2019 - Page 8 of 11 - Best Money Moves

4 Big Employee Benefits Trends for Family Planning

by LizStevens | Apr 30, 2019 | Blog

4 big employee benefits trends for family planning. What you need to know about family-friendly employee benefits like fertility services, paid maternity leave and childcare assistance.

More employers are offering family-friendly benefits like paid maternity leave and fertility services to attract employees in today’s competitive labor market, according to a report from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.

“Employers are recognizing that all employees have lives and commitments outside of the workplace and are expanding their benefits to be more inclusive. These types of benefits help employees address work-life conflicts, while keeping them productive and engaged at work,” explained Julie Stitch, CEBS, associate vice president of content at the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. “I expect we’ll see family-friendly benefits continue to grow as part of the larger trend of expanding work-life balance policies.’”

Family Planning Employee Benefits for Fertility

Fertility benefits aren’t just for big corporations anymore. Ten percent of employers with 50 or fewer employees offer some sort of fertility benefit (up from 4 percent in 2016). More than 30 percent of employers with 500 or more employees offer fertility benefits (up from 24 percent in 2016). Employers most commonly offer:

In-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments (23 percent)
Fertility medications (18 percent)
Genetic testing to determine infertility issues (15 percent)
Non-IVF fertility treatments (13 percent)
Visits with fertility counselors (9 percent)
Egg harvesting or freezing services (7 percent)

Paid Leave Benefits Are Expanding

Paid leave offerings are expanding as employers strive to meet the demands of employees’ personal lives. Maternity leave is offered by more than 40 percent of employers of all sizes, from employers who manage fewer than 50 employees to companies with more than 10,000 employees. More than 30 percent of employers now offer paternity leave (up from 24 percent in 2016) and more than 20 percent offer paid adoption leave.

It’s important to note employers are providing additional types of leave for different situations, for example:

Paid family/caregiving leave (17 percent)
Paid leave to attend a child’s activities (8 percent)
Unpaid family leave (34 percent offer this beyond FMLA requirements)
Unpaid adoption leave (26 percent)
Unpaid leave to attend a child’s activities (25 percent)

Flexible Scheduling Benefits for Parents

Flexible scheduling is a must, especially for parents. More than half of employers offer flexible work hours or compressed work weeks. Nearly ten percent of employers offer ‘job sharing’, where two or more employees share one full-time job. Employers also offer childcare benefits that resolve some of the need for flexibility and help parents cover the steep cost of childcare:

Resource and referral services for childcare (27 percent)
Emergency/sick childcare (7 percent)
On-site or near-site childcare (5 percent)
Childcare subsidies (3 percent)

Employee Benefits for Financial/Family Planning

Financial planning is a necessity for family planning. More than 70 percent of employers offer dependent care flexible spending accounts. Fifteen percent of employers now offer 529 savings plans that help save for children’s higher education. Over 10 percent offer scholarships or paid tuition for employees’ children.

More on Employee Benefits:

Employee Benefits Success is All About Communication

10 Quick Highlights from SHRM’s 2018 Benefits Report

What are the Latest Trends in Benefits Strategies?

Research Says Employees Want Financial Wellness Programs

A Lack of Healthcare Benefits is Causing Financial Toxicity

What Benefits Do Employees Want in the New Year?

Top 10 Workplace Etiquette Rules for Communication

by LizStevens | Apr 24, 2019 | Blog

Top 10 workplace etiquette rules for communication. Work-related emails sent after hours are stressing employees out and here’s what appropriate office etiquette looks like in a digital age.

Ninety-seven percent of employees receive work-related emails after hours and most feel obligated to respond promptly, according to research by Signs.com.

Workplace Etiquette: Should You Send Work-Related Emails After Hours?

Nearly 35 percent of employees are stressed out by work communications after hours. Millennials were most likely to feel anxious about late-night work correspondence. Research by Adobe found white-collar workers between the ages of 25 to 34 spend more than six hours a day checking their email. More than a third of them check their email right when they get up, before they’ve even gotten out of bed.

Worker accessibility after hours is a relatively new phenomenon that thought leaders and lawmakers are evaluating. New York was the first to consider a law that would bar employers from requiring employees to check emails after hours.

Employees are more connected than ever because of the digital revolution and as such, they’re more likely to be affected by one another’s behavior. What are the new rules?

Top 10 Workplace Etiquette Rules for Communication

Don’t Use a Speakerphone. Roughly 70 percent of employees found using a speakerphone in a shared or open office to be unacceptable. If it’s a call you need to take hands-free, use a headset or find a private room to avoid distracting your coworkers.
Gossiping Isn’t Good Team Building. Talk about the weather, sports, upcoming events, or send a sweet GIF, but whatever you do don’t fall into gossiping as a way to relate with coworkers.
DON’T USE ALL CAPS. Using all caps indicates an aggressive tone, or a lack of digital skills, neither of which will be appreciated by coworkers. The only time caps are acceptable in the workplace is when you are sending “CONGRATULATIONS!” to celebrate an achievement.
Reply Carefully. More than 60 percent of employees consider it poor workplace etiquette to hit reply-all to emails. This rule requires some finesse. Don’t reply all to an email asking for your order for the staff lunch. Do reply all to a department-wide update to make sure everyone knows you’re on the same page.
Politics Aren’t Welcome.
More than half of employees think it’s inappropriate to discuss politics in the workplace. Even if you think your political interests are aligned with your coworkers, it’s best to keep politics or off the clock.
Silence Your Phone. You’re going to compulsively check your phone at least once every half hour anyway, do you really need a ringtone or vibration for every notification? Your coworkers certainly don’t think you do.
Don’t Copy the Whole Team. Before sending an email ask yourself: who needs to see this? If it’s not something that the entire organization needs to know, there’s no reason why everyone should be copied. Be more selective when sending general correspondence to coworkers.
Take Calls When You’re Available. It should be clear that taking a call while going to the bathroom is poor workplace etiquette, but roughly 45 percent of employees think it’s still worth mentioning. It’s embarrassing to have to reschedule a call because of your bladder, but it’s far more uncomfortable for everyone involved to be on a call while you’re using the restroom.
Use Styles Appropriately. Forty percent of workers think the improper use of bolds or italics in work communications is unacceptable. This is somewhat similar to using all caps in the way that it could convey an unintended tone. Bold/italics also have a tendency to draw the attention of the eye, so if a random word is bolded or italicized it can be confusing and distract viewers from the message itself.
Keep Your Jokes to Yourself. More than a third of employees think it’s poor workplace etiquette to send joke emails to the entire team. It really depends on your work culture whether or not it’s appropriate to send joke emails, but the important qualifier here is ‘to the entire team.’ Rarely, if ever, will there be an occasion for you to send an unsolicited joke email to your entire organization.

More on Workplace Etiquette and Office Culture

2 Simple Strategies to Improve Office Culture

What’s Wrong with Wellness Program Incentives?

How Do You Handle Management Issues?

Do Flexible Work Schedules Work?

4 Modern Office Design Trends to Watch

Retirement Concerns: Is Financial Literacy the Solution?

by LizStevens | Apr 17, 2019 | Blog

Retirement concerns: is financial literacy the solution? Those workers that do have a 401k aren’t saving enough to cover expenses in retirement, even when employers match contributions.

Retirement is a far-off goal most Americans don’t even think about while they’re paying down debts, struggling to pay for childcare and taking care of aging parents. It’s become so disconnected from reality that 20 percent of Americans are actually basing their retirement plans on winning the lottery, according to research by Stash.

Americans Are Not Saving Enough for Retirement

Not saving enough for retirement is the number one fear among middle-income earners, and with good reason. Four researchers at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University recently found three-fourths of American workers with defined contribution plans like 401(k)s aren’t saving enough to maintain their standard of living later in life.

Can Financial Literacy Solve Retirement Concerns?

Nearly half of U.S. adults failed to correctly answer basic financial literacy questions in a recent annual assessment.

The P-Fin Index by the TIAA Institute asks 28 questions across eight functional areas of finance including: earning, consuming, saving, investing, borrowing/managing debt, insuring, comprehending risk and go-to information sources. American adults scored highest in the area of borrowing/managing debt and lowest in comprehending risk.

This year, the P-Fin Index included several new questions indicative of financial wellness. According to the report by TIAA Institute, “Greater financial literacy is positively associated with the capacity to handle a financial shock, saving for retirement on a regular basis, being unconstrained by debt and other indicators of financial well-being.”

Financial Wellness Programs and Financial Literacy

Financial literacy is indicative of financial wellness and high school curriculums across the country are adding personal finance courses as a requirement for high school graduation to start addressing the widespread lack of financial literacy.

What about the half of U.S. adults who couldn’t answer basic financial literacy questions? How can they learn the skills they need when they don’t know where to begin?

Financial wellness programs help workers improve financial literacy, pay down debt and save for retirement. They are a valuable employee benefit and with the right financial wellness program, like Best Money Moves, employees are given the tools and resources to help them attain financial literacy while they better their financial wellness.

More on Retirement:

How to Help Employees Save More for Retirement

Financial Support Limits Retirement Readiness for Parents

Revealing Research on Financial Stress and Productivity

What Does Financial Wellness Look Like for Women?

What Tops Financial Stress for Employees?

2 Top Tips for Increasing Employee Productivity

by LizStevens | Apr 9, 2019 | Blog

2 top tips for increasing employee productivity. Recent research from Cigna highlights rising employee stress and two areas employers can target to minimize worker stress and increase productivity.

Stress was identified as a key employee health problem in the 2019 Cigna 360 Well-Being Survey. Over 80 percent of workers say they’re stressed and almost 15 percent say they’re unable to cope. The top stressors are personal finances, workloads and health concerns.

Stressed out employees don’t think employers are helping much. Close to 40 percent of workers say no stress management support is provided and only 30 percent receiving stress management support from their employer felt it was adequate.

It’s a serious issue. Studies have shown that employees lose sleep, are distracted at work, have higher rates of absenteeism and are more likely to have health problems when under stress.

Improve Work Culture for Better Employee Productivity

“There is a real need to resolve the ‘always on’ culture before it escalates further as it is negatively affecting the global workplace,” says Jason Sadler, President, Cigna International Markets.

More than 60 percent of employees work in an ‘always on’ culture where they feel the need to constantly access work emails, attend work calls or check mobile phones for work purposes. Workers report a decline in their physical health as a result of not having enough sleep and exercise.

Most employees feel that employers are not addressing wellness concerns sufficiently and often have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ mindset when it comes to stress management and workplace wellness programs.

Make Employee Wellness Programs Work

There are two specific employee populations that don’t feel like their workplace wellness program addresses their needs.

Half of the ‘sandwich generation’ (defined as those between 35-49) feel senior management doesn’t seriously support workplace wellness programs. Having to care for both aging parents and growing families is taking its toll on this generational cohort. More than half of those in the sandwich generation indicated there isn’t a workplace wellness program in place to address their needs, including but not limited to flexibility at work, enhanced company settings and special leave arrangements.

Over half of working women feel that workplace wellness programs need to better address the specific needs of each gender. They see an unmet demand for customized wellness programs that support flexible working hours, establish breakrooms where employees can relax, give the flexibility to work from home/elsewhere outside of the office, provide special paid leave and bolster job/employment security.

The best workplace wellness programs have various components so employees can choose the wellness benefits most relevant to their specific needs. Employers who prioritize stress management through effective wellness programs are likely to reclaim some of the employee productivity lost to stress by way of distraction and absenteeism.

More on Employee Productivity:

Do Flexible Work Schedules Work?

Know the Warning Signs of Employee Burnout

Help Your Employees Get More Sleep!

What Tops Financial Stress for Employees?

How to Raise Productivity and Employee Wellbeing in One Shot

Zombie Employees: Who Are They and What Do You Need to Know?

How to Support Mental Health at Work

Do Flexible Work Schedules Work?

by LizStevens | Apr 2, 2019 | Blog

Do flexible work schedules work? A new study by IWG found flex work policies are a key factor in winning the war for talent that benefits employers as much as it does employees.

It’s official, flex work is the new norm. More than 80 percent of U.S. employees would choose a job that offered a flexible work schedule over one that didn’t, according to the latest workspace survey by International Workplace Group (IWG). Nearly half of workers consider their commute to be the worst part of their day and one in five employees say they are ‘regularly late’ for work due to travel disruptions.

A flex work policy provides employees with a certain degree of flexibility in determining when and where they work. It’s an attractive perk for employees, but there’s another reason why more than 60 percent of businesses worldwide have adopted flexible work arrangements: there are benefits aplenty for employers, too.

What Do Employers Get From Offering Flexible Work Schedules?

More than 80 percent of companies that adopted flex work policies say that productivity has increased as a result. Close to 70 percent say having a flexible workspace helps them reduce organizational expenses, manage risk and consolidate their portfolios.

Flexible work arrangements could also benefit the U.S. economy. IWG cites a Regus report that estimates by 2030, the U.S. could see an economic boost of as much as $4.5 trillion annually from flex work.

How Flex Work Policies Works

Each organization has its own unique flex work policy. One-fifth of global workers describe flex work as the ability to make some decisions about working hours. A quarter of global employees equate it with being able to manage workloads. More than half of the global workforce views it as being able to choose the type of work location.

When the flex work trend began, flexible scheduling applied primarily to office workers, but that’s not the case any longer. Roughly 70 percent of manufacturers and retailers currently use some degree of flexible working to attract and retain staff.

Why Flexible Work Arrangments Are a Big Deal to Employees

Offering a flexible work option establishes a high level of trust and makes employees feel valued, something that can boost their organizational loyalty.

It reduces some of the stress employees have when scheduling complications arise. When a child is sick, a parent might be able to work from home instead of scrambling to find childcare (and then fretting over paying a premium for last-minute childcare). When an employee has a cold, they don’t have to push themselves to make it to work (where the illness would then spread). Similarly, if an employee has an ongoing health issue, flexibility at work could make it easier when scheduling doctors appointments, treatments, or procedures.

Most importantly, with a flexible work schedule, employees don’t feel stuck on the 9-5 grind they collectively gripe about.