Tag: human resources

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Does the FMLA Protect Organ Donation Surgery as a ‘Serious Health Condition?’

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Organ donors are living saints. If you are in need of an organ to save your life, and someone is willing to sacrifice a kidney, or a liver segment, or bone marrow, and selflessly accept the pain and inconvenience, you are very, very fortunate.

Sacrificing one’s organ to save another’s life should not also result in sacrificing one’s job.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division published Opinion Letter FMLA2018-2-A [pdf], which answers the question, “Does organ-donation surgery can qualify as a ‘serious health condition’ under the FMLA?” (Thanks to Eric Meyer for bringing this to my attention.)

The answer is yes.

The FMLA defines a “serious health condition,” in part, as an “illness, injury, impairment, or physical or mental condition that involves … inpatient care in a hospital, hospice, or residential medical care facility.” “Inpatient care” means as “an overnight stay in a hospital, hospice, or residential medical care facility, including any period of incapacity … or any subsequent treatment in connection with such inpatient care.”

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, donors usually remain in the hospital four to seven days after the harvesting surgery. Thus, because organ donation commonly requires overnight hospitalization, it qualifies as a serious health condition covered by the FMLA.

Thus, covered employers (those with 50 or more employees on the payroll during 20 or more calendar workweeks in either the current or the preceding calendar year) must provide FMLA leave to an eligible employee-donor (someone employed for at least 12 non-consecutive months, who worked 1,250 hours during the 12-month period preceding the start of the requested leave, and who works at a location with 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius).

What if, however, you are not an FMLA-covered employer? Or the employee-donor is not FMLA eligible? Or they already used up their 12 weeks of FMLA leave? Think twice before you deny requested time off for organ donation.

  • The ADA may require that you grant the time off with, or without, the FMLA or state-specific law. The ADA does not require an employer to provide a reasonable accommodation to a person without a disability due to that person’s association with someone with a disability. Nevertheless, the ADA mandates that an employer avoid treating an employee differently than other employees because of an association with a person with a disability. Thus, if an employer grants time off to employees for their own surgeries, the ADA will require similar treatment to employees taking time off to donate an organ to one’s association or relation.

Is it inconvenient for an employer to provide time off to any employee? Absolutely. Do you want to be in a position of defending your decision to fire that employee in the face of a leave request for the selfless act donating an organ to save another’s life? Absolutely not. While such a decision is likely illegal, it’s also undoubtedly inhuman. And it’s that inhumanity that will cost your company dearly in front of a judge or a jury.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.

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ComPsych Survey Emphasizes In-Person Counseling Over Mental Health Apps

There’s an app for that — that meaning almost everything. I covered mental health apps for Workforce a couple years ago, exploring how technology solutions can benefit employees with mental health issues, which is why I was intrigued to find a ComPsych survey in my inbox the other morning. The findings? If employers want to help depressed workers, apps may not be the answer.mental health apps

Workforce covered technology in our latest HR tech-themed issue, including a few stories on the negative and positive impacts of technology. While this information was also valuable, I found the survey by ComPsych, a Chicago-based employee assistance program provider, to be especially noteworthy because of the specific population it addressed: depressed workers. We can argue pointedly on both sides about how technology has both positive and negative effects on people’s lives and well-being. But when we’re talking about mentally ill people getting help, I think it’s better to be a bit more careful.

Also read: Is Technology the Answer to Your Employees’ Mental Health Problems?

I can’t speak for this hypothesis, but I can share some of the findings from the ComPsych research. The EAP, considering the loneliness epidemic and the need for more face-to-face interaction, advocates for in-person counseling. The role of apps in getting mental help? “Using them as means to draw people in to receive more in-depth help.”

Also read: Loneliness Creeps into Workplace Wellness World

“There’s a human function and a human interaction component — you can call it empathy, you can call it connectedness, you can all it a lot of things — that you miss regardless of what you employ in the technological realm that an in-person experience with another human being provides for a person seeking care,” said Richard Chaifetz, founder, chairman and CEO of ComPsych.

He added that any way we can improve, increase and expand people’s ability to access care is positive and that technology has a lot of value in mental health. Take, for example, a different technology in health care: telemedicine. This solves some issues related to access and availability of care, but for serious illnesses or comprehensive medical problems, in-person care is preferable. The same could be said about mental health.

Take this instance. Years ago, people would took paper surveys about their mental well-being. Am I depressed? Am I stressed?

“Those moved to internet-based questions, and now they’ve moved to online cognitive help for people to walk through different scenarios in their lives and provide resources and counseling online,” Chaifetz said. “It’s a way to stimulate thought, [and] it’s a way to bring people under the tent to explore issues related to mental health or mental well-being.”

He also added that at ComPsych, when people are online, they constantly are reminded that in-person care in available. Here’s the number you call, here’s how you get something scheduled, here’s what you need to know. It’s a way to make sure people know their options.

Most employers understand that technology is not the answer to everything in medical care, and more employees than in the past are open to getting care for mental health needs, thanks to the stigma disappearing over time, Chaifetz said.

Still, I find this important to bring up because understanding something and taking action are two different things. For example, quality and access in mental health care are still current issues, even if people understand the importance. Chaifetz mentioned that most large and medium sized companies have mental health services beyond basic counseling mandated in their health plans, but that leaves me curious about the state of health plans for small employers, where many employees work and get health insurance.

Looking at this from a broader perspective, this pitch reminded me of something that it couldn’t hurt to remind employers. Wanting to help your overall workforce with their general mental health and wanting to help your mentally ill employees with specific mental health issues are two different beasts.

Both are important, and both require different considerations. It’s the difference between someone needing to take a mental health day to sleep in and do something relaxing and someone needing to take a mental health day to see a counselor for an emergency session. Or the difference between someone wanting to use HSA dollars to help pay for an exercise class and someone wanting to use HSA dollars for medication.

The amount of mental-health pitches I get a day is great and I believe a good sign that employers genuinely want to know what they can do so as not to negatively impact their employees’ mental health.

In other benefits-related news this week:

  • Can This New Employee Benefit Help You Hack Death?: A blockchain startup has adopted a stem cell storage benefit, saying that these young, healthy cells can potentially be used in the future for “health maintenance.” However, experts in stem cell research say there’s not yet any scientific evidence that stem cells could be used to reverse illnesses (be in heart-related illnesses, brain-related illnesses or blood cancer) when people age. Is this benefit promising more than it can deliver? (Bloomberg)
  • IRS Clears Way for Student Loan Benefit Tied to 401(k): This company has introduced a new benefit in which debt-straddled employee with student loan benefits can begin to save for retirement by paying off student loans. When they make a loan payment, their company puts money in their 401(k). My benefits sources say this is not yet a trend, for a variety of reasons, but it’s definitely something to have your eye on moving forward. (Employee Benefit News)
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7 Tips on How to Handle Cyber Sabotage and Other Insider Tech Threats

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Your employees are your company’s weakest link, and therefore, your greatest threat to suffering a cyber-attack and resulting data breach.

While employee negligence (that is, employees not knowing or understanding how their actions risk your company’s data security) remains the biggest cyber risk, another is growing and also demands your attention—the malicious insider.

According to one recent report, malicious insiders are responsible for 27 percent of  all cybercrime. Over at her Employment & Labor Insider Blog, Robin Shea suggests that one recent workplace embarrassment for an employer was the result of internal cyber-vandalism, and not external hacking.

Dark Reading reports on a recent survey, entitled, “Monetizing the Insider: The Growing Symbiosis of Insiders and the Dark Web.”

“Recruitment of insiders is increasing, and the use of the dark web is the current methodology that malicious actors are using to find insiders,” explains researcher Tim Condello, technical account manager and security researcher at RedOwl.

Cybercriminals recruit with the goal of finding insiders to steal data, make illegal trades, or otherwise generate profit. Advanced threat actors look for insiders to place malware within a business’ perimeter security. …

There are three types of people who fall into the “insider” category, says Condello: negligent employees who don’t practice good cyber hygiene, disgruntled employees with ill will, and malicious employees who join organizations with the intent to defraud them.

What is a company to do? I’ve previously discussed how to protect against the negligent employees who don’t practice good cyber hygiene—training, training, and more cyber-training.

No amount of training, however, will stop a disgruntled employee with ill intent, or a malicious employee who joins to do harm.

These latter two categories need more specialized attention—an insider threat program. The Wall Street Journal explains:

Companies are increasingly building out cyber programs to protect themselves from their own employees.… Businesses … are taking advantage of systems … to find internal users who are accidentally exposing their company to hackers or malicious insiders attacking the company. These “systems,” however, can prove costly, especially for the small-business owner. While investment in a technological solution is one way to tackle this serious problem, it’s not the only way. Indeed, there is lots any company, of any size, with any amount of resources, can do to develop an insider threat program.

Aside from the expense of costly monitoring programs, what types of issues should employers include in an insider threat program? Here are seven suggestions:

    1. Heightened monitoring of high-risk employees, such as those who previously violated IT policies, those who seek access to non-job-related business information, and those who are, or are likely to be, disgruntled (i.e., employees who express job dissatisfaction, who are on a performance improvement plan, or who are pending termination).
    2. Deterrence controls, such as data loss prevention, data encryption, access management, endpoint security, mobile security, and cloud security.
    3. Detection controls, such as intrusion detection and prevention, log management, security information and event management, and predictive analytics.
    4. Inventories and audits for computers, mobile devices, and removable media (i.e., USB and external hard drives), both during employment and post-employment.
    5. Policies and programs that promote the resolution of employee grievances and protect whistleblowers.
    6. Pre-employment background checks to help screen out potential problem employees before they become problems.
    7. Termination processes that removes access as early as possible for a terminated employee.

No company can make itself bulletproof from a cyber-attack. Indeed, for all businesses, data breaches are a when issue, not an if issue. However, ignoring the serious threat insiders pose to your company’s cyber security will only serve to accelerate the when.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.

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6 Human Resources Habits Needed to Survive Enterprise Transformation

worker centers

Executive teams under duress inevitably retreat behind walls of spreadsheets and for good reasons. Whether the stress arises from changing market pressures, acquisitions, divestitures, an IPO or any other cause, CEOs and their surrounding teams know that attention to top and bottom lines is crucial. Truth in transformation lies in numbers. However, thriving through transformation requires people — the right people.

And that requires prioritizing human resource management throughout the change.

I stepped in as Symantec’s chief human resources officer four years ago, just as the company was edging toward the decision to spin off its $7 billion storage group, Veritas.

With over 25 years of human resources leadership experience at Frito-Lay, Disney, Sun Microsystems, Cisco and others, I learned how successful enterprises leverage human resources to facilitate their transformation objectives through people. In order for a company to attract, motivate, deploy and capitalize on its talent, I would like to share a plan based on six core concepts that I have seen pay massive dividends during transformation.

1. Be relentlessly transparent. Businesses inevitably form silos, cliques and agendas. However, the more insulation develops between groups, the less any individual or group can gain an accurate sense of reality in the organization. I recall being in one executive meeting where everyone showed up with scorecards showing nothing but green statuses on their work streams. “If you’ve got this much green, I don’t believe it,” I thought. We need to have more yellows and reds to be real with ourselves. It’s not about truth so much as transparency. We have these interdependencies. We rely on each other. If I think you’re green that means I can go ahead and do my thing — until it’s too late, and then we risk all failing together. Successful corporate transformation requires alignment with every stakeholder, and that alignment can’t happen with people wearing rose-colored glasses.

Pulling those glasses off may entail fierce discussions and overcoming confusion. It may mean asking for help and accepting, without judgment, that people are imperfect. Part of HR’s job is to mediate that process in ways that empower everyone to leave them free to move forward on an aligned path.

2. Look both vertically and horizontally. Everyone has a vertical path, that set of problems and responsibilities that dominates your day and the strategy behind your role. Fewer people also scan horizontally. When you see and understand others’ work streams, you start to find points where their paths intersect with yours and those around you. Those intersections can yield major impact, both positive and negative, and the sooner you can see those patterns, the better you will be able to leverage or avoid those impacts. Because of its broad scope, HR should be better than most at this horizontal scanning and pattern recognition.

3. Use relationships to see both realities. Every corporate culture has its own paradoxes, its own forms of doublethink. How should someone new to HR leadership, or a leader in a new HR role, survive in the absence of experience? By embracing both realities. First, you need to rely on the formal leaders for alignment. They will tell you how things get done. Then, you need to find the informal leaders, the influencers and top performers who know how things “really” get done. Learn both routes and follow both.

Will formal and informal leaders tell you everything you need to know on Day One? Not at all. You must forge positive relationships with both groups and gain trust so that they want to tell you everything you’ll need. You must be an excellent listener. Those relationships will sustain you when things don’t go as planned. People will know your intentions were good, offer forgiveness, and help to orient you in a better direction.

4. Shape the energy. Every meeting I am in, I get clear about the energy in the room. That may sound really amorphous, but it’s real. People come in closed. They’re outcome-focused, not present in the conversation. I try to shift that energy, because if people aren’t listening and open to the discussion, then we’re going to see failure. Human resources professionals need to emphasize the human element of HR. The energy dynamics in the room as well as those outside of it shape the corporate culture and its operations. Consider: Is your company’s culture one in which the things said in the meeting room is the same things that get shared outside it? Are commitments made in the room but then not carried out beyond it? The answers define whether a business is functional or dysfunctional. HR executives have the power to shape the energy if they can recognize it and respond appropriately.

5. Don’t just be your hat. Do not fall into the trap of thinking HR leadership is your top role. You are a business leader first. Too often, people define what they do by the functional hat they wear. If you wear the HR hat and act within the traditional functional perspective of that HR role, you may have solid priorities, but you won’t have perspective. A business leader understands how the business operates, right down to its nuances. If people observe you not understanding these nuances, you will lose your ability to influence. They won’t trust your advice, because they’ll feel you don’t understand the whole picture.

6. Take the vitals, then use them. Times of transition are rife with ambiguity. Roles can change on a dime, and new plans often overlap with old, potentially breeding confusion. Clarity and effectiveness in such periods depends on constant inquiry, listening, and conversation. In this vein, if you will, HR executives need to be like doctors and take the pulse of employees at regular intervals in order to determine health. These are vital statistics — vital to the company’s well-being and growth.

Very often, employees have better insights than executives. In a transformation, regular pulsing is critical.
When you combine these six skills, you’re in a position to create clarity in a company that might otherwise get stuck in the fog of transition. A human resources executive with these skills is perfectly placed to help transform the top and bottom lines, open new markets, and lead the business in a wave of innovation.

Amy Cappellanti-Wolf is the chief human resources officer for Mountain View, California-based Symantec. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

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No, You Can’t Require Your Employee to Work During an FMLA Leave

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Let’s examine a question I receive all too often — can an employer require an employee to work during an FMLA leave?

So as not to bury the lede, the answer is pretty strong no.

To examine this issue, let’s take a look at Lay v. Louisville-Jefferson Cnty. Metro Gov’t (W.D. Ky. 5/29/18).

Justin Lay, a packer in the Solid Waste Management Division of the Louisville-Jefferson County Metro Government, applied for, and won, a promotion to an equipment operator. The new position required Lay to hold a commercial driver’s license, which the collective bargaining agreement provided three months to obtain.

During that three-months period, however, Lay suffered a broken leg in an off-duty accident. As a result, he took an FMLA leave. During that leave, however, the employer terminated his employment because he had failed to obtain his CDL as required by the position.

Lay sued, claiming that his termination — specifically, the expectation and requirement that he obtain his CDL while out on an FMLA leave — violated his rights under the FMLA.

The court agreed that “requiring an employee to work while on leave from work is the definition of interference with an employee’s FMLA rights,” and that requiring an employee to complete the requirements for a CDL and take the driver’s test while on FMLA leave constituted this mandatory work. It concluded that a jury should determine whether the employer violated Lay’s FMLA rights and set the case for trial.

What can employers learn from this case? If an employee is out on FMLA leave, leave the employee alone.

There is a distinction to be made between “fielding occasional calls about one’s job while on leave [as] a professional courtesy” (which a New York federal court, in Reilly v. Revlon, concluded was not an FMLA violation), and requiring one “to continue to perform work-related tasks while ostensibly on medical leave” (such as providing updates on accounts and pending sales, which the 6th Circuit, in Arban v. West Publishing, concluded was an FMLA violation).

Generally, speaking, however, anything more than routine questions that can be fielded in a quick phone call or email will likely constitute a violation of your employee’s FMLA rights.

Make sure your managers, supervisors, and the co-workers left behind know and understand that an employee out on FMLA is not to be working. Otherwise, you just might be buying yourself an FMLA lawsuit.

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OMG! Ur Hired!

texting
Besides convenience, texting is a great way to get a sense of a candidate’s personality.

Millennials and their Gen Z successors have little time for thoughtfully crafted emails or telephone pleasantries.

These digital natives grew up texting and often consider other formats to be cumbersome and outdated. So it should come as no surprise that they think text messages are a completely appropriate way to communicate with recruiters and their future workplace peers.

A recent survey from Yello, the talent acquisition software company, shows 86 percent of millennials “feel positively about text messages being used during the interview period,” and a similar HeyWire Inc. survey shows 67 percent of employees are using text messaging for business-related communications.

While it may seem like an overly casual environment to connect with potential hires, texts offer a lot of benefits — especially in a recruiting setting, said Jason Weingarten, co-founder of the Chicago-based Yello. “Text is faster, it’s easier and it’s more personal,” he said. It can also solve many of problems that create a negative candidate experience, including delays in communication, lack of follow-up and overly generic form letters.

“There are many points in the recruiting process that are very stressful for candidates,” he said. “Getting a quick response or update can ease some of that anxiety.”

It can also be handy for recruits who have another job and don’t want to communicate via their company email or phone, said JoAnne Kruse, chief human resources officer at American Express Global Business Travel. “They are lot more responsive via text, and it’s an easy way to move the process forward.”

A Strange Bunch

Besides convenience, texting is a great way to get a sense of a candidate’s personality, said Jack Barmby, CEO of Gnatta, a customer service software company based in the U.K. His developers and support staff use text messaging to talk to each other and to potential new hires. “It is the underpinning of how we communicate,” he said.

The company uses Slack, a cloud-based team collaboration tool for its text platform, creating different conversations for different projects, teams and topics. Participants post project updates, questions and comments that others in the group can see and respond to.

“It’s more efficient than email because users can quickly scroll through posts, find those that are relevant, without getting bogged down in a bunch of ‘reply-all’ email chains,” he said. There are no formal rules for use, beyond the basics — don’t be a jerk, and don’t post comments that are not relevant to the topic. “Otherwise it’s very organic, and we encourage people to let their personalities flourish.”

Gnatta also uses it as a vetting tool for new hires. When a candidate makes the hiring short list, they are invited to join one of the casual Slack channels, where Gnatta employees talk about what’s going on in their lives. The recruits get a chance to see how the team communicates, and the team gets a sense of their personality, Barmby said. “The ‘shine’ of the interview comes off, and they have a chance to be themselves.”

Inviting candidates to engage via text helps his team determine who will be the best cultural fit for the organization, and it ultimately becomes an extension of the onboarding process. He admitted that some candidates are turned off by the process because it adds a week to the decision, but others love the opportunities to connect with potential peers. “Developers can be a strange bunch, and not everyone is a good fit,” he said. Spending a week chatting with the team is a great way to decide who will fit in.

For all its conveniences there also are risks to using texts in recruiting. Companies need to be thoughtful about the information they share via text and how those communications can be tracked, Weingarten said. “If you get audited, you need to be able to show the source of the texts, how they were sent, and what messaging you used.”

Recruiters shouldn’t put too many rules around how texting is used. Where recruiters are looking for better, faster and more personal ways to engage with talent, texting is a cheap and familiar solution that can add real value to the process.

“Text is the next iteration of how we communicate,” Kruse said. “It can be a hugely helpful way to quickly connect with people, is a style that they prefer, so why wouldn’t you take advantage of that?”

Sarah Fister Gale is a writer in the Chicago area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

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Some Workplace Haiku to Start Your Week

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer

Lately, the news has been so grim, with

Office thermostat
Why do you hate me so much?
I’m freakin’ freezing
My biggest weakness
Why would you even ask that?
Nobody’s perfect
Used corporate card
To buy beer and Pokémon
Does that count as fraud?
Tweeted those pictures
Interview begins at 2
Can I delete them?

Reading those inspired me to write a few of my own.

Workplace harassment
HR ignored her for months
We have to pay, big!
Email from PayPal
Time to update my account
What is ransomware?
HR’s big headache?
An hour here, hour there
Intermittent leave
Exempt / non-exempt?
We owe unpaid overtime
Class lawsuit; oh crap!
How about you? Share your own workplace haiku in the comments below, or on Twitter, with the hashtag #haikuatwork.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
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Employers, Do Not Ignore Obvious Disability Accommodations

Jon Hyman The Practical Employer
All the way back in 2014,

An employee must ask for ADA accommodation to receive it.

That is, an employee must ask for an accommodation unless the employee’s need for an accommodation is so obvious that the employer cannot reasonably turn a blind eye toward it.

Case in point? Kowitz v. Trinity Health (8th Cir. 10/17/16).

Roberta Kowtiz worked for Trinity Health as a respiratory therapist and lead technician in its blood gas laboratory. She also suffered from cervical spinal stenosis, a degenerative spinal disease, for which she took a 12-week FMLA leave. She returned to work with restrictions that included max eight-hour shifts and no lifting more than 10 pounds. In the interim, Trinity updated the training requirements for Kowitz’s department to include renewed CPR training. Kowitz’s work limitations, however, prevented her from completing the training, a failure which resulted in her termination.

In her ensuing ADA lawsuit, the appellate court concluded that Kowitz’s failure to request a reasonable accommodation relative to the CPR training was not fatal to her ADA claim.

Though Kowitz did not ask for a reasonable accommodation of her condition in so many words, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Kowitz, her notification to her supervisor that she would not be able to obtain the required certification until she had completed physical therapy implied that an accommodation would be required until then.

What is the key takeaway for employers? You cannot ignore what you know about an employee’s disability and the potential need for an accommodation. Instead of ignoring the employee, you must engage in the interactive process with that employee to determine the need for, and feasibility of, the accommodation, whether or not the employee actually requests it.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
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Employers’ Greatest Concerns This Election Cycle

With the presidential election quickly approaching, the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans surveyed 486 human resource and benefits professionals on the campaign issues impacting benefits — that is, issues that have been mentioned on either of the presidential platforms.

I spoke with Julie Stich, associate vice president of content at the organization, about the noteworthy findings in the survey, which spanned from large and small companies, both public and private, across industries.

[Workplace Issues in the Presidential Debate: Did I Miss It?]

Stich also noted that there’s so much uncertainty around this election, it’s difficult to make a good prediction about which benefits could go forward. Also, we don’t know what the majority of Congress will be, and employee benefits haven’t been at the forefront of any of the debates. That being said, certain benefits or benefit reforms are popular on the bipartisan level.

  • 96 percent of participants support increased health care provider price transparency.
  • 84 percent support increased access to mental health care.
  • 76 percent oppose the Cadillac tax.
  • 75 percent support tax-exclusions for child-care expenses.
  • 68 percent support legalized prescription drug importation from other countries.

“So many employers as well as workers are frustrated that they just don’t know what a particular procedure is going to cost, or how much they’ll get billed after the fact,” said Stich. “It’s not surprising that we saw such strong support.”

Issues like mandated paid family leave and increased minimum wage were less agreed on. The minimum wage argument wasn’t shocking, but that only 53.3 percent of these survey participants supported paid family leave surprised me. As much as I’ve noticed the big presence of paid family leave throughout research and interviews in the past few months, and even though both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have proposed (albeit, very different) paid leave plans, support was still pretty much split in this survey.

[Clinton Vs. Trump: The Workplace Winner Is…]

Something else I found interesting. Of course, health care issues are big, and employers continue to support things like continuing to have the elimination of pre-existing conditions exclusion, or getting rid of the Cadillac tax, or even covering adult dependents up to the age of 26.

WF_1028_WorkingWell_ElectionBenefits_JulieStich
Julie Stich, associate VP of content, International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.

“When that provision first came out in the law, there was a lot of grumbling in the employer community about it, but it’s turned out to be a provision that employers as well as workers have embraced,” said Stich.

So, I wonder: What current controversial health care related benefits will be embraced in the future? Is it something stirring up controversy in this election cycle? Just a thought.

Finally, I want to briefly mention the high support of increased mental health care.

“We’re hearing more and more about the struggles that individuals with mental health distress are facing, and being able to have access to care that is affordable is critical to their wellbeing,” said Stich. “And not just their own, but family members and those who support them. And even in the workplace, if you have a co-worker suffering from mental distress, that can be challenging in how people get along, how they work together, productivity.”

It’s encouraging that employers are seeing the importance of providing mental health benefits at the same level as they provide other types of health benefits, she added and I agree wholeheartedly.

Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below or email at aburjek@humancapitalmedia.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

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Hilton Adopts More Family-Friendly Employee Benefits

WF_1014_ONLINE_HiltonAdoption_AdobeStock_58581924_articlecopy
Adoption assistance is Hilton Corp.’s latest employee benefit offering.

International hotel chain Hilton Corp. is aiming to provide a hospitable environment for its employees as well as its guests. One way of accomplishing this is through a wide range of benefits, the most recent of which is an adoption assistance program.

“We frequently ask team members for their feedback and suggestions,” said Laura Fuentes, senior vice president of talent, rewards and people analytics at Hilton, in an email interview. “Last year, we identified that parental leave was one area where we could add to our industry-leading programs and provide even more support and flexibility to team members and their families.”

They pinpointed adoption as one of the many ways an employee might choose to start a family.

Hilton’s adoption assistance benefit, which begins Jan. 1, includes reimbursement on expenses up to $10,000 and two weeks of paid parental leave. There isn’t a limit on the number of adoptions this applies to, and it covers hourly and salaried U.S. team members who have been at Hilton for at least a year, averaging at least 30 hours a week.

Although not common, the offering of this type of benefit is on the rise.

Employers that offer paid leave for adoption has increased from 17 percent to 20 percent from 2015 to 2016, according to the Society for Human Resource Management 2016 Employee Benefits Survey. Nine percent of employers provide additional assistance for adoption, for example, through a stipend.

Stipends or reimbursements for adoption range from $5,000 to $25,000, according to Jackie Reinberg, national practice leader of absence, disability management and life at consultancy Willis Towers Watson. The average is about $10,000, which is what Hilton is offering, Reinberg said.

Adoption assistance benefits fit into Hilton’s overall strategy to make it a great place to work for employees and to foster both professional and personal growth, said Fuentes. It offers other family-friendly benefits like paid time off, a GED assistance program and remote workforce opportunities.

Family-friendly benefits also help Hilton attract and retain the best talent, she added, which is good for employees and good for business as well.

“Parental leave and adoption assistance are important to our team members, therefore they are important to us,” said Fuentes. “We are proud to offer the best and most comprehensive family benefits in the industry and are continually looking for ways to support our team members’ personal and professional growth.”

Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below, or email at aburjek@humancapitalmedia.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.