Global coronavirus diagnoses are nearing 100,000, and the international marketplace is beginning to feel the pain as well. Many businesses are unsure how to address worker concerns and are quickly discovering they don’t have pandemic control policies on the books to guide their decision-making.
If you’re a business or HR leader anywhere in the world in 2020, you need to have a proactive plan for how your organization will handle employee cases of coronavirus, minimize the spread and impact of coronavirus throughout your team, and maintain the flow of productivity and work while keeping everybody safe.
Moving forward, we’ll take a deeper look at:
What coronavirus is
How you can address the outbreak with your employees
What you can do to strengthen and protect your business at this crucial moment in public health crisis
What is Coronavirus, Really?
In science and medicine, the term “coronavirus” actually refers to a whole family of viruses that have evolved to cross over from animals to humans. If you remember the SARS (Sever Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) outbreaks of about a decade ago, those were both examples of coronaviruses.
The coronavirus generating so much concern this winter is technically known as “COVID-19”.
COVID-19 is what is known as a “novel virus,” meaning it hasn’t been seen before. Novel virus strains are dangerous because, by nature, they have no vaccine yet. That’s why an up-to-date flu shot, while a best practice for every individual, provides no protection against Coronavirus this year.
What are the Symptoms of Coronavirus?
Generally speaking, coronavirus affects the upper respiratory symptom. Symptoms include:
Cough
Fever
Shortness of breath
Difficulty breathing
In especially severe cases or in vulnerable patients such as the very young, very old, and the immunocompromised, coronavirus infection can lead to:
Pneumonia
Severe acute respiratory symptoms
Kidney failure
Death
How is Coronavirus Transmitted?
COVID-19 is spread primarily through person-to-person means. When an infected person coughs or sneezes, they sends droplets into the air which can land into mouths and noses or get inhaled by other people, leading to infections.
Coronavirus can also be spread through infected surfaces and objects, although it is far less common. If an infected person sneezes or coughs onto an object and someone else touches that object and accidentally communicates the virus to their mouth, nose, eyes, etc., they can become infected.
It’s important to understand that the virus lives and reproduces within the respiratory system. That means that if it’s on your hands, clothes, etc., you can prevent it from entering your body by taking the right precautions.
How Should We Address Coronavirus with our Employees?
Communicate Proactively
Being a great leader is all about strong communication, and that’s never more true than during times when people are worried or confused. At this particular time, you need to communicate with your team in ways that inform them as to what’s going on, reassure them that there’s a plan in place and everything will be fine, and empower them to continue working in safe ways.
Points of important communication during this state of the coronavirus outbreak include:
What is coronavirus?
How does it spread?
How many cases have occurred in your state or local area?
What can employees do around the office to keep everybody healthy?
Who should stay home and when?
What can/should employees do if they’re sick?
You can share this article or any number of other resources to answer baseline questions about what is going on, bust some myths that have people worried, and show that you are taking a proactive approach to protect your employees from the spread of disease. Moving forward, as the virus continues to spread, keep people updated on how your planning is evolving to maintain transparency and keep everybody bought-in.
“Unlock” the Earned Time Bank
One simple, practical, impactful thing you can do during this time is to eliminate limits and restrictions on paid time off. Every flu season, millions of people go to work sick because they’re out of earned time, anxious about running low, or saving time for a vacation in a few weeks. This year, you need to keep those diligent folks away from the office!
Granting your team unlimited PTO increases the chances that employees will act in the best interests of the group and stay away from the office if they fear they may be getting sick.
Expand Remote Work
Given that person-to-person contact is the main vector for the spread of COVID-19, one smart prevention measure is to keep employees from being cooped up in the office together. Consider allowing traditionally office-bound team members to work from home in the coming weeks and months. Expand your use of eConferencing applications and online productivity systems to deliver the structure of the office to your team while everyone is safe and healthy at home.
If you have employees who would rather stay home during the coronavirus outbreak, you should do your best to enable their continued productivity from afar. Even if nobody at your organization ends up contracting COVID-19, you’ll still be respected by your employees for letting them earn their living in a way that protects their health and the health of their families during this crucial time.
Reduce Travel
The ease and ubiquity of international travel have played a key role in the spread of COVID-19, and, as everybody knows, if one person is sick on an airplane, it’s only a matter of time for everybody surrounding them. That’s why this spring could be the time to ease up on your sales team’s tradeshow schedule, minimize all non-critical business trips, and focus on maximizing the work your employees can do from their desks (or from their homes, in the case of remote work).
While this sounds like an attack on your ability to close deals and continue normal operations at first blush, it’s important to note that entire global economy is struggling through this outbreak together, and everybody must do their part to contain and eliminate the threat. Part of that is eliminating all unnecessary travel that could put your team at risk for exposure.
Provide Healthcare Accessibility Reminders
While most of your employees just went through benefits enrollment in November and December, this public health emergency is the perfect example of the scenario that nobody is really thinking about when they select their healthcare coverage. As your team’s employer, it’s your responsibility to provide them with the education they need to connect with responsive care if they are concerned about the health of any of their family members.
This could take many forms, but it’s a good idea to remind employees:
Which healthcare facilities are in their coverage networks
How they can use HSA/HRA funds to cover medical needs during this time
A realistic estimate of what a trip to their doctor would cost to talk about their health
Be Supportive But Serious
It is by no means an exaggeration to say that the whole world is watching as the COVID-19 scare plays out. Many of your employees are likely nervous about their own health as well as that of family members. You need to create an environment in which everybody feels as safe as possible in the moment and trusts that there’s a plan in place to prevent them from getting sick.
You need to project confidence, concern, and compassion at all times.
Creating a Disease Control Plan
If your business does not have a disease/pandemic control plan in place, now would be the perfect time to get working on one.
You need a clear policy that will guide:
How your business will adjust day to day to discourage disease transmission
How your business will address and handle employees who become sick
How your business will address operations if COVID-19 expands to true global pandemic status
How your team will address the needs of traveling employees who become quarantined in other countries
How you will clear team members for return after their illness
At what point you will shut down your office
With those questions answered, you’ll be equipped as best as possible to protect your team, weather the COVID-19 storm, and continue your business’ success into the future.
Takeaways
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak is continuing to spread rapidly across borders and oceans, disrupting life and business for billions of people around the world. Your business can survive and even thrive throughout this time of international concern, but it’s going to take a lot of hard work and strong planning. Remember:
COVID-19 is a new virus which infects the respiratory system
There is currently no vaccine or cure available for COVID-19
COVID-19 is primarily transmitted from person to person through droplets that are coughed or sneezed into the air
It’s crucial to communicate proactively and transparently with employees during this time of international panic
Unlock the PTO bank, extend work-from-home opportunities, and do anything you can to keep sick people away from the office this year
Reduce your team’s travel schedules to keep everybody healthy
Ruprecht has been an essential part of the Chicago
meatpacking industry since 1860. They provide food service businesses and
retail establishments with a stable supply of raw proteins with global sourcing
and exacting standards as a division of Kilcoy Global Foods, complete with five
premium beef brands. More recently, Ruprecht has become the industry’s leading
provider of sous vide cooked proteins that save chefs valuable time and
increase food safety.
In early 2019, Ruprecht prioritized modernizing their HR and
benefits in order to foster an overall more productive and engaged workforce.
The company’s leadership team had recently changed and new CFO Frank Patton and
the rest of the executive team wanted to focus on building a positive
workplace,
“Ruprecht as a company has been around since 1860, so we’ve got longstanding history and longstanding employees in our organization. But it didn’t feel like we were really helping them with their high-touchpoint activities. The CEO and I had come on board at Ruprecht and were very focused on making the culture more employee-centric and started evaluating how we did core things within our organization.” said Frank Patton.
As Frank and the rest of the team looked at what they could
change about how Ruprecht operates to make it more employee-centric, they came
to realize that they needed to overhaul their benefits package and human
resources administration. But while they knew what they needed to change, they
did not know how best to go about optimizing their benefits package and HR
systems. They needed a more proactive HR partner who could guide them through
the process rather than just connecting them with vendors. As Frank elaborates,
“As you would expect, benefits and all things payroll-related are big touchpoints for our employees. And so it was really at the beginning of our time at Ruprecht that we started to evaluate areas of our business that needed some care and feeding. We started to evaluate our partners and realized we didn’t have the right partner for HR administration and benefits who could be a thought-leader for us to help us understand how we should look at big cultural elements such as benefits.”
The Ruprecht team discovered Launchways through a trusted
business referral and quickly realized that the Launchways approach aligned
well with their goals for how they wanted Ruprecht to operate. And, best of
all, Launchways promised to be the active, engaged partner that Frank and the
leadership team was looking for,
“We started having conversations with Launchways and realized that there was very good alignment between how Launchways was approaching business and the business model and what we were looking for. I would say this is a huge differentiation for Launchways. They very much want to embed themselves within their clients’ businesses. If you’re going to be a partner, you can’t be a drive-by partner. You have to be somebody who is actively involved in the discussion.”
Launchways worked with the new Director of Human Resources,
Ryan Klatt, to review and streamline existing HR processes and identify the
ideal HR technology solution to improve the experience for the HR team and the
entire Ruprecht team. Launchways was able to put together a comprehensive
technology suite that met Ruprecht’s needs and fell well within their budget.
Launchways also evaluated Ruprecht’s current benefits package and put together
a proposal for a new benefits package based on employee needs and financial considerations.
As Frank reports, Launchways’ transparency was refreshing and empowering,
especially from a finance perspective,
“Launchways gives you complete transparency. You get a view of here’s what that brokerage fee relationship was and here’s how we drive value. So from a financial person’s perspective, it was wonderful. I know what my spend was, I know what I’m going to spend in the new relationship, and I know the value that I’m going to get.”
This new approach to HR and benefits gave the Ruprecht team
valuable peace-of-mind and clarity regarding their benefits strategy. What used
to be a complex and frustrating expense with limited impact for employees and
unclear ROI became a positive force in building a more engaged workplace,
“For us, it’s transformed our view of how we should look and think about benefits. It’s open-book, completely transparent, and this is a great area to do that with because it’s so mysterious to begin with. It’s a black box. So now we don’t have as much mystery and we can sit down and talk openly and honestly about it.”
Another aspect that the new leadership had to tackle to
align Ruprecht’s workplace realities with the company’s values was workplace
safety. As in the case of benefits, Ruprecht knew they needed to overhaul their
safety processes but were at a loss as to what changes to make. Frank asked
Launchways if we could help evaluate resumes for a new safety officer, which
led to Ruprecht hiring Launchways to conduct a risk assessment and recommend
improvements to their safety systems.
“It was extremely helpful because it meant we could have someone come in, spend some days in our facility and evaluate not only the person we have in that role but also what that person is doing and our highest priority needs. And honestly, I think we will be using Launchways again on the safety front because it helped us come up to speed so quickly and the value that we got from that discussion, I don’t think you could get any other way.”
In June 2019, Illinois became the 11th state in
the country to legalize the use of recreational marijuana. This January, that
law went into effect and was met enthusiastically by Illinoisans: newly legal
dispensaries did $10 million in business in the first week alone.
Although it is often viewed as a legal matter affecting
individual citizens, legalization introduces numerous complications and
concerns for employers. While employers can still regulate the use of marijuana
in the workplace, legalization has made enforcing those policies much more
difficult and employers risk compliance violations if they overstep their
bounds.
Whether you are a business owner or HR professional, you are probably already grappling with the effects of Illinois marijuana legalization. At Launchways, we know that our clients certainly have. So, we decided to bring in a legal expert and our in-house HR expert for a free webinar on navigating legalization in Illinois. We hosted the webinar on February 19th but you can still stream it on-demand anytime.
We want everyone to benefit from
the advice that our experts gave during the webinar, so let’s take a look at
the key points covered during the lively session.
Webinar Overview
Legalization Details
and Key Distinctions
What can employers legally
do from a compliance standpoint?
Compliance Concerns
from Legalization
Webinar Overview
On February 19th, HR
leaders from across Illinois tuned in for a presentation by two industry
experts.Our first panelist was Heather Bailey. Heather is a partner in
SmithAmundsen’s Labor & Enforcement Practice Group and has practiced in
employment and labor counseling and litigation for 18 years. She
counsels on day-to-day operations, human resources, and management decisions
regarding employees, practices, and policies. In short, she is an expert in
navigating employers through compliance issues and helping them create
effective and compliant employee policies.
The second panelist was Launchways’ HR Client Manager,
Karina Castaneda. Karina is a seasoned HR professional with over 15 years of
experience working in employee benefits, performance, and staffing. She helps
Launchways clients with all of their compliance questions and concerns and
provides them with strategic advice regarding talent management.
Needless to say, both panelists know the ins-and-outs of
compliance and effective employee management. And they proved full of valuable
insights into effectively responding to marijuana legalization in Illinois.
Legalization Details and Key Distinctions
To start the webinar, our panelists went over the specifics
of what the Illinois legalization law, officially known as the Illinois
Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act, does and does not do.
The Act made recreational consumption of marijuana legal
throughout Illinois and enshrined marijuana as a legal substance that employers
can not regulate outside of the workplace as part of the Illinois Right to
Privacy in the Workplace Act. The fundamental consequence of legalization and
the modification of the Right to Privacy Act is that employers’ enforcement
strategy needs to change from regulating use or consumption to regulating
intoxication. Luckily, our panelists provided clear guidelines for how to
effectively make the shift.
What can employers legally do from a compliance standpoint?
Employers can still take action against employees for being
intoxicated in the workplace from marijuana just as they can for alcohol
intoxication at work. Where things get tricky is that there is no such thing as
a “breathalyzer” for marijuana. Your current drug testing policies will likely
catch general drug use, but cannot pinpoint real-time intoxication,
making them an ineffective enforcement tool that will expose you to compliance
and lawsuit liabilities if you try to use them as the sole basis to prove intoxication
at work.
As Karina outlined during the presentation, the law does not
prohibit employers from regulating the possession, use, or distribution of
marijuana in the workplace. So, employers can treat marijuana much as they
already treat alcohol in the workplace, just with a slightly different
enforcement strategy. Specifically, they should establish clear intoxication
standards based on a combination of drug testing and document reasonable
suspicion signs. And, says Karina, employers should update their policies to
clarify the company’s stance on marijuana and the consequences of using the
substance at work.
Heather delved deeper into effective and compliant
enforcement of a zero tolerance workplace drug policy. Specifically, she
emphasized the importance of establishing a good faith belief in intoxication
as the grounds for any disciplinary action. She advised employers to provide
concrete reasonable suspicion checklists and train managers on how to identify
symptoms and record them using the checklists. Importantly, drug testing should
be used to support these checklists but not used as an enforcement tool on
their own.
Compliance Concerns from Legalization
Our panelists explained that employers need to tread
carefully when pursuing disciplinary action against impaired employees in light
of legalization. In addition to relying on a good-faith belief in intoxication
and reasonable suspicion checklists, Heather emphasized that employers must
allow employees the opportunity to contest the allegations to avoid compliance
issues or potential grounds for lawsuits. However, the burden lies on employees
to prove that they were not impaired so long as the employer has provided
reasonable grounds for disciplinary action.
Heather also explained that because the Act protects
marijuana use outside of work hours and while not on call, employers have to
tread carefully so that they do not give even the appearance of discriminating
against employees for using marijuana in their free time. That means that you
cannot refuse to hire, terminate, or otherwise treat employees differently
because of their perceived marijuana use so long as they are not using it at
work. Similarly, you may face lawsuits if you take disciplinary action that is
not based on a good-faith belief in actual impairment.
Both panelists cautioned employers against the inconsistent
or uneven application of drug testing policies given the additional
discrimination risks introduced by legalization. If drug testing seems targeted
and is not based on recorded reasonable suspicion, you may face discrimination
lawsuits. And across the board, clarity is your friend: make your drug policy
and enforcement language as clear and explicit as possible and communicate
changes to managers and employees.
Heather finished her presentation with a list of
best-practices that employers should follow, including:
Have a Zero Tolerance drug policy
Educate employees on your company’s stance on
cannabis
Have an ADA process for medical marijuana users
Update job descriptions for safety-sensitive
positions
Train, train, train management
Do not rely on drug testing alone to prove
impairment
Karina outlined how these changes affect your human
resources policies, advising employers and HR professionals that they should:
Evaluate current drug testing policies,
including pre-employment testing, general testing, and post-accident testing
Update employee handbook with a clear policy
that states the company’s stance on cannabis use
Notify and train managers on policy updates in
light of legalization
Enlist outside help for areas of confusion or
when additional assistance is needed to update policies or train employees
Stream the Webinar for More Valuable Insights
In this article, we covered the general overview of the panel’s advice to employers and HR professionals. But addressing the effects of cannabis legalization in the workplace is such a complex and important topic that it is best to hear from the experts themselves. Stream the complete webinar on-demand anytime here.
Do you need help ensuring your drug policy and testing procedures are compliant? Launchways offers a free handbook and employer policy review. Request your free handbook review today.
“Discrimination” is a word that no human resources
professional ever wants to hear. Unfortunately, many HR leaders are unaware
that discrimination can easily be lurking where we expect it least: in our
employee benefits programs.
Moving forward, we’ll explore:
The difference between unfairness and discrimination
How employee benefits can unknowingly be
discriminatory
What HR needs to do identify and eliminate
discriminatory benefits practices
Discrimination vs. Unfairness
Discrimination is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of
different categories of people, particularly on grounds of race, age, or
gender.
Unfairness is a lack of equity; that is to say, a situation
in which not everybody is treated the same way.
Those concepts are closely tied – and they can certainly
occur at the same time – but they’re not exactly synonyms.
Fairness is an ideal, a target we should be able to hit the
vast majority of the time. As an HR department, nobody is ever going to
love every policy or initiative, but if your policies and the way you treat
people feels consistent, you’ll be fine. When fairness issues become systemic
and begin to affect work or culture, then you have a problem.
On the other hand, it’s never okay to be
discriminatory from a moral or legal/compliance standpoint.
How does this apply to employee benefits?
By nature, insurance isn’t always “fair.” For example, if a
30-year-old employee and a 68-year-old employee are on the same health plan,
making the same employee contribution, the 68-year-old will see much more value
due to their increased likelihood of medical need.
If you’re the 30-year-old in that scenario, that doesn’t
feel very fair, but it’s not discriminatory. That’s because, if that
30-year-old had the same medical needs as the 68-year-old, the plan would be
just as valuable to them. There’s no unfair barrier in place blocking access
due to age.
The EEOC dictates that programs are not discriminatory in
that exact scenario as long as they provide either equal
cost or equal benefit.
HR directors and benefits managers hear a lot from employees
about why their benefits offerings are imperfect, but it’s crucial to sort out
a fairness issue from actual discrimination.
How can employee benefits be discriminatory?
As their name implies, employee benefits are valuable perks
that positively impact people’s lives. When you start offering different
employees different levels of benefits, you encounter a real fairness issue,
but depending on the way you’re classifying employees when you make those
offers, you might be discriminating and not even knowing it.
The law states that in order to offer two employees
different benefits packages, you need to demonstrate those two individuals are
on different levels in terms of “bona fide employment-based classifications.”
Those bona fide classifications include:
Full Time vs. Part Time status
It’s okay to offer full-time employees benefits
that part-timers don’t receive
Geographic location
It’s okay (even necessary) to offer eligible
employees different benefits packages based on where they live
This generally applies to businesses that
operate across multiple states
Different dates of hire and lengths of service
It’s okay if senior employees have been
“grandfathered in” with an old plan
So, the bottom line is, if you have two full-time employees
working in the same office who got hired on the same day, they should have
equitable access to the same employee benefits programs.
What about managers and executives?
The most common way businesses inadvertently commit benefit
discrimination is by the way they structure benefit offerings to so-called
Highly Compensated Employees (HCEs). An HCE is someone who:
Makes more than $130,000 or
Owns more than 5% of the business
If your business is self-insured, the ACA prevents
you from offering preferential benefits packages to HCEs. If your business is fully
insured, you can offer a higher tier of benefits (or lower premium costs)
to HCEs if your business does not offer a cafeteria plan. In the event you are
insured and have a cafeteria program in place, it’s unlikely you will be
able to offer different plans to your executives, but always double check with
your broker.
Regulations concerning benefits discrimination
If you would like to explore the compliance frameworks to
fully grapple with the problem, here are some places you can find
discrimination regulations specifically tied to employee benefits policies.
There are three compelling core reasons to review your
employee benefits programs through the lens of checking for discrimination:
Reducing discrimination is simple the right
thing to do
An employee dispute over a discriminatory
program could become a long legal battle
If regulators discover or catch wind of
discriminatory practices, your business will be fined
As an HR leader, you need to be proactive and be sure you:
Lead an internal audit of your employee benefits
offerings to ensure packages are offered in a way that is nondiscriminatory
Contact your benefits broker to ensure they are
aware of all relevant regulations and can describe to you how and why your
program is compliant
Inform your legal and compliance teams as
quickly as possible if you detect any issues, shortcomings, or possible areas
of discrimination
Take ownership over correcting all issues as
quickly as possible
When you work to eradicate hidden discrimination from your
policies and offerings, you’re strengthening your organization for the
long-term and doing your part to create a better work experience for all
professionals.
Takeaways
Employee benefits discrimination unfortunately occurs often
because the situations in which businesses can or can’t offer different
packages can confusing at times.
Just remember:
Insurance isn’t necessarily “fair” (because
there’s no guarantee people will get the same value out of it), but it should
never be discriminatory
All differences in benefits offerings should be
based on bona fide employment-based classifications, like part time vs. full
time, location, or date of hire
If you are self-insured or have a cafeteria
plan, you cannot offer preferential benefit packages to highly compensated
employees
All HR departments should lead an audit of their
offerings in collaboration with your benefits broker and legal team
The flow of talent into and out of your organization has a direct impact on your ability to do great business and thrive. That means every organization should have a clear vision and thoughtful approach to new employee onboarding.
Unfortunately, for many businesses, onboarding has evolved into a major pinch point. It’s become increasingly complicated, and it’s rarely satisfying for either the new employee or the organization who’s betting on their productivity.
Moving forward, we’ll explore:
What new employees actually need to get started
Why the challenge of new employee onboarding/enablement has grown
How innovative employee management platforms address those challenges in effective and productivity-boosting ways
Breaking Down New Employee Support Needs
Let’s start by considering your brand-new employee. It’s their first day. They’ve got the talent and ability to be a difference-maker for you, and their enthusiasm will never be higher.
So, what do they need from you right away to feel authentically plugged in and ready to hit the ground running?
Let’s take a minute to break it down, piece by piece:
Getting Paid
Payroll enrollment is one of the most basic and important aspects of employee onboarding. You need your new employees to see a clear, legitimate path to payment from day one.
When you get payroll enrollment right, it creates a highly satisfying experience that motivates your new hires to dig in, roll up their sleeves, and immerse themselves in the work.
If your new employee’s first check isn’t prepared on time or if the information on it is wrong, that creates a negative early impression for your talent, and correcting the issue will only cost them more time and effort.
Signing Up for Benefits
As with payroll, smooth employee-benefits enrollment is crucial to getting your new talent bought in and ready to do great work.
Benefits election actually contains several specific but unique challenges:
Providing a platform and experience that makes signing up for benefits clear and easy
Offering educational resources that help new talent make the best, most cost-effective choices
Getting that documentation from your employee to your insurance providers
There is an incredibly wide spectrum of knowledge and comfort levels with health insurance across the workforce, and even for great talent, making benefit elections can be intimidating. When you’re able to make the process feel straightforward and empowering, it goes a long way in building buy-in and setting new hires up for success.
Work Enablement
Once your employees are enrolled in payroll and signed up for benefits, they’re probably feeling pretty legitimate and excited about the journey they’re starting. Capitalizing on that moment of enthusiasm is crucial, but it’s not possible unless you have a strong hold on the actual work enablement piece.
What do employees need in order to do great work? For some, that depends specifically on their role within your organization, but there are a few general areas that you need to address for every new hire.
Hardware
Every single employee within your organization needs technological hardware in order to do their job well, whether it’s patrol trackers and communication devices for security guards, tablets for field service workers, company phones for sales professionals, or just the standard desktop and laptop computers many people need to get work done.
Of course, you can’t just pass out expensive tech tools without a tracking and accountability system in place to ensure your hardware is kept in good condition and you know where all your devices are located. That means you’ve got the double-tough responsibility of getting your new hire everything they need as quickly as possible while also needing to focus on documentation.
Software/Accounts/Credentials
Passing out hardware is just the beginning of meeting your new employees’ technological and work enablement needs. In order to be a fully functional member of the team, they need all kinds of accounts created.
Depending on the situation, that might require purchasing software licenses, creating new login credentials, and so on, but to give you a sense of how much really goes into technical work enablement now, each employee likely needs:
An email account
A login for company ERP/productivity platform
Standard office software licenses (word processing, spreadsheet creation, etc.)
Document sharing/collaboration portal credentials
Access to any relevant SaaS or cloud-based apps
FAQ Support
Alright, so your new employee is fully enrolled in payroll and benefits, they have been issued their company hardware, and they have all the accounts and credentials they need to get started. What’s left? All the little stuff, of course!
No matter how smart or experienced your new hire, there are a variety of questions that are going to pop up in any new job scenario. The faster and more directly and effectively you can answer those questions, the faster your new hire will stop feeling like the new hire and start feeling like a fully-integrated team member.
That means you need some kind of reference resource built into your onboarding system that incoming talent can use as a floatation device during times of confusion or panic in their opening weeks.
With that piece in place, you’ve officially onboarded a new hire in a way that supports great work and great organizational buy-in.
Why Is It So Hard to Get Employee Onboarding Right?
When you dissect it like we have, new employee onboarding is a massive responsibility, and the expanded use of technology hardware and software over the last 25 years has only made it more complicated.
Thanks to all those tech support needs, onboarding has grown into a shared responsibility of HR & IT. Unfortunately, though, the interdepartmental back-and-forth often leads to communication breakdowns, duplication of effort, and poor data hygiene.
Finally, a better way is emerging.
How Employee Management Platforms Address These Challenges
Employee management platforms are software solutions that integrate as many of the tasks related to employee onboarding and long-term employee management as possible into a single system.
Employee management platforms eliminate repetitive tasks, significantly streamlining the paperwork and communication associated with onboarding tasks and allowing for full new employee enablement in a single day.
Using an employee management platform, you can leverage a single system your employees can use to:
Enroll in payroll and benefits
Access, download, or log into the apps and software they need
Connect and communicate with their colleagues
Get answers to basic questions about employee protocol and support resources
At the same time, your managers, HR, IT, and payroll professionals can use the system to:
Assign and track hardware
Monitor employee time usage
Create (or disallow) credentials, accounts, and permissions as needed
Build and automate custom workflows between tools
Make updates to the system using a single source of truth
How Employee Management Platforms are Providing New Gains
By bringing all that management, administration, and work enablement functionality together in one place, employee management platforms create incredible time savings. That means more time for productivity!
When there’s no repeat data entry and everything can be handled through a single platform, your HR professionals will have more time to provide a holistic, employee-centered onboarding experience that sets new hires up for success and leaves them feeling ready to take on the world for your company.
When you provide a platform that simplifies hardware assignment, it frees your IT team from the mindless tasks of device management and creates new opportunities for them to pursue long-term quality-of-life initiatives for your employees.
And, of course, when you provide a new employee onboarding experience that feels cutting edge, easy-breezy, and empowering, your incoming talent will have a greater sense of security, a greater sense of motivation, and a greater sense of purpose.
Takeaways
Employee onboarding procedures can feel like an endless list of equally crucial tasks. Employee management platforms are creating new opportunities to untie that knot and rethink onboarding.
Remember:
New employees need to feel legitimate and see a clear path to compensation from day one
New employees need their work tools as fast as possible to accelerate their integration into work and company culture
Onboarding can feel over-complicated because the responsibilities are spread out across several different departments
By all integrating the processes and tasks into a single system, businesses can maximize new employee onboarding and get the most out of their talent from day one
How to Learn More
Rippling is revolutionizing the onboarding process by helping HR professionals support their new hires better than ever.
By integrating all aspects of the onboarding process into a single digital platform, Rippling accelerates the new employee orientation experience, connecting hires with the tools, coverage, and credentials they need with a minimal number of clicks.
To learn more about how Rippling can smooth the employee onboarding process at your business and create a new way of managing HR and IT responsibilities, contact them today.
At Launchways, we’re constantly looking for new innovative, effective ways to help businesses meet their HR, employee benefits, and business insurance needs. This month, we’re proud to announce we are adding Group Insurance Captive solutions to our ever-expanding portfolio of solutions for growing businesses.
In this post we’ll:
Define Group Insurance Captives in a straightforward and useful way
Explain the value proposition of our group captive membership
Describe why we’re so excited to be offering this new program
Provide next steps for businesses hoping to learn more about our group insurance captive
What is a Group Insurance Captive?
A “captive” insurance company is an organization founded with the sole purpose of providing business insurance to its owner(s).
Essentially, a captive is the purest form of self-insurance. A business or group of businesses forms a captive in order to meet their insurance needs without being beholden to the packages, limitations, and pricey markups of the traditional marketplace.
A group insurance captive specifically involves a group or “pool” of businesses with similar scales or goals coming together to create and share a captive insurance company. That new company, managed by a designated third party, obtains insurance for each owner/member organization, processes their claims, and maintains the overall health of the pool.
How Do Businesses Benefit from Joining Our Group Insurance Captive?
So, now that you know what a group insurance captive is, the natural question is: Why would you want to be part of one?
Organizations that form or participate in a group captive have greater independence, greater power for self-determination, and greater potential for profit. Let’s take a look at some of the specific ways those gains play out:
In the traditional marketplace, you rent your insurance. With a captive you own it.
Total continuity of services as desired
No stress over price-gouging at policy renewal
In the traditional marketplace, business insurance is an expense; in a captive, it’s an opportunity for return.
Get up to 60% average return on premium
Use safety initiatives/risk management skills to maximize your payout
With your own insurance company, you can get exactly the coverage you need and eliminate overspend.
No more bundled services you don’t want or need
Turn self-knowledge into efficiency-of-scale
Owning your insurance company means you call the shots!
Work with your pool partners to set the tone for the captive
No more getting sold out or let down by the insurance company
With a captive, you have greater access to insurance data than ever before.
Understand your needs, claims, and expenses better than ever
Gain insights to help streamline coverage/claims processing in the future
How to Know if You’re a Good Fit for Our Group Insurance Captive:
Once you hear about the potential benefits of group insurance captives, it’s natural to wonder if your organization is a fit to join.
If your business can answer “YES!” to each of the following questions, then you’re a great candidate for our new group insurance captive program:
Do you pay $150,000 or more in insurance premiums each year?
Does your company have an entrepreneurial spirit?
Does your company desire greater control and stability?
Does your company understand the concept of “risk for reward?”
Is your company committed to safety?
Why Join a Launchways Group Insurance Captive in 2020?
Now that you’ve got a general understanding of what group insurance captives are and what kind of value they offer businesses, it’s time for us to answer another important question: Why us?
Since our inception, Launchways has focused on providing support and solutions that help growing businesses thrive in the immediate future while also planning for long-term success.
We’re entering the world of Group Insurance Captives because we understand that business insurance needs are increasingly diverse, and more and more organizations are feeling frustrated by the limitations of the traditional marketplace. We want to help our clients bet on themselves, forge powerful partnerships with likeminded businesses, and get the exact coverage they need to thrive.
We believe in the power of growing organizations to improve the business space and lead the next wave of American innovation. That’s why we’re helping businesses find potential pool partners, organizing our group insurance captive, and connecting organizations with the management and expertise they require to ensure their captive experience is successful.
Takeaways:
Here at Launchways, we’re excited to be helping our clients gain the power and freedom group insurance captive membership can bring. We’re looking forward to applying our innovative approach and emphasis on specific customer goals to help businesses gain the power, efficiency, and profit potential our group captive offers.
Remember:
Group insurance captives offer businesses true ownership over their insurance, enabling:
New profits from return on premiums
Increased control over claims management
Innovative partnerships with pool peers
To be a strong group captive candidate, a business should pay at least $150,000 in annual insurance premiums and be a stable but innovative organization
On June 25, 2019, Governor Pritzker signed the Illinois
Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act into law, making Illinois the 11th
state to legalize recreational cannabis. The law went into effect this January
and dispensaries sold over $10 million worth of recreational marijuana in the
first week.
The legalization of Illinois recreational cannabis has
potentially serious ramifications for business owners, HR professionals, and
managers. Many fear that their employees will show up high at work or get high
at work during breaks. And because using recreational marijuana is no longer in
itself illegal in Illinois, employers can’t enforce zero-tolerance policies
towards its use – just its use at work.
While there are valid concerns, Illinois recreational
marijuana legalization doesn’t pose an existential threat to employers. As long
as you are careful and implement a few straightforward policies, there is no
reason to fear legal recreational cannabis.
So, how can you protect your business from having employees
show up high at work and from discrimination suits for taking action against
employees for being high at work? In this article, we’ll explore:
Concerns About Recreational Marijuana in
Illinois
Preventing Employees From Being High at Work
Protecting Yourself Against Lawsuits for
Policies Against Marijuana in the Workplace
Why Illinois Recreational Marijuana Legalization
Isn’t a Threat to Businesses
How to Learn More
Concerns About Recreational Marijuana in Illinois
Whether you support it or not, Illinois recreational
cannabis legalization is a reality. What does that mean for you as a business
owner, manager, or human resources professional?
For the most part, your policies on recreational marijuana
and drug testing in the workplace shouldn’t have to change. But the way that
you enforce those policies may need to be modified.
Despite what some business owners think, and some overeager
employees might insist, your employees aren’t suddenly allowed to show up high
at work. Employers are still allowed to have zero-tolerance policies for the
consumption of recreational marijuana, intoxication from recreational cannabis,
or the storage of marijuana during work hours or while on call.
But you’re no longer allowed to take action against
employees who use recreational marijuana outside of company time and are not
high at work. Many employers might not have a problem with this on the face of
it. After all, off the clock employees’ time should be their own unless the
after-effects impact their job performance.
However, even if you fully support the use of recreational
cannabis outside of work, the legalization of recreational marijuana in
Illinois makes it harder for you to prevent employees from being high at work.
And it exposes you to potential discrimination lawsuits if you take action
against employees for being high at work based on evidence of their use of
recreational cannabis in general rather than just at work.
After all, there is no equivalent of a breathalyzer for
marijuana as of yet. That means that there is no surefire way to tell if an
employee is high at work. And methods for drug testing in the workplace have
varying degrees of accuracy. Many companies that are currently drug testing for
marijuana are using hair follicle drug testing. But hair follicle drug testing
is only useful to tell whether or not an employee has used recreational
marijuana in the past several weeks or even months. That means that hair
follicle drug testing is now more or less obsolete for drug testing in the
workplace in states with legalized recreational cannabis. And urine tests are
not even a reliable solution for drug testing in legal states as they can
deliver positive results for recreational marijuana use anywhere
between two weeks and a month in the past.
You might think that you can still take action against
employees for using recreational marijuana during off hours because recreational
cannabis is still illegal on a federal level. That might be true if the
Illinois law simply allowed employers to control marijuana use at work and did
not give the same right for off-work hours. But the 600-page law amends the
Illinois Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act that prohibits employers from
punishing employees for using legal substances outside of work to expand the
definition of legal substances to include recreational cannabis and medical
marijuana. So while you won’t break federal law by punishing employees for
consuming recreational marijuana outside of work, you will be in violation of
state law.
So, how can you stop employees from being high at work
without breaking the new Illinois recreational marijuana legalization law or
exposing yourself to lawsuits?
Preventing Employees From Being High at Work
If you can’t rely on traditional drug testing in the
workplace to prevent employees from being high at work, what can you do?
The Illinois recreational cannabis law establishes reasonable
suspicion or good-faith belief that an employee is high at work as a legitimate
standard for taking action against that employee. So, until somebody invents foolproof
technology for marijuana-use testing to see if an employee is currently high at
work, your best bet is to leverage the reasonable suspicion standard.
How can you take advantage of the good-faith belief standard
as laid out in the Illinois recreational marijuana bill? The first step you
should take is to train supervisors and managers on how to identify drug use,
including distributing reasonable suspicion checklists that they can fill out
for incident reports, and educate all of your employees about the reasonable
suspicion standard that will be used to tell whether they are high at work.
That way, your team will be prepared to meet the standard and your company will
be sheltered from liability for enforcing the standard. You should also include
the reasonable suspicion checklists in all of your accident report forms,
especially if your business is especially susceptible to workplace-safety
issues.
According to the Illinois recreational marijuana
legalization law, these are the symptoms that your team should record if they
suspect an employee is high at work and that you can use to meet the good-faith
standard:
Changes in speech, dexterity, agility or
coordination
Irrational, unusual or negligent behavior when
operating equipment or machinery
Disregard for the safety of others
Carelessness that results in any injury to
others
Involvement in any accident that results in
serious damage to equipment or property
Production or manufacturing disruptions
So long as you are meticulous about recording symptoms at
the time, you should not have to fear reprimanding employees for showing up
high at work. Under the Illinois recreational marijuana bill, if an employer
demonstrates a good faith belief that an employee is high at work, the burden
shifts to the employee to prove that they were not impaired.
And you can still use drug testing in the workplace as part
of your efforts to dissuade employees from being high at work. Random drug
testing for marijuana is explicitly permitted under the new law and can provide
additional support for reasonable suspicion claims. And you can maximize the
usefulness of random drug testing by reviewing your methods for drug testing in
the workplace to ensure that you are testing for use in the past 6-12 hours
rather than the past 30+ days. For instance, replace hair follicle drug testing
with more accurate saliva or blood testing. Just don’t use drug testing as the
sole justification for any disciplinary actions.
Protecting Yourself Against Lawsuits for Policies Against Marijuana in the Workplace
Now that you know how you can effectively address the use of
recreational cannabis in the workplace, let’s take a look at how you can
safeguard yourself against lawsuits when you take action against an employee
for being high at work.
First and foremost, don’t take action against employees
without the standards we outlined in the last section and always air on the
side of caution, even if you meet the reasonable suspicion standard. It’s
generally not worth risking serious disciplinary action against an employee
unless their use of recreational marijuana poses a threat to their productivity
or workplace safety, and if that is the case, then they have probably well
surpassed the good-faith suspicion standard.
Beyond following proper enforcement procedures, another step
that you can take to minimize your liability is to give employees advanced
notice regarding any changes in drug enforcement policy and to provide
comprehensive education about the recreational marijuana policies and their
enforcement. This can head off claims of unfair surprise, prevent unnecessary
lawsuits from being filed because an employee didn’t know what the policies
were, and ensure that managers enforce the policies properly.
You may well have to review your drug enforcement policies
as well as your anti-discrimination policies because Illinois recreational
cannabis legalization adds pressure behind previous discrimination issues.
Recreational marijuana enforcement has a history of racial bias and you have to
tread especially carefully to avoid any semblance of bias, whether conscious or
unconscious. So, conduct rigorous implicit and explicit bias training and make
sure that random drug testing in the workplace is genuinely random and applies
to all employees equally.
So long as you follow these steps, you shouldn’t have too
much to worry about regarding discrimination lawsuits as a result of the
legalization of recreational marijuana in Illinois.
Why Illinois Recreational Marijuana Legalization Isn’t a Threat to Businesses
The good news is that unless you work in an industry fraught
with workplace-safety concerns, such as construction, Illinois recreational
marijuana legalization is cause for caution rather than concern. As long as you
put the right systems in place, there’s no reason to be too worried about the
legalization of recreational marijuana. You will still be able to stop
employees from being high at work and take action against employees who do use
recreational marijuana at work, without fear of damaging lawsuits.
And while you should protect yourself from repeated
workplace intoxication that causes performance or cultural issues and from
discrimination lawsuits, casual use by employees should not be an issue for
most employers. Ten other states have legalized recreational marijuana and
businesses continued to thrive. States with legalized recreational cannabis states
represent four
out of the top five state economies in the country and California, the
poster-child for legalization, is the largest state economy in the country.
Illinois business owners will be fine – so long as they handle the transition
correctly.
Illinois recreational cannabis even presents opportunities
for employers to set themselves apart and win the war for talent. According to
a 2019 survey
by PBS Research, Civilized, Burson Cohn & Wolfe, and Buzzfeed News,
half of Illinoisans surveyed said that their ideal workplace would permit
marijuana use outside of work but that two-thirds were uncomfortable with use
in the workplace. If those numbers are accurate, most employees are likely to
respect the prohibition of marijuana use at work and business owners can
improve their employer branding by taking a hands-off approach to recreational
cannabis use outside of work.
How to Learn More
The legalization of Illinois recreational cannabis has made things a lot more complicated for business owners and HR professionals throughout Illinois. There’s no way that we can cover all of the complexities and details of how you should handle the legalization of recreational cannabis, prevent employees from being high at work, and protect yourself from discrimination lawsuits in one article. Nor are we attorneys who can give you sufficient legal advice.
That is why we’ve enlisted the help of an attorney who is well-versed in all things employment law to help guide business owners and HR professionals through this turbulent transition. Heather Bailey is a partner at SmithAmundsen’s and an expert in employment and labor counseling and litigation. She’ll be joining our very own HR Client Manager Karina Castaneda for a comprehensive free webinar on understanding the ins-and-outs of the Cannabis Regulation Act and how it affects Illinois employers.
Before we dive deep into the power of Diversity and
Inclusion, let’s take a second to establish our terms and clarify what D&I
actually looks like.
Workplace
Diversity: The practice of hiring, promoting, and building a team in a way
that brings together people of different backgrounds, educations, personal
histories, experiences, and areas of expertise.
Workplace
Inclusion: The practice of ensuring diverse voices are fully comfortable,
integrated into, and valued as members of a thriving, complementary,
interdependent team.
To be clear, diversity is nothing without inclusion!
It’s pointless and somewhat dishonest to build a diverse team only to
maintain a leadership framework where a certain “in-group” maintains the power
to impactfully steer the ship while a nominally diverse team underneath them
feels disenfranchised or fearful.
Why Diversity and Inclusion Build the Best Possible Team
The true potential of humanity lies in our ability to come
together and build a unit that’s more powerful than the sum of its parts. A
group of people from similar backgrounds, educations, and ways of navigating
the world might be able to put their heads together to come up with one, two,
or even three ways of solving a given problem, but when you invite
professionals of diverse backgrounds to the table, the possibilities are far
more open-ended.
When businesses make diversity and inclusion main values and
priorities, they can gain incredible benefits, includes:
Increased brainstorming/innovation potential
More access to outside-the-box problem-solving
A wider skill and knowledge base across the
organization
A thinktank and business team that accurately
reflects the national and global marketplace
Building a Foundation for a Great Team
There’s no magic recipe you can learn to turn D&I into
areas of pride and opportunity for your business, but the key is to foster a strong
culture. If that culture is one that values diversity of people and ideas,
fights for representation and inclusion in every situation, and works to give
everybody a voice, then you can really capitalize on the innovative power of
D&I.
Workplace culture determines both the levels of buy-in,
engagement, and persistence your team will put into their work on a day-to-day
basis, their feeling of personal investment and their job, and the dedication
they put into embracing and maintaining the company culture. Great talent wants
to work in a culture that supports them and sets them up for success. When they
encounter a situation where they don’t feel comfortable, valued, or positively
plugged in, they leave quickly.
Creating a Level Playing Field Through Education
While diversity hiring programs are nearly ubiquitous in the
big business world, they often lack the crucial, consistent ground-level
follow-through (inclusion) that turns that diversity into business power. Employee
education (in the form of in-house training or formal professional development)
is a key piece of the puzzle when it comes to shaping your existing culture
into the kind of inclusive environment that sets the business up to win big
with D&I.
Of course, you can’t just do diversity and anti-harassment
education to check them off the list for compliance purposes – employees can
smell that from a mile away, and it directly affects their ability to engage
authentically with the training and reflect on the information in a way that’s
going to augment their mindset or behavior at work. Discussions of diversity
and inclusion need to be powerful, real, and backed by thought-provoking
human-to-human engagement – not a comprehension quiz at the end.
Designing and building that education program is a key step
in articulating, fostering, and supporting a great employee culture. When you
give great talent something important to aspire to and make it real for them,
the possibilities are endless. At the same time, worker education creates a
foundation for accountability and makes it easier to remove toxic mindsets that
do damage to inclusion or morale.
Don’t Hesitate to Be Great!
The biggest mistake organizations make is waiting to
articulate the perfect approach to D&I. Every business can and should be
doing something about diversity and inclusion at scale today. If you think
diversity training or inclusion workshops would be valuable to your team, seek
out a great independent PD provider who can help you today – don’t form a
committee to discuss what the training might look like two years from now.
Of course, long-term initiatives are key to harnessing
diversity and inclusion as business strategies over time, but the best thing
any organization can do from a talent-centric and corporate decency standpoint
is to identify a starting point and dig into exploring the challenge and
addressing the issues at hand.
In the next section of this book, we’ll explore some of the thinking
points and strategies businesses can use to find a starting point for their
D&I program, articulate a commitment to diversity and inclusion and begin
creating that great culture and winning team. Depending on the size, industry,
or existing culture of your business, some of these approaches might be more
relevant or feasible early-on in the process than others, but any of these
strategies will help you grow in your ability to embrace D&I in a powerful,
data-driven way.
Part 2: Planning to Become Unbeatable
Aligning Your Values
Everybody knows diversity is good, right? Everybody believes
people should be represented and have voice at the table, right? Those
statements are hopefully true, but creating a culture of excellence through
diversity and inclusion requires that you as a business shout those values from
the rooftops.
Articulation is the first step for you as an employer to
tell your team members what you really stand for as an organization and what
you expect out of them as employees. At the same time, your company values help
you establish a public face that can be used as part of on-going marketing or
recruitment campaigns.
When you as an organization show your employees and
the public through your actions and business practices that you care about
diversity and value inclusion (and don’t just tell them), you set
yourself up to win big on many levels including:
Improved recruitment capabilities
More talent from diverse backgrounds
Fewer toxic team members who don’t embrace
diversity
Improved reputation in the public space
Improved opportunities for partnerships with
other diverse companies
Improved ability to create logical, powerful
procedures that are rooted in established values
Building the Strongest Possible Understanding of Your
Current Team
Of course, before you can hone yourself into a diversity and
inclusion powerhouse, you need to build a rich understanding of the current
state of D&I in your organization. Without that foundation of data, it’s
hard to know what the challenge/opportunity really looks like and what you need
to do to get there.
A few years ago, gathering that data would’ve been pretty
tough, but thanks to advances in human capital management technology such as
Paylocity’s demographics dashboard, mining your HR records to create a “state
of the business” diversity report for your business only takes a few clicks.
That data can help you understand your workforce in terms of:
Age makeup
Experience level
Education level/background diversity
Gender representation
Diversity among leadership
Diversity by department
Diversity by team
Once you’ve created that roadmap of your current state, it’s
much easier to understand the work at hand. When it comes to understanding the
state of inclusion in your organization, that can be a little trickier, but
employee surveys and other engagement markers can be useful to fill out the
picture.
Setting Ambitious but Achievable Goals
With your commitment to diversity and inclusion articulated
and a rich understanding of your existing team’s make-up and culture, it’s time
to roll up your sleeves and get down to the work of determining what your
D&I strategy is going to look like and how it will impact your business.
The key here is to be sure you’re setting data-driven goals – things that you
can measure either through qualitative or quantitative means to determine your
success.
If your program is going to grow into something great, you
need to dream big, but it’s important to think at scale and in a logical order.
When it comes time to set those tentpoles that will guide the vision and work
moving forward, ask yourself:
If we’re not satisfied with the current state of
diversity in this organization, what would we like to look like three years
from now?
Does the diversity of our leadership
align with the diversity we envision for our workforce?
If not, how can we step up recruitment and
promotion of diverse leaders? Where would those leaders fit best?
How will our regular recruiting, on-boarding,
and P.D. approaches need to be modified to support our commitment to making
these things happen?
What can we do to improve workplace culture
in a way that maximizes talent and invites everybody to the party?
How will we use data to measure whether
or not this is happening?
What will we do on a daily, weekly, and monthly
basis to reinforce our commitment to D&I and ensure the work environment
stays healthy?
Creating Powerful Policies & Procedures
The answer to some of those questions will likely lie within
your policies and procedures. The best way to guarantee the success of your
D&I initiatives is to give them real teeth by backing them with official,
well-defined rules and policies. It’s one thing to say you value diversity and
inclusion, it’s another to codify your beliefs in a way that make it easier to
hold everybody accountable to organizational ideals.
Some of those procedures will be dictated by government
compliance. The EEOC is responsible for ensuring that diversity and inclusion –
at least to the levels articulated by the federal government – occur in the
workplace, and many states are adopting increasingly specific racial or LGBTQ+
inclusion laws to hold businesses to a higher standard.
You’ll never become a leader in the fields of diversity and
inclusion by sticking to government guidelines, however! If you’re looking to
get a better sense of how your HR department can support a diverse workforce
better, take a look at some of your industry’s identified diversity leaders.
What do they do to attract talent? How has that diversity, inclusion, and
strong culture created wins for them? What can you do at scale to replicate
their success?
By using legal guidelines, industry best practices, and
emerging trends, you can create a D&I framework that speaks to both the
current climate and what’s unique, special, and exciting about your business.
Building Benefit Packages that Truly Value Diversity & Inclusion
Part of inclusion is recognizing everybody’s needs and
ensuring they are met in a way that supports productivity and a positive
relationship with work and the workplace. That means taking care of your
diverse workforce away from the office is just as important as building a great
environment for them to work in.
Employee benefits are an area in which businesses frequently
send subtle, non-inclusive messages that employees pick up on. For example,
many health plans provide no coverage for same-sex couples. For organizations
that value diversity and inclusion, those kinds of biases must be eliminated
from your compensation, benefits, and healthcare packages in order to build a
system that’s truly valuable and authentic for everybody.
At the same time, it’s important for HR to consider how
their offerings will support a wide variety of workers from different
backgrounds. Ask yourself questions like:
How can you build value for young families?
What about single, relatively healthy folks? How
can you save them (and yourself) money while still providing a strong healthcare
safety net?
What about transgender or intersex employees who
need access to preferred doctors to get their medical needs met?
What about employees with long-term medical
issues who require expensive medicines and therapies?
How can we help provide culturally responsive
medicine and services? How can we make sure all our employees have access to
services that make them and their families feel comfortable and happy?
In order to support a diverse workforce and live up to your
values as a progressive, inclusive employer, you need to find a way to answer
those questions without making the classic benefits plan design error of trying
to offer everything. It’s important to remember that more doesn’t always mean
better when it comes to benefits. Building a truly inclusive benefits framework
is a tall task, but it’s incredibly rewarding and can set your business apart
from the pack at a time when talent is more conscious than ever of their
healthcare needs.
Part 3: Staying Unbeatable
Keep Your Eye on the Data
So, you’ve established diversity and inclusion as core
values, devised a recruitment and promotion initiative, beefed up your policies
and training procedures, and gotten the feedback you need to build a really
great culture. It’s tough work, and it’s rewarding, but it’s important not to
fool yourself into thinking the work is done once your program has been created
and rolled out in its initial form.
Part of inclusion is being responsive to the evolving needs
of your team members as individuals and a community. Those targets move
month-from-month and year-to-year, and for your organization’s D&I approach
to remain strong over time, you need to keep evolving to keep up with shifts in
your employee culture.
Of course, your most powerful ally in this work is data! You can and should continue to monitor your HCM data and survey your employees regularly to provide yourself with a strong understanding of the state of diversity and inclusion across the organization.
Create a Built-in Feedback/Assessment Loop
Part of getting the data you need to stay unbeatable is
creating a formal framework through which employees can conduct on-going
discussions about diversity and inclusion to help you, the employer, understand
how well you’re doing and what they need from you.
Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are a great way to support a
diversity and inclusion strategy, as they provide tremendous two-way value. For
employees they provide the opportunity to speak frankly with their most direct
peers about the needs of their specific community or interest group and finally
create a space that’s specifically designated for talking about the personal
side of work at hand. For the employer, ERGs are a great way of making sure
team members feel empowered to discuss the issues that concern them in the
workplace, and they create a feedback loop that lets you know very clearly what
people’s needs, wants, and goals for the office culture are.
Once again, it’s important to mention that you can roll out ERGs at any point in your D&I journey. As soon as you’ve identified particular communities or interest groups within your team, create a framework for them to get together, talk about their shared experience, and discuss their vision for the workplace and issues that are relevant to them. There’s no need to wait until you’re three years into the initiative and have greatly increased the diversity of your workforce – in fact, it’s better for you to start small early on and allow the ERG program to scale up with your business.
Maintaining the Commitment to Greatness Together
Diversity and inclusion are all about commitment –
commitment to talent, commitment to values, and commitment to greatness
together. When you create a great cultural platform, create a diverse,
complementary team, and focus on inclusion in a way that ensures everybody is
heard and their abilities are maximized, you set your business up to maximize
its potential for profit, innovation, and high-level problem-solving.
Remember:
Diversity is nothing without inclusion – A
hiring/recruiting initiative is just one piece of a much larger picture
A strong, positive culture and employee
education framework must be in place in order for a D&I initiative to be
successful in the long term
Every business should be doing something to
tackle D&I at scale today – Progress over perfection
Good HCM data is necessary to benchmark your current
state of D&I and measure the success of your initiatives over time
HR policies and procedures, along with employee
benefit offerings, must reflect the organization’s deep commitment to diversity
and inclusion
Diversity and inclusion is a complex, evolving
challenge/opportunity, but businesses that get it right have the power to
maximize the potential of their individual team members and their organization
as a whole.
Enter Your Information to Read The Rest of This Guide!
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Captive insurance programs enable businesses to reduce their
insurance overspend, fully control their coverage, and turn safety initiatives
into profitable returns.
Unfortunately, though, many organizations shy away from
forming or joining captives because, when they start doing online research,
they often run into incorrect and damaging myths about captives.
Moving forward, we’ll:
Identify the top five myths about captive
insurance programs that are prevalent on the web
Debunk each myth using evidence
Describe the true value and possibilities of a
captive insurance program.
Myth #1: You have to be a huge corporation to benefit from a captive
Why is this myth so prevalent?
When you first start researching captive insurance programs,
most of the messaging on the first page of search engine results focuses on how
captive programs are used by large corporations who hold multiple businesses
and operate facilitates across the globe.
Why is this a myth?
It’s true that single-member captives (in which one business
creates its own insurance company) are generally formed by large corporations,
but that’s not the full story! Group insurance captives or “pool” captives
specifically exist to bring together medium-sized businesses so they can gain
the insurance negotiating power of their bigger competition.
When it comes to whether or not your business is a good
candidate to join a group captive, your business’ size, headcount, or profits
don’t enter into the equation at all. It’s all about the scale of your business
insurance premiums.
The Bottom Line
If you pay more than $150,000 annually in premiums, you are
a strong captive pool candidate. You don’t need to be a multi-national
corporation or a Fortune 500 giant – just a business with a goal of doing
things better.
Myth #2: Entering a group or pool captive exposes your business’ health to
other people’s risks
Why is this myth so prevalent?
The idea that group insurance captives expose your money to
other business’ risks is a logical fallacy. That is, it seems right on its
surface when you have a cursory knowledge of the topic, but a deep dive proves
it to be completely false.
When businesses hear the words “group” and “insurance”
together, they incorrectly assume risk and responsibility are shared equally
among the pool members for claims. They connect the dots and assume that if one
pool member has a “bad year,” it damages their business allies as well.
Why is this a myth?
Pool captives are specifically structured to protect the
vast majority of each member’s investment from the risks and claims of others.
Over 90% of your premiums are specifically set aside for your use.
That means less than 10% of your total investment can be
lost due to claims made by other members of your pool.
In fact, in Launchways’ group captive program, each member retains complete ownership of 98% of their funds. This means that with the Launchways group captive, only 2% of your investment is considered “at-risk.”
The Bottom Line
Yes, group captive membership requires the willingness to
take on increased risk compared to the traditional insurance marketplace, but
it’s absolutely false to say that your potential for profits is at the mercy of
your pool partners.
Myth #3: When you’re in a captive, one big claim can blow up your business
Why is this myth so prevalent?
Like Myth #2, the “catastrophic claims scenario” is a
logical fallacy: it sounds right, but it isn’t! When people hear “self-insurance,” they assume
that means “we’re on the hook for every dollar and cent of every potential
claim.”
Unfortunately, this myth is also sometimes perpetuated by
insurance providers and brokers who are hesitant to work outside the traditional
marketplace. Their motivation is to protect their own interests and ease of
doing work, not yours!
Why is this a myth?
One word: reinsurance. Whether you operate your own
single-member captive or participate in a group or pool program, part of your
investment is always in reinsurance to prevent exactly this scenario.
That reinsurance policy prevents unforeseen or
much-larger-than-expected claims and issues from damaging your business’
long-term viability or standing as a strong group captive partner.
The Bottom Line
Reinsurance is a part of every captive program, and it’s
there to protect you from potentially harming the health of your business.
Myth #4: We’d have to change the way we do business to form or join a
captive
Why is this myth so prevalent?
The idea of creating your own insurance company sounds
pretty daunting at first. Many people assume they’ll need to restructure their
organization to make the captive viable or transform themselves into a more
attractive group pool member.
Like so many other myths we’ve tackled, this one is at least
in part in heavy circulation because many insurance package providers aren’t
crazy about the idea of businesses cutting them out as middlemen.
Why is this a myth?
The whole point of a captive insurance program is that it
allows your business to be itself more fully – you gain the ability to insure
outside-the-box risks, gain ownership over the claims management process, and
reclaim power and autonomy that traditional business insurance limits.
Captive insurance programs aren’t about changing your
business, they’re about changing the circumstances under which you do business.
Furthermore, in the case of group captive programs, independent managers handle
pool responsibilities, meaning there’s minimal change to your day-to-day
operations and responsibilities.
The Bottom Line
A captive is about supporting your business better and
providing greater economy of scale. The idea that you need to significantly
“whip yourself into shape” to be a captive candidate is false.
Myth #5: Captive programs used to offer great perks, but the value isn’t
there anymore
Why is this myth so prevalent?
Anytime people perceive the value of a product or service
has been reduced even a small fraction, there’s often an impulse to throw out
the baby with the bath water.
Single-member captive programs used to offer large
corporations significant benefit as tax shelters, and it is true that most of
those incentives have been removed. In reactionary style, many of the big business
blogs have published content claiming captives “aren’t what they used to be.”
Why is this a myth?
As we’ve established repeatedly in our myth-busting
exercise, insurance captives aren’t just for the biggest companies in terms of
workforce or economic power. Just because those industry leaders are upset about
changing regulations, doesn’t mean you should be tricked into thinking like
them.
In fact, some of those same regulatory changes that have
made captives slightly less profitable for large, multinational entities have
actually made it easier for medium-sized businesses to form effective
pool captives. Even if captives have slightly declined in value for the biggest
business, they’re still loaded with potential for mid-sized businesses.
The Bottom Line
Captive insurance programs still offer tremendous value:
independence, authentic ownership of your business’ insurance and claims
process, and the potential to make a dividend instead of turning overspend into
loss are just three examples of why they’re still relevant and extremely
useful. Don’t be scared off just because they’re not the big-money tax shelter
they used to be.
Key Takeaways:
As we’ve seen, captive business insurance programs (both
single-member and group or pool) allow organizations to navigate the insurance
market in a more personalized, powerful manner.
Even though most entities aren’t big enough to pull off a
single-member captive, medium-sized businesses are increasingly forming
alliances that provide big value and the potential for profit.
There are plenty of myths out there about captives, most of
them designed to make the programs seem scary and risky, but it’s important to
remember:
You don’t need to be a gigantic corporation to qualify for a group or pool captive – you just need to pay at least $150,000 in annual premiums
Within a group insurance captive, over 90% of your investment is protected and sequestered for your use only
Reinsurance is built into captive programs to prevent catastrophic claims events
Captives should be about enabling you to do better, not forcing you to jump through hoops
Even if they’re not spectacular tax shelters anymore, there’s still immense value in the independence and negotiating power captives create
Just about every company these days has a mission, vision,
and set of core values. But all too often, these documents are reviewed once a
year by leadership then filed back away in a drawer. In these cases, they
remain hollow ideals rather than a reality of life at the company. Sometimes
this happens because the company followed the trend without really knowing what
it meant. Other times, businesses want to live their values, they just don’t
know how to realize their values in their business goals and day-to-day
operations.
Through our role as HR and benefits consultants, we’ve
gotten to know hundreds of companies over the years who struggle with this exact
challenge. And we’ve had the chance to guide them through the process of
integrating their values into everything that they do, particularly by crafting
values-driven benefits packages and human resources processes.
We’ve seen what works, and we’ve also seen what doesn’t. And
we have also seen how businesses transform and grow when they start realizing
their values in their day-to-day work.
This is one of the best things about being part of the
Launchways team. We’ve taken the lessons we’ve learned from working with our
clients to heart and live our values every day, in every way.
Our values shape who we are as team members, collaborators,
and consultants. They fuel our personal growth and make us invested in the
success of our coworkers, our company, and our clients. And we get the chance
to help our clients live their values and build more productive, engaging, and
rewarding workplaces.
Let’s take a look at what it means to live our values at
Launchways, including:
The Launchways Core Values
How We Make Our Values a Reality of Life at
Launchways
Values-Driven Customer Relationships
Helping Our Clients Live Their Values
Launchways’ Core Values
Before we dive into how we live our values, here’s a quick
overview of what our values are, as
described by CEO Jim Taylor:
Resourceful
We are a resourceful organization. We take initiative, we
own the challenges that are set before us, and we embrace the work of finding
solutions, no matter what it takes.
We are a driven enterprise. We’re passionate about what we
do, and we strive to always go above-and-beyond for our clients and each other.
Change-Maker
We’re a disruptive business. We’re unafraid to do things
differently, especially when we think it can yield better results. We’re
confident in our ability to improve the industry.
We’re a reflective and honest brand. We value constructive
conversation and believe that differences of opinion can make conversations and
businesses stronger.
We’re a community-minded team. We’re always looking for new
ways to support members of our Launchways community while also engaging with
the greater Chicago community.
How We Make Our Values a Reality of Life at Launchways
A values-driven workplace starts from the bottom-up. No
amount of cajoling from the C-Suite can make a company’s values a reality.
Every employee has to buy into the values and make them an intentional part of
how they interact with their work, their coworkers, and their clients. Only
then will a company’s values become a driving force in the company culture.
That said, there is a lot that a company’s leadership can do
to get employees to take ownership of company values. Unsurprisingly, with over
fifteen years of experience consulting with thousands of businesses, Jim knows
a thing or two about how to build a values-driven organization. And he built
Launchways around our core values from the ground up. Every process is shaped
with the company’s values in mind – how and who we hire, how we run our
meetings and share feedback, how we talk to each other across every level of
the Launchways team, and how we are encouraged to grow and advance within the
company.
And it’s worked. Our values are an integral part of what we
do and how we do it. They help us treat each other with honesty and integrity,
encouraging us to be our best and most authentic selves, to genuinely care
about our fellow team members, and to be deeply invested in our clients’
successes.
It makes all the difference in the world to go into the
office every day and work alongside friends and peers towards common goals with
a shared vision, mutual respect, and open communication.
Values-Driven Customer Relationships
At Launchways, we know that we do best when our customers
thrive. And our values define every aspect of our relationships with our
customers. We become an extension of our clients’ teams, as invested in their
success as we are in our own.
One of the main expressions of our values-driven approach to
our client relations is our consultative sales model. Essentially, we provide
our clients with solutions rather than products. We never go into a client relationship
with the plan to “sell them” on specific products. Instead, we identify their
needs first and then find the HR technology, benefits, and business insurance
solutions that meet those needs and that help our clients accomplish their business
goals.
At Launchways, “out-of-the-box” packages are out of the
question, and it would be anathema to us to suggest that a client adopt a
product if it isn’t the absolute best solution for their business.
This approach doesn’t just deliver better results for our
clients, it also makes our work a lot more rewarding and engaging. We approach
each new client with a fresh perspective, using our skills and experience to
develop unique solutions and solve their specific challenges.
In short, we get to be strategic problem-solvers rather than
succumbing to the uncaring monotony of the hard-sell.
Helping Our Clients Live Their Values
A significant part of living your values is making sure that
the way you treat your employees aligns with your company’s core values. That
means that your benefits and human resources processes need to be aligned with
those values.
In our role as benefits and HR consultants, we get to help
our clients align their people-processes with their values. For example, we’ve
helped companies who value employee safety overhaul their workplace safety
practices and we’ve helped companies who value diversity and inclusion
implement more inclusive benefits packages.
Even after we’ve implemented the initial values-oriented
solutions, we continue to help our clients live their values over the long run.
Because we deliver scalable solutions, we build long-term relationships with
our clients. Our clients regularly turn to us as they face different business
or human resources challenges, and we guide them towards the strategies and
solutions that will keep them faithful to their core values.
This is a unique aspect of our client problem-solving that
goes beyond reducing their costs, expanding their benefits, or streamlining
their processes. We don’t just get to help our clients succeed – we empower
them to make sure their employees succeed as well.
Key Takeaways
If there’s anything we’ve learned from our years of guiding
businesses through the process of maximizing their human potential, it’s the
importance of company values. That is why we live our values in every aspect of
how we work and do business at Launchways. Here’s what living our values looks
like at Launchways:
Putting our values at the center of everything
we do
Developing relationships with our coworkers and
clients that are based on trust and honesty
Delivering meaningful solutions for our clients
through a consultative sales process
Helping our clients live their values by
aligning their benefits and HR processes with their company values
