Flexible Work Schedule Doesn't Hurt Productivity
Original post benefitspro.com
Schedule flexibility should not be perceived as a gift to employees, suggests a new study. If it were, the employer would be giving up something, presumably employee productivity.
But an increasing body of research indicates that flexible workplaces are no worse for wear than others with stricter schedules.
The most recent study, published this month by Phyllis Moen, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota, analyzed the effect that flexible work policies have on IT workers at a major firm.
Half of the 867 workers continued working under the company’s existing policy, with standard schedules and exceptions occasionally granted by supervisors.
The other group was given an entirely open-ended schedule, with no restrictions, so long as the employees completed their assigned work. Supervisors were also encouraged to think about ways to reduce work-family conflicts for employees, and were even prompted twice a day reminding them to come up with such ideas.
The study found that those who were granted the additional flexibility were not any less productive than those who labored under the traditional schedule. Those with the flexible schedules also reported being much happier because of the reduced stress of trying to make time to pick up kids and other typical work-family conflicts.
The study prompted a major feature story in the New York Times Magazine, “Rethinking the Work-Life Equation,” which profiled the growing ranks of experts in favor of flexible scheduling. Employers are under increased pressure to help their workers strike a work-life balance because of shifting gender roles, as more and more married couples commit themselves to both career advancement and child-rearing.
Even employers that are generous to employees seeking schedule flexibility may not produce the same level of stress-reduction as a policy that explicitly grants unlimited flexibility.
‘‘What people told us, over and over again, was that the new policy removed the guilt,’’ Erin Kelly, an MIT professor who collaborated on the study, told the New York Times Magazine. ‘‘We heard that word a lot.’’
Enrollment in vision plans remains high
Original post benefitsnews.com
Employers hoping to attract and retain employees need not look further than their vision benefit offerings. New research shows vision benefits have high engagement with employees, but some experts say employers need to work closer with advisers to build the benefit plan workers are seeking.
According to the 2016 annual Employee Perceptions of Vision Benefits survey conducted by Wakefield Research on behalf of Transitions Optical, eight in 10 people chose to enroll in employer-sponsored vision plans. It’s the only benefit to experience a year-over-year increase, the survey found, adding that some benefits such as life, dental and 401(k) plans saw a slight decrease in enrollment compared with 2015.
As more millennials enter the workforce, ancillary benefits such as vision may be considered a more immediate need than retirement plans or some medical benefits, Jonathan Ormsby, strategic account manager with Transitions Optical suggests.
“A competitive benefits package is a significant consideration and draw for workers,” he he says. “Nearly a third of survey respondents said they have, or know somebody, who has accepted a job in the last year because it offered a competitive benefits package – and one in five note that vision is the most appealing element of the package.”
The survey also found employees are increasingly making demands of their employers in terms of what options the vision plans cover. Forty-one percent say it is very important and 46% say it is somewhat important to have premium materials covered, including impact resistant polycarbonate lenses, photochromic lenses, anti-reflective treatment and others.
A desire for broader choice is also affecting the vision market, according to Srikanth Lakshminarayanan, senior director for the Center of Excellence at HGS Healthcare, which provides business process management and end-to-end services for healthcare payers and provider organizations.
“What we now hear from the customer is that they want a choice of options to be much broader,” he says. “They don’t want to be tied up to a particular vision care company” in order to obtain group discounts.
Education
“I think education is the top priority and one strategy we recommend for that is better collaboration between advisers and employers,” notes Ormsby.
For example, he says, “Advisers need to better educate employers on the materials especially the frames and lenses side of the benefits.”
Eighty-seven percent of employees say having premium material coverage is important when selecting their vision plan but more than a quarter are uninformed about the lenses covered by their vision plan, Ormsby says.
“So plenty of room for education,” he says.
Education should be a year-round initiative, he adds, something advisers should think about when working with employers. The survey found 29% of respondents felt a vision plan’s website was the most valuable resource in helping understand benefits, while 26% felt the benefits provider was valuable.
3 Ways to Boost Employee Health with On-Site Wellness Program Support
Original post benefitspro.com
When employers launch a robust employee health program, too often corporate wellness becomes another job for someone who already has a full range of responsibilities.
That’s why it’s crucial to have someone “on the ground” who owns health and wellness and can in turn play an active role in building a successful health management program.
We see the benefits of providing an on-site wellness presence. Our client sites that have a dedicated on-site program manager enjoy a 33 percent higher participation rate compared to similar programs that don’t include an on-site manager.
The benefits of having an on-site wellness program manager include the following:
- Screening participation: 58 percent increase
- Health advising participation: 43 percent increase
- Coaching enrollment participation: 21 percent increase
In addition to on-site program managers, here are three ways our clients inspire employee wellness with on-site solutions—and how this option might make sense for your organization.
1. Drive engagement with health advocates
To meet the needs of more than 12,000 employees in 18 locations at a leading automotive parts manufacturer, my employer HealthFitness provides six on-site health promotion coordinators and eight full-time benefits advocates to help employees and their families navigate the health care system.
On-site advocates serve as corporate wellness navigators and answer questions employees may have related to their benefits—from how the medical plan works to how to earn incentives.
Advocates work as a touch point for employees—whether they meet before, after or during shift breaks.
Results:
Support from on-site benefit advocates has paid off in providing real results for both employees and the company.
- 48,000 benefit advocacy contacts driving referrals to benefit providers
- 6.2 percent year-over-year reduction in health risks
- 93 percent completion rate of health assessments and screening for employees and spouses
2. Activate boots on the ground
To build rapport with the manufacturing population at a leading producer of agricultural products, our on-site staff regularly meets employees where they are—donning steel-toe boots and protective gear to join them in the field, safety meetings, or break rooms.
Our on-site presence lets them know we are here for them and are committed to their health.
For example, to make it easier for employees to participate in wellness activities such as screenings, on-site staff are scheduled to work early hours (from 4 a.m. to 12 p.m.), giving workers the opportunity to participate in blood pressure screenings without leaving the worksite.
The mindset of ‘we bring the program to you’ is essential to program participation success.
Results:
- 11.3 percent decrease in average number of high health risks from 22.47 to 2.19 among 2,400 participants.
- 97 percent of participants were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their on-site biometric screening event.
- 63 percent of employees participated in one or more lifestyle management programs in 2013.
3. Build a network of on-site wellness champions
Our on-site program manager leverages a wellness champion network of more than 30 employees to meet the needs of 12,000 employees at an agricultural and construction equipment leader.
Wellness champions build employee awareness and increase engagement in corporate wellness programs.
Employees at 20 sites throughout the country turn to the wellness champions as a resource, to share ideas and ask questions. Wellness champions also represent employees during ongoing conference calls and help ensure health and wellness continues to be part of their daily routines.
Results:
- 85.3 percent of the employee population has participated in at least one health management activity.
- 43.1 percent participation in a walking program that challenges employees to walk 10,000 steps a day.
- 21.1 percent participation in health coaching so employees can develop an individual, confidential plan to help them reach their health goals.
4 Ways to Talk to Employees So They Listen
Original post entrepreneur.com
No one likes to be lectured in the workplace.
As a leader, you need to communicate with your employees to deliver strategic direction, reinforce corporate culture and rally the troops to achieve company goals and objectives. To be effective, you need to deliver these messages in a way that creates energy and enthusiasm, rather than deflating your team.
Here are four tips for talking to employees in a way that energizes them rather than depleting them:
1. Use humor. No matter how big or small your operation may be, there is often tension and emotional distance between the boss and employees. To diffuse that, I regularly use humor, a tactic that makes me more approachable. In my experience, the best kind is self-deprecating humor. When I showed up to meet new employees for the first time at a Midwest location, I started the conversations by poking fun at my pronounced "New Yawk" accent. It got a laugh and made me seem more accessible.
2. Ask open-ended questions. And then be quiet. My favorite question to ask is “Tell me about [insert topic here].” When you ask a new employee about his ideas or a technologist about a new device, you are asking them to do more than give you a pat sentence or two in response. You have the opportunity to access that person’s deep knowledge and passion. Ask a question that opens the conversation wide and then hold still and listen.
3. Bring others into the conversation. A boss-employee conversation may seem casual to the boss but can feel like an interrogation to the employee. To diffuse this situation, I like to bring others into the conversation to even out the experience. I may turn a one-on-one discussion into a larger conversation by inviting people to join us and share their thoughts and experiences. It benefits me, because I get to hear more voices, and it helps put everyone else at ease.
4. Let the little stuff slide. If you are the kind of hands-on person who helped build the business from the ground up, you probably have insight or advice on everything from the capital budget to color of the carpet. But you don’t have to communicate every thought to the staff. If it’s not an important critique, let it go. I visited a flower shop in my company once and noticed the manager was not lining the trashcans with plastic bags. I know from experience that liners make the job easier, but I also know that I don’t need to communicate every idea that comes into my head. It just creates a climate of nitpicking.
Conversations that take place up and down the food chain – between supervisor and staff, people of different departments and the boss and the new employee – are often the source of great new ideas.
As the boss, it’s your job to get those conversations started and keep them going. You have a chance to make that happen (or achieve the opposite) every time you open your mouth.
Top healthcare benefit trends to watch
Original post benefitsnews.com
The number of employers offering a healthy living/incentive program grew in 2015, and is one of several trends to watch as the year 2016 unfolds, analysts say.
Plan design changes and programs such as incentive and wellness were of increasing interest to employers last year and most “continue to turn to their brokers and consultants to learn more about new health plan benefit designs and distribution models,” says Tiffany Wirth, executive director of the Healthcare Trends Institute.
“Helping employees better understand the value of provided benefits and making cost-conscious benefit decisions continues to remain important to employers,” she says.
The number of employers offering a healthy living/incentive program grew from 29.8% in 2014 to 34.6% in 2015, according to the HTI’s 2015 Healthcare Benefit Trends Benchmark Study.
During a webinar unveiling the results, Wirth said 21.8% of employers are considering such a program and 16.7% are still learning about them. About 1 in 4 employers (24.7%) indicated they weren’t interested in offering such a program.
“We’re starting to see these types of programs take hold as [healthcare] reform is being adopted and companies are pushing employees to understand their decisions, their purchases, and all of the different things that go along with healthcare benefits,” she says.
As part of incentive program tracking, HTI has also been examining what sort of wellness programs companies are implementing, Wirth says.
Almost half (44.6%) offer at least one type of wellness program, the survey found. Thirty-one percent offer biometric screenings and about 30% offer an opportunity for health risk management.
Key differences from the 2014 benchmark study, Wirth says, included the ranking of top benefits offered by employers. The three highest company-offered employee benefits in 2014 (PPO, family plan and prescription drug) continued to rank high in 2015, but dental came in at No. 1 this year, with about 74% of employers offering it.
More than half (52.1%) of respondents said they had some familiarity with defined contribution plans and private exchanges, with the majority of those who indicated they were interested in offering a DCP identifying 2017 as the year they would likely do so.
Wirth says continued interest is growing among employers to learn and understand more about DCPS.
7 Tips to Get Your Team to Actually Listen to You
Original post entrepreneur.com
Right from the outset, entrepreneurs must pay attention to every communication and opportunity for sharing their passion and vision. They must communicate effectively, so they can inspire others to come aboard. They must speak honestly and in ways that reveal their personal character and genuine connection. Yet, this sort of communication style can be difficult and time consuming – especially when demands are huge and time is scarce.
There is far more to being an effective and authentic communicator than most entrepreneurs believe -- at least when they are starting out. Even if you think you’re good at speaking to your team and motivating them, there’s always more to learn.
Leadership communication is a discipline and a practice: The more time, effort and heart you put in, the more effective you become. There really are no shortcuts.
That said, here are seven ideas that can help you focus your attention and improve your leadership communication.
1. Be authentic.
When you speak with your employees you must come across to them as real. This means sharing your beliefs and your struggles. Talking about moments of doubt but also explaining how you overcame them with more conviction and confidence than ever. Or perhaps share a story or two about a failure and disappointment in life.
The most convincing talks are when stories are shared about personal weaknesses and what one was doing to overcome them or disappointments and failures and how they were turned around.
2. Know yourself.
Dig deep. Know your values and what motivates you. If you don’t know yourself you cannot share or connect with others. People want to know what makes you tick as a human being not just as a leader. Share this and make yourself real.
3. Rely on a good coach or a trusted advisor.
Developing good communication skills takes time -- and in the rush of business, that’s scarce. Having someone who can push you to examine and reveal your interests and passions is enormously helpful and the value is immeasurable.
4. Read up on leadership communication.
If you can’t hire a coach, read all that you can. This is an inexhaustible resource, and you should never quit learning anyway. Books, articles, the internet; the possibilities are endless.
5. Make values visible.
Effective, empathetic communication and a commitment to culture can provide a solid foundation for your ideas and contribute to making it a reality. Many of today’s most successful companies have gone through dramatic crises. Their improvements often hinged upon genuine communication from the leaders.
For instance, think of Starbucks and Howard Schultz’s clear and genuine communications about the importance of managers and baristas being personally accountable for future success. Your employees want to know what you and the company stands for. What is the litmus test for everything you do? These are your values. Talk about them but you must always be sure to “walk the talk” and live by them.
6. Engage with stories.
You can't rely on facts and figures alone. It’s stories that people remember. The personal experiences and stories you share with others create emotional engagement, decrease resistance and give meaning. It is meaning that gets employees' hearts and fuels discretionary effort, thinking and desire to actively support the business.
Once someone was implementing a massive pricing cut. He could have presented reams of data about this change and why it needed to be made. Instead he invited in four clients of the firm who had written letters about why after more than 10 years they had decided to leave due to our pricing being noncompetitive. Everyone was engaged and quite horrified to hear this feedback. Getting the team’s support for the change was much easier after that.
7. Be fully present.
There is no autopilot for leadership communication. You must be fully present to move people to listen and pay attention, rather than simply be in attendance. Any time you are communicating, you need to be prepared -- and to speak from your heart. Leadership communication is, after all, about how you make others feel. What do you want people to feel, believe and do as a result of your communication? This absolutely can't happen if you read a speech. No matter how beautifully it is written, it doesn’t come across as authentic or from your heart if you are reading it. Embrace what you want to say and use notes if you must, but never read a speech if you want to be believable and move people to action. (And yes this requires a ton of preparation).
Your speeches are visible and important components of your role as a leader. Successful entrepreneurs are conscious of that role in every communication, interaction and venue within the organization and beyond. They also know that while today’s world provides a wide range of ways to communicate to your organization -- mass email, text, Twitter, instant message and more --connecting is not that simple. Electronic communication is a tool for communicating information -- not for inspiring passion.
3 ways gamification can improve your team’s well-being
Original post benefitsnews.com
What does a big, fancy word like “gamification” mean anyway? Simply put, it’s the idea that game-like rules and rewards make the hard stuff fun. And smart leaders now use it to engage and motivate their employees.
Well-known game designer Jane McGonigal says “living gamefully” helps people bring curiosity, passion and balance into their lives. It gives them a higher purpose so they keep moving forward in their mission even when obstacles block their vision.
Gamification is the reason fitness apps work. When the buzzer signals that you hit 10,000 steps, you win. Even performance reviews contain elements of game design – when your employees exceed all their goals and move to the next career level, you both win.
Let’s go for that big win. Help your employees achieve their goals and improve their health by introducing these gamification strategies.
3 gamification strategies to implement:
1. Wellness quests. As noted above, wearable technology makes tracking exercise so much easier. But gamification for health doesn’t require that level of sophistication — you can make a game out of almost anything when you keep score by pencil. Challenge your team members to sneak extra exercise into their day. Have them jot down a checkmark every time they take a stretch break. Heat up competition by posting results on a whiteboard for all to see. Add rules or creative complexities as time goes on and the activities become easier. The more quests employees complete, the healthier they’ll be.
2. Social communities. We all need a little help from our allies. We crave support from one another, and we’re willing to dig in deeper when we know others are rooting for us. So it’s no surprise that social interactions and competitions help employees stay motivated and happy. Hook your employees into healthy activities with team vs. team challenges, photos, comments, nudges and cheers. Recognize accomplishments in ways that best fit your company’s culture – whether that’s sending around leader-board rankings each week or letting peers nominate each other for special badges.
3. Power-ups. The journey to well-being is never over — but it’s nearly impossible to keep going if you don’t hit milestones. This is when you need to activate “power-ups” — the quick tasks that feel like small wins. Remember how satisfying those power-ups were in your video games of childhood? Encourage your employees to take baby steps toward their goals. For instance, they may not have time for a lunchtime workout, but can they sneak in a few jumping jacks before every meeting? How about simply standing up for two minutes? Or taking a mid-meeting plank break? Achievements like these provide a burst of feel-good energy and intrinsic motivation to help us stick with lofty commitments.
Here are the top 10 most costly U.S. workplace injuries
Original post lifehealthpro.com
Workplace injuries and accidents are the near the top of every employer’s list of concerns.Here is the countdown of the top 10 causes and direct costs of the most disabling U.S. workplace injuries. The definitions and examples can be found at the BLS website.
- Repetitive motions involving micro-tasks
Some of these tasks may include a word processor who looks from the computer monitor to a document and back several times a day or the cashier at the local grocery store who is scanning and bagging groceries for several hours at a time.
- Struck against object or equipment
This category of workplace injury applies to workers who are hurt by forcible contact or impact, for example, an office worker who bumps into a filing cabinet or an assembly line worker who stubs a toe on stacked parts.
- Caught in or compressed by equipment or objects
These workplace injuries result from workers being caught in equipment or machinery that’s still running as well as in rolling, shifting or sliding objects.
Picture the scene in a movie in which wine barrels topple over, catching the bad guy beneath them, only in this case, it’s the employee whose job it may be to stack the barrels. Perhaps it’s the experienced worker who removes a machine guard to dislodge material that’s stuck and gets a finger caught when the machine starts moving again.
- Slip or trip without fall
Occasionally, workers do slip or trip without hitting the ground. Think of the employee entering the workplace who slips on icy stairs but is able to grab the handrail to prevent hitting the ground. But the action of grabbing the handrail may cause the employee to injure his shoulder or wrench her knee.
- Roadway incidents involving motorized land vehicle
The worker may be the driver, a passenger or a pedestrian, but the cause of the injury is an automobile, truck or motorcycle.
- Other exertions or bodily reactions
These motions include bending, crawling, reaching, twisting, climbing or stepping, according to the BLS. Consider, for example, a roofing contractor’s employees who are continually climbing up and down ladders.
- Struck by object or equipment
This category covers a range of possible injuries, from being struck by an object dropped by a fellow worker to being caught in a swinging door or gate. Picture the construction worker on a scaffold dropping a hammer on the worker below.
- Falls to lower level
The roofer could fall to the ground from the roof or ladder, or an office worker standing on a stepstool, reaching for a heavy file box, could fall to the floor.
- Falls on same level
The second most costly workplace injury, surprisingly, is a fall on the same level. Picture the employee who is walking through the office and falls over an uneven floor surface or someone leaning too far back in an office chair and toppling over.
- Overexertion involving an outside source
The BLS explains that overexertion occurs when the physical effort of a worker who lifts, pulls, pushes, holds, carries, wields or throws an object results in an injury.
The object being handled is often heavier than the weight that a worker should be handling or the object is handled improperly. For example, lifting from a shelf that’s too high, or in a space that’s cramped. Within the broad category of sprains, strains, and tears caused by overexertion, most incidents resulted specifically from overexertion in lifting.
Risk managers should work with their carriers and workplace safety specialists to minimize injuries, lost work days and workers’ compensation costs.With a little effort, employers can understand more about the causes of accidents and injuries in their organizations, identify the appropriate actions to reduce the number of injuries and minimize employee disabilities from workplace accidents.
You may look more productive skipping lunch, or eating at your desk. But you aren’t.
Original post Ellie Krieger, The Washington Post
The hour-long lunch may be a charming relic of the past, like phone cords and typewriters, but in today’s 24-7 work culture, many of us don’t take any lunch break at all.
Fewer than 20 percent of American workers regularly step away for a midday meal, and 39 percent usually eat at their desks, according to a survey done by Right Management.
This trend is fueled by the notion that the most dedicated, effective workers are constantly available and on-task, and that taking a lunch break is counterproductive. It’s a perception that’s especially powerful in the tech sector, which gave birth to the meal-replacement drink Soylent so you don’t need to stop what you are doing to eat. The tagline for the product is “free your body,” which implies we’d be better off liberated from the pesky burden of needing to be fed.
But the idea that breaking for a meal hinders accomplishment is plainly wrong. The truth is, stopping to eat can actually make you much better at what you do.
Part of the reason lunch can boost your performance at work is that food literally fuels your brain, which needs a constant supply of energy to function optimally. So, the worst thing you can do for your midday mental performance is to skip lunch; and the best thing you can do, it seems, is to eat one with a balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fat.
Carbohydrate is the brain’s primary fuel and study after study, on everyone from children to airline pilots to the elderly, show improvement on memory tests after eating carbs, especially slow-release carbohydrates such as whole grains and vegetables. But it turns out that protein and fat have distinct roles in powering our brains as well.
In a 2001 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looking at how carbs, protein and fats affect thinking, researchers concluded that each of the macronutrients enhanced performance on different kinds of tasks. So the optimal power-lunch should include all three — carbs from vegetables and/or whole grains; a protein such as lean meat, eggs, beans or nuts; and a healthy fat like olive oil or avocado.
Can employers access an employee’s social media account?
Original post ebn.benefitnews.com
The water cooler, it seems, is a thing of the past. Or at least the actual physical water cooler is. These days, many of the office conversations take place online. Employees air their grievances, connect with each other and catch up on each other’s lives through social media.
As technology plays a bigger role in our lives and simple statements that were previously private now become public, employers have an increased interest in what their employees are doing and saying online. Are they disparaging the company? Are they harassing other employees? Are they divulging company secrets?
While these are all valid questions that an employer may want answered, employers need to tread carefully when developing policies regarding their employees’ use of social media. As the technological landscape and employee behavior is changing, so too are the laws governing permissible employer actions in relation to social media.
It is a temping proposition for employers to want access to their employees’ social media accounts. There are some valid reasons that an employer may want and need to know about their workforce’s social media activities. However, there is a growing population of states that have prohibited employers from asking employees for their social media account information.
Most of these state laws, where they exist, prohibit an employer from requiring, or requesting the employee’s social media username and password. Many, including California, Connecticut, Oregon and others also prohibit the employer from asking the employee to access the social media account while the employer is present.
Still others, like New Hampshire, Maine and Delaware, prohibit the employer from asking or requiring employees to add the employer as a friend or to invite the employer to a group that gives the company access to non-public information. In addition to prohibitions on requesting or requiring employee social media account access, nearly all these laws also have an anti-retaliation provision prohibiting employers from taking adverse action against an employee who refuses to divulge his or her social media account information.
Some exceptions exist
Nevertheless, in a nod to the legitimate reasons an employer may have to access information an employee has posted on social media, many of these laws have exceptions for formal internal investigations of employee violations of law or company policy. The laws also frequently make exceptions for social media accounts created by the employee on behalf of the employer, at the request of the employer and/or that are used for company purposes.
Many of the laws also specifically state that a company retains the right to review any publicly available information that an employee has posted on social media, an important exception in light of the fact that many employers research applicants online prior to hiring. As long as all of the information is publicly available, this practice is still permitted under the laws discussed here.
Because so much employee activity now occurs online, employers are wise to stay knowledgeable not only on various new technologies, but also the developing law surrounding protecting the privacy of employees’ online lives. States continue to add these types of laws — the latest being a Connecticut law prohibiting employer requests for social media account access that goes into effect in October of this year.
These laws, while similar, are not all alike, and not all states have them. Employers, especially those with employees in multiple states, should familiarize themselves with the rules governing the areas in which they operate because employee use of social media is likely to only increase as time goes on.
O’Connor, an associate and litigation lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP, is a member of the labor and employment practice and the automotive industry team. The information in this legal alert is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as specific legal advice.