Andie Burjek, Author at Workforce

June 28, 2019June 29, 2023

The Employer’s Voice in the Future of American Health Care

I went to the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference in Las Vegas this past week with one very specific goal: Get a feel for what HR professionals are excited and worried about in the benefits space, especially regarding health care and the 2020 election.

Tracy Watts, senior partner at Mercer, began here health care presentation with her “favorite quote from the president”: “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”

This obviously got a lot of laughs from the audience of HR professionals.

Watts’ main message to employers in the course of her session was that employers, who insure 54 percent of the American population, have a vital role in helping to shape the future of the country’s health care. She cited that employers collectively spend about $668 billion annually on health benefits to cover employees and their dependents. “[Employers] have a bigger stake in this than anybody,” she said.

She also listed the health-related issues that different governing bodies can address and the ones that they’ve already begun to address. For example, the Trump administration has the ability to address HSA guidance, mental health parity, drug prices, HRA guidance and ACA Section 1557 nondiscrimination, and it’s currently addressing the latter three. Meanwhile, Congress has the ability to address the Affordable Care Act employer mandate, HSA reforms, drug prices, the ACA Cadillac tax and out-of-network “surprise” medial bills, and it’s currently addressing the latter three.

My question for employers: What power do you have to impact the health care environment? How are you currently utilizing that power? Where is there still room for improvement?

This session also gave me the opportunity to overhear gossip from the audience about the latest developments in the benefits space. For example, a major piece of health care-related breaking news had just happened in the past 24 hours: President Donald Trump announced his “Executive Order on Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First.”.

Meanwhile, more major changes were happening on the state level. California had just voted to reintroduce the individual mandate for health insurance. Also, a few women around me were expressing frustration about how difficult it is to keep up with what’s happening on the state level in the paid sick leave and paid family leave areas. They expressed exhaustion at dealing with “the nuance of state laws.”

Overall, the 2019 conference meant many HR folk were feeling confused and overwhelmed by the massive regulatory changes happening (or likely to happen) in the benefits space.

Also watch: Tracy Watts on the Executive Order and its Implications for Employers:

More 2019 SHRM Conference Coverage:

Brené Brown at SHRM Conference: ‘Leaders Are Never Quiet About Hard Things’

Exclusive Video Interviews from the 2019 SHRM Conference

The State of #SHRM19 Speech: Wait Until Monday

Day 2 at #SHRM19: It’s All About the Underutilized Talent Pool

SHRM Releases Annual Benefits Survey

Gary Kusher on Workplace Health Care Issues and the 2020 Election

June 27, 2019February 25, 2022

Do Employers Have a Duty to Protect Employees’ Personal Information?

Employees trust their employers with a whole bunch of personal information. Social security numbers, medical documents, insurance records, birth dates, criminal records, credit reports, family information, etc. And it’s not like employees have a choice over whether to disclose and entrust this information to their employer. These documents are all necessary if employees want to get hired, get paid, and obtain health insurance and other benefits. Thus, an employer’s personnel records are a treasure trove of PII (personally identifiable information — any data that could potentially identify a specific individual, which can be used to distinguish one person from another and de-anonymizing otherwise anonymous data).

For this reason, cyber-criminals target myriad businesses in an attempt to steal (and then sell on the dark web) this data.

Also in Legal: Biometric Privacy Lawsuits Rising

If a company is hacked, and employees’ PII or other data is stolen, is their employer liable to its employees for any damages caused by the data breach?

I’ve covered this issue twice before (here and here), with different courts reaching opposite results (albeit the majority of them concluding that an employer can be held liable).

In AFGE v. OPM (In re United States OPM Data Sec. Breach Litig.), the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently addressed a similar issue, and concluded that employee-victims have standing to sue their employer following a data breach from which their personal information and data is stolen. A “substantial risk of future identity theft” is sufficient harm to give rise to a lawsuit, and the “their claimed data breach-related injuries are fairly traceable to [their employer’s] failure to secure its information systems.”

All of these cases are legally interesting, and, I submit, largely practically insignificant. Regardless of whether you, as an employer, have a legal duty to protect the personal information and data of your employees, you still have a significant financial and reputational incentive to take reasonable steps to maintain the privacy and security of the information.

Moreover, as data breaches continue to increase in quantity and quality, courts and legislatures will look for ways to shift the cost of harm to those who can both better afford it and better take measures to hedge against them. Thus, I predict that in five years or less we will have a legal consensus on liability.

The question, then, for you and your business to answer is what are you going to do about it now? The time to get your business’s cyber-house in order is now (actually, it was years ago, but let’s go with now if you’re late to the game). Don’t wait for a court to hold you liable to your employees (and others?) after a data breach.

Thus, what should you be doing?

Implementing reasonable security measures, which includes encryption, firewalls, secure and updated passwords, and employee training on how to protect against data breaches (such as how not fall victim to phishing attacks).
If (or more accurately when) you suffer a data breach, timely advising employees of the breach as required by all applicable state laws.
Training employees on appropriate data security.
Drafting policies that explain the scope of your duty as an organization to protect employee data.
Maintaining an updated data breach response plan.

Remember, data breaches are not an if issue, but a when issue. Once you understand the fact that you will suffer a breach, you should also understand the importance of making the issue of data security a priority in your organization. The average cost to a company of a data breach in 2018 is $3.9 million (and increasing annually). While I generally don’t work in the business of guarantees, I will guarantee that any expenses you incur to mitigate the potential cost of a data breach is money well spent.

June 25, 2019June 27, 2019

SHRM Releases its Annual Benefits Survey

The Society for Human Resource Management released its annual benefits survey today at the organization’s annual conference in Las Vegas.

The survey confirmed some facts that HR has known for a while, like that employers find that retirement and health care benefits are most important to their workforce. It also highlighted some major trends that are impacting the benefits landscape including health insurance costs, competition for top talent and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.

Not surprisingly, employer-sponsored health care is a major concern for both employees and employers. The SHRM survey found that eighty-five percent of organizations prefer Preferred Provider Organization insurance plans. Meanwhile, though, interest in high deductible health plans linked with health saving accounts is rising. Fifty-nine percent of organizations offer an HDHP plan option that’s linked with a savings/spending account while 19 percent offer an HDHP option that’s not linked with an account.

Also read: The 4 Myths of Health Care Cost Reduction

Employers in general are aware that social determinants of health may impact an employee’s ability to afford to access coverage, but the survey data doesn’t show a response to that in the form of something like wage-based premiums or a reduction in cost-shifting, according to SHRM Chief Knowledge Officer Alex Alonso. That being said, he sees an increase in “cafeteria-style benefits” as a way for employees to access what benefits they need for their individual circumstances.

The survey also shared some details on how health care costs are being split between employers and employees. For full-time employees, it depends on company size. Twenty-eight percent or companies with 1-99 employees fully pay for health insurance premiums, compared to 9 percent of employers with over 500 employees.

Also notable is that offering health insurance to part-time employees is becoming more popular in order to attract and retain talent. Still, 19 percent of organizations require part-time employees to pay their premiums in full, while 36 percent of organizations share the cost.

According to Alonso, there has also been an increase in telemedicine. It can be a “convenient health care option” for employees, especially those in rural areas where there aren’t as many health care providers as more urban areas.

On the more surprising side, employers as a whole ranked wellness “near the bottom in importance to their workforce.” SHRM Director of Data Science Liz Supinski said one reason behind this is that insurers are increasingly offering services like chronic disease management programs that used to only be offered through wellness services.

Between and 2015 and 2019, a couple key areas of health care have seen a dramatic drop of prevalence, according the survey. Ninety-one percent of employers offered mental health coverage in 2015 compared to 83 percent in 2019, and 83 percent of employers offered contraceptive coverage in 2015 compared to 71 percent in 2019.

Supinski noted that this is not necessarily a negative sign or employees who need to access mental health or reproductive health services. Rather, before the Affordable Care Act, these areas were not automatically included in the core, basic health plan, and then the ACA mandated them as essential health benefits. The survey question refers to extra services that exist out of the health plan.

More 2019 SHRM Conference Coverage:

Exclusive Video Interviews from the 2019 SHRM Conference

The State of #SHRM19 Speech: Wait Until Monday

Day 2 at #SHRM19: It’s All About the Underutilized Talent Pool

Brené Brown at SHRM Conference: ‘Leaders Are Never Quiet About Hard Things’

June 4, 2019June 29, 2023

By the Numbers: Diversity in the Workplace

Diversity is being heralded as both the right thing to do and a smart business decision for employers. But does the data show widespread diversity in the workplace yet?

Human Capital Media’s Talent Tracker is a custom analytics service developed by the HCM Research and Advisory Group. Talent Tracker integrates data from open sources originating from the U.S. Census, the National Center for Educational Statistics, World Bank and Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here are some of the latest statistics about diversity in the workplace.

Also in By the Numbers: The Latest Health Care Statistics

Also in By the Numbers: There’s No Place Like (Work From) Home

June 3, 2019February 24, 2026

The Business Benefit of Employee Assistance Programs

Employee assistance programs were originally created to address alcoholism and drug use in the workplace.

These programs have since matured to address a broad range of issues that can affect all aspects of employee performance and engagement. From the misuse of drugs and alcohol to stress, anxiety, sleep disorders and depression, they take on “virtually every problem an employee could have,” said Gregory DeLapp, CEO of the Employee Assistance Professionals Association.

This evolution has also changed who runs the programs, he added. In the beginning, most EAP leaders came to the role through the training department or because of their own recovery. But today, most EAP professionals have a social work background or mental health training.

“It reflects what’s being offered and when,” he said.

Today, mental health is a leading driver of EAP investments and the services provided, and thanks to the growing social dialog about depression and anxiety, employees are more open to taking advantage of these offerings, said Barbara Veder, vice president of employee support solutions for Morneau Shepell, an HR technology and consulting firm in Toronto. “That leads to more early engagement, which is always the focus for EAPs.”

She noted that stress, depression and anxiety are among the top reasons why employees access EAP services, and she encourages employers to provide tools and services that help employees to be more proactive in their mental health care. These may include online assessments to gauge risks, rapid access to counseling rather than waiting weeks for an appointment, and wellness apps and self-directed programs to help “get people back to their best selves,” she said.

On the employer side, EAP providers are offering more data and analytics to help them understand whether these programs are being used, and what impact they may have on the business. “Having access to meaningful data allows employers to tailor their programs to the needs of the workforce,” Veder said. It isn’t just about gauging whether employees use these services. Good metrics also help them understand what intervention types are most appealing and how their use breaks down among employee groups. “A lot of people want to take ownership of their care, while others respond better to human interventions,” she said.

DeLapp noted that companies should be sure the data they are getting demonstrate actual business impact. “So much of what is sold today is based on measures of activity, like number of therapy visits, or calls to a call center,” he said. He argued that employers should be asking for outcome measures that demonstrate results.

Workplace Outcome Suite Impact

Many benefits leaders are finding this kind of data through the annual “Workplace Outcome Suite” report developed by Chestnut Global Partners, which uses workplace surveys to demonstrate the effectiveness of EAPs in business terms related to absenteeism, presenteeism, work engagement, workplace distress and life satisfaction. For example, the most recent WOS annual report found that before implementing an EAP program, companies saw an average of 10.92 hours of work missed over a 30-day period due to mental health related issues; after the implementation, it dropped to 5.64 hours — or an improvement of 48 percent. “It helps employers anticipate what impact an EAP will have on the business,” DeLapp said.

Also read the 2018 Sector Report: Anxiety and the Employee Assistance Program

Also read the 2017 Sector Report: EAPs are Valuable but Underused

While EAPs are often considered separate from other benefits programs, it is also important to find synergies between EAPs and benefits offerings, he said. For example, financial pressures can cause stress and anxiety, so offering financial planning services, student debt repayment and other voluntary financial benefits can have the knock-on effect of easing workplace anxiety. “It’s an interesting dichotomy that should be considered when crafting any EAP program.”

May 27, 2019June 29, 2023

Paid Leave for Caregivers Being Used to Attract Millennials

As the demand for family friendly benefits grows, employers are responding by offering paid leave to new parents.

While that’s good news for families, a rapidly growing segment of the workforce is often overlooked — employees who are caring for an aging parent, an ailing spouse or other loved one.

About 40 million people in the U.S. are caring for an adult family member and 60 percent of them are employed, according to a 2015 report by AARP. And an increasing number are stepping into that role at a younger age. About a quarter of all caregivers are millennials ages 18-34, according to AARP’s research.

That is why a small but growing number of employers are expanding their family leave policies and offering paid leave to employees caring for a loved one, whether it’s a child, a parent, a spouse, or an in-law or grandparent.

“Caregiving comes in all different forms,” said Jen Fisher, managing director of wellbeing at consulting firm Deloitte. “It’s not just about bringing a child into the world. The dynamics of caregiving and the definition of family have changed.”

In 2016, Deloitte began offering 16 weeks of paid leave to full-time employees caring for a family member. Leave can be taken all at once or at a minimum, in three-day increments, according to Fisher. Previously, only new parents were eligible for paid leave.

“Caregiving for someone who is sick ebbs and flows,” she said. “If you’re caring for an elderly parent at home, one week there’s a lot going and on other days you’re not needed 100 percent. You can build your caregiving needs around that. It’s a really flexible program.”

Under the 1993 Family Medical Leave Act, private employers with more than 50 employees must provide 12 weeks of unpaid leave, but some employers are going beyond what’s required in order to attract younger workers.

“Caregivers are getting younger,” said Kathleen Kelly, executive director of the Family Caregiver Alliance, a nonprofit research and policy organization that supports caregivers. “There are many more millennials and Gen Xers caring for a parent or grandparent. It’s a byproduct of baby boomers having kids later. Caregiving has changed generationally. Employers need to wake up to this.”

More than half of millennial caregivers are the sole provider for an elderly family member, providing an average of 26 hours of care each week — the equivalent of a part-time job, according to a 2018 study by the AARP Public Policy Institute.

Yet, most do not feel supported at work. They are less likely to tell a supervisor they are caring for a family member or to discuss it with co-workers, the study showed.

In addition to providing paid leave, employers need to better understand the challenges that caregivers face, said Kelly.

“Issues around children have become more or less accepted, but not with eldercare,” she said. “If you say, ‘I have to take my mom to a doctor’s appointment,’ people think, ‘Can’t she do it alone?’ It doesn’t have the same urgency or importance.”

According to AARP Public Policy Institute, about 100 major U.S. firms have adopted or expanded paid family leave over the past three years, but only 20 percent made it available to family caregivers.

That is likely to change, according to Candice Sherman, CEO of the Northeast Business Group on Health.

More than half of millennial caregivers are the sole provider for an elderly family member, providing an average of 26 hours of care each week.

“People are living longer, there are gaps in the health care system, employees are more dispersed geographically, so they are caregiving from afar. Large employers are aware,” she said

The vast majority of employers surveyed by the Northeast Business Group on Health in 2017 agree that caregiving will become an increasingly important issue over the next five years, and nearly half cite caregiving as one of their top 10 priorities.

“You’re seeing companies expand paid leave but they are also looking for ways to support caregivers and that creates an opportunity for companies like ours,” said Michael Walsh, CEO of Cariloop, a platform that enables employees to access caregiving resources. “With our services, you’re not just giving people time off but giving them the tools they need to figure out things they don’t understand. We didn’t feel that a company’s health plan or EAP had the coverage needed for the long-term or took into account all the barriers involved with caregiving.”

Walsh, who launched the Texas-based company in 2013, said that younger workers are driving the interest in support for caregivers in the workplace.

“A major factor is a wave of millennialism, which is about feeling supported and making sure that your company empathizes with what’s important to you,” he said. “We can’t just check the boxes. We have to go further and send a message that we care about you and your family.”

May 15, 2019April 25, 2019

Business Travelers May Need Help Managing Their Health

Long-distance trips may be something to boast about, with wanderlust-driven influencers posting perfectly filtered photos on their social media accounts. Work-sponsored road trips also may sound glamorous but workers should recognize the potential negative impacts of business travel on their health.

Frequent business travel is associated with poorer health outcomes, according to “Business Travel and Behavioral and Mental Health,” a 2018 article from the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. The analysis found that people who traveled more often for work were more likely to smoke, have trouble sleeping and show higher levels of anxiety and depression symptoms. The study concluded that “employers should provide programs to help employees manage stress and maintain health while traveling for work.”

Hal F. Rosenbluth, chairman and CEO of New Ocean Health Solutions, at one point hit the road every other week for work. Rosenbluth knows the challenges of regular business travel within the U.S. and abroad. For people who travel overseas, there’s “always the possibility of sickness or geopolitical events that require immediate attention and sometimes evacuation,” he said.

Also read: Helping HR Care for the Business Traveler

Medical and travel security services firm International SOS and medical insurance provider Geo Blue are among the options for these travelers. “I typically use it if I’m traveling to countries where medical care isn’t terrific or I’m out of the city somewhere where there isn’t a lot of care. If something goes wrong, I know I can have a plane or a helicopter get me to where I need to go,” Rosenbluth said.

Lengthy international trips may “cause a person to lack focus after arrival” and Rosenbluth recommends travelers delay meetings for 24 hours to recover from the flight and adapt to time changes.

Whether someone is traveling domestically or abroad, work-life balance may take a hit. Especially for people with young families, the partner who remains at home with the children may feel overwhelmed, Rosenbluth said, and that communication is important.

Business professionals informally polled on LinkedIn by Workforce had several suggestions to stay healthy while traveling for work and how employers can help.

Find quick, healthy grab-and-go options near the hotel to resist the urge to eat fast food.
Join a gym with multiple locations to use the membership while traveling.
Employers can maintain a company culture that stresses positive health behaviors like getting enough sleep and allowing people time to eat.
Reimburse reasonable wellness expenses for fitness classes in travel destinations.

Rosenbluth suggests that travelers exercise, which may be difficult if there’s no fitness center or if the destination poses a safety hazard for walks offsite. Business travelers also should be careful about what they eat and should carefully consider food safety.

Also read: Got Breast Milk? These Female Business Travelers Do

May 13, 2019June 29, 2023

The Importance of Happiness at Work

Last year, members of our HR community called me with common feedback that they were meeting so many people who are unhappy at work and life. Any research you choose to look at for the past 10 years averages nearly three-quarters of people are looking for jobs and many of them are unhappy with their work.

Mo Gawdat, the founder of onebillionhappy.org and former chief business officer at Google X, focuses on the relation between innovation and happiness. After losing his son Ali, he made it his personal mission to help 1 billion people become happier in all aspects of their life. I saw him speak last year and after he tells the room it is all right to be happy at work, Mo’s speech brought tears to thousands of attendees.

I agree wholeheartedly with Mo and my own belief is that we need to humanize, look ourselves in the mirror and be happy again at work and at home. We spend a substantial amount of our lives at work and I believe our happiness is impacted by how we feel in the workplace. This process of pursuing happiness highly resonated with me and the important role that HR professionals play in it.

Did you know that 65 percent of startups fail because the relationship between the co-founders also fails? This is same percentage for the top 10 countries with divorce rate worldwide. I think we can draw a correlation between the two: More relationships in the world fail than succeed.

If you haven’t heard of Esther Perel yet, be sure to catch one of her podcasts. A Belgium-born psychotherapist who now lives in New York, Esther helped change the lives of millions of couples. She is not afraid to tell people to “shut it!” and is working to unleash the chains of workplace relationships where jealousy, betrayal and bitterness can sabotage a business as much as a marriage.

Also read: Keeping Data Safe is the Next Wave of HR Tech Innovation

We’re especially seeing this in HR technology. Josh Bersin, the world’s leading analyst on the future of work, highlighted the move from automation to productivity in organizations over the past two years.

In the context of the digital revolution, Esther blames our devices for causing all sorts of new vices in the workplace. Esther feels that digital communication is damaging, and because 2D communication deprives us of our senses, the level of distortion between Slack or email messaging and face-to-face to voice communication is massive. Arianna Huffington echos this and encourages everyone to start introducing her Thrive Global model in their lives to disconnect from technology and reconnect more with life.

So I ask you, how different can our world and workplaces be in five to 10 years’ time if we start making work relationships better and innovate to support this ideology?

I ask everyone to rethink their happiness at home and in the workplace, and share their thoughts on how we’re going to change the future of work for the better.

May 3, 2019October 18, 2024

The Past, Present and Future of Internal Communication

Effective communication with internal staff ensures that all parties are on the same page. Without alignment on company goals, mission and values, confusion can easily ensue. That’s where Robyn Hannah steps in. As senior director of global communication at Dynamic Signal, an employee communication and engagement platform based in San Bruno, California, she leads the communication strategy both internally and externally, ensuring that employees know how to complete items as fundamental as signing up for health insurance to as complex as delivering business goals.

In an interview with Talent Economy [Workforce‘s sister publication], Hannah shared her observations of internal communication practices, what she sees for the future and suggestions for how to start a strong internal communication strategy on a dime. Edited excerpts follow.

TALENT ECONOMY: What exactly is internal communication and why is it important?

ROBYN HANNAH: Communication is the vehicle through which we disseminate corporate goals, business objectives and company culture. These things that make up the fabric of our organization disseminate to our employees, and from our employees to our customers, through communication. I think it is fundamentally how we create alignment within our company; it’s how we allow employees to know who we are as a company and what our values are; it’s how they understand our company goals, whether that’s for the year or quarter; it’s how employees can prioritize.

If you’re dealing with a difficult customer and maybe they are operating outside of your business values, maybe you have to retire a customer. Some of those tough business decisions can be bounced against the framework of who you are as an organization, what your vision and mission and values are, and the only way for employees to know those things, to make those decisions and to have that criteria is by having some vehicle for delivery, which is truly internal communication.

“Someone has to create alignment. Your employees are your most-valued asset. You do not have a company without your employees.”

— Robyn Hannah, senior director of global communication at Dynamic Signal

TE: Historically, how has this role changed?

HANNAH: For different companies of different communication maturity levels, internal communication can mean different things. For some, it’s very tactical. It’s blocking and tackling. It’s here’s your information. For a long time, the intranet or maybe posters in a breakroom have been internal communication for a lot of organizations. But that doesn’t work anymore.

Technology has fundamentally changed the way that we communicate in our everyday lives. We live in this app economy where news and information and content push to us. No longer do we have this destination model. I don’t go to the New York Times on my browser, right? I get a push notification, and that information that is being pushed to me is based on topics that I’ve self selected are relevant to me.

I think internal communication at companies is starting to reflect more the way that we communicate in our everyday lives. The enterprise has been a little behind. There are still a lot of companies that are using intranets and posters. Part of the evolution is that we’re moving to proactively providing employees news and information that’s relevant for them to do their job, and we’re now able to deliver it in a way that’s convenient for them.

Also read: Make Benefits and Internal Communications Inseparable

At Dynamic Signal, our employee communication and engagement platform is designed to meet employees where they’re at with targeted, relevant, timely content and information delivered to them on the channel that is most convenient for the way that they work. If you are in finance and you sit behind a computer all day, maybe getting internal communication about your open enrollment period or a new leadership appointment via email makes sense for you. Maybe you’ll read your email. But if you are a sales executive, when you’re looking in your inbox, you’re only looking for customers and trying to close business. You’ll mentally ignore those internal emails as, “I can get back to that later.” But what if they’re really important?

If the goal of internal communication is to align employees to business objectives and goals, disseminate culture and values, help employees prioritize their day and make sure that they’re getting the information they need as efficiently as possible, we need to find ways to get it to them in a way that makes sense for them. That’s a big part of the evolution.

Beyond that, what’s been really interesting is we’re seeing more and more appointments of chief communication officers. The CCO is a relatively new C-suite position, but it seems like every week we’re seeing more large companies appoint somebody as CCO. They’re really consolidating communication under one org, whereas in the past, maybe internal communication sat under HR or operations, and external communication — things like social media, public relations — sat under a marketing team.

The problem is that today, the speed of communication, the fact that everybody is on mobile and everyone is getting news and information at their fingertips all the time via news apps and Twitter, there’s no longer a sense of internal communication and external communication. It’s really confidential communication and everything else.

The other really important and I think notable advance in internal communication is around measurement. So many other parts of the organization, especially marketing, have become very data driven. And historically, internal comms has been seen as this soft, cushy part of the business. We put an email out there and said, “Open enrollment starts now. Please read. Action required!” We didn’t have any measurement. We didn’t know what was happening with penetration; we didn’t know what employee sentiment was; we didn’t know what employee engagement was; we didn’t know how employees were feeling or receiving the information. It was this sort of spray and pray mentality. Communication now looks at things beyond just open rates but engagement, time on page, are employees taking action on some of the information they’re given?

I think measurement is how communications will continue to earn a seat at the table. It’s hard to get budget or authority when you don’t have data. Communicators I think have always known that internal communication is critical when it comes to things like alignment, understanding business goals and objectives, driving culture throughout the organization. But if you have no way of measuring that, you can’t prove that. You can’t get resources or budget or headcount to support those efforts.

TE: In your position at Dynamic Signal, what do you communicate internally and externally?

HANNAH: There’s so much! We want to make sure our employees know how to enroll in the 401(k) or go see the doctor. We want them to have those sort of basic, HR communication functions, but it can also be the lunch menu for the week or our holiday schedule.

We have things like Women of DySi and Pets of DySi and DySi Cares, which is our CSR group. So we have these employee affinity groups that people can choose to join and connect with other employees around issues that are important to them. We have this whole internal channel of people who submit photos of their pets. It’s been fun to see these other sides of your colleagues’ lives that you wouldn’t normally see.

We also want our employees to be very well-informed about what our company goals are. Our CEO sends video messages saying, “Great Q1! Here’s what happened and what we’re looking to accomplish in Q2.” We also host all-hands meetings with an AMA [Ask Me Anything] session. We’ll send out that notification to all of our employees through different channels — whichever channel works best for them — and we let them know that this is coming up and they can submit questions that they want to ask the CEO. I think our objectives are always ensuring that employees feel celebrated, connected, aligned, know what our goals and objectives are and that they feel valued as people.

On the external side of things, we’re sharing what we’re doing in the industry, our thought leadership and some of our research externally, but it’s not enough for us to just share that from our own branded channels. In my role as far as public relations and media relations go, it’s exciting to get to go speak to communications professionals and share all of this, but it’s really important for us that our employees feel empowered to be storytellers, too.

We are very careful about who we hire because we want every employee to feel empowered to be a brand ambassador and an employee advocate. We push a lot of our news out to our employees to share across their own networks, in their own voice. And different employees share different things. That’s perfect because everyone brings a unique and diverse perspective to the company, and we use our communication tools to empower them to tell those stories externally. We believe that external storytelling success begins with internal communication.

“External storytelling success begins with internal communication.”

— Robyn Hannah, senior director of global communication at Dynamic Signal

TE: For smaller companies that might not have the funds for an internal communication role, who typically owns this, and what advice would you have for them?

HANNAH: Internal communication is a non-negotiable. Someone has to create alignment. Your employees are your most-valued asset. You do not have a company without your employees. And employees who don’t know what your goals are as a business, don’t know who you are as a company and what your values are and what your mission is, they can’t function and you will not be successful as an organization if you ignore the fact that employees are your most-valued asset. Whether it’s an executive or HR or someone in marketing, communicating with your most-valued asset — the people who truly represent your business to the world — is a non-negotiable.

I think you just have to start, even if you have nothing in place. Someone has to say, “Our employees are important; they need to know what’s happening in the company; they need to know what we’re driving to as a company; they need to know that we value them because we recognize we don’t have a business without them.”

If all you have is email, start with email. If all you have is an open space where you can gather people together, go face time. If you’re a small company and can get everybody in one space, great. Or use Skype or Google Teams or whatever digital tool you need to get people together.

My advice is to start doing something. And sometimes asking forgiveness is better than asking permission. We all have a phone in our pocket with video and camera capability. You can start a free social media account and start to take photos and video of your employees and what their day-to-day looks like. Celebrate the people who make your company what it is. Highlight and showcase them. Create a sense of pride and loyalty. Start to empower them to tell their story on social media. That doesn’t cost any money.

This story originally appeared in Workforce‘s sister publication Talent Economy.

May 1, 2019June 29, 2023

How Business Leaders Should Respond During Crises

When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, 2017, HR consulting company ADP jumped into action to support its 36 employees living in the U.S. territory.

In the event of a major emergency that impacts its employees, ADP conducts associate safety and welfare checks, which involve an emergency notification system that reaches out to workers via call, text and email to ask if they need assistance, said Zona Walton, senior director of global business resiliency at ADP. Her team achieves 100 percent response in these instances, no matter what it takes. In the event of Hurricane Maria, though, ongoing power outages made these safety checks more challenging and involved search and rescue efforts.

“It can take us hours, it can take us days, and it can take us weeks,” she said. In Puerto Rico, it took several days to locate all employees around the island. “We’re continuing to support Puerto Rico, and we probably will for quite some time, just because of the devastation on the island and the needs of our associates we have there,” Walton said at the time of publication.

ADP provides whatever the workers need, particularly MREs (meals ready to eat), water, flashlights and batteries, but they can also support employees financially. Through its ADP Cares fund, its employees make donations, which are then matched by the company. These funds are available as donations to workers in crisis. Financial support and outreach from employees — particularly in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria — have been incredibly heartwarming, Walton said.

“We see that from one event to the next,” she said.

Balance a corporate statement between acknowledging the tragedy but not panicking.

Walton said her team has activated crisis management for 12 events between Aug. 1 and Nov. 2 of 2017. These events have included hurricanes, wildfires and terrorist attacks that could affect the safety of their employees. Her team had to account for about 8,800 ADP workers.

Walton has seen an uptick in crisis management, partly due to an increase in terrorist attacks and extreme weather events, and partly due to an increased emphasis on employee safety and security, both at ADP and at companies as a whole.

“This is an evolving space,” said Trusha Palkhiwala, vice president of global HR services at ADP. “I think companies are trying to figure out where their right role fits.”

Sharing Sympathy

Although the humanitarian efforts in Puerto Rico have largely been about the physical safety of workers, other tragedies can call for emotional support, Palkhiwala said, leading ADP to communicate their employee assistance programs or even bring counselors to offices.

ADP CEO Carlos Rodriguez also reaches out in some cases. Without sharing political views, it’s normal for him to express sympathy for victims, Palkhiwala said.

Another CEO advised to take a similar approach to corporate communications. If it’s the CEO’s personality to contact employees or the company as a whole in the aftermath of tragedies, then they should, said Adam Ochstein, founder and CEO of StratEx, a Chicago-based human resources software company. However, if they don’t usually make a statement, doing so could come across as panicked.

And communication doesn’t have to be from the CEO, necessarily. “Whoever is kind of like that culture cop for the company should be the one that’s writing or driving the message on it,” he said. At a large enterprise, this could be a supervisor for a department or region who then accesses corporate resources such as EAPs. Also, it’s crucial to communicate these services in common areas, such as the company break room or portal.

Ochstein suggested balancing a corporate statement between acknowledging the tragedy but not to panic. “We’re not putting our heads in the sand. At the same time, we also don’t want to get everyone panicked either, but let’s talk about this, and let’s share how we’re all respectively feeling about it.”

“It’s OK to come across as vulnerable, upset and to show your humanity.”

— Adam Ochstein, founder and CEO of StratEx

As an example of how not to respond after a tragedy, he cited New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s statement about the Oct. 31, 2017, terrorist attack in New York City, which left eight people dead and 12 more injured. “The reaction by New Yorkers, as evidenced last night, this morning, people got up, they went to work, children went to school, and that’s what makes New Yorkers special. That strength. That resilience,” Cuomo said.

Ochstein liked Cuomo’s business-as-usual attitude, but if the statement “doesn’t have an empathetic chord struck along with that tough New Yorker bravado, then it comes across as cold and insensitive and callous,” he said. “One without the other causes issues. If I’m too mushy, then no work gets done and you paralyze people. If I have too much of that bravado, then I’m seen as insensitive and callous and unkind.”

In events that impact workers the most, Ochstein suggested business leaders post a blog, have a town hall session and have opportunities for the company and its employees to give back to their communities.

Additional advice from Ochstein includes expressing that an event is impacting them. “It’s OK to come across as vulnerable, upset and to show your humanity,” he said.

Ochstein also advised business leaders to be as prepared as possible ahead of events. In instances of natural disasters that are predictable, preparation is feasible. “The unnatural tragedies, unfortunately, there’s been a lot of those over the last several years, so sadly, we’re getting good practice,” Ochstein said.