wellness – Page 5

January 14, 2020June 29, 2023

Workplace Initiatives Helping to Fight Opioid Epidemic

In the months after John Hindman lost his son to a heroin overdose in 2016, he discovered that he was not alone in his grief. As word of the tragedy spread among his colleagues at Leidos, a defense, aviation and health tech firm, many came forward to share their stories of loved ones struggling with addiction. He was so overwhelmed by the breadth of the problem that he wrote to his CEO challenging him to do something about it.

In a lengthy email titled “A Father’s Request” Hindman told Leidos CEO Roger Krone about his son Sean, who died at age 30, and his struggles with opioid addiction and later, heroin. He wrote of his grief and explained that many other employees face similar challenges, either dealing with their own addictions or those of loved ones. A few weeks later Krone replied. Hindman said his exact words were, “You broke me down. We’re all in.”

“I’ve worked here since 1985 and I never knew how many people were impacted by this epidemic,” Hindman said. “I felt that Leidos’ leadership had no idea of what was happening within the company. I realized that I needed to communicate this within Leidos, not with criticism but with honesty.”

The email launched not only a companywide initiative to combat the opioid epidemic, but also a national movement among business leaders to raise awareness and provide resources to their workforces and communities. The Reston, Virginia-based company distributed a CEO pledge to end opioid addiction that 60 corporate leaders around the country have signed so far.

Leidos, which employs 33,000 people worldwide, also held town hall meetings to gauge the extent of the problem and launched an internal public awareness initiative. It also reexamined its benefits and began looking at ways to better control the prescribing of opioids.

Opioid addiction has ravaged communities across the country. The misuse of these drugs is also a contributing factor in heroin addiction. In 2017, more than 70,000 people in the U.S. died from a drug overdose, a record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Opioids, which are a risk factor for heroin use, were involved in the majority of those deaths. This has a direct effect on the workplace, impacting health care costs, productivity, absenteeism and recruiting. Employers in states such as West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky have been particularly hard hit, as have those in the construction, trucking and manufacturing industries.

Given that two-thirds of those who are addicted to opioids are in the workforce and that many get their prescriptions through their employers, corporate leaders have found themselves on the front lines of a public health crisis. According to a report by the Society of Actuaries, the prescription opioid epidemic cost the economy $179.4 billion in 2018. This includes $60.4 billion in health care costs and $26.5 billion in lost productivity.

Many employers are finding innovative ways to fight the problem, from public awareness campaigns to offering treatment programs to managing prescription opioids to seeking alternatives to pain pills.

“This is something we’re all coming to grips with,” said Lorraine M. Martin, president and CEO of the National Safety Council. “Issues in our community will end up in the workplace. This is the first year that opioid deaths eclipsed deaths by car crashes. That’s a big alarm bell. It’s tricky because most people become addicted to drugs that have been prescribed to them and many get those prescriptions through their employer.”

While 75 percent of U.S. employers have been directly affected by opioids, only 17 percent feel extremely well prepared to deal with the issue, according to a survey by the National Safety Council. More than a third have experienced absenteeism or impaired worker performance and have had an overdose, arrest or injury because of opioid use, they survey found.

“I think we’re all at different places on this journey,” Martin said. “In areas that are hard hit employers have put in place programs that address recovery. Others still don’t understand that this is happening in their workforce or the role that they can play in fighting it. It’s important that employers understand how it affects their bottom line. The numbers are startling. Various industries and employers saw it quicker and some have taken very creative actions.”

One employer that saw firsthand how a regional opioid crisis also affected its workforce was Belden, a manufacturer in Richmond, Indiana. In 2016 the company was facing a labor shortage and having a hard time finding qualified applicants. About 1 in 10 applicants failed their drug test, so the company developed a novel approach to the problem. In 2018, Belden began offering drug treatment to those who failed their drug screening with a promise of a job if they successfully complete the program. The program, called Pathways to Employment, was so successful that the company launched it at its New York and Pennsylvania locations a year later.

“The program has grown to 30 in Richmond,” said Ellen Drazen, corporate communications manager at Belden. “Our locations in Syracuse and Washington (Pennsylvania) were chosen because they were seeing a similar impact on hiring due to the opioid epidemic.”

Belden has also signed the CEO pledge launched by Krone at Leidos.

In other parts of the country, business coalitions are taking collective action to address the problem.

In Kentucky, which has the fourth highest drug overdose rate in the country, a group of employers launched the Opioid Response Program for Businesses, which helps companies develop policies that support recovery, such as addressing the stigma around addiction. The program is run by the Kentucky Chamber Workforce Center.

“Stigma is one the most profound obstacles in dealing with this problem,” said Natalie Middaugh, a project coordinator at the Kentuckiana Health Collaborative, a nonprofit organization focused on improving health care delivery in Louisville and southern Indiana. “We need to help employers understand that addiction is a chronic disease and not a moral failing or a criminal issue.”

The collaborative joined the effort in 2017 after a significant spike in overdose deaths. In February of that year, Louisville emergency services handled 43 overdoses in one day.

“That was a huge turning point,” Middaugh said. “It’s a community health issue and a business issue, but there is also genuine concern about employees and their families.”

In the past five years, large employers have made a number of changes in their benefits plans in response to the opioid crisis, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation 2019 “Employer Health Benefits” survey. Forty percent launched or revised an employee assistance program in response to the opioid crisis, nearly a quarter modified their health plans to incorporate step therapy for opioid use, 38 percent provided additional health information to employees, 8 percent required employees with high opioid use to obtain prescriptions from only one provider, 21 percent asked their insurer or PBM to increase monitoring of opioid use, and 2 percent increased the number of substance abuse providers in their networks.

The National Business Group on Health and a number of regional employer coalitions recommend working with health plans and pharmacy benefit managers to develop benefit plans that feature safeguards such as limiting coverage for certain prescriptions to small quantities.

Managing opioid prescriptions was a top priority for Leidos, which in 2018 began restricting prescriptions on long acting opioids, such as morphine, oxycodone and fentanyl, and limiting short-acting opioids to seven days. The most common drugs involved in prescription opioid deaths are methadone, oxycodone and hydrocodone. Leidos worked with its pharmacy benefit manager ExpressScripts to implement the changes, according to Karen Kanjian, director of corporate benefits.

“Our part in this as benefits people is to look at what we’re doing in our programs, and we know that the frontline of defense is our PBM,” she said. “They see claims coming in real time and they have access to data, such as which doctors are prescribing and how much are they prescribing.”

Leidos also plans to work with dentists, who often prescribe opioids for procedures such as pulling wisdom teeth.

“My husband had a tooth pulled and got six weeks worth of pain pills that he never finished,” said Heather Misicko, a benefits consultant at Leidos.

A 2018 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found a link between use of opioids after tooth extraction and long-term use. With 3.5 million wisdom tooth extractions performed each year, that’s a lot of pain medication sitting in people’s medicine cabinets, according to Meg Moynihan, director of strategic marketing at Stericycle. Safe disposal of medications is an important part of addressing opioid addiction, she said.

“Because these drugs are prescribed by doctors for legitimate medical conditions people don’t think of them as a risk,” Moynihan said. “I lock the liquor cabinet but I never thought of locking the medicine cabinet. Having medications lying around makes them more accessible to friends of children, housekeepers and visitors, particularly during open houses when selling a home. It takes less than 30 days to develop an addiction.”

In fact, 20 percent of Americans hold on to their prescription medications because they don’t know what to do with them, and 1 in 10 have offered or given their unused prescription drugs to friends or family members for either medical or recreational use, according to a 2019 study conducted by Stericycle. The company offers envelopes that can be mailed to the company anonymously for safe disposal.

In September, Stericycle and the National Safety Council released a free online toolkit to help employers develop and implement policies and programs that support opioid addiction recovery. It includes sample policies, employee presentations, white papers, videos and other materials designed to support a drug-free and recovery friendly workplace, according to Martin.

The toolkit recommends using the NSC substance abuse cost calculator, which takes into account location, industry and number of employees, to determine the economic impact of drug abuse. After that it lays out a 12-month plan for developing and implementing an opioid policy, from education to communication to vetting the policy with legal counsel.

The NSC also recommends working with health care plans to ensure that mental and behavioral health services are covered, encouraging annual screenings for substance abuse, making sure that alternative pain management treatments, such as non-opioid medications, acupuncture, and chiropractic and physical and occupational therapy are covered, and providing or enhancing EAP services.

“If you don’t know where to start, go to the toolkit,” Martin said. “We advise employers to look at their own health care benefits and to look into alternative medicines. Opioids are not always the best drug for managing pain. Also, make sure to have naloxone in all your facilities. It should be in every workplace and office.”

Naloxone is a medication, either in the form of an injection or a nasal spray, that can stop the effects of an opioid overdose. Before implementing a workplace naloxone program Martin suggests consulting with an attorney to make sure it complies with federal, state and local regulations and training employees on how to spot and respond to an overdose.

While there are many tools and approaches to tackling opioid addiction in the workplace, Hindman said that the most important factor is having company leaders who are committed to the effort. While not every company has the resources of a Leidos, employers are in a unique position to make a difference, he said.

“A third of all addicts are functioning in society, which means that they are in the workplace,” Hindman said. “It’s very hard for the working world to come to grips with this problem. It boils down to a company’s core values. You need to commit it to paper and use it as a platform to attract talent and not treat it as rhetoric. The problem exists broadly and deeply in society and since you’re reaching into society for the employees you need, it makes sense to invest in solving it.”

November 26, 2019June 29, 2023

Please Tell Me Why Worksite Wellness Programs Are a Waste of Time and Money

My father passed away in October 1986 from a heart attack at age 49.

That was his last in a series of major and minor cardiac events. I was 21 years old when he died. At the time I perceived my father to be old (as do most children).

Now, at age 53, it’s an odd perspective to look back at his passing and reflect on where he was in his stage of life and career and consider his outlook on the future.

Gary Cassidy

My family has a history of heart disease and my father was no exception. As an engineer for General Electric, he worked long, hard hours and traveled frequently.

Physical activity, nutrition and doctor’s visits were not high on his priority list. I call this attitude the “I feel fine so I must be fine” mentality.

He enjoyed eating the crispy skin off the Thanksgiving turkey, fat from a well-cooked steak and ladles of cream sauces — all the good-tasting stuff that was loaded with calories, fat, cholesterol and sodium.

When my father had his first heart attack, the doctors found he had extremely high blood pressure and major blockages in all four of his arteries. By that time, too much damage had been done to his heart and there was nothing they could do for him. Still, my father started eating better, took up golf, spent less time at work and focused on reducing his stress.

It’s important to remember that during my father’s lifetime, 1937 to 1986, company wellness programs did not exist. He grew up with exercise guru “The Jack LaLanne Show,” hula hoops, calisthenics, the sauna suit, vibrating belts and other early fitness trends and fad diets. Most centered on the external appearance of fitness but lacked a focus on inner fitness, the biometric and lifestyle measurements that truly determine if one is healthy.

You would think I learned something from his experience, but you’d be wrong. When I was young I felt indestructible.

I had a high metabolism and didn’t gain weight no matter what or how much I ate. The good news: I was physically active in soccer, aerobics, long-distance running, weight lifting, competitive Taekwondo and many other activities.

The bad news: my diet was significantly less than stellar. It wasn’t unusual for me to have fast food for breakfast, lunch, dinner and a late-night snack all in the same day. I inherited my father’s “I feel fine so I must be fine” mentality.

In 1993, after eight years in the Air Force, I returned to civilian life to work at a large insurance carrier, where I learned about health care claims, annual employee benefit renewals and risk management, which drive and control an employer’s health insurance costs. I began to understand that the overall health of a workforce can affect an employer’s health care costs.

I learned about the decisions that organizations must make about health insurance cost sharing, like imposing premium increases, and that employee benefits are a large part of the workforce’s total compensation. I observed how employees who do not take responsibility for their personal health can cause others who do to pay more for their own health care benefits, something that always struck me as unfair.

At age 35, I finally visited my doctor for an annual physical, and the results were not good. My total cholesterol was over 300, my HDL was low and my LDL and triglycerides were high. I was also diagnosed with hypothyroidism.

While this was an “aha!” moment, I should have seen it coming. I knew that I had a family history of high cholesterol and most men on my father’s side of the family died young from cardiac-related causes. But “I felt fine so I must be fine.”

My doctor prescribed cholesterol and thyroid medication. I began to focus on nutrition and continued to be physically active. After one year, my numbers started to improve, but even now I still have work to do. Progress, not perfection.

While conditions like these may take years to produce symptoms and can initially go unnoticed, they are still incrementally causing damage to one’s health and well-being. This is why it’s so important to focus on preventive measures to manage a disease before it has the chance to cause a major medical event.

After my father had his first heart attack, he was released from the hospital and sent home. He walked slowly so as not to raise his heart rate. One day I watched him spend 20 minutes walking up 15 steps in our house. When we lose our health it’s the simple things we take for granted that are impacted the most.

Seeing first-hand the impact of how an undiagnosed heart condition affected my father’s health helps me stayed focus on wellness. In every wellness program participant, I see someone whose life can be positively impacted.

I often reflect on what would have happened if my father’s company had a wellness program. Knowing him, he would have been one of those people who wouldn’t want to participate. Because he was too busy. Because he didn’t have the time. Because it didn’t make sense; he “felt fine.” Because he had too many other things to do. Because it was his choice how he managed his health, not the company’s.

While all of this may be true, I think that if he had participated in a wellness program, gotten his blood work done and learned about his high blood pressure and high cholesterol before he had a heart attack, he would still be here today.

So I ask you, what’s the downside of participating in a wellness program?

Gary Cassidy is the director of employee education, communication and wellness for Camden, New Jersey-based insurance broker Corporate Synergies.

November 3, 2019June 29, 2023

A Workplace Nip and Tuck

I recently received a story pitch with the subject line, “Do Baby Boomers Need to Go Under the Knife to Keep Their Edge at Work?”

Sure, roll your eyes. Scoff at a pitch with a pandering subject line that cries “Open me!” like a pricey bottle of booze at a five-dollar white elephant holiday gift exchange. Crinkle your nose and sniff a haughty sniff at the thought of someone actually undergoing plastic surgery to keep an edge at work.

I don’t think it’s a silly question at all.

But you do. Then again you look like an Olympian thanks to that Lagree ultimate strength workout in the corporate fitness center. If Adonis was your co-worker he’d stare slack-jawed at your chiseled body as you passed by in the company cafeteria with your meatless burger, bowl of elderberries and glass of oat milk.

Perfect hair, stylish glasses (not that you need them; it’s just accessorizing to make you look smarter), glowing skin (of course you use product, doesn’t everybody?), and the shoes. Yes, it’s all about the shoes.

You’re at the top of your game. You crush it daily.

Until, well … until you’re getting ready for work one early spring morning and the bubbly yet acerbic TV personality on your go-to morning news program blurts out that your company has been acquired. The deal is just a passing mention following the always informative “Mr. Fix-It” segment but the chill racing down your spine buries a big fat pit in your stomach. Your knees buckle and your cup of freshly brewed raspberry chai tea trembles like a swimming pool in an earthquake.

Your company was acquired by an out-of-state competitor. You’re stunned. And you’re angered because you didn’t hear about the multimillion-dollar acquisition from the CEO via a hastily called all-hands teleconference call, or a posting through the corporate intranet. Not even a terse, one-paragraph companywide email announcing the deal. No, it was a giggly morning news show delivering a body blow that radically alters your perfectly coiffed life.

It’s been your corporate casa for nearly three decades, which makes sense given that its inviting, folksy motto is “It’s our business to make you feel at home!” Sure you’d bounced from job to job early in your career searching for the right fit. I mean, who hasn’t? And after three decades on the job it’s OK to admit that you’ve toyed with the thought of retiring — not immediately mind you. There’s still a lot left in the tank.

Your “home,” however, has other ideas that don’t take into account your distant fantasy of spending part of your golden years mountain biking across the Peruvian Andes. The mentoring of junior executives whom you suspected were already at your pay level despite being half your age has come to mean nothing. The weekends spent hitting near-impossible deadlines, all the sweat equity dripping from that slightly wrinkled brow onto your place of employment — wow, reality sure bites sometimes.

Within a month it’s clear your job is in peril. A week after regulators were pleased and stockholders were paid out you also are out … out of a job. Because you know, as the new CEO proudly boasted on your go-to morning news show, “After any acquisition, there is a duplication of efforts, which results in some synergies, and unfortunately for a lot of people today, we’re realizing those synergies. These synergies will ultimately provide a better experience for the consumer.”

Well naturally. I mean, synergies.

So now you are just another older worker in the job market. Self-doubt creeps in as you realize after your third rejection notice that ageism is a cold, cynical, perpetual workplace cycle that many employers flaunt in their never-ending search for younger, cheaper labor.

Where once you dismissed studies that found more than half of full-time workers in their early 50s were at some point forced out of their job and then experienced long-term unemployment or a huge cut in pay for years after, you now see that you are its living embodiment.

Two months ago you were a highly respected senior VP of product development. Now you’re unemployed, trips to the gym are infrequent and toast with butter and jam has replaced elderberries.

Those kids you mentored, the ones you took under your wing, not to mention out for happy hour? They are the ones interviewing you now. They all look so young and vibrant. You’ll do most anything to get back in the game, because you still have a lot to offer!

And, well, a nip here or a shot of botox there is justified to level the playing field. Going under the knife? Given your life’s new realities it’s not so silly after all.

I mean, synergies, right?

October 10, 2019June 29, 2023

Managing Mental Health Crises at Work

employers mental health; Millennials and mental health

Talking about suicide does not need to be taboo.

Mental Health America’s 2019 “The State of Mental Health” report has some concerning statistics. While adult prevalence of mental illness has been relatively constant, suicidal ideation, or suicidal thoughts, has increased from 3.77 percent in 2012 to 4.19 percent in 2017.

“That’s over 10.3 million adults in the U.S. with serious thoughts of suicide,” the report noted. Meanwhile, more than 10 million adults in the U.S. have an unmet need for mental health treatment.

Companies should understand how suicide could impact not only a person’s family and loved ones, but also their co-workers, clients and everyone around them, said Ali Payne, practice leader for organizational wellbeing at insurance brokerage Holmes Murphy.

“I think the way we make sure people feel connected is having a strategic relationship with leaders and having leaders be open about how it impacts them or how they do business,” Payne said. She suggested creating a work environment where open conversations are encouraged.

Leaders should educate themselves of the available resources and prepare themselves if a mental health crisis happens, she said.

Suicide is a significant public health issue both in the United States and worldwide. Between 1999 and 2016, suicide rates have increased in every state in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Further, the World Health Organization estimates that one person dies of suicide every 40 seconds worldwide.

“Our Global Suicide Crisis,” a 2019 report from Prudential, notes that while it’s understood that depression and anxiety can be precursors to suicide, there isn’t yet enough known about the many reasons behind suicide to prevent it. Still, addressing depression and anxiety can help.

One way to address mental health in the workplace is by adopting best practices such as telehealth for behavioral health and on-site mental health clinicians, the report notes. It also stressed that when an employee takes time off to deal with a mental health episode, managers should remain in contact with them. “This may not only help an employee through depression — it can also reduce their fear of returning to work,” the report noted.

Workplace benefits and policies like this are valuable, Payne said, but employers and managers can also learn about accessible community-based resources that address mental health. These resources include mental health services provided by and crisis hotlines, government organizations, state-based organizations and local hospitals and health providers.

“A lot of employers don’t always know what those resources are, and they sometimes take them for granted until they’re impacted by [a mental health crisis],” Payne said. “Then they might take the initiative to figure out what those resources are. But I always say, let’s be as proactive as we can and really try to get a handle on what [these resources] are even outside of what we’re buying today.”

Co-workers can also benefit from guidance in learning how to address what they think may be a mental health crisis in a colleague. It may not be a comfortable situation, Payne said, but part of the training she does for clients is based around understanding how to help struggling colleagues.

Productivity Expectations

One work reality that may impact an employee’s mental health is rising productivity expectations, Payne said. “Right now we’re all asking our people to do more with less,” she added, saying that employees are more often wearing many hats and pitching in wherever the company needs them. “We need to make sure we’re thinking about how workload impacts people.”

Even though employers understandably want employees to be their most productive selves, that’s difficult for an employee when they are having mental health problems. It’s an added stress as well if they still feel workplace pressure to be at maximum productivity even when they’re not feeling good, Payne said.

“If they’re feeling like this, they’re definitely not going to bring their whole self to work. They’ll leave a majority of what they need and what they want somewhere else,” she said.

She also suggests that team leaders learn to help people recognize when they’re not feeling 100 percent and when they need to take a break.

Personalizing Programs

“We can’t just say that mental health affects everyone the same way,” Payne said. Financial stress may negatively impact one person’s mental health while career stress may cause a similar reaction in someone else. There isn’t one simple solution to address this workplace issue.

“There’s no silver bullet to anything, and that’s what everyone wants,” she said. “Everyone wants this silver bullet that’s going to solve all the problems in mental health, like stress management.”

While stress management programs have some value, stress impacts everyone differently. People can improve their resiliency, but even so they may not be as resilient of a person as someone else, Payne said. Some people are just more resilient than others. Simply investing in programs meant to increase employees’ resiliency is not enough to address stress and mental health, she said.

Payne encourages her clients to consider all the resources they have at their disposal that can be impactful to different people with different needs who are struggling.

“It doesn’t mean that they’re struggling all the way to suicide,” Payne said. “It might just mean they’re struggling in general. How do we make it OK to not be OK?”

Further national, state and local resources:

The Past and Present of Mental Health Treatment

My most recent Workforce print feature story is about mental health parity, and that’s one of the topics I love writing about as a benefits reporter: the need for quality, accessible, affordable mental health coverage.

My preliminary research steered me to a new book, “Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness.” It explores scientists’ ultimately unsuccessful attempts to figure out the cause of mental illness.

The argument is that even though ideas or theories in psychiatry have prevailed in certain moments of history, all of them have been proven inadequate or outright wrong. And we’re still uncertain about both the cause of mental illness and why treatments work on some people but not others.

This sounds cynical, but I love a book that rationally explores the highs and lows of a scientific goal (in this case, to pin down the cause of mental illness). This isn’t discouraging as much as it is proof that people will constantly try to progress their understanding of the world in order to help people with a disorder. It’s more promising to me to see people admit their miscalculations and be determined to move forward than to see people stubbornly hold on to ideas from the past.

There are a few reasons I want to write about this book. The history of mental health treatment and theory is simultaneously fascinating, inspiring and upsetting. Especially in this context, history gives us many examples of how some of the mental health trends we’re now seeing in the workplace may not be exactly new.

I’ve gotten press releases about how people are more depressed or anxious now than ever before — especially millennials (or whatever young generation is being picked apart at the moment). I’ve spoken to people about how prevalent mental illness is and how that has changed over time. I’ve always been skeptical about the idea that it’s more common than in the past. My theory is that it’s more talked about now, more diagnosed now and less stigmatized now, and so the numbers just seem higher. (Feel free to argue against me on this, of course!)

What interested me about “Mind Fixers” was the section about the Cold War Era and how it was seen as the “Age of Anxiety” at the time. Many people relied on the “minor tranquilizer” Miltown, a predecessor of Valium, to deal with that anxiety. Meanwhile, in the 1980s depression became “the common cold of psychiatry.”

Comments like this make me wonder how current trends compared to other periods of history. This isn’t to minimize the impact that mental illness has on people and communities in the present. I bring this up so that we don’t talk about the history of mental health in a way that romanticizes the past. People in the 1950s, the 1800s, and before that had mental disorders, too. The treatments just weren’t as advanced.

According to the National Institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, 41.2 percent of adults with a mental illness have received mental health services. And, more importantly, this statistic is very gendered if you dissect the data further. While 47.6 percent of women have received this type of health care, only 34.8 percent of men have.

That’s a big gap. Why don’t men get mental health care as much?

There’s a lot written about this already (see the National Alliance on Mental Illness, National Institute of Mental Health and Psychology Today, for example), but here’s a historical angle that shows how deep this goes. “Mind Fixers” briefly explored a 20th century mental disorder known as hysteria.

It was “associated with women and weakness” and men did not receive this label. Fast forward to the 1970s, when people were talking about a new trendy topic called “stress.” It was thought that women were twice as likely to experience stress and depression than men.

This is just a snapshot. Still, it shows how deep these roots are that may tell men that they’re weak if they admit certain things.

Finally, “Mind Fixers” mentioned the unwillingness of insurance companies to cover psychiatric services in 1970s. Lack of benefits coverage of behavioral health is something that even today — after the passage of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in 2008 — is still sometimes an issue.

Also read: Mental Health Parity Law Successes and Challenges

According to “Workforce Attitudes Toward Behavioral Health,” a February 2019 survey from behavioral health company Ginger, 35 percent of the 1,214 U.S. employees surveyed reported that they had to pay directly for behavioral health services their benefits didn’t cover. Further, 85 percent of people said that behavioral health benefits are important when evaluating a job, and 81 percent of people said they face barriers in accessing behavioral health care. The most common barrier (28 percent) was that providers aren’t available in their benefits plan.

I’d strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the science behind mental health. It brings up a lot of interesting talking points like, How much has stigma improved in the past 200 years, and where is there still room for improvement? Which issues still exist that caused people problems all those years ago as well?

While this isn’t a book about the workplace, you’ll read about certain historical trends and movements that sound a lot like some of the “innovative” solutions you’re hearing about now. Maybe you’ll learn a couple lessons from history.

September 16, 2019June 29, 2023

Love, Life and Career — Chasing the Trifecta

Stefanie Coleman

As I think about the workplace issues faced by my clients, I can’t help but reflect on my personal life and how there might be some parallels. Supervising a toddler’s play date through the corner of an eye, holding my newborn in one arm while typing this opinion piece with the other and a light bulb switched on for me. To authentically reflect this chapter of my life and the workforce issues that matter most to me right now, I have to blog about flexibility. For me, there is nothing else so top of mind.

Since 2007, I’ve advised firms around the world on all kinds of workforce issues including flexibility. Over the course of my travels, I’ve had world-class mentors, both men and women alike.

Within this group, there is a set of common traits that I strive to emulate. They successfully balance the three important attributes of the trifecta: love, life and career.

If you are career-oriented, balancing the three components of the trifecta is an important condition for living a happy and fulfilled life. And, when done properly, it improves your chances of success in the workplace.

In the United States alone, despite relatively low levels of violent crime and unemployment, coupled with steadily rising income per capita over the last few decades, general happiness within the population is declining. The 2019 World Happiness Report describes this relationship as the Easterlin Paradox, where despite rising standards of living, happiness levels trend inverse. This is attributed to a variety of factors, one of which includes digital advancement — ironically, an urgent business opportunity for most executives.

Another reason for the Easterlin Paradox could be the growing workload faced by many employees in today’s workforce. In fact, HR leaders (particularly in North America) consider unmanageable workloads a key risk to their people experience. In response, several firms have prioritized wellness strategies as a means to remediate. To do so, establishing the link to flexibility is key. Wellness and flexibility cannot be decoupled. They go hand-in-hand.

Good flexibility programs help employees balance the trifecta.

Empower employees to spend meaningful and undistracted time with their loved ones and to invest in starting and/or growing loving relationships.
Give employees adequate opportunities to enjoy their lives by engaging in leisure activities, pursuing personal passions and participating in social and/or community networks.
Create a professional environment where love and life are celebrated and where making investments of time in these two components of the trifecta will enhance an employee’s career, as opposed to harming it.

The equation is pretty simple: Organizations that offer flexibility are more likely to have engaged workers. Engaged workers are more likely to be productive. Productivity leads to heightened levels of business performance. Performance strengthens the employer brand. Top talent likes top brands.

In a job seeker’s market where, at least in the United States, there are more open positions than available talent, firms cannot afford to be inflexible if they want to gain the competitive advantage in a growing war for talent.

But where to start? Consider these five tips for paving the way to a flexible future:

Establish flexible HR policies. Consider a work from home or casual dress policy. Think about an unlimited or mandated vacation policy and how this might impact well-being. Offer flex-time so employees can adapt their work hours to complement their lifestyle (to honor family, health and spiritual commitments).
Lead by example. Flexible HR policies are meaningless when not adopted. Sometimes, workers do not take advantage of these policies in fear of retribution if leaders do not walk the talk. It’s important that leaders give employees permission to partake by taking advantage of these policies themselves.
Consider diversity. Flexibility means different things to different people. For example, what might flexibility mean to a parent? How about someone transitioning to retirement? A caregiver? Someone with standing religious commitments? A single person?

With more diversity in the workplace than ever before, it’s important to take into account diverse needs when designing flexibility programs. A one-size approach to flexibility could offer an inflexible result.

Invest in technology. If the goal is to free up more time for employees for their personal use, offer state of the art technology that enables efficient work from home and mitigates unnecessary travel to the workplace or to meetings (particularly, where distance/air travel is required).
Monitor well-being and flexibility. To understand the return on investment in flexibility, establish a correlation to well-being metrics and other business outcomes and monitor this over time. Also, review the unintended consequences of “unsupervised” flexibility and put the necessary controls in place. For example, monitor patterns in remote working periodically to make sure people are still coming on-site to work and collaborate when necessary, while taking advantage of the policy when it’s not.

There are many ways to bring more flexibility to the workforce. However, as is sometimes the case with people programs, efforts to enhance flexibility will be futile when leadership support is not in place. While these are best enabled by HR, visible C-suite sponsorship is critical. Remember this before getting into tactics, as getting the leadership team on board first will be a worthy and very important next step.

September 12, 2019June 29, 2023

The Mental Health Parity Challenge

It’s been a decade since the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act went into effect, with the goal that insurers and health plans offer mental health and substance abuse benefits comparable to coverage of medical and surgical care.

Despite progress made since the law’s passage, some barriers to equality still exist. As vital as behavioral health care is for people with substance abuse and mental health disorders, unlike their physical health needs, employees with employer-sponsored coverage may face challenges in accessing and affording quality mental health care coverage.

The current environment sees employers, employees, the government and individuals spending more money on behavioral health than ever before, but the results just aren’t there, said Henry Harbin, a psychiatrist with over 40 years’ experience in the behavioral health field.

Harbin, whose experience includes senior positions at public and private health organizations, said that while fatality rates for many medical issues are decreasing, fatality rates from suicide and opioid overdoses — two major issues in behavioral health — are increasing. Between 2004 and 2014, the death rate for heart disease decreased by 16 percent and for stroke by 19 percent. In the same span, the death rate climbed by 17 percent for suicide and over 200 percent for opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For employers, genuinely caring about their employees’ mental health issues is a good start, but providing quality coverage is important as well. Behavioral issues among employees are prevalent. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 1 in 5 adults in the United States have a mental health disorder. Meanwhile, 1 in 22 adults have a serious mental illness like schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder, the study noted.

Access Issues

There is a national shortage of seasoned behavioral health professionals in the United States, which can “constrain access to essential care and treatment for millions of individuals with mental illness of substance use disorders,” according to the Health Resources and Services Administration report “Behavioral Health Projections, 2016-2030.” The agency, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, focuses on improving access to health care services for individuals who are uninsured, isolated or medically vulnerable. The report stressed the fact that certain areas of the United States have few or no behavioral health providers available.

The shortage of behavioral health care providers impacts a majority of employer-sponsored health plans, according to Mercer’s May 2019 “10-Minute Survey on Behavioral Health” that surveyed 523 employers. Sixty-three percent of respondents reported that they lack adequate access to outpatient behavioral health care in some or all of their locations.

Some 74 percent of employers said they are taking action to improve employee access to quality behavioral care. Most commonly, 49 percent addressed this by enhancing their employee assistance program services or changing their EAP provider. Only 12 percent of these employers conducted a network analysis to identify gaps in behavioral health care.

Early intervention can be vital for behavioral health, especially for patients with a severe disorder, Harbin said.

For a patient with schizophrenia, for example, screening by one’s primary care physician or pediatrician can help identify the problem early on. The patient can then see a specialist sooner and will likely see better outcomes, Harbin said.

Tom Sondergeld, vice president, global HRIS, benefits and mobility at global pharmacy giant Walgreens Boots Alliance, said that one of the biggest priorities in their carrier analysis was to evaluate access. Employees with a behavioral health issue often face long wait times to see a behavioral health specialist such as a psychiatrist. “To me, that’s not parity,” Sondergeld said.

Walgreens has been pushing hard on its insurance carriers in recent years so that employees can find coverage for the care they need in a timely manner, Sondergeld said.

While larger organizations may have more resources to negotiate with insurance carriers, he suggested that small organizations can join coalitions such as the National Business Group on Health, allowing their voice to be heard within that larger pool of companies.

He also said that using data to tell a powerful story is a way smaller organizations can influence their carriers. Employers can get this information through their health plan, which can use its data to analyze utilization and costs across the various benefits to get a better picture of the overall spend and areas to concentrate on to improve spend.

For example, if a third of the workforce needs access to behavioral health care for themselves or their loved ones, but the data show that a majority of people can’t access care in a timely manner, that’s a powerful, data-supported story.

Also read: Managing Mental Health Crises at Work

The human impact of mental health problems is notable, as mental illness impacts how people handle stress, how they relate to others and whether they make healthy choices, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Still, HR can use the business case to support the need for better access.

Poor mental health and stress can impact an employee’s job performance, their relationship with co-workers and their physical capabilities and daily functioning, according to the CDC. Depression interferes with a person’s ability to complete physical job tasks about 20 percent of the time and reduces cognitive performance about 35 percent of the time, the agency notes.

“When [employees] can’t find the care they need, the business suffers because they aren’t engaged,” Sondergeld said.

Network Issues

A host of issues exist even when an employee does access care for behavioral health problems. A majority of people with behavioral conditions are screened and treated through primary care and not a specialist, Harbin said. The quality of this behavioral health care is often low, with many people not necessarily even getting a diagnosis but getting a prescription for a psychiatric drug. Harbin noted that the patient’s response to the drug may not be tracked efficiently, the drug and dosage may remain unchanged, and this may help lead to low efficacy outcomes.

Employers should urge employees to use specialists if they want improved outcomes, he said.

Patients accessing out-of-network providers is another issue, he added, citing a 2017 Milliman Inc. report, “Addiction and Mental Health vs. Physical Health: Analyzing Disparities in Network Use and Provider Reimbursement Rates.”

Patients seeking behavioral care more often need to use an out-of-network provider than patients seeking medical or surgical care, according to the report, which also found that medical and surgical providers are paid at higher rates than behavioral providers. The lower reimbursement rates are one reason for low network participation rates among behavioral health providers, making it difficult for patients to find more affordable in-network care.

Employers can work with their providers or vendors to understand if there are places where there are more complaints about access issues than others, said Mandie Conforti, a licensed clinical social worker and senior consultant at Willis Towers Watson.

Even though the mental health stigma is lifting, it’s still there, she said. Many employees hesitate to call HR to complain about not being able to find a behavioral health provider.

“We’ve been asking behavioral health centers to do more customized networks, enhancing the network in locations where employers may have a larger base of employees,” she said.

Quality Control Issues

It’s difficult for a patient to find the right provider for their unique situation or one who can get them the best results.

Employers have historically not asked their insurers many questions about behavioral health or the quality of these provider networks, said Sandra Kuhn, Mercer’s national lead for behavioral health consulting. This is an area in which they have potential to be more proactive and really push for more information from their insurers.

Questions can include: What quality measures do you use to bring carriers in and keep them in-network? Can you share with us at the end of the year a data set to show how many people were in treatment and the average length of time people stay in treatment? Also, did people improve while they were in treatment?

“Tools exist to measure those things, they’re just not being uniformly applied,” Kuhn said.

Also read: Lessons on Addressing Mental Illness in the Workplace

She also suggests that employers look for specific data points as indicators of whether the health plan is adequately addressing behavioral health, starting with data on what the employee population looks like. Then, look at EAP utilization. If utilization is low but a lot of people are using the behavioral health network in the health plan, then perhaps employees aren’t aware of the EAP services. That knowledge could give employers the opportunity to close the gap.

Data can also educate employers on how much out-of-network behavioral health care employees are getting. Maybe employees are having access issues, or maybe they’re unsure of how to go about finding care. They could be relying on friends’ referrals rather than something more evidence-based.

“If [employees] don’t have a clear way to obtain information about the network, the types of providers and what provider is good for what types of challenges, they’re just randomly picking, and that’s problematic,” she said.

She continued that quality metrics are “reasonably established” for certain areas of the behavioral health system. The type of care people may need ranges from outpatient care for mild or moderate cases to more complex and higher levels of care for more severe conditions. This inpatient care is where quality metrics are consistent, but most people come into contact with behavioral health services at the outpatient level, Kuhn said.

There are some insurance carriers and tech solutions like Ginger.io and Lyra Health that are using their own measures, but these aren’t consistent with each other, she said. This can lead to inconsistency and member confusion.

“They don’t know if they’re going to a quality provider or not, and oftentimes they don’t know how to judge if they’re improving,” Kuhn said. That may lead to people thinking that if they go to their friend’s therapist, they’ll get the best care.

“There are all sorts of wives tales that come out of there not being a good way to determine quality,” she added.

Employers can also push vendors on how they assess quality, said Conforti. Many times providers self-report quality to behavioral health centers. Whether they actually have the competencies to do so, they could simply check the boxes that they can work with any disorder.

“There has to be a better way at assessing and making sure that providers are doing good, sound, evidence-based care,” she said.

September 6, 2019June 29, 2023

Facing the Caregiving Crisis

When Mani Mueller landed a plum job at a biotech firm in Wisconsin in 2013 she brought her parents from Pennsylvania to help care for her two young daughters while she found her footing at work.

The timing was perfect. Her mother had just retired and her father, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, was doing well and looked forward to spending time with his granddaughters. But what promised to be a dream scenario fell apart within a few months as her father’s condition declined and her mom couldn’t keep up with his care.

Parkinson’s is a progressive nervous system disorder that affects movement, and her father began falling frequently, requiring constant supervision. Soon, Mueller was tackling not only the demands of a new job, but also working a second shift as her father’s primary caregiver and power of attorney, shuttling him to doctor’s appointments, researching treatments, and learning to navigate the Medicare and Medicaid systems. Since her father, a Laotian immigrant, spoke little English she also became his translator.

At 37, Mueller had joined the ranks of 44 million adults in the United States who provide unpaid care for a loved one who needs support, according to AARP. She also became a member of the “sandwich generation,” caring for both a parent and children. Like many caregivers in the workplace, she never told her employer for fear of damaging her career. Instead, she used her vacation and personal days to meet the demands of caregiving.

In January 2018, five years after she placed her father in a nursing home, her company, Promega, introduced a caregiver leave benefit that provides employees with an additional two weeks of paid time off a year to care for a sick parent, spouse or child, or to welcome a new child. But even then Mueller was reluctant to come forward.

“I didn’t want to advertise that I was dealing with all of this or put on paper that my dad has this condition and my kids have that condition,” said Mueller, now 43 and a manager in supplier quality at Fitchburg, Wisconsin-based Promega. “I keep everything to myself. I thought sharing this information would negatively impact my career. I’m very quiet and private, but internally, I thought ‘How much more can I deal with?’ I was exhausted and stressed out.”

Mueller’s story illustrates the dilemmas faced by many caregivers who must choose between what’s best for their families and what’s best for their careers. It also sheds light on the complexities of caregiving in a time of great demographic change. Older people will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history by 2030, traditional family structures are changing with families getting smaller and more geographically dispersed, and thanks to medical advances people are living longer with disabilities and chronic conditions.

This is resulting in a caregiving crisis that many employers are failing to acknowledge or understand, according to a Harvard Business School study released in January. “The Caring Company” report highlights a disconnect between the kinds of supports caregivers in the workplace need and what most companies provide.

Fear Factor

One reason that employers don’t understand the impact of caregiving on their businesses is that many employees are afraid to tell them, according to Linda Roundtree, an HR consultant who specializes in the aging workforce.

“When people don’t feel free to come forward, they have to make an excuse for why things happen or why they’re distracted at work,” she said. “There’s fear about hurting their careers. You see that fear when women are afraid to disclose that they’re pregnant.”

Only 28 percent of employees who care for a loved one were willing to admit that their family responsibilities harmed their careers, according to the Harvard Business School report. Around half of caregivers surveyed were afraid of being overlooked for challenging assignments, or missing out on salary increases or bonuses. And while 80 percent of employees admit that caregiving has affected their productivity, less than one-fourth of employers said that caregiving influences employee performance.

Mueller said that if Promega had a caregiving benefit when she started there it’s unlikely that she would have taken it. But by 2018 Mueller had been a manager for two years and was confident in her position. So, when her dad’s condition worsened again that May and her daughter was diagnosed with a kidney infection she signed up for time off under the company’s caregiver leave policy. Her father died the following November.

“Exceptional caregiving” is the term that Roundtree uses to describe the new realities for caregivers who are caring for loved ones with a host of cognitive impairments, physical disabilities and chronic conditions.

“There is a huge chunk of the workforce that will be taking care of a child with special health care needs or an elderly parent,” said Roundtree, who co-authored a 2018 paper on the changing nature of caregiving for Boston College Center for Work and Family. “Today even young, single people understand that complex things will happen either to themselves or to a partner or spouse and they need employers that know how to support them.”

The Young Caregivers

While the typical caregiver is a white woman in her late 50s, about one-fourth of all caregivers are between the ages of 18 and 29, according to AARP. They are also the fastest growing and most diverse demographic in the workplace. Employers need to understand that caregiving affects workers of all ages, Roundtree said.

The scope of the problem came as a surprise to executives at Promega when the company surveyed its own workforce in 2017 to better understand the caregiving needs of its employees.

It looked at all kinds of situations from parents of newborns to parents of children with special needs to children caring for parents and adults caring for a spouse, according to Promega benefits manager Diana Clark. She said that everyone was surprised by the variety and intensity of the demands on employee caregivers. They discovered a hidden population of employees who were spending about 29 hours a week on caregiving duties, basically working a second unpaid shift.

Also a surprise was the average age of their caregivers: 33 years old.

Promega Benefits Manager Diana Clark caregiving — Promega Benefits Manager Diana Clark

“I would have thought three years ago that average caregiver is 55 or 60 years old and nearly retired, but it’s a parent with kids and an elderly parent who is struggling with cancer or some other health condition,” Clark said.

“When you talk to people in those roles they will tell you that’s just what they do and that it’s not a burden. They’ll say that ‘dad just needs me to get groceries, or he can’t drive, or I have to make sure that mom takes her meds.’ There so many tactile details involved that we couldn’t help but see the strain.”

This led Promega to launch caregiver leave benefits in January 2018 that provide employees with an additional two weeks of paid time off a year to care for a sick parent, spouse or child, or to welcome a new child. The benefit can be used in daily increments or all at once. So far, 120 employees, or 12 percent of Promega’s 1,400 employees, including subsidiaries, have used the benefit.

Employees Open Up

Clark said that the program has taken on a life of its own with employees coming forward to share their stories and even launching their own initiative called Circle of Caring. The initiative connects caregivers and employee volunteers willing to help with meals, shopping, lawn care, transportation and other errands. One group of volunteers even planted a garden for an employee who was an avid gardener but was unable to use his arm after a surgery.

This year, the company also began offering free onsite psychological counseling one day a week for caregivers and plans to offer health care navigation services, among other supports for caregivers, such as bereavement support and financial counseling.

Deb Notstad, 57, a complaint investigations specialist at Promega, is grateful for the benefits, even though they came too late to help her. In 2016 her elderly mother was dying and she was caring for her 28-year-old son Adam, who is physically and developmentally disabled. Notstad, a single mother, is also the legal guardian for her brother who is a critical diabetic and is developmentally disabled. While she thinks that two weeks of paid leave is great, it’s not nearly enough for those with complex caregiving needs.

“When they introduced the benefit I had already spent weeks in the hospital with my son,” she said. “My first reaction was, ‘Are you kidding? This is a drop in the bucket.’ But I don’t know too many businesses that offer something like this.”

While a growing number of companies including Starbucks, Cigna, Best Buy and Microsoft offer caregiver supports such as extended paid leave, long-term care insurance for parents and grandparents, and counseling, the vast majority do not offer benefits that are valued by caregivers, according to the Harvard Business School study.

The top reasons that caregivers quit their jobs is the high cost of paid help, the difficulty in finding trustworthy support, and the inability to manage the demands of work and home — all areas where employers could provide support, the study found.

Those that fail to address the problem will pay the price in “hidden costs” such as turnover, loss of institutional knowledge, absenteeism and other factors that are difficult to quantify, according to the study.

Katie Boer, 31, never thought that two years after landing her dream job as a broadcast journalist she would be quitting to look after her 71-year-old mother. In 2016, shortly after she began working at a Las Vegas television station, Boer’s mother, who lives in Seattle, was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia, which can cause hallucinations and Parkinson’s-like symptoms such as body rigidity, tremors and balance problems.

At first, Boer handled things by phone and took paid time off for regular trips to Seattle, but as her mother’s condition worsened the situation became unmanageable. Her mother would call her at work several times a day confused and agitated, often minutes before she went on the air. Eventually, Boer installed a video camera in her mom’s apartment to keep a closer eye on her. But when she saw her mom lying on the floor in the middle of the night crying out Boer’s name for hours, she reached a breaking point.

“I’d be lying in bed watching her not sleeping with tears falling sideways down my cheeks,” she said.

“I’d cry all night and go to the bathroom and throw up. Even though I had a dream job I felt like I was selfish for not being there. So I sacrificed my job and moved to Seattle.”

For employees at smaller companies without caregiving supports or benefits like flex time or paid time off the burden of caregiving can be especially crushing.

Amanda Smith, 34, works at a small nonprofit arts foundation on the East Coast that is not required to provide leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. With a toddler who has cerebral palsy along with other disabilities and requires round-the-clock care, managing a career is an enormous challenge.

While her boss was initially accommodating, allowing her to work from home one day a week, he has become impatient with the lack of flexibility in her schedule, she said.

“He’d like me to come in without any warning but our lives our very, very choreographed because of all the doctor’s appointments, services and nursing care that my son needs,” she said. “We can’t just call a babysitter. My husband would have to call in sick or my mother-in-law would need to come because she’s the only one besides us who knows how to take care of him. I don’t think employers really understand how complicated caring for a child with a disability can be.”

But many are trying, according to LuAnn Heinen, vice president at the National Business Group on Health, a coalition of large employers.

“It’s definitely on their radar,” she said. “We did a survey in 2017 and 88 percent of employers think caregiving will be a big issue over the next few years. Paid leave is important but we know that it won’t solve the problem if you’re caring for someone over a number of years. There must be more supports like flexible work arrangements, health care navigation, and services to help employees find caregiving services. Employers realize this.”

For those that fail to address the needs of caregivers, Clark warned that companies like Promega will be happy to hire their employees away.

“Unemployment is low and there are great people out there who are not getting their needs met and will want to work for an employer who recognizes them as a whole person,” she said. “You lose so many aspects of what that person can bring to the table when they are trying to take care of their families and are not supported.”

August 9, 2019June 29, 2023

Unlimited Paid Time Off Is a Deceptive Ploy in Today’s Workplace

Employees may be lured by the idea of unlimited paid time off but the reality is unlimited paid time off is often an egregious fabrication that employers tell their workforce.

What is usually lost in the conversation is what employees are forced to give up when their organization decides to implement an unlimited system. There are plenty of legitimate business reasons to stop offering — and stop being enamored by — the allure of the unlimited PTO promise.

“It’s great to not have to pay out [accrued vacation] when people leave,” said Maggie Grover, a partner at Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean LLP in an interview with website HR Dive. “Because people are so connected and working even when they’re technically off, they tend to take fewer full vacation days. So even if you cap a vacation bank at 1.5 or 2 times the annual accrual amount, the payout at the end of the employment relationship can still be significant.” And just to note, not all states require employers to pay out accrued vacation.

Recognizing that this is a large financial obligation, many companies are relieving themselves from these obligations by offering unlimited policies.

Employees also can’t save or accrue “unlimited” vacation time to use next year. When it comes time to transition from the company, the employer has no obligation to pay out the extra hours of productivity that were used in lieu of taking a break.

According to outplacement firm RiseSmart, an unlimited PTO policy “significantly reduces the costs of having to pay employees for unused PTO and may be one of the most compelling factors for companies considering an unlimited PTO policy.”

Unlimited vacation is a work-around, plain and simple. By offering this perk, companies get away from tracking and accruing a liability that in some states, once accrued, is considered earned wages. And once wages are considered earned, they must be paid out at departure or termination.

Less Time Off for Employees

Some studies show that American employees today often end up taking little or no more time off in an “unlimited” system compared to when they have a set number of days off each year.

In a study by HR platform Namely, research suggests that employees with “unlimited” vacation actually take fewer days off (13) on average than those with a limited number (15).

Unlimited PTO Is No Win-Win for Today’s Talent

Unlimited PTO sounds generous on a job description, but employees by and large end up getting paid less with no value attributed to their PTO while companies gain more of their employees’ productivity.

This latest benefits trend is harming the workforce and leading mass groups of employees to forfeit the second most important job benefit with no way to monetize or reutilize the value of their PTO.

Companies need to ask if they’re making these changes for employees or for their bottom line. If, let’s say, employees are using 100 percent of their PTO and a company wants to decrease expenses, then perhaps such a program makes sense. However, this is generally not the case today. Employees thus leave billions of dollars worth of unused PTO on the table.

Are benefits a meaningful way to attract, engage and retain employees? Absolutely.

Will unlimited PTO be a mainstay of the future of work? Absolutely not.

Instead of unlimited, employers — and talent — should be thinking in terms of flexible, diverse and portable benefits to mirror the workforce today.

July 30, 2019June 29, 2023

Pack Mentality: How Dog-Friendly Policies Might Improve Company Culture and Engagement

Imagine it’s a typical, hurried, tired Monday morning.

You rush out the door, coffee in hand, and by the grace of green traffic lights, make it to the office just in time. The ride up the elevator is a familiar feeling — to-do lists and meeting agendas already running through your mind.

Upon opening the office doors, you’re greeted by your coworkers and their smiling, tail-wagging dogs.

This is a reality in a steadily increasing amount of workplaces across the country. According to a 2019 benefits survey by Society for Human Resource Management, 11 percent of workplaces allow dogs, a 3 percent increase from 2015.

In June, Rover, an in-home dog-walking and pet care company, released a list of the 100 Best Dog-Friendly Offices in the United States, which was topped by the likes of widely known organizations such as Amazon, Airbnb and Uber. In forming the list, Rover considered dog-related benefits such as dogs being allowed in the office, pet stipends, paid time-off for pet bereavement and other pet-related amenities, such as green spaces to walk your dog and treats.

For many, the idea of having a furry friend tag along from nine to five is ideal. However, creating a space that is both dog-friendly and people-friendly takes time and thoughtful planning, said Jovana Teodorovic, head of people and culture at Rover, where people can bring their dogs to work every day.

dogs in the workplace — Jovana Teodorovic, head of people and culture at Rover, and Riley.

“That doesn’t work in every environment. It depends on what building you’re in, how dog-friendly they are and how much space you have,” she said. “We have been very proactive in how we design our spaces, and that allows a large number of dogs in the office every day.”

Teodorovic said that allowing dogs in the office has positively impacted company culture at Rover as well as the productivity and happiness of individual employees. Dogs often serve as a point of conversation and connection between employees.

“Taking a break during the day to play with your dog is a great way to feel better throughout the day and to feel more engaged with the work you’re doing,” she said.

However, introducing dogs into the office requires proactive planning and open communication between all levels of an organization’s structure.

“The first thing is to have employee buy-in regarding these policies,” Teodorovic said. “[Make] sure that the majority is comfortable with being pet-friendly and then having mechanisms in place around the folks who have allergies or have a fear of dogs.”

Rover also has thought out policies regarding all the “what ifs” that come with being a pet-friendly office, from potential altercations between dogs to the inevitable need for “doggy bags.”

“We offer free dog-walking for our employees so that the dogs are walked and quiet and satisfied,” Teodorovic said. “The dogs are in a safe space every day and we have dog gates as well.”

Creating a safe, regulated and familiar environment for dogs also helps reduce any incidents.

“Of course our employees being very dog-oriented and great dog owners and training their dogs from the beginning creates a really great workplace,” Teodorovic said. “But it’s different for any company and it really should be an evolving process.”

Ultimately, Teodorovic said, an organization may determine that dogs-in-the-office policies simply aren’t for them, whether that’s due to allergies, building policies or the wants of employees.

There are other ways for employers to be dog-friendly without actually having dogs in the office. Many of the companies on Rover’s list as well as Rover have benefits that support pet-owners. These benefits range from “pawternity” leave (an extra week of paid time off after getting a new dog), providing $500-$1,000 toward adoption fees, and free dog-sitting services.

Teodorovic said that dog-friendly policies and benefits can not only be a tool in increasing retention and recruiting, but improving employee’s everyday experience at work.

“If a company is struggling to create their culture or having a positive culture, it’s a really great way — without having a ton of policies and meetings and work — to accelerate the quality of their interactions and the quality of their company culture,” she said.