This year, Globoforce celebrates 20 years of providing employee rewards and recognition solutions.Â
And 2019 also marks another milestone as co-founder and CEO Eric Mosley said that Globoforce is renaming itself Workhuman.
Headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts, and Dublin, Ireland, Workhuman also is the name of Globoforceâs annual conference, which this year is scheduled March 18-21 in Nashville. The conference features actors George Clooney and Viola Davis as keynote speakers.
âIâm thrilled to announce that our company name now clearly reflects the power of bringing gratitude into the workplace,â Mosly said in a Feb. 27 press statement. âWe are Workhuman. This evolution acknowledges both the traction and effectiveness of our Workhuman Cloud platform and the demand from progressive global organizations who want to motivate and empower their people to do the best work of their lives.â
Some 4 million people in more than 160 countries access Workhuman Cloud, according to the press statement.
âGreat leaders instinctively know that the more gratitude in a company, the better it performs,â Mosly said in the press statement. âTurnover is cut in half for employees who receive a moment of gratitude from a fellow employee at least once every 60 days. And safety records are more than 80 percent better for teams that express gratitude.â
Workhuman CHRO Steve Pemberton
In December 2017, Globoforce named veteran human resources leader Steve Pemberton as its chief human resources officer.
Pemberton, the former chief diversity officer for Walgreens Boots Alliance, the well-being enterprise of the drug-store giant, was brought on to work with Globoforce HR leaders and senior management executives worldwide to help them create relationships with their employees so they feel recognized, respected and appreciated, according to a statement from the company. Pemberton also was assigned to manage Globoforceâs WorkHuman movement.
Companies including JetBlue, the Hershey Co. and Procter & Gamble Co. utilize Workhumanâs recognition programs, according to the annual Workforce magazine Hot List of Rewards and Recognition Providers.
Along with a new name, Workhuman also announced their newly expanded $4.5 million headquarters expansion in Dublin along with the creation of 150 new jobs, the press release stated.
In a recent meeting with a major client my consultant team and I were faced with an unusual request.
A transgender executive working for the organization had been facing a series of small but cumulatively damaging setbacks in her career after many years of success. Her slow-motion derailment was harming the performance of her team, which was tasked with a high-stakes, high-visibility project. She had transitioned (from male- to female-presenting) two years earlier and she believed the perceived lag in her performance was not about her actual results, but about her now more-visible gender identity. The organization wanted to invest in the executiveâs development and needed help finding her a coach.
It turned out I was the only one in the room who had experience working with transgender clients, but before I could gather more information, one of the leaders jumped in eagerly with a suggestion: âWell, why donât we call up the local chapter of the Human Rights Campaign and see if anyone there can coach her?â Several heads nodded.
My heart sank. These educated, well-intended professionals had just made the same error too many of our clients make â confusing coaching with mentoring.
As a professional coach and former fitness instructor, there are parallels between the two disciplines that can be helpful in making a distinction between coaching and mentoring.
Before the modern fitness movement first began in the U.S., gyms, sports and various forms of dance and exercise already existed. In the late 1970s and early â80s, programs such as Jazzercise emerged, and Richard Simmons and Jane Fonda helped popularize a whole new form of intense, rhythmic exercise done to upbeat music.
In those early years, almost anyone who was charismatic and a good dancer could lead an âaerobicsâ class. However, driven by increasing popularity, the exuberance of innovation soon gave way to widely varying levels of quality among aerobics classes and instructors, some of which seriously injured participants. Over time, the industry developed standards, ethics and certification guidelines so that today, fitness instructors are mostly well trained and accountable, and class participants enjoy both safety and effective guidance in meeting their wellness goals.
Coaching is similar in that the term âcoachingâ existed long before the coaching field, and some aspects of what we today refer to as âcoachingâ have always been performed by skilled therapists, bosses, clergy, healers, elders and even close friends. However, these similarities, as well as the recent explosion of the coaching field, have contributed to both confusion about what coaching is and widely varying degrees of quality among coaches even as the field has adopted certification procedures, a code of ethics and credentialing requirements.
The Elements of Professional Coaching
âProfessional coachingâ is not coaching like we see happening in sports. Itâs not directing. Simply put, coaching is the facilitation of self-discovery in another person. This self-discovery is achieved through powerful and provocative questions, insightful feedback on what the coach is noticing, and a clear plan for action and accountability. Effective coaches are extraordinary listeners, highly creative, extremely agile and masterful at self-management â skills developed over months of training and years of practice.
Coaching is not giving advice, telling someone what to do, or showing someone how to perform a task. These functions are more accurately described as advising, mentoring or even consulting. Mentoring is a form of advising, in which the mentorâs role is to impart what the learner doesnât have â knowledge, wisdom, skills and connections. Coaches can be effective even with minimal experience in their clientâs field or industry, because the client possesses the âselfâ the coach helps them unlock and act from. In mentoring, the mentor has the answers; in coaching, the client has the answers.
Effective advising, mentoring and consulting often have coaching elements to them, but they are not technically coaching. Itâs also true that some coaches incorporate advising or consulting in their work â for example, debriefing the results of an assessment or 360 â but when they do, they arenât necessarily coaching. When I incorporate advising into my coaching, I always ask permission to do so, and verbally indicate when I am stepping in and out of coaching mode.
Being clear about what coaching really is, it is not about nitpicking semantics. When advising is called coaching, or mentoring is conflated with coaching, everyone involved misses out on the unique transformative power of a professional coaching relationship. People think they have experienced coaching, when they have not.
Professional coaches are to coaching what certified fitness instructors are to the fitness world. Here are some of the requirements:
Many professional coaches have completed a certification program, often accredited by the International Coach Federation, which requires up to 125 hours of training taking place over several months or longer. Some certification programs also require an exam, completion of hours observed by a mentor coach, and receiving coaching from a senior level coach. Coaches who complete certification become certified professional coaches or another designation bestowed by their certification program.
Some coaches, certified or not, choose to complete a credential, usually with the International Coach Federation. This requires at least 100 documented hours of coaching experience, passing an exam, and in some cases (depending on the type of credential and selected path), mentor coaching and/or the submission of recorded sessions for evaluation. Credentialed coaches (ACC, PCC or MCC) must complete continuing education to maintain their credential, which must be renewed every three years.
In sum, all credentialed coaches are trained, many credentialed coaches are certified, but not all certified coaches are credentialed. The latter case is similar to that of a social worker that has completed their MSW degree but is not yet licensed as a counselor.
Being clear about the qualifications that professional coaches possess is not about denigrating those who arenât certified or credentialed. Many coaches who are not certified or credentialed are very skilled. But many of them are not. Some of them are not even doing coaching, and they are neither held to a professional code of ethics nor required to meet continuing education requirements.
Our clients trying to support their struggling transgender leader had good intentions, but have a common misunderstanding of what coaching entails. Suggesting that a person from the Human Rights Campaign would be qualified to coach a transgender executive just because theyâre LGBTQ is like saying a person whoâs good at arithmetic is qualified to do your tax returns, or a person with nice hair is qualified to cut yours. Professional coaches have a specialized, often highly developed skill set that should not be devalued or dismissed.
Both coaching and mentoring are critical to developing employees from underrepresented and marginalized identity groups. While we do need insightful, validating facilitators of our self-discovery, we also need competent role models to show us the way.
When Tesla added a pair of independent directors to its board late last year, the bulk of the attention went to the more famous of the two â Larry Ellison, Oracleâs billionaire founder and a recent Tesla investor.
More noteworthy for the people management industry is the controversial car makerâs appointment of Kathleen Wilson-Thompson, executive vice president and global chief human resources officer of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.
Wilson-Thompson, 61, is the latest C-level HR professional picked for a board seat at a U.S. public company, part of a nearly three-fold increase over the past decade in CHROs and other top HR executives with positions on U.S. corporate boards.
Itâs a trend that industry leaders, analysts, academics and former CHROs believe will continue.
Boards historically shied away from adding members without operating experience, but more have warmed to the idea of including HR experts to better grapple with risk and compliance issues related to everything from the #MeToo movement and diversity to rising employee activism. A tight labor market thatâs made companies appreciate the value of a strong corporate culture and a positive employer brand also is contributing to HR executivesâ attractiveness as board members.
âBoards typically havenât had great insights into whatâs happening in the organization,â said Donald âDJâ Schepker, research director at the University of South Carolina Center for Executive Succession, which studies board issues. âHaving directors with HR expertise allows them to ask more pointed questions about the culture, and in todayâs environment, thatâs probably the top issue that boards are focused on.â
Wilson-Thompson has been Walgreensâ CHRO since 2010, four years before the company acquired Boots Alliance to create a global retail and wholesale pharmaceutical giant that today has approximately 418,000 employees and annual revenue of $117 billion. Before joining Walgreens, Wilson-Thompson spent 17 years at Kellogg Co., in various corporate HR and legal roles.
As a woman and African American, Thompson adds to the diversity of Teslaâs board, which previously had two women and two people of color out of nine board members. As a former employment lawyer with a decade of board duty, she also brings experience that the board could use as Tesla deals with management and people issues on multiple fronts.
Tesla added the independent directors to settle a Securities and Exchange Commission complaint that alleged CEO Elon Musk lied in an August Twitter post about securing funding to take the company private. As part of the settlement, Musk stepped down as chairman, and he and the company paid separate $20 million fines.
After boosting its workforce by 30 percent in 2018 to meet demand for lower-cost Model S sedans, Tesla in mid-January announced a 7 percent layoff. The reduction will help cut operating expenses in advance of shrinking U.S. tax credits for electric cars that will effectively boost Tesla vehiclesâ sticker prices, according to a Jan. 18 email Musk sent to employees.
Wilson-Thompson did not respond to several requests for comment. A Telsa spokesperson declined to comment beyond a Dec. 28 statement announcing the board appointments. In it, the company praised her for bringing âa passion for building and promoting great workplaces.â
Gaining a Seat at the Table
Securing more board seats could be the outcome of the much-discussed, long-hyped goal of getting HR a seat at the table. From 2005 to 2017, the number of HR executives on U.S. public company boards almost tripled, from 84 to a record high of 243, according to Equilar, the executive compensation and corporate governance data analysis firm. Equilar compiled the data by reviewing board seats held by HR executives at companies in the Russell 3000 index, which represents approximately 98 percent of all U.S. public companies.
Even so, the portion of C-level HR executives with board positions is minuscule. Only 3.7 percent of U.S. HR pros who are named corporate officers at the companies they work for also sit on one or more corporate boards. That represents an increase from about 2.4 percent in 2005, but a drop from a high of 5 percent in 2014, according to Equilar.
Wilson-Thompsonâs appointment also highlights the increase in the number of women on corporate boards. In 2018, women comprised 18 percent of U.S. corporate directors, up slightly from 16.5 percent in 2017, according to Equilar.
Last year, California became the first state to mandate that by the end of 2019 public companies have at least one female director, a number that by 2021 will rise to two for boards with five members, and three for boards with six members or more. In December, a bill was introduced in the New Jersey state legislature that if passed would impose the same requirements on companies based there.
Despite the bigger role that HR executives play on some boards, others still will not consider CHRO candidates because many of those individuals lack operating experience. CHROs also must combat a misperception that HR professionals arenât good with numbers, an outdated notion given todayâs widespread use of analytics in HR departments but one that nevertheless persists.
âIf I have a half hour with a CEO, theyâll walk away convinced they need an HR person on their board,â said Robert Lambert, a former CHRO at Macyâs, Patagonia and REI who now works as an executive search consultant for Allegis Partners. âBut the big search firms have thousands of people who look fabulous on paper. Why would they go to the extra effort to pitch an HR person? They donât, itâs not worth their time. Even for the most accomplished female or diverse candidates, itâs virtually impossible.â
Waiting in the Wings
To get around that kind of thinking, organizations that support HR leaders or women in management run programs to ensure that when the call comes, their members and clients are ready.
According to Women Corporate Directors, a New York organization that supports women on private and public boards, about 18 percent of its 2,400 members sit on Fortune 500 boards. The organization is piloting programs in New York and Los Angeles that groom C-level women executives looking for their first board appointments. The timing is right, said Susan Keating, the organizationâs CEO. âWhether itâs #MeToo or the California legislation around women in boardrooms, thereâs a heightened awareness of the need for more diversity, and more gender diversity.â
Catalyst Inc., the womenâs leadership consulting and advisory firm, created a program in 2013 to coach CHROs and other women with at least 10 years of C-level experience to fill board vacancies. Members of Catalyst Women on Board meet eight times over two years to set goals, strategize and get feedback from mentors. âHaving a diverse board with women and people of color enhances problem solving,â said Meesha Rosa, Catalystâs senior director, corporate board services. âIt sets the company up to win in the market of the future.â
Employees, shareholders and other investors are holding boards responsible for corporate-level decisions made under their watch. A recent example of that is the lawsuit that shareholders of Google parent company Alphabet filed in January over a former Google senior executive who was accused of sexual harassment but still awarded a $90 million exit package when he left the company.
âBoards are going to have to be more accountable,â said Johnny Taylor, CEO at the Society for Human Resource Management. âWeâre in this knowledge-based economy, so you canât just dismiss it. You canât just replace talent. It could be your superstars that donât want to work here. Thatâs changed the game.â
Where are we at with <insert random request for information>?â
If you hear this type of question from a new boss as an HR leader, be alert. This question is not an invitation to list whatâs been done. Itâs a test.
Put on a helmet, kids, because Iâm about to give you some tough love.
In the future, all of you reading this will get a new boss. Most of you will have five to 10 new bosses across the rest of your career, which is reflective of how chaotic work is for our generation and the general pace of change.
Some of those new bosses are going to have manageable expectations. But itâs important to note that many of them are going to expect new things out of you, and they generally wonât be that concerned with your feelings.
Many of the new bosses are going to expect you to be great in the way you do HR. The problem with that? Their definition of great is going to be different than yours, and their definition is the only one that counts.
Hereâs how your interactions with a new boss who expects you to be great are going to go:
1. The new boss comes in and things appear fine. This is called the honeymoon period. All parties are getting to know each other, and your new boss is forming opinions of what heâs got related to talent on the team. There are lunches, light meetings and even some jokes!
2. Youâre presented with a challenge, and you do what you do, and what you have always done. Letâs assume the challenge is about recruiting, and the boss asks you what youâre doing to recruit developers. You reply with what youâve always done, which is to post far and wide and pray those postings are effective. Note that you didnât do more than what you did in the past in this area. It was out of your comfort zone, and what you had always done had always been enough.
3. The new boss expresses on some level that youâll need to think differently to meet expectations. How your new boss frames this request depends on the challenge, but it generally follows a âWhat else you got?â
4. The new boss doesnât tell you what more looks like, but will tell you if they are impressed by what youâre doing. Thatâs why theyâre the boss. If they have to tell you what to do, theyâre not sure why they need you on the team. They wonât tell you what to do, but they will compliment you if youâre on the right track and if you keep them updated on progress.
5. Silence is dangerous. Long stretches of silence are generally accompanied by you being fired or someone else being hired above you.The most dangerous thing you can do with a new boss is not engage. If you accept silence and refuse to get in front of the relationship, thatâs you doing what youâve always done. Organizational change usually follows long periods of silence.
I know. Things were fine before the new boss came along. Youâre not sure why you have to change, and it generally seems unfair.
Iâm not here to argue with how you feel. Iâm just here to tell you that most of us will have at least one new boss who acts like this. Your cadence with that new boss is going to feel almost exactly how I outlined above â if you look closely.
The danger is that you donât make a move to get in front of it. When the new boss comes in and immediately wonders if you suck at HR, itâs not an automatic death sentence. You can adjust to the new expectation and perhaps even learn along the way.
To react to the new boss who has higher expectations, youâll have to be assertive in changing your day-to-day routine. While thatâs hard enough, itâs only the tip of the iceberg. Reinventing how you are doing HR also comes with confrontation of others â vendors, the people you manage on your HR team and the managers and employees in the client groups you support.
Youâre on the clock with any new boss both as an HR leader and a line HR pro. Whether you report to a CEO as an HR leader or a new VP of HR as a line HR pro, youâre likely to be tested.
You have to play offense. Donât be fooled by long periods of silence, because low engagement from your new boss can represent an extended severance period, the kind where everyone knew but you.
The first â a boy bullied and called a “sissy,” a man grabs at a woman’s behind, a businessman condescending to a female employee. During, a voice over notes that men make “the same old excuses”: Boys will be boys.
Then, vignettes of men doing better â intervening against sexual harassment, being attentive fathers to their daughters, promoting peace over violence.
The tagline: “Bullying. Harassment. Is this the best a man can get? It’s only by challenging ourselves to do more, that we can get closer to our best. To say the right thing, to act the right way.”
This message should not be controversial. But it has been. Very.
Piers Morgan: “The subliminal message is clear: men, ALL men are bad, shameful people who need to be directed in how to be better people.”
A slew of folks on Twitter who are calling for people to #BoycottGillette.
Here’s the thing. Gillette’s add calling for an end to toxic masculinity isn’t the problem. Toxic masculinity is the problem.
We men can, should, and must do better. #MeToo isn’t a catchphrase, it’s a philosophy. Equality should not be controversial.
And yet, it is. Until we men do better â until we stop bullying those we see as weak or un-masculine, until we stop grabbing and groping, until we stop condescending to those who we view as different or weaker, and start treating women as equals, intervening to stop harassment, and being better role models â harassment and discrimination will continue to plague our society and our workplaces.
I fully recognize that a sizable portion of my readers will take issue with my stance on this commercial and this issue. And that’s OK.
The ad is designed to spark debate. So let’s have a debate. Defend your position that the ad insults men. Without debate nothing will change.
And on issues of gender equality and sexual harassment, change is long overdue.
This December, employment search engine Indeed and job-hunting service Glassdoor released their respective lists of top places to work. Indeedâs list identified the top workplace cultures of 2018, while Glassdoor noted the 10 best places to work in 2019.
These two lists had one thing in common: In-N-Out Burger and Southwest Airlines.
The fast food restaurant In-N-Out Burger was ranked second by Indeed and third by Glassdoor. It received great feedback from both sites for sticking to the same plan and resisting any new trends in the fast food industry. Its simple menu and tasty food have attracted both celebrities and burger fans alike for a long time.
Southwest Airlines was ranked No. 10 on both sites. On Glassdoor, Southwest Airlinesâ mission of being dedicated to the highest quality of customer service and company spirit gave them a 4.4/5 rating.
Amy C. Edmondson, Harvard Business School
Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School and and author of The Fearless Organization, Amy C. Edmondson, believes In-N-Out Burger and Southwest Airlines cracked both lists because they are places that would qualify as âpsychologically safeâ workplaces.
â[In a psychologically safe workplace,] people feel their voice is valued,â Edmondson said. âAt Southwest, theyâre incredibly collaborative and engaged in getting planes turned around quickly and safely. Southwest is a terrific example of a culture that has worked hard to ensure its employees know that their voices are valued and welcome.â
Edmondson has three tips for offices to overcome intrapersonal fear and create psychological safety. These tips allow for more people to speak up, ask for help and address what isnât working in the office. It gives everyone a healthy mindset while on the clock.
First, constantly remind people of what theyâre up against, Edmondson said. âWhat are the challenges, what is the nature of the work an office does, [and] what is world of which we now live in?â
She suggests asking respectful questions to people about their work, then taking a moment to think before reacting to any bad news.
Edmondson said that having psychological safety in the workplace has other positive results as well.
âIt leads to the work feeling meaningful, believing what you do has an impact, believing that your colleagues are dependable and having some structure and clarity about tasks,â Edmondson said. âPsychological safety is the underpinning factor to other aspects of a healthy workplace.â
The day has finally arrived. Itâs time to announce the Worst Employer of 2018.
To remind you, we had four finalists in contention for this ⌠(dis)honor:
The Murdering Manager â company owner hires two men to rough-up a handyman who was not doing his job, and they accidentally kill him.
The Sexist, Racist, Xenophobic, Oh My! â plant manager calls foreign-born employees “terrorists” and women “bitches,” and tells the only black employee that her husband should work in a cotton field with a rope around his neck.
The Supervisor Supremacist â supervisor begins morning staff meetings by saying “White Power” and giving the Nazi salute; when African-American employee complains, he finds himself hanged in effigy.
The Tasering Torturer â company owner disciplines employee by threatening to kill him, lighting fires near him, and repeatedly shocking him with a taser.
The final vote wasn’t close. The winner tallied an astounding 62% of all first place votes.
The Worst Employer of 2018 isâŚ
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The Murdering Manager
I love it when a local boy makes good. This story came from my own backyard, right here in Northeast Ohio. In fact, the top two were both Ohio employers. (Next year, Buckeye State, let’s not try quite so hard.) Rounding out the finalists are The Sexist, Racist, Xenophobic, Oh My! in third place, and the The Supervisor Supremacist in fourth.
What did we learn? That murder bests torture, and they both top harassment of any variety.
This brings 2018’s contest to a close. I hope everyone had a little fun, and learned something along the way.
The contest has already resumed for the Worst Employer of 2019 â Our first nominee, The Philandering Pharmacist (thankfully not from Ohio), has already set a pretty high bar.
This past year weâve reported on many aspects surrounding employee benefits, from the shifting retirement landscape to workplace stress and beyond. As we approach 2019, several employee-benefits experts shared with Workforce what trends theyâre expecting next year.
Encouraging employees to map out their individual work-life balance strategy:Â
Employees should make a point to consciously create a harmonious balance between their work and non-work lives, according to Rick Hughes, head of service at the University of Aberdeen’s Counselling Service and a co-author of the book âThe Wellbeing Workout,â along with Andrew Kinder and Cary L. Cooper. Their work life can have a positive influence on their non-work life and vice versa.
âFor example, a walk or fresh-air break at lunchtime can boost energy and generate a feel-good factor to aid afternoon productivity,â he said. âOr managing problems before leaving work may help to prevent thinking about the issues at home. Itâs about getting things into perspective.â
Becoming more holistic in your wellness approach:Â
One trend that is emerging now is the need to incorporate all dimensions of health into well-being programs, according to Joyce Young, managing director for the High Health Network. Research has found that to achieve the highest level of total well-being, one must focus on physical, mental and emotional wellness as well and oneâs purpose in life.
In practice, this means that just focusing on an illness isnât enough. For example, depression screening has value is some ways, but, ultimately, itâs just a disease search, Young said. Itâs not a holistic approach.
âWe need to provide the techniques and methods for the everyday person whoâs not seeking treatment to be able to build their capacity and strength in the mental, emotional and purpose in life directions,â Young said.
Cecile Alper-Leroux, vice president of human capital management innovation at Ultimate Software, agreed that this is a major trend for HR leaders to be aware of and gave some practical suggestions on how to pursue it.
Employers should design work with overall employee well-being in mind, she said. They can also offer transformative technologies to help monitor and interact with employees to support and reinforce positive behavior.
Creating a workplace where people feel like their total well-being is supported is no easy task, she said. But it will âincreasingly set apart the workplaces where employees will want to stay and be their most productive selves, and those that will struggle to retain the best talent.â
Reconsidering your conceptual understanding of health:
According to early trends in a survey sheâs involved with, Joyce Young said, 90 percent of people find that the messaging of health frames it as a problem, not a resource. That is, when people see health-related communications, most of it is about getting treatment for an existing problem rather than general self-care.
âItâs not a surprise, but if the mindset is that way, then we donât have as much motivation to cultivate [health as a] resource because weâre thinking more, we need to get this treatment or solve this problem,â she said.
Alternatively, if people thought of health as a resource, they could benefit in several ways. One, the health care system will deliver more for them. Also, the risks of the kinds of health problems by which people are preoccupied will decrease.
âWe must bring our conceptual understanding into the 21st century,â Young said. âIf we think differently, that will help us act differently as well.â
Considering onsite health care:Â
This year saw a few Silicon Valley powerhouses like Apple and Tesla develop their own worksite health centers, and these werenât the only organizations bringing health care onsite, said Michael Huang, national medical director of Marathon Health. In 2018, one third of organizations with 5,000 or more employees provided a general medical clinic at or near the worksite, up from 24 percent in 2012, according to Mercerâs â2018 Worksite Medical Clinics Survey.â
The onsite health care model has proven results, with employers who measured their ROI last year reporting âreturns of 1.5 times or higher,â Huang said. He expects momentum to continue in this area in 2019, with companies of all industries and sizes working with providers to create customized plans and programs that fit their budgets and the unique needs of their employee populations.
âBy inserting the health system into the existing workplace, physicians are better able to forge lasting relationships with patients through face-to-face, personalized interactions,â he said. âThis individualized care encourages regular visits to the health center, allowing employers to better track health trends, and improvement on those trends, by an employee population.â
Mental health is one area in which onsite care can be particularly beneficial, he said, as employers can utilize onsite care to give employees direct access to resources like counseling and therapy from licensed counselors, addressing barriers to mental health care like long waits for appointments and poor quality of care.
In addition to streamlining access to quality behavioral health care, âbringing these resources onsite signals that employeesâ needs are understood and supported, reducing the mental health stigma in the workplace,â Huang said.
Providing cancer support services as an employee benefit:
The number of cancer patients and survivors will reach almost 18 million in the next decade, according to the CDC. And according to a recent survey that nonprofit Cancer and Careers commissioned The Harris Poll to conduct, 79 percent of the respondents said that patients/survivors that receive support from their employer are more likely to thrive in the workplace.
The poll â which surveyed 882 cancer patients/survivors who were either employed or unemployed but looking for work â also found that 53 percent of respondents feel that resources or support programs are needed to address cancer survivorsâ workplace concerns, and 64 percent believe that working through their cancer treatment helped them cope.
Penn Mutual Life Insurance is one example of an organization seeking to expand its cancer care services. It began offering services this October through Cancer Guardianâs Comprehensive Cancer Support Program, which includes advanced DNA testing, dedicated cancer support specialists and digital medical records management.
Penn Mutual President and Chief Operating Officer David OâMalley said that a year before the launch of this program, the company began talks with Wamberg Genomic Advisors to learn about the changing genomics landscape and from there spent the next year deciding how to best leverage the cancer benefit.
What the company ended up deciding was offering the benefit to its 1,000-plus associates as a supplemental, employer-paid benefit, available to associates regardless of if theyâre on Penn Mutualâs health plan. Also, the company does not track utilization. âPrivacy is important to us,â OâMalley said, adding that the company didnât want employees to feel as if their medical privacy was being infringed.
âWe saw this as the opportunity to have a leading benefit,â he said. While benefits surveys have data on cancer insurance at organizations â the Society for Human Resource Management, for example, found that 33 percent of organizations offered cancer insurance in 2018, up from 28 percent in 2017 â the percentage of organizations offering comprehensive cancer support benefits is not as readily available.
Meet Joyce Fogleman, the president, pharmacist and sole owner of J&S Professional Pharmacy, who is, along with her pharmacy, the defendant in a sexual harassment suit in Blades v. J&S Professional Pharmacy.Â
With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Judge J. Philip Gilbert of The United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois describes the employer as “your typical pharmacy.”
Typical, that is, until you read the allegations levied by Wendy Blades and her co-workers:
Joyce Fogleman demanded kisses on her mouth by employees as a prerequisite to receive their paychecks.
Fogleman gave employee spankings as a form of discipline and sexual gratification in front of other employees and customers.
Fogleman went nude both in the workplace and at company-sponsored events.
Fogleman made comments about the physical attributes of employees in front of other employees and customers.
Two thoughts:
1. What the hell kind of pharmacy is this?
2. Employers, the bar for 2019 is set. How will you top it?
In my experience, self-improvement is a day-to-day task. Itâs a culmination of hard work that over time is accomplished by small but constant steps.
With the new year comes a good number of people whose New Yearâs resolution is to get healthy. Given that people spend a good amount of time at the workplace, Iâve spoken with workplace wellness experts and others about well-being tips employees should keep in mind on a day-to-day basis in 2019. Some of them have also explained the employerâs role is in accomplishing these basic tasks.
Keep track of your achievements: Sometimes we can get caught up in the fast pace at work, getting bogged down by problems and difficulties and failing to appreciate our successes along the way, said Rick Hughes, head of service at the University of Aberdeen’s Counseling Service and a co-author of the book âThe Wellbeing Workout,â along with Andrew Kinder and Cary L. Cooper. This can lead to anxiety, tension and stress.
âToward the end of each work day, list three âachievementsâ of the day in your diary,â Hughes suggested, adding that they donât need to be major accomplishments. They can be as simple as âI had a good meeting with my colleagueâ or âI got appreciation from a customer.â
âAt the end of the week youâll have 15 achievements,â he said. âSit back, applaud yourself and look forward to building on this further the following week.â
âBelieve it or not, being composed is a skill,â Young said. âWhen youâre composed you have more control, more optimism, you make better decisions, and those decisions you make, because theyâre better, help you stay in balance.â
She suggested three ways in which people can hone this skill.
Connect with something personally meaningful. âIf you stop every so often and say, what is meaningful to me? It resets the idea that Iâm not just wandering here. There are things in my life that matter to me, and you basically are connecting with them. If we donât connect and reflect, then these important points in our lives get away from us,â Young said. She added that if someone spends a couple minutes reflecting on whatâs personally meaningful to them, the example might not be something positive. It could be something thatâs causing negative thoughts or emotions. Thatâs still valuable, though, since it gives people a sense of centering and takes them away from the trivial things that can take up oneâs day-to-day life.
Nap. Studies have shown that even a three-minute nap can be refreshing, Joyce said. Personally, she enjoys taking 20-minute naps many days. Short naps can help someone feel more refreshed and composed.
Connect with nature. This can help with something called âattention fatigue,â Joyce said. Oneâs sense of attention gets tired, much like a muscle, and experiencing nature can help restore that attention, for example by looking out the window at the office at the park across the street or keeping plants at the desk.
HR has a role in this, too. First, if decision makers in the HR community actually engage in the practices, they get the benefit of the practices, Young said. Also, if they engage in practices like this then itâs easier and more apparent to them what specific things they could do to help support their employees in similar endeavors.
Get fresh air: Expanding on Youngâs âconnect with natureâ idea further, Tracy Hultgren, the creator of the blog Trail Tracing, advocates that people take a little time out of their day to get fresh air and take a walk. Hultgren spoke with Workforce earlier this year, and his ideas are worth revisiting.
For one, his notion to walk outside every day is simple and applicable to most geographies, from the middle of a city to a suburb close to local parks. Walking is a simple form of exercise that most people can do, Hultgren said. While many people have an âall-or-nothingâ approach to working out â an attitude like, âIf Iâm not going to run a marathon, Iâm not going to run at allâ â allowing oneself a short, stress-free daily workout like walking lets them have a little time every day to take care of themselves in a low-key and not stressful way.
An employerâs role in this is simple. Basically, they just have to be open to allowing employees a short amount of time each day to leave their desk.
Scrap the resolutions: This one is coming from me. A while ago, a friend suggested that having a âgoalâ for the year was better than having the traditional resolution. So instead of telling yourself to go to yoga once a week, make a theme like âtranquility.â
Itâs something more flexible, realistic and creative, because instead of doing one specific task every so often, you have a general vibe youâre striving for, and a lot of different activities fit in it. You might to yoga to calm down and feel more at peace, but you could also go on a long walk, spend a little time pampering yourself, or cook yourself a dinner that makes your apartment smell good.
This is also something realistic to fit in your everyday life, I believe.
Any other wellness tips you find valuable in your workplace? Comment below or reach out to me on Twitter @Andie_Burjek. Iâll add them to this list post-publication.
The tagline: “Bullying. Harassment. Is this the best a man can get? It’s only by challenging ourselves to do more, that we can get closer to our best. To say the right thing, to act the right way.”
