Employee Benefits Blog

Companies are always looking to improve the quality of life of their employees by using a variety of incentives. To this end, employers are increasingly open to making a number of quality of life allowances, from dogs in the workplace to catering healthier lunchtime meals.

This isn't solely done for the purpose of improving morale and well-being. Employers have noted a strong correlation between employee health and their productivity at work. But can employers start encouraging healthy employee habits outside of their 9-5 purview?

One area of focus for company wellness has been the sleep habits of their employees and how subtle tweaks can have a profound impact on employee productivity.

Internet-based virtual doctor visits and telemedicine health services are increasingly gaining acceptance among consumers. Just witness yesterday's $125MM acquisition of Scottsdale, AZ-based HealthiestYou by Teladoc as proof. In fact, it's estimated that there will soon be more than one million patients worldwide seeking online doctors instead of using traditional hospital visits.

This hard to ignore growth could place further pressure on doctors to update their health IT infrastructure and allow them to compete in the online medical space. Online doctors could help alleviate the cost of healthcare and improve the affordability of providing healthcare-related employee benefits. Many patients are opting for more informal online video meetings with their doctors in order to fit a doctor’s “visit” into their busy schedules.

Yes, this is the land of opportunity. However, a recent report from research firm Glassdoor found that employee benefits for Americans lag far behind their European counterparts. Researchers compared paid paternity and maternity leave, general paternal leave, paid holidays, paid sick leave, and unemployment benefits across 14 countries. While countries like Sweden, Finland, France, and the UK took the prize in numerous categories, the U.S. failed to shine in any of the areas analyzed.

Why should we care how U.S. employee benefits compare to other countries? It's doubtful your employees will move to another country just to get more paid time off. However, this trend is significant for U.S. companies looking to retain their talent. Here's why.

Suffering a net loss of over two million jobs in the past decade, the construction industry is still reeling from the aftereffects of the recession. Despite being in the midst of a steady and prolonged recovery (the number of construction jobs is expected to grow 19 percent through the year 2018, compared with 11 percent growth projected for all industries combined), a new generation of workers has sadly not yet embraced the industry as an option that affords exciting and viable career paths.

With turnover in the construction industry already about twice the national average, and increasing as the economy returns to full employment, construction owners need to retain their most valuable assets and one of their most important competitive advantages in the marketplace – their people.

Unlike other sectors reliant on technology-driven productivity, construction depends heavily on its skilled workforce for growth and profitability. With 68 percent of construction companies employing less than five people, keeping highly skilled employees is key to the success of these small businesses.

Video is a powerful medium. Moving pictures and sound capture our attention better than any other communication vehicle. When deployed in an office environment, video is a terrific choice for keeping employees engaged in otherwise dry topics, such as codes of conduct training or employee benefits.

Well executed, video can set the right mood and tone for any message - and it can make a business come across as far more professional and polished.

Many companies are already using video, most especially during their on-boarding process - new hire employees typically see their first corporate video within a few days of being hired. Companies at the forefront of this trend know that video effectively and consistently conveys messages, reduces costs, and sets the right tone for their brand.

Here are several other reasons to make the use of video more prevalent in your organization.

"My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time." (Steve Jobs)

Managing an organization’s human capital is a complex job, and technology can automate and streamline aspects of it that before required hours of paperwork and rote calculation. The time technological solutions is freeing-up is allowing HR professionals to play a bigger role in the strategic direction of their companies. 

In fact, thanks to these advancements, the HR function is becoming more mobile, analytical, and adaptive - with HR analysts providing more insight into corporate direction, predictive hiring trends, and analysis of benefits and compensation plans.

Here are six primary ways technology is affecting HR:

Retaining highly qualified and specialty skill employees is something every company strives for: turnover, especially among higher-level employees, directly affects your company's bottom line. Keeping the people who have demonstrated excellence over and over again requires a more intensive effort than keeping moderate performers. Those with an excellent work history, especially if they're on the fast track, are often being approached by other companies and may be tempted away by lucrative offers.

Keeping employee retention high among the top performers on your team is essential to your success for a number of reasons, but figuring out how to do that can be a bit of challenge. Here are a few simple things you can do to keep that top talent on your team.

As a business, your most important asset is your people. We know, that's somewhat of a cliché and everyone says it — but it is still one hundred percent true. Every month, over two million employees leave their jobs: an act which can leave their companies in the lurch. And you know that high turnover can become very expensive, very fast.

So what are you doing to improve employee retention in your company? The fact is, there's no single silver bullet that will make all of your employees want to stay with you forever. But there are certain things to look at when you want to improve your retention rate.

Hiring
First of all, great employee retention means, in part, that you're already hiring the right people: employees who want to work with you and have the skills to succeed. So take a close look at your hiring strategies and history: are you hiring people with a history of reliability? If a candidate has hopped from job to job in the past, they're likely to hop right away from your company, too. Next, see if the people you hire are demonstrating a strong desire to work for you. Did they apply because they need a job, or because the position involves what they're passionate about?

There can be no denying the fact that the landscape of employee benefits is a challenging one at best. And for multi-state workforces, employee benefits challenges multiply exponentially. HR departments around the nation struggle with the unique issues surrounding multi-state employment.

Compliance is the Sticking Point

One of the main issues complicated by multi-state work is proper risk assessment and management of compliance issues. Employers hiring multi-state employees must comply with all federal laws and state laws in all the states in which they conduct business.

This is more easily said than done. Here are just a few areas where compliance can be an issue: