Employers Spend $742 per Employee for Wellness Program Incentives

Are you looking for new incentives to help your employees participate in your wellness program? Check out this interesting article by Brookie Madison from Employee Benefit Advisor on how employers are offering financial incentives in order to increase participation in their wellness programs.

Wellness programs are popular with employers but employees continue to need motivation to participate. Seventy percent of employers are investing in wellness programs, while 73% of employees say they are interested in wellness programs, but 64% of employees undervalue the financial incentives to join the wellness programs, according to UnitedHealthcare’s Consumer Sentiment Survey entitled “Wellness Check Up.”

Only 7% of employees understand the four basic terms of health care —premium, deductible, copayment and coinsurance — which is why UHC didn’t find it surprising that workers underestimate their financial incentives in wellness programs, says Rebecca Madsen, chief consumer officer for UnitedHealthcare.

Despite this disconnect between what employers are offering to help ensure their employees’ health and what employees are willing to do to maintain a healthy well-being, the most appealing incentives to employees for wellness programs are health insurance premium reductions (77%), grocery vouchers (64%) and health savings accounts (62%).

Employees find the financial incentives of the wellness programs appealing, yet only 24% of employees are willing to give up one to three hours of their time per week to exercise, attend wellness coaching sessions or research healthier recipes to eat.

“Unwilling to engage is part of the problem why a third of the country is obese and another third is overweight. We have a real problem in terms of keeping people healthy and that’s what we want to help address,” says Madsen.

Madsen recommends that employers promote their wellness programs and incentives multiple times throughout the year. Gift cards, reduction of premiums and contributing to health savings accounts are leading ways to reward employees. “Incentives on an ongoing basis get people engaged and motivated to participate for a long period of time,” says Madsen.

Wellness programs also provide a way for employers to adjust their benefit packages to be customized and be more than a ‘one size fits all’ approach. “Look at your insurance claims, work with insurance providers and identify common health challenges. See where you have prevalent healthcare needs and who your high risk populations are to develop programs that target those results,” suggests Madsen.

Wellness programs need endless support from advisers, insurance providers, consultants, consumers, friends, family members and employers in order to encourage employees to live healthy lifestyles, according to UnitedHealthcare.

Madsen suggests that employers have onsite biometric screenings. “Helping people know their numbers will help them understand where they have an opportunity to improve their health, which would make them motivated to engage more,” says Madsen.
New trends of wellness programs incorporate the use of activity trackers. Twenty-five percent of employees use an activity tracker and 62% would like to use one as part of a wellness program.

See the original article Here.

Source:

Madison B. (2017 June 28). Employers spend $742 per employee for wellness program incentives [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/news/employers-spend-742-per-employee-for-wellness-program-incentives

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3 Traits of a Successful Well-Being Program for Employees

Do you know what it takes to create a successful wellness program for your employees? Check out this article by Maya Bach of Benefits Pro and find out the 3 traits all successful wellness programs have in common.

Well-being.  You’ve likely heard the term used in and out of the workplace for how to become “a heathier you.”

According to a 2016 report by the Society for Human Resource Management, two thirds of employers offer a general wellness program. 

Many companies invest in corporate well-being with the aim of increasing productivity, driving talent acquisition, employee retention and lowering health claim costs.

These businesses aim to consciously foster a company culture that values the mental, physical and financial health of their employees in and out of the workplace, recognizing that “health” means something different to everyone.

So, in the race to attract and retain talent, how can you create a well-being program that sets you apart?

1. Shared and customized programming

Research published in Harvard Business Review that examines the effectiveness of well-being programs highlights that engagement with wellbeing programming increases when employees feel a sense of ownership.

These programs that are built and shaped by staff through focus group sessions and channels, such as an internal communication platform where employees can voice suggestions for types of activities and timing of events, perform the best.

With the understanding that “being healthy” means something different for everyone at different points in their lives, programs should take on a flexible quality while seeking to meet the needs expressed directly by employees, thereby offering them a unique sense of ownership of the program.

2. Follow-through on feedback

Several studies suggest that organizations with a culture of keeping one’s word are more profitable.Throughout the employee experience, sharing and engaging on feedback actively is encouraged.

Following through, whether that means evening cardio-yoga classes or fresh avocados, demonstrates the company values feedback and staff ideas.

If the request can’t be completed, it’s important to close the loop by offering insight and attempting to offer alternative solutions.

Replying to a seemingly small request highlights that even a fast-paced, rapidly growing organization listens, thereby cultivating a culture of trust.

3. Offer multiple touch points

Not everyone is interested in lunch and learns or yoga classes, for that matter.

While it’s good to offer traditional program components – nutrition classes, cooking demos, weekly walking club, weight loss challenges – staff shouldn’t need to sign up for a class to engage with the program’s tenets.

To avoid adding another “to-do” to an employee’s already-full plate, digital signage with weekly “Did you know…” health facts followed by calls to action, healthy catering suggestions and smaller snack self-serve cups helpfully nudge employees to adopt healthier behaviors.

While well-being professionals should maintain a business-centered mindset when designing and implementing a program, it’s important to maintain a high degree of flexibility and visibility to provide a customized program.

Actively soliciting employee feedback, following through on specific requests and offering employees various ways to engage with core well-being tenets support program sustainability and longevity.

See the original article Here.

Source:

Bach M. (2017 July 3). 3 traits of a successful well-being program for employees [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.benefitspro.com/2017/07/03/3-traits-of-a-successful-well-being-program-for-em?ref=mostpopular&page_all=1

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3 Key Points for Choosing a Wellness Provider

Are you in the process of searching for a new wellness provider? Take a look at this article by Rick Kent from Employee Benefit Adviser and check out these 3 great tips on what you should be looking for when searching for your next  wellness provider.

Saddled with low savings rates and high household indebtedness, many American workers are relying on company-sponsored retirement plans like 401(k) programs as their last great hope for retiring with dignity someday. Unfortunately, rapidly escalating costs and tougher regulatory obligations have made supporting such plans among employers and third-party benefits consultancies a far more complex task than ever before.

Naturally, these events have raised the importance of offering robust financial wellness programs that complement company-sponsored retirement plans. Employees need offerings that provide valuable educational resources, personal finance coaching and relevant benchmarking data to plan participants and plan sponsors.

But how can employee benefits consultancies, already frequently strapped for time, deliver such tools and resources to their clients? Do they need to build this on their own, or should hiring an in-house expert or acquire a smaller provider?

The good news is “neither.”

Over the past few years, a number of dedicated financial wellness service providers for company retirement plans has emerged and are able to serve true third party, turnkey offerings that can be integrated with the offerings of employee benefit consultancies. In many instances, these services can be "white labeled" under the consultancies' own brands.

But caveat emptor: As with capturing any potential growth opportunity with an outsourced provider, it’s important to team up with the right partner.

With that in mind, here are the three key considerations to bear in mind for benefits consultants who are seeking the right third party, turnkey financial wellness provider to partner with and drive greater value for clients.

Look for educational and training materials that are robust and tailor-made to the plan participants. Any reasonably good financial wellness provider should be able to offer educational and training materials that cover a wide range of topics, including basic financial and investing concepts, tips for paying down debt and general keys to improving retirement preparedness. Frankly, that’s easy enough to accomplish, and required nothing more than bit of time and some money.

But what separates great financial wellness solutions from those that are merely good is both the willingness and capability to customize that content to the size of the plan and unique needs, goals and aspirations of the participants. An educated plan participant, one who is armed with information that is tailor-made for them, is far more likely to take the steps necessary to improve their financial wellness.

Demand data analytics programs that can demonstrate ongoing financial health and retirement readiness. It’s one thing for plan participants to have the knowledge they need to understand better what takes to one day retire comfortably. It’s an entirely different thing, however, knowing whether they are actually on track to do that.

That’s why it’s critical for a financial wellness provider to have data analytics programs in place that monitor key metrics and can determine, in real time, whether someone is making the behavioral changes necessary to become financially healthy and retirement ready. Importantly, providers should also be able to aggregate this data for plan sponsors, since that would provide important clues about the overall effectiveness of the plan.

Provide access to financial wellness resources without disrupting or tearing down current technologies. Nearly every benefit company has their own technology portals that allow plan participants to adjust their contribution amount or swap investments, as well as to view balances, statements and other critical information about their account. Obviously, not many companies will want to rebuild or make significant changes to their technology infrastructure to add financial wellness resources.

Therefore, look for providers that can integrate their own turnkey solutions into existing platforms with little, if any, disruption. This includes giving benefit companies the option of white labeling those resources under their own brand.

Not only is there a clear opportunity for employers to invest in financial wellness programs to seek to maximize productivity by minimizing personal finance-related stress in the workplace, but there are also heightened risks of regulatory fines and penalties from the U.S. Department of Labor. These regulations are aimed at company retirement plans that fail to provide plan participants with the tools and guidance they need to make the most of their retirement plan savings and investments.

Given this extra layer of liability, it will be more important than ever for plans sponsors and employee benefits companies to pair up with the best possible financial wellness provider to give plan participants a better sense of their options and better prepare them for the future.

See the original article Here.

Source:

Kent R. (2017 June 21). 3 key point for choosing a wellness provider [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/opinion/three-key-points-for-choosing-a-wellness-provider

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How to Build Financial Wellness into a More Holistic Wellness Program

Are you looking for new ways to help your employees increase their financial wellness? Check out this great article by Michelle Clark from SHRM highlighting what HR can do to help employees engage with the company's benefits program to improve their financial situation.

The majority of HR professionals give their employees a financial health rating of “fair” and nearly 20 percent report that their employees are “not at all” financially literate according to a national SHRM survey.

That’s an issue. Because when employees are stressed about money they don’t turn their worry off at work – and the price is paid in lost productivity.

You can help fix the problem. Everyone wins when traditional employee wellness programs are recast in a more holistic, well-rounded way – with financial wellness an important cornerstone.

There is no cookie cutter solution. But if you build a customized program that’s responsive to specific requirements and comfort levels of different employee groups, it can be rewarding and valuable.

First, review your employee demographics to get an idea of what their financial situations may look like. For example, it’s understood that the majority of today’s workforce is comprised of three age groups: Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials. Each has different financial stressors and preferences on how they prefer to receive assistance:

  • Boomers on the verge of retirement are wondering if they can afford it or even want to retire. If they need to work, they are worried they’ll have a hard time finding a job.
  • Generation X can barely think about retirement planning when they’re trying to cover the mortgage, raise kids, save money for college and shoulder responsibilities for aging parents.
  • Millennials are burdened by student loan debt while trying to stretch their paychecks so they can live on their own instead of with their parents.

There also are vastly different ways each accesses support. Boomers may be okay with online resources and one-on-one coaching. But Millennials and Gen Xers may want more high-tech resources such as websites offering basic money courses and worksheets to help with budgets, housing or investment planning.

Once a solution has been established, the next step is getting people to partake. You don’t want to target employees, since privacy is a major consideration. Offering options allows employees to engage privately on their own terms. That’s why the online solutions are ideal for individual financial issues, offered in tandem with more on-site sessions on general concerns. And there’s always the potential of offering one-on-one financial counseling or financial wellness coaches to round out your program.

See the original article Here.

Source:

Clark M. (2017 June 16). How to build financial wellness into a more holistic wellness program [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://blog.shrm.org/blog/shrm-blog-june-2017-how-to-build-financial-wellness-into-a-more-holistic-we

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Is Data Collection Key to a Successful Wellness Program?

Are you looking for the key to unlocking a successful wellness program? Check out this article by Joseph Goedert from Employee Benefit Adviser and see how data collecting can be a great resource to use when creating a successful wellness program.

The collection and analysis of consumer data can provide insights to employers, including healthcare organizations, into their employees’ health status while offering the basis for information for the creation of wellness plans.

An individual’s buying habits, voting affiliation and voting history, television viewing, financial status, family status and social sentiments—which are the emotions behind social media mentions—together can give a view of the individual’s overall well-being, says April Gill, vice president of analytics solutions at Welltok, a vendor that offers health optimization services.

Social media mentions, for instance, can be analyzed to generate a sentiment score on the general happiness of an individual. A regular voter can indicate a person who may be active in community affairs and may be agreeable to accepting a walking program to improve health.

Consumer data, matched with health data like lab results, claims and biometric data, can be used to start making correlations that detail the healthcare needs of a person. The goal, Gill says, is to have a better understanding of an individual’s receptivity to joining a health program that can offer the highest probability of success.

If an individual subscribes to Netflix or other television services, data collection companies can see what television shows a person is watching and if they are a couch potato and need to exercise more. A person watching a lot of sports might be a candidate for suggesting a step program or playing a sport. A diabetic who often is online may be a good candidate for an online diabetes management program and to stay engaged in the program. “We need to offer resources in a manner that patients are ready for,” Gill asserts. These resources could come from an employer, health plan or provider organization.

Privacy laws may limit the types of health data that employers can see, but Welltok will work with local providers to identity employees to be targeted for health interventions. “We can get individual level data from providers,” Gill says. “It behooves employers to establish relationships with local providers.”

That relationship includes working with providers to move beyond a focus on utilization—tracking how many individuals participated in a certain programs, she advises.

But while data can paint a picture of wellness, there are many gaps in the available information, Gill cautions. A lot of commercial data is not identifiable, and sometimes the data is incorrect.

See the original article Here.

Source:

Goedert J. (2017 June 9). Is data collection key to a successful wellness program [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/news/is-data-collection-key-to-a-successful-wellness-program?brief=00000152-1443-d1cc-a5fa-7cfba3c60000

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High-Deductible Health Plans Promote Increased Wellness Program Participation

Are you looking for a new way to increase participation in your wellness program? Take a look at this interesting article by Nick Otto from Employee Benefit News on how offering high-deductible health plans can be a great way to boost enrollment into your wellness program.

Employer-provided healthcare continues to be the most common access to health insurance in the U.S., and as employers continue to look for ways to cut costs, consumer-driven high-deductible health plans continue to grow with the added benefit of increased employee engagement in healthcare choices.

Fourteen percent of the U.S. population was enrolled in a CDHP and 14% was enrolled in an HDHP, a slight increase for both from the previous year, according to the 2016 EBRI/Greenwald & Associates Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey.

And the number of workers who were in a CDHPs or HDHPs was more likely than those in a traditional plan to exhibit cost-conscious behaviors, according to a recent report from the non-partisan Employee Benefit Research Institute.

“This survey found that high deductibles are associated with new behaviors [that are] often encouraged by employers and insurers,” says Paul Fronstin, director of EBRI’s Health Research and Education Program and co-author of the report.

The theory behind CDHPs and HDHPs is that the cost-sharing structure is a tool that will be more likely to engage individuals in their health care, compared with people enrolled in more traditional coverage, the study suggests.

And with the employees taking a bigger interest in their healthcare planning, employers are noticing their wellness programs taking a bigger role.

The study focused on three types of wellness programs: a health-risk assessment, a health-promotion program to address a specific health issue, and a biometric screening.

“CDHP enrollees and HDHP enrollees were more likely than traditional-plan enrollees to report that they tried to find cost information. They are also more likely to participate in wellness programs.” Adds Fronstin.

Specifically, 45% of CDHP enrollees reported that their employer offered a health risk assessment, compared with 34% of traditional-plan enrollees and 30% of HDHP enrollees. When asked about the availability of health-promotion programs, 53% of CDHP enrollees, 32% of HDHP enrollees and 41% of traditional-plan enrollees reported that their employer offered such a program.

Additionally, when asked about biometric-screening programs, 45% of CDHP enrollees reported that their employer offered such a program, compared with 36% among traditional-plan enrollees and 33% among HDHP enrollees.

CDHP and HDHP enrollees were also more likely than traditional-plan enrollees to report that their employer offered a cash incentive or reward for participating in a biometric screening program. Seventy percent of CDHP and 67% of HDHP enrollees reported a cash incentive or reward for a biometric screening, compared with 51% among traditional-plan enrollees.

While these numbers represent self-reported awareness of available health and wellness programs and cannot be cross-referenced with objective data from employers and insurers, it is significant that, across the board, CDHP enrollees are aware and participate at higher rates in wellness programs, the author notes.

Another trend the study found was the increased interest in health savings accounts.

Among individuals enrolled in CDHPs, 56% opened an HSA, 19% were in an HRA, and 25% were enrolled in an HSA-eligible health plan but had not opened an HSA.

It’s more common for employers to contribute to HSAs than in the past, and the dollar amount is also increasing, EBRI says. Seventy-eight percent of CDHP enrollees reported that their employer contributed to the account in 2016, up from 67% in 2014.

Additionally, 20% of CDHP enrollees reported an employer contribution of at least $2,000 in 2016, up from 10% in 2014.

 

See the original article Here.

Source:

Otto N. (2017 June 1). High-deductible health plans promote increased wellness program participation [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.benefitnews.com/news/high-deductible-health-plans-promote-increased-wellness-program-participation

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7 Morning Rituals To Make Your Day 8 Times More Productive

Are you looking for a way to make your morning more productive? Take a look at this great article by Karen Reed from Positive Health Wellness and check out these 7 great tips for boosting your productivity in the morning.

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine. ” — John C. Maxwell

Rituals make you who you are. The morning ritual is rediscovering productivity at the start of the day. You need not wake at the crack of dawn to have a productive start to your day. Instead, you need to take a close look at how you start your day and figure out how to get more from it. One way to do that is establishing a morning ritual.

What Is Morning Ritual?

A morning ritual is something you do daily as part of your morning.It must be a right blend of both physical activities and mental activities.If you start your day with a few simple tasks, it helps you to begin a cycle of results that will increase your vigor to be productive through your day.

The morning ritual gives you a chance to center yourself and embrace your day instead of fleeing from it. It will help you to enjoy the luxury of time you’ve given yourself by rising at an appropriate time.

Why Creating A Morning Ritual Will Make You More Successful?

Establishing healthy habits and morning routine are critical for a lifetime of success. Your morning routine sets the right tone for the whole day. If you do each day right, you’ll do life right. If you don’t have a good morning routine, you may feel overwhelmed and disorganized.

The first step to work smarter and not harder is that you need to create healthy habits. The personal ritual that you set up for yourself will put you in the right mindset and offset any morning procrastination.

The other reason to create a morning routine is to avoid mental fatigue. We have only certain amount of energy and willpower when we wake up each morning. It slowly gets drained away with decisions. It is especially true if you have hundreds of small decisions to make in the morning that means nothing, but will affect how you make decisions for the rest of the day.

So try to have the first hour of your day vary as little as possible with routine. Knowing how the first few minutes of your day looks like, is powerful and it helps you to feel “in control” and “non-reactive.” This action, in turn, reduces anxiety and ensures that you’re more productive throughout the day.

Steps To Put Your Morning Ritual Into Place

  • Write down a list of things you do every morning and what you like to add.
  • Estimate the time it’ll indeed take to do everything on your list.
  • Adjust your wake-up time to fit in your new ritual.
  • Familiarize your list each morning for at least 2-3 days before making adjustments.
  • Once you’ve got used to your changes, start enjoying your morning rituals.

You could work on “Habit Stalking” to craft yourself a good morning routine that works for you. Habit Stalking is a way to build a new practice into your life by stalking it on top of something that you’re currently doing.

Avoid designing something long and complicated when you’re starting off.  Start with an easily manageable chunk of time. You can start with a  five or 10-minute ritual and move your way up. Just take your time to build a balanced morning schedule. There’s nothing like starting your day off fabulous both mentally and physically.

Benefits Of Having A Morning Ritual

  • A morning routine helps you to feel more grounded and embodied.
  • It helps you to slow down and tune into your intuition.
  • Enables you to batch your energy sources and self-care in a defined amount of time.
  • Makes you less reactive and more intentional as you start your work day.
  • Helps you feel more productive without feeling fragmented.
  • Promotes more space and pause to make choices that nourish you.
  • It syncs with your natural feminine rhythms and those of nature.
  • It optimizes your decision making power for creative and productive work.

7 Morning Rituals You Should Adapt

Here are seven tips to build your morning routine that will help to become the best version of yourself and will make you take on your day confident and energized.

Meditation

Meditation helps you to start your day on a positive note. It helps you to be more at peace with yourself. Research has shown that meditation can enhance your:

  • Attention
  • Creativity
  • Working memory
  • Emotional regulation
  • Immune function
  • Cognitive performance
  • Self-control
  • Healthy habits
  • While reducing stress

Researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University have found that meditation reduces Interleukin-6 an inflammatory health biomarker found in highly stressed individuals. If you begin your day with meditation, it calms your “busy mind syndrome,” which results if you don’t activate your mental spam filter.

Meditating helps to filter out the internal and external noise and negative self-talk that can sabotage your otherwise sharp, clear, perpetual acuity. Meditating as a morning ritual helps you to tame your emotions and keeps your emotional brain in check.

A study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry says that patients who were suffering from an anxiety disorder or panic disorder underwent three months of meditation and relaxation training. And at the end of the three-month period, their panic attacks had substantially reduced.

Meditation also improves empathy and positive relationships. It enhances feelings of competence about one’s life and promotes environmental mastery, ego resilience, and purpose in life.

What a beautiful way to start your day, filling your soul,mind, and body from the “Higher Power” to embark on your day’s journey.

Gratitude

Robert Emmons, the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude,writes, “it’s an affirmation of goodness. We affirm that there are good things in the world, gifts, and benefits we’ve received.”

In the second part of gratitude, he says, “we recognize that the sources of this goodness are outside of ourselves. … We acknowledge that other people—or even higher powers, if you’re of a spiritual mindset—gave us many gifts, big and small, to help us achieve the goodness in our lives.”

After you’ve completed your meditation just take a few minutes and be thankful for all the positive things that happened to you.  You might be grateful for an unexpected visit from an old friend, a beautiful encounter with a kind stranger, or a new opportunity that shines your way.

Practicing gratitude as a morning ritual can have tremendous benefits for your overall health. Being grateful increases your self-esteem makes you more optimistic and less materialistic and self-centered.  It increases your happiness, makes you more relaxed, resilient and less envious.

Gratitude increases your energy, longevity, improves your sleep quality and immunity. It boosts your career growth by increasing your goal achievement, productivity and decision making. It results in better management and improved networking.

Your social relationships get a boost by being grateful. It results in healthier marriage, more friendships and deeper relationships. The real power of gratitude is that it helps you to pick out and focus on what is working in your life –what is in tune with your being as a whole. If you have time, you can also practice gratitude journaling.

Writing Down Your Tasks

Journaling your important tasks is a practical ritual. It helps you to focus your day and life on what is essential. It helps you to prioritize and manage your time better.

Start the ritual by identifying and writing down one to three essential tasks you need to complete during that day. They may be the tasks that support your long-term goals that are related to your purpose, passion or the general direction of life.

You can also write down mundane tasks which David Allen, productivity speaker and author of Getting Things Done calls “core dump.”this involves writing down every project, task, and activity you need to address.

You can write down every “to do” item you can think of. It clears the space in your head for more important topics.

Morning Pages is a technique developed by Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way. It involves writing approximately 750 words of conscious writing. If you follow this practice as a morning ritual, it clears your head for the day’s most important thinking.

Writing down your tasks helps you to process your emotions, gives a record of your past, gains you a sense of achievement, helps you think big and makes you more committed.

Positive Affirmations

Barrie Davenport writes in live bold and bloom that affirmations are a form of auto suggestion. If you practice it deliberately and repeatedly, they reinforce chemical pathways in the brain and strengthen neural connections.

If you practice positive thought patterns or affirmations regularly, you create neuroplasticity in the area of the brain that processes what you’re thinking about.

Some of the positive affirmations you can say are:

  • I awake in the morning feeling happy and enthusiastic about my day.
  • I can tap into the wellspring of inner happiness anytime I wish.
  • I have healthy boundaries with my partner
  • Success is my natural state,and I expect to be successful in all of my endeavors.
  • I am energetic and enthusiastic. Confidence is my second nature.
  • I always attract only the best of the circumstances and the best positive people in my life.
  • I choose to be proud of myself.
  • I am talented.
  • I am attractive and beautiful.
  • Every cell in my body quivers with energy and good health.
  • I breathe in peace. I breathe out chaos and disorder.

Exercise

Morning is a great time for exercise. It’s quiet and peaceful in the morning.You can go for a mindful run and have little interruptions. Even a simple 5-minute exercise workout will wake up your muscles and get them ready for the day ahead.

A quick morning exercise jumpstarts your cells.You could jog, walk, dance, do yoga- anything to get your blood flowing.  The options are endless. If you’re on a weight-loss mission, a brisk morning walk is a key to shedding a few pounds.

According to researchers from Northumbria University, people can burn up to twenty percent more body fat by exercising in the morning when they are on an empty stomach.

Researchers say that the morning light helps synchronize your body clock. Researchers, from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, say that light is the most potent agent to harmonize your internal body clock that regulates the circadian rhythms. This aspect, in turn,controls energy balance. It is not rocket science to understand that including exercise as a morning ritual keeps you productive and energetic the whole day.

Listen To Uplifting Music

Music uplifts your physical and mental health in numerous ways. When you combine music and your exercise together,you get stunning results. Researchers found that participants pedaled faster when riding stationary bicycles while listening to music. Listening to pumping music helps you to run faster, and increases your workout endurance.

Music makes you feel happier because it enhances blood vessel function. It reduces stress levels and relieves depression. It improves your cognitive performance and helps you perform better in high-pressure situations. If you’re hard pressed for time, just combine this ritual while doing your morning exercise or while driving to work.

Detoxify With Lemon Water

Drinking warm water first thing in the morning helps flush the digestive system and rehydrates the body. Drinking lemon water acts as a natural flush and cleanses your liver. Lemon juice enhances stomach acid production and bile production. It results in a clean liver and lymph system.

Lemon contains vitamin C and potassium. When you drink lemon water first thing in the morning, it helps your body to absorb these vitamins and provides a little immune boost. Vitamin C is good for your adrenals and contributes to reducing your stress levels.

Since lemon water flushes your body, you enjoy a cleaner skin. The vitamin C helps in collagen production and makes your skin smooth and healthy. If you drink lemon water first thing in the morning, it will help you maintain a healthy weight.

Conclusion

You are what you frequently do everyday. If you include special routines in your daily schedule, you can turn your life around for the better. The main thing about rituals is that you can start your own and train yourself through practice.

Be conscious because routines work both in positive and negative ways. So be smart and choose the right ones. If you follow the ones that we’ve discussed above, we are positive that these morning rituals will bring only good things to your life.

See the original article Here.

Source:

Reed K. (2017 June 11). 7 morning rituals to make your day 8 times more productive [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.positivehealthwellness.com/fitness/7-morning-rituals-to-make-your-day-8-times-more-productive/

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Advisers Seek a Tech Solution to Financial Wellness

Have you been looking for a new solution to increase your client's investment into their financial well-being? Check out this great article by Cort Olsen from Employee Benefits Advisors on how advisers are using technology to help their clients invest in their financial wellness.

With many employers taking advantage of wearable wellness devices such as Fitbits and Apple Watches, advisers and consultants say they would like to see a similar platform that will efficiently monitor a person’s financial wellbeing.

“For physical wellness there are health assessments like biometric screenings to gather information and then there is the wearable data that tells people where they need to be to stay on track with their health goals,” says Craig Schmidt, senior wellness consultant for EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants. “The difference with the financial piece is that there isn’t a way to track users’ spending habits or monitoring their retirement funding to make their financial status more budget friendly.”

While Schmidt says he has not been able to find a platform that monitors financial status at such a personal level, John Tabb, chief product officer of Questis, has put together a platform that manages to gather data and make suggestions on what employees should be focusing their investments on such as paying off student loan debt or investing in their Roth IRA.

Tabb estimates that there are roughly 30 companies that call themselves financial wellness firms but adds that none of them are “holisitic.” “Not to say that they are not good, but there are only a handful of companies that can allow advisers at financial institutions to utilize their platform as a tool,” he says.

Saving for retirement vs. paying off student debt
Shane Bartling, retirement consultant for Willis Towers Watson, says they have developed a program with their clients that addresses gaps in the market and increases the value of the overall lineup of financial well-being services offered by employers generally around retirement readiness.

“As a result of requests from clients and the needs we have identified with our consulting work, we have built out a technology solution to compliment the line-up of other resources that clients have available,” Bartling says. “We wanted to find the indicators of poor financial wellbeing in the workforce, how to measure it and then how do we engage the parts of our workforce that are going to see the highest value from the resources we are providing.”

The WTW program offers clients an initial assessment from an adviser to determine where employees are struggling the most with their finances. “There is a way to look at behaviors employees are signaling when they are in a poor financial situation,” Bartling says. “They begin to do things like using loans, taking hardship withdrawals and then ultimately you see issues like wage garnishment tend to pop up on the radar and are opting out of the 401(k).”

SoFi has expanded its business focus from student loan refinancing firms into the workspace by helping employers offer a student loan repayment benefit.

“Looking at the employee benefits space today, student loans are generally a pretty big hole in most employers benefit offerings,” says Catesby Perrin, vice president of business development at SoFi. “The main stays of employee benefit offerings are healthcare and 401(k), which we all know are essential, but in many respects don’t address the most pressing financial concerns of the largest demographic in the workforce, which are millennials.”

Perrin adds that 401(k) and other forms retirement saving is imperative for everyone in the workforce, however retirement is not a top priority for millennials due to other financial stressors that are taking place in their day-to-day lives.

“As great as a 401(k) is and how important it is intrinsically, if you have $500 or $800 a month due in student loan payments, which is totally plausible for somebody coming out of undergrad today, the 401(k) is a total luxury,” Perrin says. “Most employers are not doing much about student loan problem, so we are offering two primary benefits today for employers… a student loan refinancing benefit and a benefit set for employers to help pay down the principle balance of their employee’s loan.”

Alternative tech gaining traction
One option is the increasing popularity of mobile push notifications. Ayana Collins, wellness consultant out of EPIC’s Atlanta office, says she is seeing a greater response from users who utilize these alerts on their smartphones to view wellness tips and strategies that they may not read if they are delivered in the form of an e-mail.

“Employees receive thousands upon thousands of e-mails and one more e-mail coming from HR or from a wellness company may not be opened,” Collins says. “If they receive a push notification from their mobile phone they are more likely to check out what financial wellness tips we are sending to them.”

Privacy invasion?
Meanwhile, new legislation determining how wellness plans are regulated has sparked a renewed interest in finding a streamlined financial wellbeing platform.

Shan Fowler, senior director of employer portfolio and product strategy at Benefitfocus, says legislation such as the Employer Participation in Repayment Act and the Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act, will help fuel the creation of a financial wellbeing platform.

“Financial regulation is very similar to healthcare regulation,” Fowler says, “due to so many branches that are contingent with legislative support. Seeing bipartisan support for this national epidemic [has me feeling] very optimistic.”

However, employees may not be as enthusiastic. Many workers are concerned about the level of data employers could have access to, seeing it as an invasion of privacy, Fowler adds.

“I think you need to put yourself into the shoes of the employee and ask if I want my company to have access to my personal information,” he says. “That speaks to that very fine line employers have to walk of having their employees’ best interests in mind, but not going too far into a ‘big brother’ mentality.”

Tabb says that while the Questis platform does offer individual advice on financial direction based off an initial assessment, the data collected is stored in an aggregate form that protects employees’ personal information from being viewed by their superiors or colleagues.

“If the employer wants some data, they are going to pay for it to help them make decisions, but it is all on an aggregate level,” Tabb says. “There is certainly a perception that needs to be addressed to ensure employees that their data is safe and that nothing is being shared with their employer that does not need to be shared.”

Both Bartling and Perrin also say their platforms offer data to employers only in an aggregate form to give them an idea of how many employees are utilizing the benefit and also the projected success rates, but when it comes to the personal finances of each individual employee, security is in place to ensure private financial information is protected.

EPIC’s Collins says no matter what branch of wellness an employer invests in, whether it be financial, physical or mental, there needs to be a reason behind the technology that they are using. If there is no payout for the employee, there will be no demand to carry the program.

“There has to be a ‘so what’ behind it,” Collins says. “If the employer is just doing a simple challenge with nothing behind it, people are not going to gravitate toward it, because it doesn’t create a moment where the users discover an improvement to themselves. That is the whole point behind wellness.”

See the original article Here.

Source:

Olsen C. (2017 May 11). Advisers seek a tech solution to financial wellness [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/news/advisers-seek-a-tech-solution-to-financial-wellness

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Employee Expectations Changing the Workplace

Do you know what benefits your employees are looking for? Take a peek at this great article from Employee Benefits Adviser about how employers are starting to customize their employee benefits programs to fit each individual employee by Nick Otto.

If employers want to retain and attract talent, they’ve got to start thinking about one big benefit trend: Customization.

“It’s not about just medical, dental and vision anymore,” Todd Katz, executive vice president, MetLife said Monday following the release of MetLife’s 15th annual U.S. Employee Benefits Trends Study.

Nearly three-fourths (74%) of employees say that having benefits customized to meet their needs is important when considering taking a new job, and 72% say that having the ability to customize their benefits would increase their loyalty to their current employer.

Workers say benefits customization is even more important than the ability to work remotely. In fact, more than three-fourths (76%) of millennials say benefits customization is important for increasing their loyalty to their employers, compared to two-thirds (67%) of baby boomers.

“Today, our lives reflect our preferences,” Katz says. “We choose how our coffee is made, create personalized playlists and decide which apps we have on our phones. In all aspects of our lives, we can make choices to meet our unique needs. The same should apply when it comes to benefits.”

That’s particularly important for driving engagement and loyalty among millennials, he said, who comprise the largest generation in the workplace today. “Customization for them is inherent, and they want to know that their employers understand and are willing to address their specific needs.”

Not only is benefits customization important for employee satisfaction and retention, but so is helping employees with their holistic wellness — both health and financial — needs.

Nearly two-thirds of employees say that health and wellness benefits are important for increasing loyalty to their employer and 53% say the same about financial planning programs.

Every day, employees come to work with financial concerns, and in larger businesses, employees acknowledge that they sacrifice their health and are less productive. Close to a third of workers (30%) say they lay awake at night worrying about money, and 23% admit to being less productive at work because of financial stress.

“Looking across the work force, when you understand what’s on the minds of employees it’d be wonderful if the set of benefits is matched to address what is a drag on the minds of workers and their worries back at home,” Ida Rademacher, executive director, financial security program at The Aspen Institute, noted at MetLife’s symposium in Washington, D.C. on Monday.

She notes there are four elements to helping workers achieve financial well-being:

Financial security in the present: Employees having control over day-to-day and month-to-month finances
Financial security in the future: The ability to absorb a financial shock
Freedom of choice in the present: Financial freedoms to make choices and enjoy life
Freedom of choice in the future: The ability to be on track to meet financial goals

Despite the need for wellness education, many employers are falling short in their offerings.

Only a third of employers (33%) say they are very likely to offer wellness benefits and just 18% currently offer financial planning programs. At the same time, only 36% of employers say wellness benefits and financial planning programs are valuable to their employees, according to the study.

“Employees are looking to their employers to help them with their overall wellness needs, whether it’s through gym memberships to stay healthy or financial education programs to plan for their futures,” says MetLife’s Katz. “As employees have more non-traditional workplace options available to them, it will become increasingly important that employers prioritize holistic wellness to drive employee engagement and loyalty in this new era.”

This may be why retention is the top priority among employers. When asked to rank their top benefits priorities, more employers (83%) chose retaining employees as an important benefits objective than increasing employee productivity (80%) and controlling health and welfare benefit costs (79%). More so, over half of employers (51%) say that retaining employees through benefits will become even more important in the next three to five years.

“Benefits historically were used for attraction and retention, but there now much more strategically important than they have ever been,” added Randy Stram, senior vice president, group, voluntary & worksite benefits at MetLife. “A diverse employee base, uncertainty regulatory environment and the changing digital landscape are adding to the increase complexity of managing benefits for employers.”

See the original article Here.

Source:

Otto N. (2017 April 19). Employee expectations changing the workplace [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.employeebenefitadviser.com/news/employee-expectations-changing-the-workplace?feed=00000152-1377-d1cc-a5fa-7fff0c920000

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Why Technology is Key to Financial Wellness Success

Are you trying to help your employees become successful and financial stable? Here is a great article from Employee Benefits News on how employers are figuring out that technology is key to helping their employees achieve success in their financial well-being by Kathryn Mayer.

Financial literacy is an increasingly desirable benefit for employees. But many employers don’t offer budgeting assistance, and a majority of workers are reluctant to let their company get involved in their financial business.

Dean Harris realized that in order to make financial wellness appealing to both employers and employees, he had to design technology that delivered flexible, multi-layered and comprehensive financial education in a way that’s enjoyable for the user — and ensures privacy. The chief technology officer of iGrad — a technology-driven financial wellness education company — created and maintains the iGrad and Enrich platforms, which deliver choices to make financial wellness the backbone of any benefit program. The product aims to offer financial wellness benefits with minimal cost and time to the employer.

“Financial literacy empowers workers to take control of something they feel is out of their control,” says Harris, a 2017 recipient of an EBN Benefits Technology Innovator Award. “By offering more information and knowledge, they are better equipped to make the right financial choices that promise to have far-reaching positive effects.”

By applying data analysis on the behavior of the user both within the platform and with regard to his approach to money, the platforms offer responsive content and recommendations. As the user’s skills and knowledge increase, the algorithm adjusts accordingly to provide newer and more relevant content leading to increased engagement and learning possibilities.

Technology is vital in achieving financial goals, Harris says, in part because it provides employees the privacy they desire.

“Financial literacy is a delicate subject. Most people are not comfortable discussing their finances —especially not with their employer,” Harris explains. “The online financial literacy platform offers the personalized and self-guided learning that will help them without exposing their personal financial information to their employer.”

Furthermore, topics addressed through the platform provide “interest, engagement and learning” for employees, Harris says. And employers “gain the benefit of a newly focused and re-energized workforce without having to drill down into areas that are too personal.”

“Ultimately, technology has made it possible for everyone to gain access to the help they need while maintaining privacy and discretion,” Harris says.

See the original article Here.

Source:

Mayer K. (2017 May 9). Why technology is key to financial wellness success [Web blog post]. Retrieved from address https://www.benefitnews.com/news/why-technology-is-key-to-financial-wellness-success

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