employee benefits Archives

How to Improve All 5 Areas of Employee Wellness in 2020

by LizStevens | Nov 13, 2019 | Blog

How to improve all 5 areas of employee wellness in 2020. Improved employee wellness helps employees perform better and saves money in healthcare costs and turnover.

Improving employee wellness can pay off in a big way.

Employees who thrive in all five areas of wellness perform better, miss less days, adapt to change with less resistance and have lower healthcare costs and turnover, according to research by Gallup.

How to Improve All 5 Areas of Employee Wellness in 2020

These are the five elements of employee wellbeing and suggestions for how employers can support each of them:

Employee Wellness Area #1: Career Wellness

Employees want to gain personal satisfaction and enrichment from their work. They also want their work to be consistent with their values, goals and lifestyles.

How Can Employers Improve Career Wellness?

Set individual goals and have regular performance reviews where employees can see their growth.
Create paths for advancement so employees can see a future for themselves within the company.
Make it clear how each employee’s work contributes to the overall company mission. This can be especially helpful for employees in monotonous jobs who might not see how their work fits into the bigger picture.

Employee Wellness Area #2: Social Wellness

Employees want to feel a sense of belonging and social inclusion at work. They want to feel supported by their colleagues and employers. Another report by Gallup observed that close work friendships boosted employee satisfaction by 50 percent.

How Can Employers Improve Social Wellness at Work?

Hold staff lunches.
Host friendly competitions, like NFL Fantasy Leagues and March Madness pools.
Throw an annual company party or coordinate a company outing where different departments can get the chance to mingle.

Employee Wellness Area #3: Physical Wellness

Employees want physical wellbeing, the balance of physical activity, nutrition and mental well-being. They want to live long, healthy lives and avoid preventable diseases and conditions.

How Can Employers Improve Physical Wellness?

Provide healthy snacks.
Reimburse gym memberships.
Expand healthcare benefits.

Employee Wellness Area #4: Community Wellness

Employees want to engage with the communities they live in. They want to address social, economic, environmental, cultural and political conditions and help the community flourish.

How Can Employers Improve Community Wellness?

Schedule volunteer days where employees get paid to help at a local nonprofit.
Reduce your company’s environmental impact and get employees involved.
Hold a drive to donate canned food or gently used coats to a local organization that supports people experiencing extreme poverty or homelessness.

Employee Wellness Area #5: Financial Wellness

Employees want to effectively manage their finances. They want to pay off debts, manage their monthly expenses and save for retirement.

How Can Employers Improve Financial Wellness?

Give employees access to a financial wellness program that’s personalized and easy to use, like Best Money Moves.
Enroll employees in a 401(k) or a comparable retirement savings program.
Offer a student loan repayment benefit.

The battle for talent in a labor market with the lowest unemployment rate (3.5 percent) in 50 years will be won with employee wellness benefits that retain current workers and attract new hires.

Employee Financial Wellness: 5 Financial Stress Statistics for 2020

by LizStevens | Nov 6, 2019 | Blog

Employee financial wellness: 5 financial stress statistics for 2020. How much financial stress costs employers and how employees really feel about financial wellness programs.

The latest Financial Stress Survey from John Hancock Retirement found that financial wellness programs improve job retention, stress levels, and job productivity. Financial wellness programs are now a component of employee benefits that employers can’t afford to ignore.

Employee Financial Wellness: 5 Financial Stress Statistics for 2020

Here are the top 5 most important findings from the report:

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Financial Wellness Programs: Personalization Is a Must

Almost 90 percent of employers say they currently have or are developing a financial wellness strategy, but only 20 percent of employees claim their employer offers anything more than a limited financial wellness program, according to the report by John Hancock Retirement.

While most employees are experiencing financial stress, they’re all experiencing it in different areas and to different degrees. That’s why it’s increasingly important that employer solutions like financial wellness programs have capabilities for customization and personalization to make sure they can address each employee’s unique financial pain points.

Financial wellness programs, like Best Money Moves, are mobile, personalized, gamified and easy to use. Best Money Moves provides practical, unbiased help so employees can make smarter financial decisions.

More on Employee Financial Wellness and Financial Stress Statistics

Top 10 Employee Benefits for 2020

5 Must-Have Benefits for Millennial Employees

How Does Financial Wellness Affect Health?

5 Fast Financial Stress Statistics

Hiring Trends to Watch in 2020

What Is Financial Literacy and Why Is It Important?

4 Big Employee Benefit Trends for Family Planning

How Can Financial Wellness Be Improved?

How to Help Employees Prepare for Open Enrollment 2020

by LizStevens | Oct 16, 2019 | Blog

How to help employees prepare for open enrollment 2020. Being more knowledgeable about health insurance benefits will help them enroll in the plan that’s right for them.

U.S. workers dread open enrollment almost as much as going to the DMV to renew their driver’s license, according to a survey by MetLife.

This level of apprehension may explain why employees make hasty benefits decisions. One in five employees spend only a few minutes reviewing benefits plans before making a selection. Another survey by UnitedHealthcare found nearly 40 percent of employees devote less than one hour to the open enrollment process.

It’s unfortunate employees are rushing benefits decisions, especially when employers are taking a more active role in driving down healthcare costs.

What can employers do to help employees better understand how different health insurance plans affect out-of-pocket costs for healthcare?

Terms Employees Need to Know for Open Enrollment 2020

One reason workers dislike the open enrollment process could be because they don’t understand the terms used when discussing health insurance and healthcare costs. UnitedHealthcare found that some workers struggle with health literacy and defining terms like:

Health Plan Premium – The amount of money a person pays for a health insurance plan each month. (Only 59% knew the correct meaning.)
Health Plan Deductible – The amount a person pays for health care services before insurance coverage starts. (Only 53% knew the correct meaning.)
Out-of-Pocket Maximum – The maximum amount a person must pay for covered health expenses during a plan year. (Only 33% knew the correct meaning.)
Co-Insurance – The share of costs for a covered health care service a person must pay after health insurance coverage is factored in. (Only 21% knew the correct meaning.)

Misunderstanding these terms when selecting health insurance benefits could lead to higher premiums, co-pays and out of pocket costs.

Additionally, just over half of employees check if their doctors are in-network for the health plan they select. If their doctor happens to be out-of-network on their new plan, it could lead to serious headaches over higher co-pays or finding a new doctor that is in-network.

How to Help Employees Prepare for Open Enrollment 2020

Seventy-five percent of employees told UnitedHealthcare they felt prepared for open enrollment, but there’s a disconnect somewhere since most employees struggled to define basic health insurance terms.

Clearly, there are a lot of factors that employees need to consider when selecting healthcare benefits during open enrollment 2020. Here are four ways that employers can communicate with employees about open enrollment to increase their understanding of the process and prompt them to review selections more diligently:

Build a guide, checklist or cheatsheet for employees to use when reviewing available benefits.
Hold a meeting before open enrollment to go over changes in costs and healthcare offerings.
Send out an email before open enrollment that goes over terminology and the factors employees should consider when selecting their healthcare plans.
Designate a contact for questions. If an employee has a question about open enrollment should they ask their direct supervisor? A member of the HR team? Call a representative from the insurance broker?

“Employees have the unique opportunity to leverage a growing number of benefits from their employers—benefits that are specifically tailored to their needs and the needs of their families,” said Meredith Ryan-Reid, senior vice president, Group Benefits at MetLife. “But first, they need to be armed with a better understanding of how these employer-offered benefits can play a central role in protecting them against the unexpected and helping them achieve their short- and long-term financial goals.”

More On Healthcare, Health Insurance and Open Enrollment

Employee Benefits Success is All About Communication

Choosing the Most Important Benefits to Employees in 2020

What the Multigenerational Workforce Needs From Employers

What’s Wrong with Wellness Program Incentives?

Top 10 Employee Benefits for 2020

5 Must-Have Benefits for Millennial Employees

World Mental Health Day 2019: Supporting Employees at Work

by LizStevens | Oct 8, 2019 | Blog

World Mental Health Day 2019: Supporting employees at work. These are five ways employers can reduce work-related risk factors and promote mental health at work.

World Mental Health Day 2019: Supporting Employees at Work

The World Health Organization (WHO) has outlined five ways employers can reduce work-related mental health risk factors, including high job demands, low supervisor and coworker support, job insecurity and long work hours.

Plus, advances in technology are making it easier for employers to give employees access to mental health benefits that can help.

5 Ways to Promote Mental Health at Work

Research by Harvard Business Review found that less than half of employees felt their employers prioritized mental health and even fewer viewed their company leaders as mental health advocates. Most employees, 86 percent to be precise, think a company’s culture should support mental health.

Here are the WHO’s five ways employers can promote mental health, adapted from a guide from the World Economic Forum:

Implement and enforce health and safety policies and practices, including identification of distress, harmful use of psychoactive substances and illness and providing resources to manage them.
Inform employees that mental health support is available.
Involve employees in decision-making, conveying a feeling of control and participation.
Create organizational practices that support a healthy work-life balance and build programs for career development.
Recognize and reward the contributions of employees.

A study led by the WHO found that for every $1 employers put into scaled up treatment for common mental disorders, there is a return of $4 in improved health and productivity.

Mental Health Benefits During Open Enrollment

We’re only a month away from open enrollment and there have been plenty of technological developments that make it easier for employers to provide benefits that support the mental health of employees.

A recent analysis from the National Business Group on Health found that more than 80 percent of employers will provide mental health services to employees virtually. One-third of employers will offer onsite mental health counselors. More than 25 percent will provide digital cognitive behavioral therapy for mental health issues. And nearly half will provide training for managers to help them recognize mental health issues and guide workers to resources.

Now is the time to consider what kind of mental health benefits your organization offers and how you can use new technology to give employees access to programs and tools that can help.

Employee Financial Wellness Statistics 2019

by LizStevens | Sep 9, 2019 | Blog

Employee financial wellness statistics 2019. New research looks at the spillover effect financial stress has on employee productivity.

Greetings,

New research by Morgan Stanley highlights the impact financial wellness has on employee productivity.

Nearly four in five employees (78 percent) with high financial stress say that they are distracted by financial stress at work and it’s not just workers with lower incomes. More than half of employees with household incomes greater than $100,000 say debt and unexpected expenses are still sources of stress. More than 40 percent of them stress about having inadequate savings.

The statistics on how employee stress impacts productivity are important, but the most surprising finding was the demand for financial wellness programs and how they could increase job satisfaction and retention.

Employee Financial Wellness Statistics 2019

Here are the three most startling statistics about the financial stress employees experience:

50 percent of employees spend more than they earn each month.
37 percent of workers say they have more debt than they can manage.
41 percent of them say they don’t have enough savings to cover three months of living expenses.

According to the report, “Debt, unexpected expenses and inadequate savings are among the most significant sources of financial stress for employees.”

“While long-term savings and planning are the most often-cited needs, employees also need help with short-term goals like budgeting, managing debt and emergency savings.”

Employees Ask for Financial Wellness Benefits

Fewer than one-third of workers have access to financial wellness, but the third that do are putting them to good use. Forty to 60 percent of those with financial wellness benefits have used them in the last three years. Here are the two big takeaways from employees without access to financial wellness benefits:

60 percent of employees would be more likely to stay at a job if their employer offered financial wellness benefits.
71 percent of workers would be comfortable discussing financial matters at work with a financial professional unaffiliated with their employer.

Communication is key for any benefits offering, but more than 40 percent of employees don’t feel adequately informed about the benefits and programs their employees offer. How can employees better communicate benefits? Employees cited a clear explanation and easy access as the two most important factors that would make them more likely to use a benefit.

Financial wellness programs that give employees direct access to the personalized tools they need to dial down their financial stress, like Best Money Moves, can help organizations improve their productivity, retention and job satisfaction.