetings waste time, so take action as needed. Allow employees to think aloud in conferences and even be a little late, but start the session. When you have a strong work culture, employees and leaders collaborate and co-create to produce real-time, meaningful results.

7. Look for Trends

Technology allows employers to spot trends and take immediate action when used correctly. Does your website measure user experience for the customer? What about your employee's "user experience?"

When you identify trends, you can impact engagement in the day-to-day doldrums of routine. You make work meaningful and help the entire staff take responsibility for trends, as well as their engagements levels. Platforms like Slack allow employees to develop activity-based work styles that boost satisfaction scores, and engagement doesn't always equal productivity. So, deepen your definition of engagement.

8. Keep the Positive Flow Going

What chain reaction would you rather have — a negative one where issues worsen due to disengagement or a positive one where employees feel engaged and value their performance beyond getting a paycheck? Monitor your initiatives for employee engagement regularly, and keep what works going to maintain the positive flow.

Human resources don't begin and end in one department. Every department requires a human touch — your workers aren't drones or robots. They have real needs that, when met, can improve morale and lift up the company to success.

SOURCE: Craig, W. (18 September 2018) "8 Benefits Of Measuring Employee Engagement" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamcraig/2018/09/18/8-benefits-of-measuring-employee-engagement/#5b9bf20a7c55


How to Build a Motivated Workforce

Are your employees motivated? Getting an engaged workforce requires employers to focus on nurturing motivation. Read this blog post to learn how to nurture motivation in your workplace.


There’s a lot of buzz and conversation happening around the importance of employee engagement to a successful organization. But I believe that engagement is an overused or at least misused term. Engagement, to me, isn’t a process but rather an end-state where your employees are “all in.”

Engaged employees work hard on today’s priorities, and when they believe what they do matters and know that you’re invested in them, they will stay with your business for the long term and help you solve the challenges of tomorrow. But getting to this state of engagement requires focusing on nurturing motivation.

Simply put, motivated workers are more productive and efficient, and stretch themselves to do more. When employees are motivated, they get their work done faster and with greater levels of collaboration, creativity and commitment. A motivated workforce goes above and beyond to do what is in the best interest of the organization and, ultimately, the bottom line. So, what are ways you can truly motivate employees?

Set Clear Expectations and Goals, and Communicate Frequently

It’s a strange truth, but many employees simply don’t know what is expected of them at work. Workers are more motivated and engaged when they are given clear objectives, understand how they will be evaluated, and see how their efforts contribute to the bigger picture. Isn’t that what we all want anyway; to contribute to and be a part of something bigger than ourselves? When HR teams help create this clarity for our employees, they experience a greater “purposefulness” or “meaningfulness”  which in turn contributes to motivation. So how do you ensure organizational alignment and foster this sense of meaningfulness?

One critical step that HR leaders can take is working with managers to increase the frequency of communication around performance and goals. When employees work with their managers to set goals and then check in on progress on an ongoing basis rather than treating them as ‘set and forget,’ it can help improve employee motivation, elevate performance and benefit organizations overall. By increasing the frequency of conversations between managers and employees around progress towards goals, HR teams can take a huge step towards creating an effective performance management program for today’s workforce.

This ongoing endeavor isn’t easy.  There are time and commitment involved, and it only works when managers and employees are both invested in open and ongoing dialog about goals and expectations. But the more often managers talk to their employees, the more motivation and performance increases within the workforce. Even quick, informal check-ins, or “managing in the moment” to address priorities or give feedback boosts an employee’s sense that someone is invested in them, and drives motivation.

Spend Time Talking About Career Development

Motivation is tied to a future outlook. One critical way to boost motivation is to move away from ineffective, backward-looking annual performance reviews, and start coaching your managers around having more frequent conversations with their employees that focus on career development. By focusing on development, these conversations become more constructive, forward-looking, and connected to both personal and business objectives. Now you’ve motivated an employee because you’re actually talking about their future and showing you are invested in them!

Implementing performance management processes that are rooted in continuous conversations that center on coaching and career development is vastly more effective for motivating the modern workforce. Focusing on ”performance development” rather than “performance review” shifts the conversation around the process to a more forward-looking, positive and employee-focused stance. This can have a huge impact from an employee motivation perspective, rather than feeling like their managers are micromanaging them or questioning their work, workers feel invested in and motivated to get to the next level in their career, which translates to increases in employee performance.

Provide Timely and Relevant Feedback

Almost half of employees receive feedback from their managers only a few times a year or less. Not only do employees want clear expectations to be established, they also want to know how these are mapping to their larger career goals. Managers need to provide feedback in a timely manner to promote career development. Feedback can be tricky to deliver, and many don’t like delivering or receiving it. So managers need to normalize the feedback by making sure it is timely and is relevant to the employee and their work.

There are many approaches to delivering feedback, but delivering all feedback all the time isn’t the right answer. Managers need to be thoughtful about evaluating all the feedback they receive about their employees and select those items that are most relevant to the employee and those items that they are ready to hear, all in a timely manner to assist the employee in their career.

So, for many reasons, a quarterly review cadence, vs. an annual review, enables managers to align employees’ individual career goals with the organization’s top priorities, ensuring the employee has a sense of purpose and business goals are met.

This is what motivating your workforce is all about. There is no silver bullet to motivate your workforce, however, HR leaders and managers can make a big impact by having frequent and continuous conversations with employees that focus on career development, communicating clear expectations and providing timely feedback. It’s an ongoing process and won’t happen overnight, but by focusing on motivation, both employees and organization at large are better positioned for success.

SOURCE: Strohfus, D (27 August 2018) "How to Build a Motivated Workforce" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://hrexecutive.com/how-to-build-a-motivated-workforce/


10 creative ways to help working parents

The parenting workforce is changing. Most working parents are concerned they won’t have enough time for their children. Continue reading to learn how employers can help working parents.


Can working moms have it all? Say goodbye to the broad-shouldered power suits of the ’80s and ’90s. Juggling a career and raising children is no longer a women’s-only issue.

While mothers are now the primary or sole source of income for 40% of American households with children, 75% of employees of all genders report their biggest concern as a working parent is not having enough time for their children. From single dads to same-sex couples, breadwinning moms to full-time working grandparents, the parenting workforce is changing.

No matter a family’s parenting makeup, employers can take an active role to help alleviate daily stressors affecting all working parents in the new, high-demand workplace. Here are 10 ways to do so.

1. Get real about childcare.

One of the biggest challenges working parents face is finding good quality, reliable, affordable care. Employers can help by offering programs and services such as backup childcare, onsite childcare, or dependent care flexible spending accounts. An employee assistance program with comprehensive dependent care resource and referrals, adoption assistance and personal finance services can relieve a lot of the hassle and pressures of finding childcare services for working parents.

2. Offer flexibility.

Many working parents report that the resource they value most is the ability to have some control over where and when they work. A policy allowing for fixed alternative hours, or the opportunity to work at home as needed, can be a big help. Providing the further ability to have some flexibility on a day-to-day basis — whether to get to a parent conference or accommodate a missed school bus — is even better.

3. Make it convenient.

The ability for working parents to get some of life’s necessities taken care of right at the workplace is a huge plus. On-site amenities that employers offer range from big-ticket items like childcare and fitness centers to postal and banking services, take-home dinners to dry cleaning pick-up and delivery, and car washes to oil changes.

4. Help tackle the “hate-to-do” list.

Often without the support of the village, working parents are saddled with overwhelming responsibilities at home and a laundry list of ‘hate’ to-dos. From grocery shopping to laundry services, employers can offer convenient concierge and errand running perks to save employees time, money, and stress in all areas of life, house, and family management. These services help free up golden personal time, so working parents can focus on more fulfilling family experiences rather than constantly catching up on personal tasks and errands.

5. Promote total health.

Being a working parent is stressful. Don’t underestimate the power of wellness offerings to provide much-needed support. From standing desks to yoga classes, walking meetings to meditation rooms, there are many ways to promote a healthy lifestyle at work.

6. Prioritize mental wellness.

Mental wellness should also be a top priority, and employers can partner with an engaged EAP to build strong stress management solutions and reduce the stigma around mental health at work. Mental health support should be confidential and available at all stages of parenting, from pre-natal to post-partum, empty-nesting and beyond. Mental wellness benefits should be promoted year-round and available to all family members.

7. Remember the older kids.

Parenting doesn’t end when children graduate from grade school. Many employers offer programs such as homework hotlines to help kids through their teen years; EAPs can also provide a wide range of resources and referrals on parenting and education. Services and activities like college coaching, financial counseling, and “lunch and learns” with scholarship or admissions experts can be invaluable to parents facing the next adventure.

8. Simplify travel.

Business travel can be hard when you’re a parent, especially of young children. Careful planning can help ensure working parents don’t have to spend precious weekend time traveling or head to meetings that might have been just as effective by phone. Increasing numbers of employers are also offering breast milk storage and shipping services; some even pay for childcare while employees are out of town.

9. Don’t forget the “working” in working parents.

Becoming a parent doesn’t automatically mean losing interest in your career. Leave it up to employees to decide if they want to take up educational or advancement opportunities.

10. Stay inclusive.

Remember that caregiving responsibilities can encompass a wide range of family situations. Make sure programs and policies — as well as communications about them — support fathers, single parents, adoptive and foster parents, same-sex couples and grandparent-caregivers.

Being a parent is a rewarding and enriching experience — but it can also be exhausting and thankless, especially for those juggling work and family. Fortunately, it doesn’t take much to make the workplace a more supportive, less stressful place for working parents, who will likely return the favor with greater productivity, engagement and loyalty.

SOURCE: Krehbiel, E (2 July 2018) "10 creative ways to help working parents" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/slideshow/10-creative-ways-to-help-working-parents#slide-6

Shifting from employee engagement to employee experience

Employee experience is gaining steam and has many employers changing the way they view their employees. Read this blog post to find out more.


The way businesses view their employees has changed. From mere workers and resources, employers started adopting the mindset that they should give their employees benefits and values, instead of just extracting value from them. The concept of employee engagement applies to this. A lot of studies and researches came out on how employee engagement helps increase employee performance and profitability. Recently though, a shift is happening, with the term “employee experience” gaining steam.

What is Employee Experience?

So, what exactly is employee experience or EX? According to this article, employee experience is “just a way of considering what it’s actually like for someone to work at your company”. It is a holistic model. It includes what the employee experiences in the workplace and within teams—bringing together all the workplace, HR, and management practices that impact people on the job.

Why the shift?

Employee engagement tends to focus on the short-term. For example, there’s an upcoming engagement activity. Once the activity is done, what happens? Most likely, the employee returns to their work, the event just a memory until the next one.

The change in workforce demography creates new demands. The millennial generation, which currently dominates the workforce, have different priorities than the previous generations. The Generation Z’s are now also entering the workforce with a new set of expectations.

Making little changes that impact employee morale and motivation is important. Employee experience is more long-term and big-picture focused. Its scope, from an employee’s point of view, can be end-to-end—from recruitment to retirement.

The challenge of EX is immense. Fortunately, technology is on your side. Various HR tools have been developed to help you get the data that you need, as well as make it easier for you to design the programs you want. Deloitte lists down what you could do right now:

  • Elevate employee experience and make it a priority
  • Designate a senior leader or team to own it
  • Embrace design thinking
  • Consider experiences for the entire workforce
  • Look outside
  • Enlist C-suite and team leader support
  • Consider the impact of geography; and
  • Measure it

The best way to conquer the challenge of EX is by starting now!

SOURCE: Cabrera, A. (23 January 2018) "Shifting from employee engagement to employee experience" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://peopledynamics.co/shifting-employee-experience/


One sure-fire way to engage employees in voluntary benefits

Do you want to increase employee engagement when it comes to voluntary benefits? Read on to learn how to increase employee engagement.


Whether your employees are 22 or 62, they need to plan for the unexpected. A sudden injury or illness can dramatically derail their financial well-being and retirement readiness. As the responsibility for healthcare costs shifts to employees, employers are taking steps to help their employees by offering voluntary benefits, like critical illness and accident insurance.

The hitch, however, is that many employees aren’t taking advantage of these benefits.

There are many reasons for this: Employees may not have much appetite for voluntary insurance benefits after choosing medical benefits. They may not understand what’s being offered or how it is relevant to their lives. Further, if they haven’t been close to someone who has dealt with a catastrophic health issue, they may not grasp how destabilizing that is and how voluntary benefits can help at a difficult time.

So how do employers keep employees from hitting the snooze button on voluntary insurance benefits, and wake them up to how these benefits can help with their overall financial wellbeing?

One way is to understand what employees might need given their life stage, family situation or other variables. To help employees sort this out, here are few scenarios of how voluntary benefits could help employees — with fictional people based on a combination of our experiences with customers.

Leaving nothing to chance

Scott tends to be a worrier. His friends joke that he’s a 45-year-old man in a 25-year-old body. He is in the “adulting” stage of life — getting settled in a career, figuring out his personal life, and living on a salary that’s just a few steps up from entry-level. Scott worries about what might happen if he gets sick or injured and can’t meet his portion of his high-deductible plan. He’s also open about the fact that he doesn’t want to move back in with his parents. Unlike most of his friends, he’s also thinking decades ahead and is already contributing to a 401(k).

Scott wants it all — financial protection now and for the future. Based on what he’s seen happen to friends and colleagues close to his age, he chose critical care and accident insurance coverage during benefits enrollment at work. These options will help cover unexpected costs if an unexpected covered event does happen, and the cost won’t take a big chunk out of his paycheck thanks to his employer’s group rate. What’s more, the benefit is tax-free if he ever needs to use it, and can help keep him independent, and out of his parents’ house.

For employers, these kinds of benefits can help mitigate employees’ financial stressors so they can focus on wellness and getting back to work if an unexpected health issue strikes.

Weekend warriors and thrill-seeking hobbies

Catherine is a marketing manager who is married with two children. She is 44 and in the “balancing” stage of life, between “adulting” and “planning.” Her main concern when looking at voluntary insurance benefits was her husband, who likes high-thrill, risky sports. While Catherine tends to shy away from motorcycles and extreme sports, she is a bit of a weekend warrior since it’s hard to find time to exercise during the week. Her kids are also active and perpetually on the go, whether playing sports or just running around with the neighborhood kids.

Once Catherine learned about voluntary benefits, it was a no-brainer to choose accident insurance for her entire family. While she hopes that her family will only have fun — and avoid injury — doing what they all enjoy, she knows they have to be prepared for anything.

Employers can help employees choose the right benefits by encouraging them to think about how they and their families spend their leisure time, including sports, hobbies, adventure travel or any other activities.

Taking account of a family history of cancer

Meet Justin. He’s 55, married, and has a daughter. He is at the “planning” stage of life — following “adulting” and “balancing.” While Justin is healthy, his family history of cancer is a concern when he considers his future. He’s seen family, friends and colleagues struggle with the costs of a serious illness. He also is acutely aware of saving enough for retirement as he has only 10-15 more years in the workplace, during which he can save.

For Justin, his life stage, family history of cancer and concern for his family’s physical and financial well-being led to his purchasing decisions. To help mitigate financial setbacks if he should become ill, Justin purchased critical illness insurance. He also purchased critical illness and accident coverage for his wife and daughter.

From an employer point of view, emphasizing that employees should consider their family and individual medical history — and how an adverse event could impact them and their families — is a compelling way to make voluntary benefits relevant.

Making it real for employees

Many employers want to help their employees choose the right benefits for their specific needs to protect their financial well-being now and for the future. Showing how needs change with age and lifestyle sheds more light on how voluntary insurance can provide benefits for covered events that will help mitigate financial losses and reduce stress.

Digital technology is making it easier than ever to engage employees across channels with easily digestible but important information. Employers can set up “decision tools” that help employees make choices, offer videos that bring different situations to life, develop app-based calculators, and tell stories about how voluntary benefits can help them and their families during an unexpected illness or injury.

Employees have a lot on their minds. The key to making voluntary benefits real is to show employees why they matter and how to choose the right products. What many employees don’t know is that employers are working hard behind the scenes to offer benefits tailored to their workforce. This is an opportunity for employers to personalize the experience and demonstrate to employees that they truly care.

Grubka, R. (27 June 2018) "One sure-fire way to engage employees in voluntary benefits" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/opinion/engaging-employees-in-voluntary-benefits?tag=00000151-16d0-def7-a1db-97f024870001


CC0 License ✓ Free for personal and commercial use ✓ No attribution required

Improve workplace fitness by focusing on the collective "we"

Do your employees participate in workplace wellness programs? Try involving the collective "we" to increase involvement. Continue reading to learn more.


Workplace wellness programs are implicitly focused on the individual: biometric screenings, individual incentives, gym member reimbursements. This approach can leave employees feeling less than motivated to take part because, even though the programs focus is on the individual, by no means does it make the program personalized.

As workplace wellness programs rapidly improve to meet the expectations of today’s workers, it’s important to remember the value of accountability and what a culture of health can do to create a workplace committed to wellness solutions.

Since wellness programs have traditionally focused on the individual, oftentimes employees never know if their colleagues are participating in any of the programs being offered. Bring it into the light by giving your employees a program they want to talk about, while still keeping it personalized. The collective “we” are not only more likely to try a wellness program, but we are also more likely to stick with it, if we know our peers are also partaking.

The power of sharing with your peers

We all know writing down a goal gives you a much higher chance of achieving it, but research from the Association for Talent Development says someone is 65 percent more likely to achieve a goal if the goal is shared with another person. Why? Because it creates accountability.

We are in the day and age of a social media frenzy, and, it’s cross-generational. We share everything we do and spend a lot of our time concerned with what our friends, family and co-workers are doing through these social platforms. Wellness practitioners can and should be taking advantage of this, especially as you build your culture of health.

To find the right wellness solution for your company or client, look for solutions that are social and easy to use. If the company as a whole has buy-in, or even a few internal advocates, word-of-mouth can be incredibly powerful. Whether that is around the water-cooler at work, on employees’ personal social media channels, or within the work intranet, create opportunities for employees to talk about your program and encourage them to use it. We know when an employee knows a few of their coworkers are planning to attend yoga or kickboxing on a Tuesday evening, they are much more likely to sign up and actually go.

These “wellness relationships” help not only build stronger bonds at work, but they also help you create and maintain healthy habits. You want your employees to engage with your wellness solution, so encourage them to share and become part of the “solution” themselves. At the end of the day, workplace wellness solutions are there to help everyone get healthier and stay that way, but they have to use the program.

More than just an incentive

We have spent at least a decade looking at incentives and how we align them to solve problems with low participation in our wellness program, when we should have focused on building a program that empowers our employees and puts them in the driver’s seat. I’m not suggesting you stop incentivizing your employees, but I do suggest you measure what it is you are rewarding. If it can’t be measured you may as well burn the money you are investing.

Remember, your employees are the real reason your program will sink or swim. Take care of your employees and encourage them to be and find their healthiest selves. Empower them in the process and give them choice in how, when and with who they participate in your wellness program and let them become your wellness solution.

Maurer E. (18 July 2018). "Improving workplace wellness by focusing on the collective 'we'" (Web Blog Post). Retrieved from https://www.benefitspro.com/2018/07/18/improve-workplace-wellness-by-focusing-on-the-coll/.


How faking your feelings at work can be damaging

Putting up a fake smile on Monday morning is sometimes unavoidable. There could be consequences to carrying a heavy emotional labor load to get over the Monday Blues.


Imagine yourself 35,000 feet up, pushing a trolley down a narrow aisle surrounded by restless passengers. A toddler is blocking your path, his parents not immediately visible. A passenger is irritated that he can no longer pay cash for an in-flight meal, another is demanding to be allowed past to use the toilet. And your job is to meet all of their needs with the same show of friendly willingness.

For a cabin crew member, this is when emotional labour kicks in at work.

A term first coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, it’s the work we do to regulate our emotions to create “a publicly visible facial and bodily display within the workplace”.

Simply put, it is the effort that goes into expressing something we don’t genuinely feel. It can go both ways – expressing positivity we don’t feel or suppressing our negative emotions.

Unhelpful attitudes such as ‘I’m not good enough’ may lead to thinking patterns in the workplace such as ‘No-one else is working as hard as I seem to be’ or ‘I must do a perfect job’, and can initiate and maintain high levels of workplace anxiety -  Leonard

Hochschild’s initial research focused on the airline industry, but it’s not just in-flight staff keeping up appearances. In fact, experts say emotional labour is a feature of nearly all occupations in which we interact with people, whether we work in a customer-facing role or not. The chances are, wherever you work, you spend a fair portion of your working day doing it.

When research into emotional labour first began, it focused on the service industry with the underlying presumption that the more client or customer interaction you had, the more emotional labour was needed.

However, more recently psychologists have expanded their focus to other professions and found burnout can relate more closely to how employees manage their emotions during interactions, rather than the volume of interactions themselves.

Perhaps this morning you turned to a colleague to convey interest in what they said, or had to work hard not to rise to criticism. It may have been that biting your lip rather than expressing feeling hurt was particularly demanding of your inner resource.

But in some cases maintaining the façade can become too much, and the toll is cumulative. Mira W, who preferred not to give her last name, recently left a job with a top airline based in the Middle East because she felt her mental wellbeing was at stake.

In her last position, the “customer was king”, she says. “I once got called 'whore' because a passenger didn't respond when I asked if he wanted coffee. I’d asked him twice and then moved to the next person. I got a tirade of abuse from the man.”

“When I explained what happened to my senior, I was told I must have said or done something to warrant this response… I was then told I should go and apologise.”

“Sometimes I would have to actively choose my facial expression, for example during severe turbulence or an aborted landing,” she says. “Projecting a calm demeanour is essential to keep others calm. So that aspect didn't worry me. It was more the feeling that I had no voice when treated unfairly or extremely rudely.”

During her time with the airline, she encountered abuse and sexism – and was expected to smile through it. “I was constantly having to hide how I felt.

Over the years and particularly in her last role, handling the stress caused by suppressing her emotions became much harder. Small things seemed huge, she dreaded going to work and her anxiety escalated.

“I felt angry all the time and as if I might lose control and hit someone or just explode and throw something at the next passenger to call me a swear word or touch me. So, I quit,” she says.

She is now seeing a therapist to deal with the emotional fallout. She attributes some of the problems to isolation from family and a brutal travel schedule, but has no doubt that if she hadn’t had to suppress her emotions so much, she might still be in the industry.

Mira is not alone. Across the globe, employees in many professions are expected to embrace a work culture that requires the outward display of particular emotions – these can including ambition, aggression and a hunger for success.

The way we handle emotional labour can be categorised in two ways – surface acting and deep acting

A few years ago, the New York Times wrote a “lengthy piece about the “Amazon Way”,describing very specific and exacting behaviour the retail company required of its employees and the effects, both positive and negative, that this had on some of them. While some appeared to thrive in the environment, others struggled with constant pressure to show the correct corporate face.

“How we cope with high levels of emotional labour likely has its origins in childhood experience, which shapes the attitudes we develop about ourselves, others and the world,” says clinical and occupational psychologist Lucy Leonard.

“Unhelpful attitudes such as ‘I’m not good enough’ may lead to thinking patterns in the workplace such as ‘No-one else is working as hard as I seem to be’ or ‘I must do a perfect job”, and can initiate and maintain high levels of workplace anxiety,” says Leonard.

Workers are often expected to provide good service to people expressing anger or anxiety – and may have to do this while feeling frustrated, worried or offended themselves.

“This continuous regulation of their own emotional expression can result in a reduced sense of self-worth and feeling disconnected from others,” she says.

Hochschild suggests that the way we handle emotional labour can be categorised in two ways – surface acting and deep acting – and that the option we choose can affect the toll it takes on us.

Take the example of a particularly tough phone call. If you are surface acting you respond to the caller by altering your outward expression, saying the appropriate things, listening while keeping your actual feelings entirely intact. With deep acting you make a deliberate effort to change your real feelings to tap in to what the person is saying – you may not agree with the manner of it but appreciate the aim.

Both could be thought of as just being polite but the latter approach – trying to emotionally connect with another person’s point of view – is associated with a lower risk of burnout.

Jennifer George’s role as a liaison nurse with a psychiatric specialism in the Accident & Emergency department at Kings College London Hospital puts her at the sharp end of health care. Every day she must determine patients’ needs – do they genuinely need to be admitted, just want to be looked after for a while or are they seeking access to drugs?

“It’s important to me that I test my own initial assumptions,” she says. “As far as I can, I tap into the story and really listen. It’s my job but it also reduces the stress I take on.”

“Sometimes I’ll have an instinctive sense that the person is trying to deceive, or I can become bored with what they’re saying. But I can’t sit there and dismiss something as fabrication and I don’t want to.”

This process can be upsetting, she says. Sometimes she has to say no “in a very direct way”, and the environment can be noisy and threatening. “I stay as much as I can true to myself and my beliefs. Even though I need to be open to what both fellow professionals and would-be and genuine patient cases say to me, I will not say anything I don’t believe and that I don’t believe to be right. And that helps me,” she says.

When things get tough, she talks to colleagues to unload. “It’s the saying it out loud that allows me to test and validate my own reaction. I can then go back to the person concerned,” she says.

Ruth Hargrove, a former trial lawyer based in California, also faces tricky interactions in her work representing San Diego students pro bono in disciplinary matters. “Pretty much everyone you are dealing with in the system can make you labour emotionally,” she says.

One problem, says Hargrove, is that some lawyers will launch personal attacks based on any perceived weakness – gender, youth – rather than focusing on the actual issues of the case.

“I have dealt with it catastrophically in the past and let it eat at my self-esteem,” she says. “But when I do it right, I realise that I can separate myself out from it and see that [their attack] is evidence of their weakness.”

Rather than refuting specific, personal allegations, she simply sends back a one-line email saying she disagrees. “Not rising to things is huge,” she says. “It’s a disinclination to engage in the emotional battle that someone else wants you to engage in. I keep in sight the real work that needs to be done.”

Those who report regularly having to display emotions at work that conflict with their own feelings are more likely to experience emotional exhaustion

Hargrove also has to deal with the expectations of clients who believe – sometimes unrealistically – that if they have been wronged, justice will prevail. She understands their feelings, even as she has to set them straight.

“I empathise here, as a parent, with their thought that there should be a remedy, even when I know it’s not going to be achievable. It helps me that this feeling is also true to me.”

Remaining true to your feelings appears to be key – numerous studies show those who report regularly having to display emotions at work that conflict with their own feelings are more likely to experience emotional exhaustion.

Of course, everybody needs to be professional at work and handling difficult clients and colleagues is often just part of the job. But what’s clear is that putting yourself in their shoes and trying to understand their position is ultimately of greater benefit to your own well-being than voicing sentiments that, deep down, you don’t believe.

Leonard says there are steps individuals and organisations can take to prevent burnout. Limiting overtime, taking regular breaks and tackling conflict with colleagues through the right channels early on can help, she says, as can staying healthy and having a fulfilling life outside work. A “climate of authenticity” at work can be beneficial.

“Organizations which allow people to take a break from high levels of emotional regulation and acknowledge their true feelings with understanding and non-judgemental colleagues behind the scenes tend to fare better in the face of these demands,” she says.

Such a climate can also foster better empathy, she adds, by allowing workers to maintain emotional separation from those with whom they must interact.

Where it is possible, workers should be truly empathetic, be aware of the impact the interaction is having on them and try to communicate in an authentic way. This, she says, can “protect you from communicating in a disingenuous manner and then feeling exhausted by your efforts and resentful of having to fake it”.

SOURCE:
Levy, K (25 June 2018) "How faking your feelings at work can be damaging" [Web Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180619-why-suppressing-anger-at-work-is-bad