Benefits Archives - Page 19 of 63

September 26, 2017October 18, 2024

6 Things to Ask Your Insurance Broker Before Renewing

Employee health benefits renewal season is upon us, and you know what that means: It’s time to think about your company’s health and benefits coverage offering. And you’re likely not looking forward to it.

Creating plans that have a meaningful impact on employees’ health can be a tough task, especially when few employees truly understand the value of their benefits package and only 52 percent say they are happy with them. But health benefits coverage is one of a company’s biggest investments, easily reaching as much as 30 percent or more of overall employee compensation, so taking the time to evaluate your strategy is important.

In an increasingly competitive environment, your health benefit plan needs to be flexible enough to meet the needs of employees across multiple generations, while also simplifying administration and controlling premium increases. Surprisingly, the solution isn’t as complex (or costly) as you’d think. You can achieve this by simply rethinking your plan design and picking the right broker.

Today’s workforce expects more from their employers and benefits. Shouldn’t you expect more from your benefits broker? Start by asking your broker these six questions.

What does the digital experience look like?

Services like Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime have infused expectations of digital simplicity, choice and instantaneous delivery into our DNA. These expectations include our health benefits. In fact, 84 percent of people would rather digitally access and interact with their health insurance if given the option. This is an area where many insurance providers fall short, still requiring faxed or mail-in forms or expecting people to hold for 30 minutes to get a single question answered. Talk to your broker about end-to-end, instant and integrated digital options. A digital experience means that all the tools for evaluating, selecting and enrolling are available online, and information such as up-to-date balances is easily accessible. Check with your broker to find an option that works with your existing HR and payroll systems.

How much of my benefits spend is really providing value to my employees?

From the Insurance 101 file: Some 80 percent of the dollars invested in insurance reaches only 20 percent of the people. To some degree this is what you want. You want your insurance to cover people who need catastrophic or high-risk care, however there’s a point at which you’re providing benefits that really aren’t meeting the needs of your entire population. Check how much of their allocation your team has actually spent and what your expected premium increase is. Get your broker to understand the demographics of your workforce population (i.e. age, the composition, the types of services they value, etc.) so you can build your employee benefits strategy around that.

How can I create a plan that is flexible enough to appeal to employees of all ages?

People want the same flexibility from their health care coverage that they’ve come to expect in all other aspects of their lives. In fact, 83 percent of employees view choice in their health benefits as an advantage. Before renewing, figure out how much your employees are spending out of pocket and how this can be reduced. This reduction may actually mean less insurance. A lot of the time the out-of-pocket expense has nothing to do with the actual insurance costs. For example, a young millennial may be paying for things like massages or gym memberships out of pocket because their insurance just doesn’t cover it. By switching to a higher deductible but offering a health spending account or lifestyle spending account, you would actually reduce their total out-of-pocket spend. Discuss with your broker ways to incorporate this type of plan personalization.

How can I incorporate preventative health coverage into my plan?

With up to 75 percent of health care costs associated with chronic disease being preventable, not having the right programs in place means that you may be overspending and getting far less value from your investment. Ask your broker what opportunities can help you encourage a healthy lifestyle. Today’s workforce approaches health holistically, it’s not only physical, but also mental, social and financial. They expect a different level of support than prior generations have. Consider integrating supplemental health coverage like fitness reimbursement and stress management to your plan.

Is onboarding and communication support available with this benefits plan?

With more than half of employees saying they would like help from employers when choosing a health plan, it’s no surprise that HR teams spend a lot of their time guiding employees on benefit-related questions. Ask your broker if the proposed plan includes on-site roll-out and enrollment and what the ongoing customer support system looks like.

Can we trust you to be a partner in setting up our company for success?

Before renewing, consider what partnership and commitment your broker is bringing to you as an employer. The goal of a great broker should be to really understand your company’s needs and goals, put those goals before their own, and be a partner that participates proactively to help solve business problems in a meaningful way. The process for a Jan. 1 renewal date should not start in September or October, it should start midyear. You need enough time to strategically think about what you want to do with your benefit plan and how to get employees ready for any changes you want to make.

With the right broker partner the renewal process doesn’t need to be stressful. Take this opportunity to rethink your plan design and look at the cost effectiveness of your offering — you should expect real value for the dollars spent. Embrace technology and push your broker to have a meaningful impact on health and well-being.

Brian Ancell is U.S. president at employee benefits company League Inc. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

September 15, 2017June 29, 2023

It’s Evident That Paid Family Leave Has Bipartisan Agreement

Between 2015 and 2017 there was a boom in the number of employers announcing paid family leave policies.

Workforce writers have covered many angles regarding paid leave. Speaking from my own personal experience, I’ve enjoyed writing about the gender divide of leave policies. Naturally, birth mothers will get a little more time to recover physically from a birth. But any other discrepancies, such as leaving out fathers and adoptive parents from baby-bonding leave or assuming that the father isn’t the primary caregiver, is just ridiculous. Workforce employment law contributor Jon Hyman has covered that in his Practical Employer blog, as well.

The gender differences in paid family leave policies are significant. However, there’s another significant gap in coverage: low-wage workers vs. high-wage workers.

The nonprofit organization Paid Leave for the United States, which cleverly goes by PL+US, recently released a report titled, “The Have and the Have Nots of Paid Family Leave,” which goes into the class difference of paid family leave. It cites that 94 percent of low-income working parents have no access to paid family leave, according to the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many paid family leave policies “are only accessible for people who work in white-collar corporate jobs, leaving out hourly employees who compromise the vast majority of a company’s workforce,” stated the report.

The other major takeaway of these findings was that many of the policies of many of the country’s largest employers are unequal. They may only apply to salaried employees rather than hourly employees, or they might only apply to birth mothers rather than fathers or adoptive parents. There are some exceptions. It singled out some employers that have managed to offer paid family leave to both salaried and hourly employees,

including Ikea, Levi’s, Nordstrom, Bank of America, Chase, Apple and Hilton Hotels.

Now, of course, from a financial perspective, it makes sense for a business to be wary of offering leave to everyone, hence any inequalities in policies. But it does leave a lot to be lacking for a majority of a company’s workforce.

That’s why I enjoyed learning about the AEI-Brookings report “Paid Family and Medical Leave” through a conversation with one of its main contributors, Isabel Sawhill. She and many others formed a diversified group of conservatives and liberals to discuss paid family leave.

They came up with a suggestion for a compromised paid family leave policy, which no one was 100 percent happy with, said Sawhill. But the fact that these different people were able to agree on something was promising. Also promising? That everyone agreed we really need a paid family leave solution in this country.

I’ll go more into the meat of this conversation in a later story. The major takeaways from Sawhill was that a diverse group of people want this, any federal legislation regarding paid family leave probably won’t happen any time soon, and it has potential to happen, though, given the bipartisan support. What’s noteworthy is, like research has shown, this push for paid family leave has mostly applied to high-skill jobs. Will the same momentum trickle down to companies that employ more mid-level and low-wage workers?

From the perspective of the larger economy, more attainable and widespread paid family leave could also benefit the country as a whole. Since 2000, labor force participation rates have been declining, said Sawhill, and one possible agent for economic growth could be to better allow parents to handle work vs. family tensions.

I’m currently working on a larger feature about the U.S. paid family leave landscape for the November/December issue of Workforce, and as I do so it’s valuable to keep these discrepancies, inequalities and realities in mind.

The more I research the topic, the more it becomes obvious that most employers would like to offer paid parental leave, only certain challenges hold them back. I’ll address this in the print article. Meanwhile, my colleague Lauren Dixon, who primarily writes for Workforce’s sister publication Talent Economy, has created a 10-step guide to creating a paid parental leave policy. This could be helpful for any HR professionals looking for practical advice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR8jBmJP-2E&t=5s

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

September 14, 2017June 29, 2023

Engagement, Apathy and Benefits Plans

We all walk around with unbelievably powerful computers in our pockets. An incredible 77 percent of Americans across income levels have a smartphone, and that number will continue to grow. The data our phones collect helps to personalize the world around us in so many ways, from the information we see in personalized ads, to the news we consume, to the brands we interact with. This highly personalized and targeted consumer experience is so ingrained in our daily lives that most of the time we don’t even realize it.

That same level of tailoring and data-driven personalization is quickly making its way into the employee benefits and HR space. We see incredibly smart tools and resources that provide personalized views of benefits, work and life. For instance, there are wellness apps that push out notifications about upcoming health screenings, fitness challenges and other wellness events for employees. Financial apps automate bill paying and saving money. And benefits enrollment platforms customize enrollment options to make choices easier for employees.

As we look ahead, advanced analytics will play a big role in benefits and HR. That means companies will be using techniques and tools such as data mining, statistics, predictive modeling and machine learning to analyze current data and make predictions about future events. And, we’ll start to see personalized health and financial experiences that mirror those used in the consumer marketing world and (hopefully) motivate meaningful behavior change.

All this technology is impressive, and its potential is tremendous. We know engagement in health, financial and work-life programs is a real challenge for employers. Most large employers invest millions in benefits to help employees and their families make good health care decisions, get the best care, change their habits for the better, save for their futures and enjoy today. And, most of these programs go unused, despite their value to the employee.

Health care tech company Accolade partnered with Harris in a poll last year and found that 43 percent of Americans say they have not used employer-sponsored programs such as wellness apps, condition management programs, provider cost transparency tools and second opinion services program within the past year. Only 13 percent have used them once, and 18 percent have used them two to three times. This engagement gap — and the business cost associated with it — is precisely the reason so many technology companies have developed smart technology to get employees the right resources at the right time.

Using data to make employee benefits and HR programs relevant and sticky is a great idea, of course, and it meets a real need. But it isn’t without challenging privacy and comfort-level issues.

Whether employees welcome these new efforts or are suspicious of them comes down to trust, culture and communication. There’s no question that employers want to improve outcomes and reduce costs. And, they also have their employees’ best interests at heart. Better health and financial outcomes create a positive impact for the business and for individual employees. Those two goals are not inconsistent with one another.

But this positive, employee-focused framing isn’t often the way large organizations approach these efforts — and the media generally doesn’t help make this case with its focus on exceptions, instead of best practices.

As technology gets more sophisticated, employers can’t do enough to educate employees about their privacy and protections. Employees need to understand the considerable effort their companies take to offer programs and resources that help them improve their health and their lives — why you make that effort, how the programs work, and how employees are protected. We must remind employees that there are stringent laws in place to safeguard individual employee data from employers. Benefits and HR leaders get aggregate data about employee health, but no one gets access to individual heath data.

Engagement with health programs will continue to lag — even with the best policies in place — until employers put resources, creativity and consistency into marketing their programs. The onus is on the employer to position programs so they are relevant, valuable and actionable for employees and their families, just like the consumer products we all know and love. Until we do that, suspicions will remain and valuable programs will go unused.

September 6, 2017June 29, 2023

Dads Are Parents, too — Baby Bonding and Sex Discrimination

Should new dads receive the same amount of time off from work to bond with their newly born child as do women? That is the question at the center of a lawsuit the EEOC recently filed against cosmetics giant Estée Lauder.

According to the EEOC, Estée Lauder’s parental leave program provides eligible new mothers six weeks of paid parental leave for child bonding (plus six additional paid weeks for childbirth recovery). Under the same policy, however, Estée Lauder only offers new fathers whose partners have given birth two weeks of paid leave for child bonding.

EEOC Washington Field Office Acting Director Mindy Weinstein says about this lawsuit, “It is wonderful when employers provide paid parental leave and flexible work arrangements, but federal law requires equal pay, including benefits, for equal work, and that applies to men as well as women.” Adds EEOC Philadelphia District Office Regional Attorney Debra M. Lawrence, “Addressing sex-based pay discrimination, including in benefits such as paid leave, is a priority issue for the Commission.”

What does this mean for your policies? If you provide unequal post-childbirth baby-bonding benefits to male employees as compared to female employees, you might be putting yourself in the EEOC’s spotlight.

Indeed, men and women are physiologically different (women give birth; men do not), and this key difference justifies some policy differences. It should be lawful to differentiate gender-based post-childbirth leave based on the medical need to recover from the trauma of childbirth. Bonding, however, is totally different. I see no reason, other than an archaic view of the role of men versus the role of women in raising children, why mom is entitled to six paid weeks but dad only two.

To conclude, I was going to offer some practical suggestions to how to handle paternity-leave issues. But, Suzanne Lucas, the Evil HR Lady, beat me to it:

Men and women can both be the primary parent. While you can certainly say only one parent can fill that role if both parents work for your company, you should otherwise take the employee’s word for it.

Legally, you have to allow up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for any parent to take care of new baby, a new foster child, or newly adopted older child. Don’t ever assume that the dad will not be the one to take this leave that is guaranteed under FMLA. Again, if both parents work for you, you can limit this to 12 weeks total.

Don’t limit leave to married couples, or heterosexual couples. Babies need care, period.

Take a page out of Facebook’s manual, and don’t require employees to use parental leave in one lump. [I’m not sold on this point, as it make leaves much more difficult to administer, could lead to abuses, and certainly leads to scheduling difficulties.]

Double check with your attorney before implementing the policy. Employment law is complex and varies from state to state. It’s always cheaper to pay an attorney before than it is to pay an attorney to defend you. [AMEN!]

August 23, 2017June 29, 2023

Think Less Is More With 401(k) Plan Participant Outcomes

Behavioral finance has taught us a lot in recent years about how people make decisions. Just as importantly, it has taught us how plan sponsors can help participants make better decisions while still providing them with choices.

However, providing people with too many choices can overwhelm them and lead to decision paralysis.

Limiting choices in decision-making can be effective when selling both ties and 401(k) plans.

I am reminded of a lesson I learned working part time in a men’s clothing store as a teenager. On my first day, the owner showed me around the store. When we got to the tie counter, he looked me in the eye and told me to never show more than three ties to a customer.

I was a bit confused and asked for clarification. Patiently, he explained I could show as many ties as needed to make the sale, but never have more than three on the counter at a time. More than that and the customer would likely have trouble making a decision.

So from that time on, I dutifully put only three ties on the counter. When the customer decided he did not like one, I would put it back in the case and, if needed, pull another one out but always being careful to limit the customer’s choice to three.

In recent years, this type of test has been tried under controlled conditions by academics. While three may or may not be optimal, limiting choices in decision-making has been proven effective.

So how can this be applied to the 401(k) plan?

Simplify the Investment Decision

No one believes that target-date funds are the optimal investment. After all, they are based on only one factor — a participant’s age. They do not take into account other holdings, risk tolerance or life expectancy, yet target-date funds have become one of the most popular investments in history. Why?

They are a simple way to get a professionally managed portfolio. All you need to decide is approximately when you expect to retire. Simple.

Participants who want to choose their own asset allocation can also benefit from simplification. After all, they are not investment professionals. So plan sponsors can help them by simplifying their decision-making.

Instead of offering large-cap, mid-cap, small-cap, value and growth, plan sponsors could consider offering one large-cap manager that covers both value and growth or consider offering a multi-cap fund that covers all of the above. Participants will have the benefit of diversification without having to know the difference between value and growth, large-cap and small-cap.

Make Joining the Plan Easier

Today, nearly half of all 401(k) plans have immediate eligibility. Plan sponsors can join this trend by eliminating complicated eligibility and entry dates. Instead of, “You are eligible for the plan after three months of service and will enter the plan on the next quarterly entry date after becoming eligible,” how about, “You will be enrolled in the plan beginning with your first paycheck?”

Companies worried about high employee turnover or increased cost of the match can address this by delaying match eligibility for a year, while still getting employees engaged in the plan immediately and simply.

Make the Plan Easier to Understand

Many participants struggle with understanding the employer’s matching contribution. Companies could address this by keeping the formula simple. For example, “We match 50 cents for each $1 you put into the plan up to X amount.” Complicated match formulas, even those designed to favor the lower-paid employees, can confuse people and result in lower participation.

People do not know how much they need to save in order to retire with adequate income replacement. Plan sponsors can help them.

If participants are auto-enrolled, be sure to include an auto-increase feature. Otherwise participant savings rates will be clustered at the auto-enrolled rate due to employees incorrectly assuming that they were enrolled at a rate that would put them on track for retirement.

Just as important, plan sponsors could provide participants with context for what is adequate savings. Consider this simple message: “Many experts believe that you need to save between 10-15 percent of your income in order to have enough money for retirement.”

This provides participants with concrete information on what will work rather than having them guess. Or consider delivering this message: “X of your peers save X percent in the plan.” The idiom of “keeping up with the Joneses” can be a powerful motivator for positive change.

Make Keeping Money in the Plan Easier

Most employers now understand that it is good for all participants if terminated participants leave their money in the plan. Larger plan assets can provide bargaining power to the employer resulting in lower fees for all participants, both terminated and active.

Terminated participants can also continue to benefit from professional oversight of the plan. However, terminated participants will not keep money in the plan if it is hard to withdraw when they need it.

A review of the distribution options may be necessary. Does the plan only allow for lump-sum distributions? This all-or-nothing option encourages, in fact requires, terminated participants to take all of their money out of the plan when they only need some of it. Installment payments could be added, enabling participants to receive monthly or quarterly distributions, while keeping the rest of their money in the plan.

A review of the investment options may be necessary. While a target date may be appropriate for many terminated participants, what options are provided for those looking for an alternative? Many retirees want a reliable way to generate income. Does the plan provide them with an attractive option?

The suggestions above are just a few of the ways to simplify a plan and make it more attractive to employees. None of these ideas create more risk or fiduciary liability for the plan sponsor. They engage participants more effectively, with a goal to improve potential outcomes. That is a win for everyone.

Don Stone is director, DC strategy and product development and senior consultant
at Pavilion Advisory Group. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

August 3, 2017June 29, 2023

This Week in Controversial Workplace Benefits

Writing about benefits can get dry sometimes.

“Employees like health care,” some survey found. OK, cool. I agree.

Then there’s a week where you come across a lot wild, timely, meaty stories that bring up a lot of questions and frustration. And this isn’t even including everything that’s happened in the U.S. health care space.

I’ve Got You Under My Skin: The most controversial benefits story I’ve seen this past week is regarding a Wisconsin-based tech company that is inserting microchips in 50 of its employees’ fingers. Employees, who signed up for this voluntarily, can use them to get in the building and pay for food at the cafeteria. Some people are excited about this.

Then there’s the more skeptical side (also the side I happen to fall on). This video sums up the concerns pretty succinctly. It could be a slippery slope where this technology “goes from being voluntary to involuntary and then it’s out of your hands.” Also, the video cautions employees to be careful about the agreements they have with employers, since there are a lot of questions out there about what happens with this data and how future companies can use it.

If wearables in the workplace of any kind — whether they’re strapped around your wrist or inserted in your finger — are really the future, then not setting boundaries present day makes no sense. Yes, employees can be cavalier about the data privacy aspect of this all now. But later? There are future implications.

[Also read: “Would Your Employer Microchip You?”]

Don’t Overthink It: Another controversial but often talked-about benefits topic nowadays is paid family leave in the United States. From what I’ve seen and read, the controversy isn’t around whether companies should or shouldn’t offer it. Heck, both presidential candidates in the recent election talked about expanding paid leave, and that might have been the only thing they agreed on in a campaign that felt like it lasted years. The controversy has been more around how much leave and who should be eligible. Birth mothers? Fathers? Single parents? Only married parents? Adoptive parents?

A lot of this felt ridiculous as somebody who grew up the time I did. I can’t fathom why companies wouldn’t offer paid family leave to fathers or single mothers or adoptive parents. It’s 2017. The “traditional family” model isn’t reality for a lot of people anymore, nor should it be.

The Harvard Business Review can explain this better than me. It just released a report that provided some very valuable information on this topic. It advocates for a simple paid leave policy. According to the report, “When it comes to new parents, you need just two simple categories: disability leave for women who are physically unable to work due to pregnancy, childbirth or related conditions, and parental leave that’s equally available to all employees, regardless of gender or caregiver status.”

Makes sense. Especially in today’s workplace where, as this report points out, even policies that have primary and secondary caregiver plans can be flawed. It mentions one company whose policy expressly states that the pregnant woman is assumed to be the primary caregiver. If the point of the primary/secondary differentiation is to allow the mother and father to decide who will have the primary role on their own terms, how can policies like that exist? This is why is makes more sense to have a simple, equal parental leave applicable to all employees.

[Also read: “Dad Friendly Work Policies Begin Growing Up”]

The Doctor Won’t See You Now: Telemedicine, also called telehealth, is the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients through technology. It’s something that more and more companies are adapting, but that doesn’t mean employees are utilizing it. Researching the topic for a larger story in Workforce’s September/October print issue, I came across a lot of the benefits, limitations and challenges of telemedicine. Telemedicine has a lot of potential, but it’s still relatively new, at least on a mainstream scale. It began in the late 1960s within smaller, niche populations. But, in the employer market, we’ve seen interest jump an impressive level just in the past five years.

As one of my editors noted, a big criticism is that when a patient contacts a doctor via telemedicine, the doctor may just tell them to go to the ER anyway in order to protect themselves in case of a wrong diagnosis.

From what I’ve read and who I’ve spoken to, that’s not really the case. For common or seasonal diagnoses like a cold or the flu, doctors can easily diagnose it over the phone. That’s the whole point, to discourage patients from going to the ER when they don’t need to and to offer medical care with more convenience and less cost.

I recently came across a survey that found that unnecessary ER trips was especially prevalent for people in their 20’s. They visit ER doctors more than any other type of doctor for general health concerns that could be easily diagnosed and treated more affordably by a primary care physician.

So, yes, in some cases telemedicine doctors may tell patients to go to the ER anyway. But I’m optimistic. If so many people are using the ER and racking up unnecessary medical costs now, why not consider an option that could offset that?

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

July 31, 2017June 29, 2023

Younger Workers Eye Short-Term Financial Goals

Piggy Bank, Financial Wellness, Workforce July 2017 Issue

When it comes to setting financial goals, younger employees are less focused on retirement and more concerned about meeting day-to-day expenses, and that should concern employers, according to a recent study by accounting firm PwC.

A growing number of millennial and Generation X employees are withdrawing money from their retirement plans, leaving them vulnerable at a time when defined benefit plans are disappearing and health care costs are soaring, according to Kent Allison, a partner at PwC.

“The recurring theme is that people continue to be stressed and can’t withstand any short-term shock to their finances,” he said. “Employers tried to solve the retirement savings deficiencies by adopting auto enrollment and auto escalation features that forced people to contribute to their retirement plans, but they never asked why employees weren’t contributing in the first place. People have competing cash flow objectives so in a way, companies are exacerbating the situation.”

About one-third of millennial and Gen X employees have withdrawn money from their retirement plans and about half think it’s likely they will need to do so in the future, according to PwC’s 2017 “Financial Wellness” survey. Topping the list of financial stressors for younger workers is student loans. Among the millennials and Gen X employees with student loans, a growing number say their loans are preventing them from meeting other financial goals — 45 percent of millennials (up from 35 percent last year) and 42 percent of Gen X (up from 31 percent last year).

In addition to managing student loan debt, an increasing number of younger workers are also supporting a parent or in-law while raising children, reflecting the challenges faced by baby boomer colleagues. These financial burdens take a toll not only on overall worker well-being and productivity, but also on the company’s bottom line.

Employees who are stressed about their finances are nearly five times more likely to be distracted by their finances at work and twice as likely to spend three hours or more at work dealing with financial matters than colleagues who are not stressed about money, according to the survey.

Employers need to broaden their financial wellness efforts and focus on saving money beyond retirement, according to Allison.

“If they want people to focus on long term goals they need to help them deal with the short term,” he said.

Rita Pyrillis is a writer based in the Chicago area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at @workforcenews.

July 26, 2017June 29, 2023

The Next Generation of Benefits Leaders

Like many of you reading this article, I stumbled into HR as a career.

As a journalism student who had never heard of employee benefits or HR or consulting, I was drawn to benefits because of the complexity and challenge of making sense of such meaty topics. But I soon discovered a much deeper sense of purpose in this work — and that purpose has kept me both in benefits and incredibly passionate about this industry.

Here’s why: Employee benefits touch the health and financial security of nearly all Americans and millions of people around the world.

Working in benefits is one of the few careers in which you can know you’re making a difference in what’s really important to people — almost all the time. Whether you’re working as a provider, a consultant or in an employer HR department, you’re having an impact on a lot of lives. You’re doing work that matters. The same can be said about so many other important areas of HR — training, learning and development, organizational development, to name just a few.

But how many people outside our industry know that? Does anyone grow up wanting to be an HR pro?

I’ve been thinking about this since my company, Benz Communications, concluded our interview series of 27 benefits pros as part of celebrating our 10th anniversary last year. (You can read all the interviews on LinkedIn.) They are an inspiring group of benefits leaders at large employers and benefits providers.

When we asked, “How did you get into employee benefits,” nearly everyone we spoke with confessed they stumbled into their career in benefits, and then fell in love with the space — much like I did. Without exception, what struck us was the absolute passion and the sense of pride and purpose these benefits leaders have about their careers.

Sarah Lecuna said she “fell into” benefits. “I wanted to be in the HR function, but wasn’t sure where would be the best fit for me and I the best fit for it. When I got a job in benefits I thought it would be temporary, but I love the work, the ever-changing landscape, and the impact it has on people’s lives.” Now she’s the global benefits leader at Intuit Inc. And Lecuna was named one of Workforce’s Game Changers in 2014.

Allison Wendelberger also didn’t get into benefits by design.

“I was finishing grad school and didn’t have a clear path in mind. Since I was a math major, I decided to take a couple of actuarial exams to make my résumé more enticing,” she recalled. She landed at HR consultancy Mercer and then spent 15 years with Aflac until she moved to her current role as business development manager for ITA Group.

“Essentially, we create programs that motivate behavior change in all the people who matter to an organization,” she explained.

Virgin Pulse President and CMO Rajiv Kumar started out as a doctor, but said, “Working in employee benefits allows me to positively impact the greatest number of lives. In clinical practice, I’d only be able to see a finite number of patients each day. Virgin Pulse, on the other hand, has touched more than 5 million lives around the world. The potential is inspiring.”

Inspiring, it is. The scope of all we touch in benefits is huge, which most people don’t realize.

“I love the fact that we make an impact at both an individual level as well as a social level. In benefits, I have a view of the difference we make not only in our employees’ lives, but also in our company culture, communities and even legislation. I find it extremely gratifying,” said Rosemary Arriada-Keiper, senior director of global benefits at Adobe.

Most people want careers that give them a sense of purpose. They want to do work that has meaning and value in the world. Employee benefits are ideal in that sense. But how do we make it less happenstance for great young people to get into the industry?

Clearly, our profession isn’t exactly front and center when children are aspiring to what they want to be when they grow up. There’s no Benefits Adviser Barbie or HR Director Lego set for our career.

But, we can all play a role in making HR a more desirable — and earlier — career aspiration. Accepting external speaking opportunities, sharing our stories and talking in the press about the great work our companies do is a start. Finding ways to brag about your career at your kids’ school or a college career fair can’t hurt, either.

All of those efforts can help inspire the next generation of game changers.

July 20, 2017June 29, 2023

Dad-Friendly Work Policies Begin Growing Up

Fatherhood isn’t just Brad Harrington’s work; it’s his life. As the lead author of fatherhood research at the Boston College Center for Work and Family, Harrington also has three children of his own.

Brad Harrington, executive director and research professor, Boston College Center for Work & Family

When a baby gets fussy or starts to cry, “It’s just so easy for fathers to stand there and think, I don’t know exactly what to do here. It’s natural to look to your wife even if she’s a first-time mother, if she’s been home with the child for a couple of months. You think instinctively she knows what to do better than I do,” said Harrington. That projection continues to solidify gender roles for both, he added.

Gender roles of opposite-sex couples have shifted over time, but that doesn’t mean people automatically mesh into new roles. More dads are involved in their children’s lives than in previous generations — since 1965, fathers have more than doubled their family involvement, cited NPR — but they’re not necessarily more confident in their parenting abilities.

Employers can play a part in making dads more comfortable in their fatherhood role. Most conspicuously, paid parental leave evens the parenthood playing field, according to Harrington. What’s key here is that parental leave is available to both men and women.

Several organizations have made massive leaps in paid leave in the past two years, he said. At some companies, “Suddenly it’s eight weeks, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, 16 weeks. It’s been a big surprise that this amount of paid leave has been extended to women, and the fact that they’ve mirrored that for their male employees has been terrific as well,” he said.

Some companies that have expanded paid parental leave include Intel, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Ikea and Hilton, he said.

“The more I’ve researched fatherhood, the more I’ve come to appreciate the importance of paid leave,” said Harrington. “Having a father take leave and spend time with their child on their own, one-on-one, and providing care directly is huge in terms of whether or not we achieve gender equality.” It’s a chance for dads to develop confidence in their role as a caregiver.

Meanwhile other resources like affinity groups and public forums, although less conspicuous than paid leave, are also important, he noted.

MetLife Inc. is one company that seeks equality in its employee leave policies and other workplace resources for parents. What’s important in the communication of these resources is that a company make it very clear that by parents, they mean moms and dads, said Michelle Birnbaum, the former head of work-life and director of global diversity and inclusion at MetLife.

One of the insurance company’s diversity business resource networks — similar to an employee resource group — is Families at MetLife. It’s one of the newer resource networks but already has close to 400 members, and on a national level it has male and female co-chairs. They hold events such as a live-streamed career panel headed by working dads across all levels of the company and an adoption panel where both mothers and fathers share their stories.

It helps to share stories and to have the messaging come from different people, said Birnbaum. “When you’re thinking about positioning any kind of support or program, work-life or wellness or benefits, considering your different audiences is important,” said Birnbaum. “When you try to take this more gender-neutral approach, there are so many pieces to look at, but it’s worth it.”

Eddie Hollowell, communications and multimedia lead at MetLife, has taken advantage of many of these perks. He took parental leave and worked reduced hours following the birth of his son.

He’s used a back-up care benefit when other child-care options fell through. And he’s attended panel discussions and webinars to get advice.

“This support from MetLife and from my co-workers and management is why I have continued to be a committed employee and it’s why I have remained with this company for 10-plus years,” said Hollowell in an email interview.

Another area in which employers tend to communicate to women more than men is workplace planning, said Jackie Reinberg, national practice leader, absence, disability and life at Willis Towers Watson. Most men go back to work full time after the birth of a baby because that’s the expected rationale, she added, and oftentimes they’re sleep-deprived or otherwise unprepared for their new reality.

“Part of what men need is having the management structure that helps them with workforce planning, when they’re going to take paternity or parental leave, and when they’ll come back to work,” said Reinberg.

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

July 11, 2017June 29, 2023

Some Constructive Criticism on Wellness

[vc_row][vc_column] New York Magazine just published an interesting — and fairly critical — article called “How Wellness Became an Epidemic.”

I’ve been thinking about it for the past week. Now, I’ll note that this article focused on the wellness industry at large and not just corporate wellness, but I still think there were some solid takeaways for employers.

Here’s a paragraph that stuck out to me:

“It can be easy to be cynical about wellness, about the $66 jade eggs that Gwyneth Paltrow suggests inserting in your ‘yoni.’ There’s something grotesque about this industry’s emerging at the moment when the most basic health care is still being denied to so many in America and is at risk of being snatched away from millions more. But what’s perhaps most striking about wellness’s ascendancy is that it’s happening because, in our increasingly bifurcated world, even those who do have access to pretty good (and sometimes quite excellent, if quite expensive) traditional health care are left feeling, nonetheless, incredibly unwell.”

It hits the major beats of the article, mainly that A) it can seem like in this industry, wellness is something that can be bought, if only you have the wealth to buy it; and B) in today’s current health care environment, both the haves and the have-nots are feeling unwell in some way and looking for the cure, sometimes in very different places, whether that’s through alternative or traditional treatment.

It’s also worth noting that author Amy Larocca C) entertainingly has a huge problem with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, a “modern lifestyle brand” launched in 2008. Larocca finds much of this advice silly. For example, Goop recommends a vitamin protocol called High School Genes for women who find it harder to lose weight as they age. As Larocca points out, “i.e., ALL WOMEN.” I would add: all people!

I have a few responses related to the employer market. First, do you think “feeling unwell” is an epidemic in the workforce? My perspective is probably skewed because of the articles I read and the people I talk to about wellness, whether it’s mental health, meditation or sleep.

From this point of view, it would definitely appear that wellness is an epidemic. But as much as employers push wellness programs, utilization can be low. A lot of reasons might play into this, but there’s one I never hear about: employees who already feel well enough and/or deal with various stresses on their own.

They might not be interested. They might take care of themselves in their own way and not rely on their employer. They may independently track their steps or their mood but feel no need to share that on an app with all their co-workers. They’re doing all right on their own.

Obviously, even these people have stresses in their life. Which brings me to my second point.

Haven’t people always been stressed, only now there’s a whole industry focused on dealing with those stresses? Having highs and lows in any area of health or well-being, whether that’s physical, financial or mental, is the human experience.

On one hand, it’s great that the wellness movement is aiming to help people through these lows. It’s better than the alternative, like not so long ago when even acknowledging mental health problems was taboo. On the other hand, to quote this New York Magazine article again, “It can be easy to be cynical about wellness” when companies try to sell you overpriced solutions you don’t need.

To put this in business-speak, yes, employer-sponsored wellness programs can help a lot of people who are struggling with some health issue. But relatively healthy employees who see these programs as a solution they just don’t need at this point in their lives? Just let them be.

Is it moral to push wellness programs on employees who feel well? Are there some cases where pushing a program on someone can cross the line from simple corporate communication to trying to force a solution on the disinterested? I’d hope corporate wellness doesn’t cross that line and try to create problems where there are none.

I’m optimistic that wellness programs can do a lot of good for companies and employees, otherwise I would not write this blog. I’ve spoken to many HR practitioners at companies who have done very impressive things with their wellness initiatives, whether that’s educating employees on drug prices, teaching about proper nutrition or offering healthy breakfasts in the morning. There’s a lot of excellence happening in this space.

But it’s worth being critical about an industry that has grown so quickly through some means that don’t seem quite kosher, at least in the commercial wellness space. Like convincing people they need things they don’t need.

Employees already have natural stresses in their life. They don’t need anything added to that unnecessarily.

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