healthcare Archives

How to Reduce Stress in the Workplace: 3 Tips to Start

by LizStevens | May 15, 2019 | Blog

How to reduce stress in the workplace: 3 tips to start. May is Mental Health Awareness Month and here are three ways employers can reduce stress, boost morale and attract talent for better employee morale and a more productive workplace.

Forty-eight percent of employees have cried at work when stressed out, according to a recent report by Gin g er. More than 80 percent of employees say they are stressed on a regular basis and 45 percent of workers under 40 are extremely stressed on a daily basis.

Stress has a significant impact on morale and productivity in the workplace. Employees report that they are fatigued, anxious, lacking focus and engagement, irritated with coworkers, producing lower quality work, missing work and missing deadlines.

Less than 30 percent of the workforce seeks professional help for stress. Others cope with stress through self-help books, or worse, a third of employees don’t do anything. More than 90 percent of workers believe their employer should care about their emotional health and 85 percent look at behavioral health benefits when evaluating a new job.

Reducing stress and supporting mental health in the workplace is a win-win. There are three areas where organizations have an opportunity to tackle stress, boost morale and attract talent.

Boost Benefits to Reduce Stress

The good news is that 50 percent of employees are more likely to do something proactive about their emotional and mental health than they were 5 years ago. The bad news is that even if an organization offers behavioral health benefits, employees might not be able to use them. The most common barriers to care are high copays for mental health services and a lack of providers who are in-network.

Employers are getting creative to break through some of these barriers. Ocean Spray, which makes cranberry drinks and sauces, recently announced that it will waive behavioral health copays for its roughly 2,000 employees beginning this summer.

Other organizations are striving to give employees access to more providers who are in-network by adding onsite behavioral health clinics or telemedicine providers that offer on-demand teletherapy or telepsychiatry.

Reduce Stress with Office Environment

There are many elements of office design that can either increase or decrease stress. A recent study found that natural light or views of the outdoors were the most sought after office design perks, outranking onsite cafeterias, fitness centers and onsite childcare. Another study looks at how different colors can affect employee productivity and communicate messages about your brand.

Employers can also create a workplace culture that’s less stressful by encouraging employees to take five minutes a day to be less stressed. Whether it’s spent meditating, taking a walk, journaling, taking deep breaths, grabbing a coffee, or googling ‘ways to reduce stress’, it’s five minutes where employees can tune into themselves and get back to work with renewed focus and productivity. It’s only five minutes and it demonstrates to employees that you genuinely care about their emotional wellbeing, even if they don’t participate.

Flexibility to Reduce Stress

Half of workers report missing at least one day of work per year due to stress, anxiety, or some other emotional or mental health challenge. Organizations that offer more flexibility around scheduling can give employees an opportunity to slow down when they’re stressed out.

Flexible work arrangements provide employees with a certain flexibility in determining when and where they work. The two most common flexible work policies are work from home policies and unlimited paid leave policies. When an employer develops a new flex work policy it’s best to find the mid-point between organizational demands and workforce needs.

More on Stress and Mental Health in the Workplace:

Stress, Money and Millennials: Where’s the Pain Point?

How High is Work-Related Stress and What’s Causing It?

How to Support Mental Health at Work

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

What’s the Best Move When Your Employees Are Stressed About Healthcare Costs?

Revealing Research on Financial Stress and Productivity

Financial Wellness Month: How to Make the Most of It

by LizStevens | Jan 16, 2019 | Blog

Financial Wellness Month: How to Make the Most of It. Employers can help reduce financial stress that hinders productivity by providing tools that help employees pay down debt and save for retirement.

January is National Financial Wellness Month! It’s perfect timing because Americans are facing their New Year’s resolutions and preparing for tax season.

Here are 5 areas of financial wellness where employees need support most:

Helping Save More for Retirement

Employees experience debilitating financial stress when it comes to retirement and they want employers to provide tools and support that ensure they’ll have enough money saved to last through retirement.

Preparing for Future Healthcare Expenses

Long-term healthcare, like nursing homes or assisted living, is expensive and although 70 percent of Americans will need it, more than 60 percent have nothing saved.

Tackling Student Loan Debt

Student loan debt surpasses $1.5 trillion and it is affecting your workforce. Student loan debt is affecting all age groups, it’s keeping younger employees from major life milestones and it is making your employees sick.

Spending Smarter

More than half of Americans spend more than they earn and 70 percent consider their level of debt to be problematic. Almost 50 percent have credit card debt, more than 40 percent have a mortgage or a car loan and over 30 percent have student loan debt. Employees need help spending smarter so they can pay down their debt and start saving.

Bracing for Recession

There’s a 23 percent chance of a recession in the next 12 months, and employees are not ready for it. The Federal Reserve Bank’s latest report found 40 percent of U.S. households cannot cover a $400 emergency expense, leaving them unprepared and vulnerable to financial crisis in a recession.

How Employers Can Help

An effective financial wellness program, like Best Money Moves, can help employees budget spending better, pay down debt, save for emergencies and plan for retirement. Best Money Moves combines technology, information, smart tools and live money coaches to help employees measure their level of financial stress in 15 categories, and then sends relevant information and tools to help them reduce that stress.

Employees use the program’s point-based rewards system, which assigns point values to every action possible on the site from setting up income and expenses with the budgeting tool to reading articles and measuring stress. Each month Best Money Moves hosts a global contest with a cash prize for the user who has earned the most points during the month. This ongoing engagement strategy keeps usage at 25 to 51 percent.

What sets Best Money Moves apart? We aren’t trying to sell your employees anything and we aren’t a “robo-investment” platform because we believe that employees need unbiased information they can trust.

Learn more about how Best Money Moves can make a difference for your employees by contacting info@bestmoneymoves.com.

Will Increasing Financial Literacy Reduce Overall Financial Stress?

First Look at the Future of Financial Wellness

What Does Financial Wellness Look Like for Women?

Financial Wellness Research Warrants Worry

Financial Support Limits Retirement Readiness for Parents

What Tops Financial Stress for Employees

Boost Employee Engagement and Loyalty with Financial Wellness

Money and Health are Tied Together. Here’s What We Know

What’s Wrong With Wellness Program Incentives?

by LizStevens | Dec 4, 2018 | Blog

What’s wrong with wellness program incentives? ROI isn’t proven, employees feel forced into participation, and worse, wellness programs can increase weight-based discrimination and stigma in the workplace, which results in increased obesity and decreased well-being.

Workplace wellness programs have long been criticized as ineffective and lacking ROI, but financial incentives for wellness program participation are even more controversial.

Depending on what the financial incentive is, failing to participate could cost an employee hundreds or thousands of dollars. It then becomes a question of whether participation is truly voluntary, or if employees are being coerced.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) set a limit for what employers could offer employees to join in on wellness programs in 2016 (30 percent of an employee’s health insurance costs). Earlier this year, a judge vacated that arbitrary limit and the EEOC said it would not produce a new number until 2021.

That means there aren’t specific guidelines for employers putting together next year’s wellness benefits to follow. It’s worth considering whether incentivizing program participation is a good idea or just a waste of money.

New research from Frontiers in Psychology found wellness programs can actually lead to increased obesity and decreased well-being. Programs that put the responsibility on employees made them believe their weight is blameworthy. It led to increased weight-based discrimination and stigma in the workplace, a consequence surely no employer intended.

Wellness programs framed from an organizational standpoint were able to avoid increased stigma. What does that look like? An employer providing healthy snacks, standing desks, or offering reimbursements for gym memberships gives employees opportunities to improve their health without shaming them, versus ‘biggest loser’ challenges that are sure to make employees more self-conscious and could fuel disordered eating habits.

Employers look to wellness programs to reduce astronomical healthcare costs and take back some of the $530 billion that poor employee health costs in lost productivity from nearly 1.4 billion days of missed work each year. However, most employers now realize offering wellness programs isn’t enough. Employee engagement with wellness benefits is low, which is why providing a financial incentive for participation seems like a great idea (and in some cases, it still can be).

Nearly 20 percent of employees are either unaware of or don’t understand how to use the wellness benefits their employer offers. Clear benefits communication is vital to program success, and a process to improve before offering financial incentives for participation. Employees need to know what’s being offered, and more importantly how it works and who to contact if they have questions.

Unless conflicting research emerges proving significant ROI for employers who provide wellness benefits initiatives, employers are better off spending those funds elsewhere. A focus on improving benefits communication and creating a culture that encourages healthy habits has the potential to boost job satisfaction, productivity and reduce employer healthcare costs. Organizational and procedural changes might require some effort, but they’re low-cost solutions to the issue of benefits engagement.

Employee Benefits Success is All About Communication

by LizStevens | Oct 16, 2018 | Blog

Employee benefits success is all about communication. A third of compensation costs go towards employee benefits and some employees would forgo a raise for better work-life balance or better healthcare benefits, but almost half of employees don’t even understand the benefits their employer already offers.

Benefits account for more than 30 percent of total employee compensation, but that doesn’t mean employees use them. Nearly half don’t understand all the benefits their organization offers, according to a report from Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

Even though they don’t have a good grasp on their current benefits, more than 40 percent of employees would forgo a raise in favor of work-life balance benefits and almost 20 percent would accept lower pay for better healthcare coverage.

More than 80 percent of employees have paid vacation time and over 70 percent have paid sick leave. Less than half of organizations offer paid maternity leave and only a quarter offer paid paternity leave. Recently large organizations have overhauled their benefits for parents, like Pinterest, whose benefits now include four months off for mothers or fathers, one-on-one classes with a parenting coach and online classes if children have learning or developmental disabilities. In the next few years, organizations offering maternity leave are likely to increase and there’s a chance companies that offer paternity leave might see a significant spike too.

Benefits that were nonexistent in 2013 (at least in terms of EBRI’s report) like health savings accounts and accident insurance are now offered by more than 15 percent of organizations. Student loan assistance is a trend EBRI started measuring this year and almost 15 percent of employees said their employer provides student loan debt relief/repayment assistance. The IRS recently ruled that a company could contribute to an employee’s 401(k) based on student loan payments, so employees can pay down their student loan debt and save for retirement at the same time with employer contributions. Employers are also helping employees continue their education as more companies partner with institutions to offer employees free college tuition.

Most employees predict weakening benefits offerings in the next three years, but everything I’ve seen in benefits trends this year points to stronger benefits offerings on the horizon. However, recently companies like Walgreens have started to slash benefits in order to raise overall wages. It’s a concerning trend to keep an eye on in the years to come.

Which Basic Need Are Your Employees Struggling to Afford?

by LizStevens | Sep 11, 2018 | Blog

Millions of Americans faced financial hardships in 2017 and are likely still struggling to afford basic needs, so which one are your employees struggling with?

Nearly 40 percent of Americans had trouble meeting at least one basic need (food, healthcare, housing, or utilities) last year, according to a recent study from the Urban Institute. This echoes an earlier report from the Federal Reserve that showed more than 25 percent of Americans skipped needed medical care in 2017 because they couldn’t afford it.

Urban Institute’s study found more than 20 percent of respondents experienced two or more financial hardships in 2017 and close to 15 percent experienced at least three. It’s not just families below the federal poverty level experiencing financial hardships either. Roughly 20 percent of people whose household income was four times the federal poverty level still struggled to meet the basics.

Almost 20 percent of Americans had trouble getting medical care or paying medical bills in 2017. More than 10 percent missed a utility bill, rent or mortgage payments. Over 20 percent did not have reliable access to a sufficient amount of affordable and nutritious food, making food insecurity the top financial hardship Americans faced.

Food insecurity is an issue that reaches outside of Urban Institute’s scope. Their “Well-Being and Basic Needs Survey” extends to adults aged 18-64 but older Americans struggle with food insecurity as well. It’s estimated that there are 8 to 10 million people over age 65 lacking consistent access to enough food for an active healthy life.

“Older adults who are chronically food insecure suffer other health problems such as low muscle mass, increased fatigue, impaired cognition and increased hypertension. In turn, this can lead to increased risk for falls, limit mobility, reduce ability for self-care, and ultimately force a move into institutional care,” says Liz Seegert, Association of Health Care Journalists’ topic editor on aging.

Employers should be concerned that some of their employees deal with food insecurity on a day-to-day basis. Hunger affects their ability to focus and can cause drastic shifts in mood. There’s also a host of health issues linked to food insecurity that can cause employees to miss more days at work or develop a chronic health issue. Something as simple as providing healthy snacks or occasional staff lunches for employees can make a huge difference in their performance.