It is no secret that health care costs for employers and their employees are out of control. Many employers have attempted to hold down these rising costs by offering wellness-program incentives.
The EEOC has signed off on these programs as legal as long as employee participation remains voluntary, which the agency defines as financial incentives for employee participation at or below 30 percent of the cost of coverage. Thus, employees have a choice — participate in the wellness program or pay a surcharge of up to 30 percent.
One area that has remained off limits for employers under these wellness programs, however, has been genetic testing and other personal and family medical histories. A new bill moving through the House of Representatives, however, aims to change that.
HR 1313 — the Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act [pdf] — seeks to clarify exactly how much personal health data employers can ask their employees to disclose as part of a wellness program, including personal and family medical histories.
Currently, under both the ADA and GINA, employers cannot ask employees about their own personal medical histories and those of their family members as a pre-condition to participation in a wellness program. All employers can do is access anonymous aggregated data collected via wellness programs.
HR 1313 would amend the law to allow employers to ask an employee for his or her personal and family medical histories (which could include historical genetic testing). The disclosure remains voluntary, because an employee could always refuse to disclose and pay the EEOC’s 30 percent surcharge to retain coverage.
This bill is scary. I am admittedly biased on this issue, as my family medical history has a big genetic piece. While I don’t hide Donovan’s Noonan Syndome, I also don’t want to face the Hobson’s choice of disclosing it to my, or my wife’s, employer or paying significantly more for our medical insurance.
Yes, health care and health insurance costs in the country are a big problem. And we must do something to fix it. I do not have the solution (health care is so complicated). I am confident, however, that whatever that solution is, it is not asking employees to sacrifice this amount of personal privacy in exchange for lower insurance premiums.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. To comment, email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
In terms of workplace initiatives, corporate wellness is a relatively new concept that didn’t begin developing until the late 20th century. And for a relatively young industry, it has witnessed impressive growth since its inception in the 1980s.
Experts contend that employers must offer wellness benefits to attract and retain employees.
Employers have plenty of options to choose from, as 951 companies specifically specialize in corporate wellness, according to IBISWorld’s industry report from July 2016. And the vastness of the broader wellness industry allows a corporate customer many options including health clubs, weight loss programs and nutrition programs that don’t primarily cater to employers.
Corporate wellness vendors also have a lot more room to grow. IBISWorld estimates industry revenue is projected to grow to $7.6 billion annually by 2021, up 3.3 percent from 2016. Only 9 percent of global workers have access to a workplace wellness program, according to the Global Wellness Institute.
But defining value in wellness remains elusive. The industry’s growth spurt is a boon for vendors as the expansion of wellness to total well-being presents more opportunities, including former Huffington Post Publisher Arianna Huffington’s high-profile debut of her new wellness company Thrive Global late last year.
Stress management programs and financial wellness programs also are spreading, adding to the array of offerings for employees. That’s leading some to question whether the expansion epidemic is too much of a good thing for employers under pressure to make the right choice for their workers, who now expect a wellness offering as part of their benefits package.
‘[Wellness benefits have] moved from nice-to-have status to must-have status’ says Emily Noll of CBIZ Wellness Solutions
Emily Noll, national director of CBIZ Wellness Solutions, said employers are discovering they must offer wellness benefits to attract and retain employees.
“[Wellness] could be different in a few years, but it’ll be there. It’s part of the expectation of what employers offer employees,” she said. “They’ve moved from nice-to-have-status to must-have status.”
Technology from telehealth to fitness apps also continues to promote growth in the industry by allowing vendors to access employees in real time and personalize the employee experience. Employers look toward technology to motivate employees to take an active role in improving their health, Noll added.
Not everyone has a positive perspective on this growth. Wellness has too many vendors, according to Al Lewis, CEO and founder of Quizzify, a company that provides tests designed to make employees smarter about health and health care. “You know there are too many vendors in an industry when seven of them have the same name,” he said.
Such growth doesn’t benefit either the employee or the employer, he argued. Vendors often do wellness to employees rather than for them, without garnering actual results, Lewis said.
At the same time the industry has seen this expansion, it’s paradoxically seeing signs of consolidation, too. Health care transparency company Castlight Health acquired well-being platform Jiff in the first transaction of 2017, and in February 2016 corporate wellness giant Virgin Pulse acquired two wellness companies, Rhode Island-based ShapeUp and Australia-based Global Corporate Challenge.
While some predicted an acquisition craze in 2016, few blockbuster deals materialized. Still, Noll said to expect more consolidation. Some wellness startups now 3 to 5 years old will have to sell in order to pay back investors. A company also may realize they can’t keep up with the technological demands and partner with a more tech-based company in order to meet client needs.
As wellness vendors become more specialized and technology expands, employers face a workplace wellness world that is no longer a one-stop shop, Noll said. Whereas previously they would use one vendor for all of their wellness needs, that’s becoming less common. Employers may need to collaborate with multiple vendors, she said.
Consolidation may cause challenges for employers as well, Noll added. They should vet the program and account management as if they’re looking at a new company to make sure they don’t lose the personal touch they want from a vendor.
The Value of Wellness
When a company invests in a wellness program, they have a lot to choose from and much to consider before partnering with a vendor.
“Before a company implements a wellness program, they have to understand what their goals are for wellness,” said Adam Ochstein, CEO of HR services company StratEx. “Is it just to have a check in the box to say, ‘We have a wellness program,’ or are they really truly committed to what an effective wellness program does?”
Interestingly, although many employers use wellness programs to control health costs, fewer than half measure their program’s return on investment. And several academic studies have failed to show substantial cost savings, according to a 2016 Willis Towers Watson report.
Wellness advocates address this disconnect between expectations and ROI in several different ways. Some companies look at wellness as a short-term fix rather than a realistic timeline for wellness to work, Ochstein said.
‘The missing element of essentially every wellness program is employee education’ says Quizzify’s Al Lewis.
“A good wellness vendor will be very transparent,” he explained. “Typically, you will see an increase in health care costs in the first two years. Long term, you’ll see a reduction.”
Costs initially rise because employees get an annual check-up and spend money on health-related expenses before they see the any results.
Others argue that workplace wellness has a value, but it’s not economic. It’s proven that such programs are bound to lose money for a company, said Quizzify’s Lewis, and they must rethink the actual value.
“If I’m going to be spending real dollars as well as directing my employees’ valuable attention to this program, how can I be sure these programs will deliver the value I really want?” said Lewis. “For some employers, that might mean a smaller investment and commitment to wellness programs. For others, that might mean a rethinking on whether a wellness program is supposed to lower medical costs or be something that will help make employees easier to recruit and retain and help improve morale in the company.”
Value is exhibited through a company showing it cares about employee well-being, he said. Employers should realize any wellness program will lose them money, though a well-designed program will lose considerably less than a poorly designed one, he said.
Wellness programs won’t change the behaviors of many unhealthy employees, Lewis added, but they will engage the already healthy employees and change the behavior of some of the undecided. “It’s important to give employees the opportunity to take care of their health,” he said.
It’s All in the Design
A major design aspect to improving a wellness program is a performance guarantee that contractually binds a vendor to a set goal, according to Jeff Levin-Scherz, national co-leader at Willis Towers Watson’s Health Management Practice.
“The performance guarantees need to be carefully written, and the goal of them should be to encourage vendors to put the right resources into the employer’s program,” he said. “It’s important not to over-engineer them and not to make them so difficult to agree on that [as a result] you end up spending too much on the performance guarantee and not enough on the actual program.”
A careful use of incentives like rewards and punishments can also help create an effective program, according to Ochstein. People often are motivated by cost.
“If you look at what curbed smoking in this country, it wasn’t the warning label on the side of a pack of cigarettes, which have been there since the ’70s,” he said. “It’s when cities like New York began taxing cigarettes to the point where it impacted the wallet.”
Behavior changes often occur when there is a life-altering diagnosis, such as diabetes or cancer, he added. “And hopefully it impacts our pocketbook before it impacts our life.”
Corporate wellness has not lived up to the guidelines it should aspire to, argued Lewis, who once worked in the industry. Vendors design programs that encourage employees to take on unhealthy behaviors like over-screening in order to make more money, and rarely do companies or HR departments push back. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force provides guidelines for how often people should get screened for certain problems.
Similarly, programs such as corporate crash diet competitions may motivate employees to take on unhealthy behaviors to lose weight and not support sustained weight loss, Lewis added.
Other than adhering to healthy guidelines, the other key component of workplace wellness is education.
“The missing element of essentially every wellness program is employee education,” said Lewis. Many people know to avoid sugar if they’re trying to lose weight but aren’t aware of how much sugar “healthy” food like granola bars have, he noted as an example. They’ll see the product in the health food aisle and assume it’s good for them without knowing what they’re putting in their bodies.
A Push for Certification
Regulations also may play a larger role in the future, said CBIZ’s Noll. There is little oversight in the wellness industry. Just two organizations, the National Committee of Quality Assurance and the Corporate Health and Wellness Association, certify wellness providers, and fewer than 30 vendors are certified, she noted.
At this point there isn’t a connection between certification and vendor quality, Noll said. But employers may see third-party certification as something that adds a comfort level to their relationship with the vendor. Likewise, vendors may see it as a way to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Patty Curran, principal for the national practices at Conduent HR Services.
Incentives also will play a less important role, said Patty Curran, principal for the national practices at Conduent HR Services.
“The heyday of incentives is probably passed and people are finding that incentives get people’s attention in some things and work in some parts of the wellness program to get people engaged, but for long-term sustainability, they’re not delivering,” she said.
A large trucking company she worked with offered the incentive of joining a raffle for NASCAR tickets, which doubled the number of participants in the wellness program. It worked in the short term, but she said in the long term interest in wellness faded. Employers have to be more focused on communicating the value of the program and educating employees so they can change behavior for themselves.
Lewis said there is a need for change in how some vendors operate. Although there are wellness programs he supports that don’t harm employees, there are others that promote unhealthy behavior.
He referenced the Employee Health Program Code of Conduct created on LinkedIn in August 2016. Vendors can publish on their websites that they officially endorse the code, which acts as kind of a Hippocratic oath. They can promise and make a point to not fabricate outcomes or endorse practices that harm employees.
“This code of conduct has got to be the thing for 2017,” said Lewis. “How can you have an industry if vendors aren’t willing to say, ‘First do no harm?’ ”
Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below or email aburjek@workforce.com.
“HR departments aren’t equipped to deal with complex social and psychological issues, so they start with solutions and hope that the problem fits,” said Tom Davenport of Willis Towers Watson.
While most employers and employees would agree that stress in the workplace is a persistent problem, they often differ dramatically on the causes — a disconnect that can undermine the success of any mental wellness program.
In a recent survey of workplace health and productivity, employers identified big-picture challenges like technology, which makes it harder to separate work and home, and organizational change as top stressors while employees were focused on more immediate and personal concerns like low pay, unclear job expectations and company culture. The stressor that employers ranked last — company culture — was the third choice of employees, according to Willis Towers Watson’s 2015-16 “Staying@Work” survey.
This disconnect underscores the fact that most employers don’t understand what causes stress for their employees and often leads them to the wrong solutions, according to Tom Davenport, a senior consultant at Willis Towers Watson.
“Everyone experiences stress differently and organizations have a hard time dealing with individualized solutions,” he said. “HR departments aren’t equipped to deal with complex social and psychological issues, so they start with solutions and hope that the problem fits. They look for EAPs (employee assistance providers) and vendors who provide mindfulness classes, yoga, resiliency programs — they check the box and say problem solved.”
The problem is that an emotional wellness program is likely to fail if employers don’t fully grasp how employees experience stress, he said.
“Organizations have a hard time dealing with individualized solutions,” said Willis Towers Watson’s Tom Davenport.
Understanding the causes and nuances of workplace stress is the biggest obstacle that employers face in dealing with the problem, according to Davenport.
In fact, nearly half of all working adults rate the efforts of their workplace to reduce stress as only fair or poor, according to a 2016 study by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Notably, the vast majority of workers — 85 percent — who say they’ve experienced a great deal of stress at work in the past 12 months rate the efforts of their workplace as fair or poor.
It is a pricey problem for employers. According to the American Institute of Stress, a nonprofit that aims to educate the public on the issue, job stress costs U.S. industry more than $300 billion annually in absenteeism, turnover, diminished productivity and medical, legal and insurance costs. And Americans are more stressed out than ever, according to the American Psychological Association’s 2015 “Stress in America” survey.
While the numbers show a slight increase in overall stress levels between 2014-15, the number of adults reporting “extreme stress” has spiked. Twenty-four percent of adults report these levels, compared to 18 percent in 2014, representing the highest percentage since 2010.
While there is little hard data showing that mental wellness programs can increase productivity and engagement, and lower rates of absenteeism and health care costs, one recent survey suggests that it can.
According to MediKeeper, a San Diego-based technology firm, between 2014 and 2016 the number of employees reporting a stress level of 1 — the lowest on a numerical scale — increased by 58 percent while the number of respondents rating their stress level at 5 decreased by nearly 40 percent.
“It was a bit of shock to us,” said David Ashworth, CEO of MediKeeper, which develops employee wellness platforms. “Intuitively, we were thinking that the stress was more. You think about it in your own life and it’s certainly going up.”
MediKeeper, whose clients represent a variety of industries, surveyed 3 million employees who took an anonymous online survey over a span of three years.
Ashworth said that the results suggest that a well-designed wellness program can reduce stress.
Which brings the conversation back to Davenport, who cautions employers to examine and understand the fundamental causes of stress among their employees.
“Ask yourself, ‘What are our biggest problems, what’s causing them and what can we do about them,’ ” he said. “The answer lies in some combination of an individual’s response to stress and the organizational culture.”
He advises monitoring sick days and turnover rates, but also talking with employees and collecting anecdotes through surveys and exit interviews.
“How an individual experiences stress changes as they move up the ladder,” he said. “You move further away from average employee experience because you’re not the average employee, you are a CEO. So there is a built-in disconnect, which is why many executives don’t seem to get it when it comes to addressing the causes of employee stress.”
Rita Pyrillis is a freelance writer in the Chicago area. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Workplace wellness initiatives continue making headway into employee perks with one important goal: influencing behavior change and improving employee health.
A step competition may aim to motivate employees to adopt a more active lifestyle while a weight-loss program could push employees to be more conscientious of their diet.
But when it comes to influencing long-term behavior, the popular carrot-and-stick model, which relies on extrinsic motivation like rewards and punishment to influence people, isn’t necessarily the most effective.
“We’re not opposed to carrots or sticks when they are used appropriately,” said Howard Kraft, Mercer’s total health management specialty practice leader in the U.S. But they’ll ultimately only work on a short-term basis, he said, adding behavior change is more difficult and requires that employees are intrinsically motivated.
There are many examples of companies misusing the reward-punishment approach. In 2013, Penn State University’s wellness program included a monthly $100 noncompliance fee for employees who chose not to participate, but soon dropped the requirement after employee protests over privacy concerns prompted a public outcry. Such plans are doomed to fail, according to Joe Ellis, senior vice president of CBIZ Inc., an employee services company.
“I would never recommend somebody be punished for not participating,” said Joe Ellis, senior vice president of CBIZ Inc.
“There are a lot of poorly designed plans,” he said. As with Penn State, if employees complain about being punished for not participating, it’s a different story. A smoker may decide not to join a smoking cessation program and therefore not receive a reward in the form of a premium discount. This person, who is now paying a higher premium than others for their lifestyle choice, may feel like they are being punished.
“The employer becomes the conduit through which those who do wish to change something in their life can access tools to do so,” said Ellis, but not everyone will choose to use those tools and participate.
“I would never recommend somebody be punished for not participating,” Ellis added. “There may be rewards for people who engage in healthy behaviors and no rewards for those who don’t. If you construe that as punishment, that’s your perception and I can’t help that.”
Incentives are governed by several regulations including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act; the Affordable Care Act; the Americans with Disabilities Act; and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. Companies don’t have free reign on how they use them in a wellness program.
And their use appears to have limited value. Forty percent of employees don’t receive incentives because they choose not to participate and only 42 percent get the full incentive available to them, according to the 2016 report by Willis Towers Watson, “New EEOC Rules Encourage Rethinking Incentives and Wellness Programs.” Employees are becoming less comfortable with incentives based on health outcomes and incentives designed as penalties.
In the long-term, what will work in terms of behavior change is some blend of self-motivation, social connectivity and changing the status quo, Kraft said.
“It’s the companies that simply think a stick or carrot by itself is the silver bullet; that’s where they get in trouble,” said Mercer’s Howard Kraft.
“A company can influence the work environment and culture to be more supportive of health and well-being; that’s where you’ll see a bigger difference,” he said. The first step for all employers is to be honest about the level of trust employees have in the organization regarding the health and well-being of its workforce.
“When an employer has the trust of the workforce and demonstrates a strong commitment to health and well-being, motivating people to do certain things and have certain behaviors becomes easier,” said Kraft. Using rewards and punishments smartly can have an impact.
“It’s the companies that simply think a stick or carrot by itself is the silver bullet; that’s where they get in trouble,” said Kraft.
Ellis agreed about the importance of a culture of health, and also noted that C-suite support is key. “The CEO and the other executives need to be onboard and also participate in creating a culture of health at a company.”
When you consider that most of us spend about one-third of our adult lives at work, it makes sense that the workplace can be the epicenter of healthy habits — for body, mind and wallet.
Many companies are taking this role seriously by treating their employees more like family members than workers. Like any caring, nurturing parent, employers are concerned about keeping their employees healthy, happy and in a position to be successful in the future.
This is a welcome evolution — from a laser focus on physical wellness toward a more holistic philosophy of “well-being” that addresses employees’ physical, emotional and financial needs.
This broadening definition of wellness comes with tremendous potential benefits, but also needs a different approach than the one-size-fits-all strategy that has often been applied to physical wellness.
Here are four ways to set your expanded wellness program up for success.
Move from “one size fits all” to “choose your own adventure.” With five generations currently in the workplace and millennials recently emerging as the largest demographic among working adults, traditional wellness programs need to evolve to meet the varying needs of employees at different life stages. Employers are gradually realizing that they can no longer focus solely on health care costs. They also need to foster a motivated, thriving and loyal workforce, and offer useful benefits that meet their employees wherever they are.
This means less of the one-size-fits-all programs of the past and more of the programs that allow employees to customize their own wellness package using various apps and tools, like fitness trackers, nutrition apps and financial management tools — and to get rewarded for their efforts.
Talk to employees. Engaged employees — those who feel their employer sees them as individuals — are more likely to have a vested interest in the company and be fully committed to the company’s success. Employees often express that they want their employers to recognize their total well-being, and they want access to resources that show that this is a priority. Because of this, many companies find that having a competitive wellness package is key to attracting — and keeping — top talent. But too often, wellness programs are designed and implemented without employee input. Reach out to your employees through surveys, focus groups and one-on-one interviews to find out what they need and what will resonate with them.
Put it in context. One challenge in introducing a new well-being program is to make sure that the program aligns with and complements the company’s full benefits ecosystem. Employers need to underscore how the program fits into their overarching corporate philosophy, so it doesn’t feel disconnected from their other HR programs, benefits or business priorities.
Emotional well-being is a growing part of this holistic health approach. Sensing the level of stress that employees experience in both their personal and professional lives, companies have introduced mindfulness programs that emphasize meditation practice and relaxation strategies. Many are also taking a new look at their extended-leave policies, which encourage a healthy work-life balance, and work-culture campaigns, which can inspire and energize employees by highlighting their common concerns, goals and successes. Meanwhile, programs aimed at promoting financial wellness have become increasingly popular. The idea is that employees can be more engaged at work if they’re not stressed out about financial concerns.
All of these programs need context for why the company is investing (the benefit for the company), why employees should care (the benefit for the employees) and how new efforts connect to other programs.
Embed behavioral thinking into strategy, program design and communications. One of the most powerful opportunities for employers is to design the workplace around well-being. Instead of looking at isolated programs or asking employees to take steps on their own, ask, “How can we make it easy to do the right thing?” That question will bring to the surface administrative barriers, confusing program design issues, changes needed to the physical workplace, or simple opportunities to better connect programs and resources.
By broadening the definition of wellness and creating a new well-being model, employers can find more meaningful ways to connect their employees with their benefits. Well-being programs that employees can tailor to meet their personal needs and preferences offer tremendous opportunities for employers to improve employee engagement and increase the overall value of their benefit offerings.
Periodically I plug the word “diversity” into Twitter search to see what comes up. I’ve found some great information that way. I’ve also found some things that gave me forehead wrinkles.
diversity is amazing and representation is important but only when it’s SPONTANEOUS
I clicked on the bio info for this tweeter; the picture is distorted, but it looks like a white man. Here’s why that’s relevant. That white man has the luxury to wait on nebulous things like spontaneity. Women and minorities don’t. We literally don’t have enough life left to wait on spontaneity when the topic is gender parity.
I wracked my brain, and I couldn’t think of one single thing about workplace diversity and inclusion that was spontaneous — and positive. Complaints are spontaneous. So are demands, attacks, knee-jerk policy changes and politically or culturally motivated arguments around the water cooler. Are those things positive? Not so much.
But the reason spontaneity and workplace diversity are so mismatched is because spontaneity is fast, it’s relatively furious, and in its context change is easy, it’s expected, it’s desired. Workplace diversity, on the other hand, is the antithesis of change and speed. It’s a battle, a slow, often painful struggle that finds every living and dying excuse to maintain and sustain its present state: lack of money and/or resources, no time, no strategy, no bandwidth, no real desire … .
The global gag rule is about exerting control over half of the population for reasons that have nothing to do with their well-being and everything to do ensuring there is no shift in power.
So, no. Spontaneity is actually ridiculous when the related topic is workplace diversity. Today, given the societal, financial, psychological and cultural constraints in which we operate, diversity requires intention. It requires discipline and repeat, consistent, sustainable effort. Let’s reserve the spontaneity to celebrate those “aha” moments that crop up as a result of strategic diverse management.
And speaking of knee-jerk policy changes, can I kvetch about the global gag rule for a minute? At its heart the central topic is abortion, not workplace diversity, but it’s relevant, trust me.
The Global Gag Rule, which that person signed back into policy on Jan. 20 — I’ve made a vow to avoid speaking his name, but you know who he is; he’s living in former President Obama’s old house — prevents U.S. funded health care providers around the world from even talking about abortion as a segment of family planning. According to one article I read, “Trump’s reimagining of the gag rule is even more severe than the original prohibition devised by President Ronald Reagan, which was limited to clinics that provide family planning services. The Trump gag extends to any health care providers around the world — which would cut an estimated $8.5 billion in aid.”
Obviously, this is terrible news for women and families everywhere. In the aforementioned article, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said the “policy could have terrible consequences for women and families around the world. I started my career working at the World Bank on health care in India. I saw firsthand how clinics funded by foreign aid are often the only source of health care for women. When women are given even the most basic health care information and services, they live longer, healthier lives — and they give birth to children who live longer, healthier lives.”
That’s major. But while health care or a lack thereof is undoubtedly important, for me the implications of the Global Gag Rule aren’t just about denying family planning and other ancillary health care services that women need, deserve and want. It’s about exerting control over more than half of the population for reasons that have nothing to do with their well-being, and everything to do ensuring there is no shift in power and control.
What happens if women are denied these types of family planning services? Let’s say they all deliver healthy babies — no doubt that absolute has already sparked all sorts of pushback in your brain because absolutes tend to do that, but bear with me — and life and death is no longer a issue. These mamas stay home with their babies, right? That’s not so bad. Kids need mamas.
Now let’s unpack that a little bit more. In many countries, including the U.S., those mamas are young, really young, school age. Having children means you don’t go to school. No school means no job. No job means no salary. No salary means no economic freedom, authority, input or power.
You see where I’m going with this? One knee-jerk policy change has impact that reverberates throughout the global community from the home to the workplace to the lack of innovation and missed opportunities some women won’t be bringing into the workplace because they won’t be there. And that policy change wasn’t spontaneous. Diversity and the word spontaneous are completely incompatible.
Yes, I know the issue is far more complex than a few pithy sentences in a blog paragraph. I’m aware. Diversity and inclusion, or a lack of those things, are systemic issues woven into the infrastructure and fabric of society’s blood. Those issues are not new. They didn’t just crop up. Therefore, spontaneity or any discussion of something similar is completely irrelevant.
And what about the generational implications of that scenario I painted with all those young mothers trapped in a cycle of ill-educated, subservient poverty? It only takes nine months to make a baby, but once he or she is here, that’s a lifelong commitment. Mama didn’t go to school. She didn’t go to work. How hard will it be for her daughter or her daughter’s daughter to do those things?
Whether it’s a tweet, or the Global Gag Rule, when push comes to shove, we women don’t have the time or the wherewithal to wait on the white, male patriarchy to determine what’s best for the course of our global lives. If women are occupied having babies and struggling with preventable female illnesses, there will be no school. Certainly there will be no advanced level schooling, which is now a requirement for advancement in our knowledge-worker-driven global marketplace.
Women don’t have time to wait or hope for spontaneous acts of diversity. No innovation-savvy workplace does either.
Kellye Whitney is associate editorial director for Workforce magazine. Comment below or email editor@workforce.com.
Set in Seattle, Frasier is full of witty dialogue and honest conversations that normalize mental health problems. Outside of sitcom-land, the DMEC is one organization which aims to normalize them as well.
This is my first “Frasier” blog of 2017. I’ve decided it’s my mission to remind people what a treasure this 90s gem is. It explores everything from serious mental health issues to complicated familial dynamics to silly everyday misunderstandings. I did my research this weekend and discovered that no blog exists that is dedicated solely to “Frasier.” No CafeNervosa.net. No MartysChair.edu. No SherryPlease.com. Oy vey. Time to step up my game.
As I write this, I think of a particular podcast that rises to a similar challenge. “Frasierphiles” describes itself as the only show with a “Frasier First Focus,” the first time that phrase has ever been used, realistically. It’s hosted by Mark Robison and Darren Mitcheem, one of whom says, “All I think about every night is how f****** good Frasier is.” (Me too!) The other describes the television series with the phrase, “It’s like looking at a beautiful cabinet!” in the first podcast episode. A beautiful cabinet full of sherry, perhaps, or cans of Ballantine? I’d say a beautiful cabinet full of witty dialogue and honest conversations that normalize mental health problems.
A stretch, perhaps, but it brings me to the heart of this blog, a conversation I had with Terri Rhodes, CEO of the Disability Management Employer Coalition. The DMEC recently released a report about mental health in the workplace, and its primary thesis was the importance of making the business case for mental health and normalizing mental illness. One in five people deal with a mental health situation on a daily basis, according to the report.
Currently, many employers offer mental health services such as screenings through health risk assessment programs or EAPs, but being able to make a business case is important if employers want to put together a new program that specifically addresses mental health, said Rhodes. Using aggregate (not individual) data from disability claims and FMLA claims, for example, can help put a dollar sign to the impact of mental illness in terms of absences, productivity and presenteeism. In this way, using data identifies that there is, in fact, a problem.
A current problem regarding mental illness in the workplace is stigma, said Rhodes, who seeks to normalize it in the workplace and show that for the most part it is treatable. “Not all mental illness is, ‘The sky is falling!’ Those are outliers,” she said.
We also discussed what mental health training for managers should look like. “In the past, even in HR, we’re told, don’t say anything, don’t ask somebody how they’re doing, don’t talk to them,” she said. “What that does is increase the stigma.”
Terri Rhodes, CEO of the DMEC
It’s important to teach managers and supervisors that mental illness is not bad and train them how to address it in their workplace. Rhodes recommended, for example, a couple of free training programs offered through the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health and Stamp Out Stigma.
This type of training should hit a few key notes, according to Rhodes. For example, managers should be able to look out for signs that somebody may be having an issue. They should be able to speak about mental illness rather than avoid the topic.
The communication-avoidance paradigm seemed a bit impossible to me at first. As unhelpful as avoidance is, how open can communication regarding mental illness actually be without seeming invasive? What is the right way to communicate without probing?
Rhodes recommended that managers be inclusive and friendly rather than be afraid of asking any questions at all when it comes to mental illness. Appropriate questions could be, How are you doing? Or, is there anything you need that will help you do your job better?
Rhodes also mentioned that 10 years ago, employers seemed to lose interest in mental health, but she’s seen a shift in attitude in the past couple years. Employers have been more willing the address mental illness. The problem itself — the high cost mental illness can have on the workplace; stigma; etc. — hasn’t changed, she said. “But employers’ awareness of their ability to make an impact is different.”
Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below, or email at aburjek@humancapitalmedia.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at@workforcenews.
Lilly Ledbetter stands with President Barack Obama the day he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Courtesy LillyLedbetter.com
Barack Obama had been in office a mere eight days when he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act making it easier for women to sue employers for equal pay.
It was the first law he passed as president and a bellwether of eight years of actions to expand rights and protections for American workers that had employers balking at the prospect of added regulation.
Fair pay was just the start. From the early days of the recession, the Obama White House promoted policies to put people to work, improve pay and benefits and protect their rights on the job.
Workplace boards and agencies soon flexed muscles atrophied by eight years of the Bush administration. Other prominent initiatives extended minimum wages and overtime pay for home health workers, and provided guidelines to stop employers from misclassifying employees as independent contractors. The Affordable Care Act, arguably Obama’s biggest, most controversial achievement, gave people not covered by employer-sponsored health insurance — including millions working in the growing gig economy — the opportunity to buy coverage through online marketplaces.
A Republican Congress pushed back on his efforts, leading Obama to use an unprecedented level of executive orders to change workplace and employment-related regulations for federal employees and contractors, moves he hoped private-sector employers would follow.
Not all of Obama’s labor and workplace initiatives succeeded. He failed to raise the federal minimum wage. Immigration reform remains in a holding pattern. An overtime pay law, a hallmark of his administration that would have affected about 4.2 million middle-wage workers, all but died after a federal judge blocked it in late November of 2016 shortly before it was set to take effect.
His relationship with unions was also inconsistent. A two-tier wage contract with union auto workers helped save U.S. automakers during the recession, but was widely unpopular with workers, as was Obama’s stance on trade. Obama appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversees labor laws and employees’ right to organize, issued more pro-union decisions than at any other time in 30 years, but other efforts to push through pro-union legislation weren’t successful.
As Barack Obama leaves the White House, what will his labor legacy be?
As Obama vacates 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., other policies and programs he championed could be uprooted by Republican President-elect Donald Trump and a partisan Congress.
Regardless of what Trump’s presidency brings, the uncertainty that comes with such a radical transition presents even more challenges for companies and human resources departments, said Nancy Hammer, the Society for Human Resource Management senior government affairs policy counsel.
“Employers need to know what they’re working with so they can plan and organize policies and employees around what the rules are and get going,” Hammer said. “That was a challenge under the Obama administration because so many changes were made and requirements were piling up. Now we’re facing a situation of wondering whether some of those will be repealed. All of that causes difficulties for employers, and can require them to spend too much time on compliance when they really want to focus on the core mission of their business and keeping employees engaged and productive.”
Digging Out of the Recession
Obama inherited a flailing economy and didn’t waste time addressing it. In 2009, he passed a stimulus package that Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., calls the most significant economic legislation of his tenure because of the tax incentives and infrastructure spending that saved jobs from being axed and created new ones. “We went from losing 800,000 jobs every month at the end of the Bush administration to gaining an average of 180,000 jobs a month in 2016,” said Maloney, the ranking House member of Congress’ joint economic committee.
During his time in office, Obama increased family leave and paid sick leave, and blocked companies from retaliating against employees for talking about pay and other parts of their jobs. As on-demand services such as Uber produced more opportunities for work in the so-called gig economy along with lawsuits over worker misclassifications the Labor Department issued guidelines spelling out the standards companies should use to determine the difference between employees and independent contractors.
Obama also oversaw passage of a regulation that required 401(k) funds to disclose fees that could eat into workers’ retirement savings, and another directing public companies to disclose the pay gap between CEOs and average workers that’s set to take effect in fiscal 2017.
His worker-friendly policies helped the United States dig out of the recession. The country added a total of 15.8 million private and public sector jobs since early 2010, including 156,000 in December 2016 to keep unemployment at 4.7 percent, less than half what it was at the recession’s peak. Wages didn’t bounce back as quickly, though average hourly earnings for private sector workers grew 2.9% percent last year, the fastest pace since 2010.
Executive Orders to Direct Workplace Policy
Obama’s focus on improving fairness for workers through executive orders was unprecedented, according to Lisa Maatz, vice president of government relations and advocacy for the left-leaning American Association of University Women.
One highlight, according to Maatz, was an update to Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs regulations barring federal contractors from discriminating or retaliating against employees and job applicants for sharing salary information. Another OFCCP rule change mandated paid sick leave for employees of federal contractors.
The guidelines were written in such detail “you could lift it and put it into your employer policy manual,” said Hammer, the SHRM legal counsel.
Having such a template can be a good thing, but it can also lead employers to adopt whatever the federal government minimum is as their own baseline, even if they previously offered something more, in which case, employees lose out, she said.
Under Obama, the NLRB was particularly active, especially on issues regarding terms and conditions of employment. The agency scrutinized to a much greater degree than past administrations employer policies that could squelch employees’ protected speech about terms and conditions of their employment, Hammer said. “The NRLB took a lot of those interpretations, through cases they decided, to an extreme level,” she said.
In another of his more significant organized labor actions, Obama convinced auto industry unions to accept a two-tier wage system that paid entry-level workers significantly less than what they would have made in the past. The deal kept U.S. automakers afloat during the worst of the recession, but was extremely unpopular with workers, dividing union solidarity, and transferring cost-cutting from other industries to manufacturing, according to the LA Times.
The administration also backed the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have required companies to recognize a union if over half the employees in a proposed bargaining unit signed on. But the legislation failed after Democrats couldn’t collect enough votes to defeat a Republican filibuster.
Also on his watch, five states — including Kentucky on Jan. 7, 2016 — passed right to work laws banning union membership as a condition of employment, bringing the total to 27 nationwide.
Growth of anti-union state laws coupled with Obama’s support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, which unions opposed on grounds that it would hurt U.S. jobs, added to a string of grievances organized labor held against the Obama administration. Those grievances also included Obama’s decisions not to make union-favored changes to the Affordable Care Act and safety regulations, according to Bloomberg.
Despite the support he was able to provide, U.S. union membership continued a gradual but steady decline during Obama’s presidency. By 2015, just 11.1 percent of all U.S. private and public sector workers were union members, down from 20.1 percent in 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Shrinking numbers and frustrations could explain why rank-and-file union members who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 switched party allegiances to support Trump in the 2016 election.
States Pick Up the Slack
Some of Obama’s most enduring labor legacies could be the employee-friendly laws passed by cities and states that he wasn’t able to enact nationwide.
On Jan. 1, minimum wages rose in 19 states affecting an estimated 4.3 million mostly low-wage workers, the most states to ever increase minimum wages without an increase in the federal minimum wage, according to the Economic Policy Institute. A total of 29 states now have minimum wages over the $7.25 an hour federal minimum, representing 60.8 percent of the country’s total nonfarm workforce, according to the independent think tank.
State and local governments also passed laws mandating paid sick leave and paid time off, and barring employers from discrimination based on gender, race and sexual orientation. In addition, cities such as San Francisco, Seattle and New York passed or are considering instituting so-called predictable shift laws that require employers to give hourly workers schedules two or more weeks in advance, among other provisions.
But a patchwork of local laws and regulations is hardly ideal. It adds to the complexity and costs companies bear setting up payroll and other human resources systems they need to manage people working in different geographic areas. Laws and regulations that vary by area don’t provide the uniform protections people count on. “We’ve always supported the idea of some uniformity across the country. Without it, it makes multistate companies hard to function,” said Hammer, the SHRM government affairs counsel.
Even so, state and local laws show “that you can be pro-growth and pro-employee at the same time,” AAUW’s Maatz said. “You can raise the minimum wage and companies will still form, and they’ll still hire people.”
H-1B Reform in Holding Pattern
Obama’s commitment to work-related immigration reform went largely unfulfilled. Left virtually intact is a contentious H-1B visa system that brings 85,000 highly skilled foreign workers a year into the country to work, ostensibly in jobs employers can’t find equally trained U.S. workers to fill.
Opponents of the program argue that U.S. companies rely on it for cheap labor. In an instance that supports their theory, Accenture paid a $500,000 settlement in October to a former H-1B employee from India for dropping a lawsuit that claimed the outsourcing and consulting giant treated him as a second-class citizen. In the suit, the senior software engineer claims he and other Indian H-1B workers who worked for Accenture in the United States were paid significantly less than U.S. employees and received inferior benefits, discrimination he alleges was based on nationality. Accenture didn’t admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement, according to Law360.
By contrast, major U.S. technology companies and other supporters of the current H-1B program say it doesn’t go far enough. They’d like to expand the current 85,000 visa limit to accept more of the tens of thousands of H-1B applications the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service receives a year over that amount, so many the agency holds a lottery every April to pick the winners. The lottery is oversubscribed to the point that a majority of winners historically have been well-heeled information technology outsourcers that can afford to file more applications than they need to beat the odds of being selected, applications that run thousands of dollars each.
John Miano isn’t an Obama fan. Miano, a computer programmer turned labor advocate and immigration policy expert and coauthor of the 2015 book “Sold Out,” said raising the minimum wage for federal employees didn’t affect tech workers, and the H-1B program hurts them.
Miano isn’t convinced Trump can solve the H-1B problem either, especially since multiple bills introduced in Congress in recent years that haven’t gone anywhere. Sure enough, as the 115th Congress opened earlier this month, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., re-introduced legislation that would radically reform or even gut the controversial H-1B guest worker visa program. Trump has indicated he supports such a step.
Michelle V. Rafter is a contributing editor. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
It is the new year, which means it’s time to snap out of our indulgent holiday habits and get back to real-life goals and aspirations.
For my team, this means launching 2017 campaigns for our clients. After all, this is an ideal time to get employees engaged in benefits! There are countless benefits and programs that can be easily promoted and tied to the typical New Year’s resolutions: losing weight, eating healthier, actually using that meditation app on your mobile phone, paying off that holiday-induced credit card debt, finally getting your will or estate in order and many more.
What’s a little more challenging, though, is creating a set of personal work-related goals. For anyone in benefits and HR, this is an excellent time to plan ahead, reflect and prioritize. I’d like to suggest a few aspirational resolutions for you and your team.
I will carve out time to think strategically.
Oh, peace and quiet. Time to think and reflect. As I write this — on a plane where the Wi-Fi is fortuitously not working (because I need to focus on this article!) — I’m reminded of how hard it is to have just a little time without interruption. Uninterrupted time may be our most precious resource. And it’s one that you must create and protect. More than likely, that means scheduling it on your calendar, prioritizing it as a team and building it into the way you work. What better time to start than now?
I will help my team think about the employee experience as a whole.
As each area of HR gets more sophisticated, and as the complexity of integrating systems and vendors persists, it is more important than ever to think holistically about the employee experience. What are you asking employees to do, step by step, to meet certain goals? Is there a consistent feel, emotion or brand experience across your programs? Can you create more value by connecting tools and resources? These are hard questions to ask and hard to dig into, but they can start to change the overall value of HR. If you’re overwhelmed deciding where to start, look at your new-hire experience. It is an obvious area of opportunity for most companies and one where your efforts will almost certainly create an immediate and measurable ROI.
I will not blame employees.
When I talk with HR and benefits leaders, I often hear these frustrations about employees:
“They just don’t care.”
“They don’t understand.”
“They won’t take the time to learn it.”
“They don’t seek information that’s out there.”
While most of this is true, it most definitely is not because employees don’t care. Rather, it’s because we have created insanely complicated systems and we’re asking average people to figure them out — largely on their own.
So in 2017, let’s stop using the employees-will-never-get-it excuse and start building systems and programs that they can use with confidence. A tall order? Yes, for sure, but not if you commit to the following resolution, too.
I will prioritize making it easier for employees to make good decisions.
I’ve spent my career trying to help employees “understand” our health care and financial systems. But, in the past couple of years, I have gradually let go of the idea that they can actually understand them.
That decision has been inspiring and motivating. Here’s why: we know it is almost impossible to get people to fully understand all the things they need to do to live happily ever after. But we can design programs and systems that make it easy for people to make good decisions and a little harder to make bad ones. This is the essence of the whole field of behavioral economics, an area of study that has really made its way into the workplace in the past several years and one that we employ in our own work. Behavioral economics offers a more strategic — and practical — approach to helping employees, and it can be applied across all areas of HR.
I will celebrate success with my team.
Just as focused time is a scarce resource, in too many organizations recognition is uncommon as well. Plenty of organizations are working on systems that promote workplace recognition, or they’re finding ways to build it into their culture. Just as important, though, is to create rituals among your closest team members. Find ways to recognize each other more often this year, and watch how much that helps you fulfill all the aspirational goals we’ve just talked about.
Dueling meetings regarding Obamacare took place last week on Capitol Hill, with President Barack Obama leading the Democratic lawmakers and Vice President-elect Mike Pence leading the Republicans. Both sides discussed the future of the Affordable Care Act and of health care in America.
The Republicans want to replace and repeal, but they don’t yet have the replacement plan. According to ABC News, after repealing it, they would delay any major changes for 18 months to three years in order to find a replacement. The Democrats want to make sure the health care law stays intact. Obama reminded Democrats that real lives are at stake and that the ACA is popular with many voters.
Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump said earlier this week on Jan. 10 that he wants to repeal the ACA soon but pass a replacement “very quickly or simultaneously.”
Whatever the future of the Affordable Care Act is, it will have an impact on employers who provide health care and employees who rely on the ACA for coverage.
What the country needs is a bipartisan replacement which provides a patients’ bill of rights but is also easy for business owners to execute from the administrative standpoint, said Gretchen Van Vlymen, head of human resources at StratEx, an HR consulting firm.
Gretchen Van Vlymen, head of HR at StratEx.
“The heart of Obamacare is great,” said Van Vlymen. “That’s the patients’ bill of rights, which has important parts like making sure younger people up to 26 can stay on their parents’ plan and ensuring that people with preconditions can get health insurance.”
Even with a Republican president and a Republican majority in both the House and Senate, she believes the patients’ bill of rights will remain intact. Republicans, from a PR standpoint, probably won’t want to take away insurance from people who need it the most.
That being said, certain mandates won’t last from a business standpoint, like the individual mandate requiring individuals to have health insurance and the employer mandate requiring employers to cover full-time employees.
A major takeaway from this meeting is that the impact of Republicans repealing the law but having no replacement plan would have major consequences, said Van Vlymen.
“That scares me a little,” she said. “I want to make sure if we do repeal the law, we replace with something bipartisan that makes sense.”
Whether Republicans and Democrats will come up with a bipartisan plan is a different story.
“I hope that politicians are thinking about not only employees but also HR practitioners and business owners who have to follow the rules,’ said Van Vlymen. “I hope this becomes a more cooperative effort than a divisive one.”
Meanwhile, as businesses move forward, what they should do is realize that the ACA is still law and that they need to follow it unless it is repealed. With a Republican plan likely in the future, it would benefit HR people to make sure they educate themselves and employees on health savings accounts and high deductible plans, which may be the future of health care in the workplace.
Andie Burjek is a Workforce associate editor. Comment below, or email at aburjek@humancapitalmedia.com. Follow Workforce on Twitter at@workforcenews.
Workplace wellness initiatives continue making headway into employee perks with one important goal: influencing behavior change and improving employee health.
When you consider that most of us spend about one-third of our adult lives at work, it makes sense that the workplace can be the epicenter of healthy habits — for body, mind and wallet.
