Performance assessment and management should be two of any business
leader’s top priorities. Unfortunately, discussions about specific employee
performance often get lost in the shuffle until a serious issue arises.
That’s because the prevailing performance assessment model
feels awkward and inauthentic to most of us – whether you’re the one being
assessed or the one doing the assessing. Yearly or quarterly appraisals create
“heck weeks” for managers during the review window and create anticipatory
anxiety for workers that damages their buy-in and daily productivity.
The long-term performance management strategy we inherited
from the 20th century just doesn’t work well anymore. Given the pace
of business and the capabilities of technology, we need performance management
processes that are more agile, more responsive, and more immediate.
Moving forward, we’ll explore:
The true value and potential of a constant
feedback loop around employee performance
How transitioning from a yearly or quarterly
assessment system to an ongoing performance management process can be easier
than it sounds
Guiding principles organizations can use as they
begin to build their new performance management system
Why Constant Evaluation is Best for Business
Instead of thinking about employee performance on a yearly
or quarterly term, businesses of all sizes, industries, and developmental
stages should begin to transition toward a culture of constant, on-going
evaluation.
It’s easy for that statement to produce a knee-jerk reaction
because, on its surface, it does sound like more work and more stress. The fact
of the matter, however, is that ongoing assessment provides more value and more
authenticity.
Let’s explore some of the ways an ongoing performance
assessment feedback loop can be beneficial to a business:
Keep Leadership Aware of the Organization’s Pulse
Senior leaders frequently express frustration that they are
unaware of individual employee performance issues until they become a business,
legal, or HR problem. That’s because the prevailing yearly assessment system
leaves them in the dark for months at a time.
When there’s a formal, ongoing, well-documented discussion
about performance between each employee and their direct supervisor, it’s far
easier for managers higher up in the chain of command to “take the temperature”
of each team or department at a glance.
Be Proactive, Not Reactive
Performance management that operates on a quarterly or
yearly term basically assumes that everything is going fine. Unfortunately,
however, we live and work in the real world, and that means some things aren’t fine.
When you assess each of your employees regularly, you create
a framework to proactively identify low-performing employees or teams and
shorten the time that bad apples stay in the barrel. Your ground-level
supervisors and team leaders gain a vocabulary, a structure, and a support
system that they can use to help senior leadership prevent small problems from
turning into big ones.
Maintain Open Lines of Communication About Performance
Yearly performance reviews are a tense time around the
office because, when someone’s assessing an entire year of your life, it’s hard
not to feel like the process is deeply personal, judgmental, and potentially
punitive.
An ongoing performance management strategy makes
professional feedback and conversations about improvement part of daily or
weekly life within each team or department. That means there’s less of that
long-term stress the yearly model creates, and the entire conversation seems
more casual, with everybody having a voice and staying plugged in.
Engage Your High Achievers
It’s easy to think of “performance management” as
“identifying and eliminating underperformers,” but too often, we forget about
the importance of recognizing the great work that high achievers are doing on a
daily basis.
Many of your employees who quietly, consistently do well are
yearning for a grateful, reassuring pat on the back, and an ongoing
conversation about performance with specific feedback is a great way to do
that. When great talent feels valued and seen in the workplace, they’re much
more likely to stick around or develop into leaders themselves.
Implementing Ongoing Performance Management Isn’t as Difficult as it Sounds
Anytime you say something is going to shift from a yearly
practice to a weekly, daily, or ongoing practice, employees understandably get concerned
that you’re about to create a lot of additional work for them.
Thankfully, however, transitioning toward an ongoing
performance assessment and management model isn’t actually as daunting as it
seems because a lot of the system you need to create already exists on an
informal level.
Let’s explore some of the reasons adjusting your assessment
timetable isn’t as disruptive as you might expect!
Much of the Tech Support Framework is Already in Place
Unlike the supervisors and performance assessors who created
the annual appraisal system, you have access to modern HRIS, HCM, document
sharing platforms, project management software interfaces, and so on.
That means your supervisors have many ways to measure how
their team members are doing that don’t involve looking over their shoulders or
having unnecessary, distracting conversations. Our tech-enabled work
environment is constantly capturing insights about how individual employees
work and achieve differently – it’s just about using that data to its full
potential.
By the same token, technology platforms make it easy to
house performance management or assessment information in an easily accessible
way, so visibility is maximized for supervisors and employees alike.
Team- and Department-Level Leaders are Just Formalizing What They Already
Do
Many supervisors, managers, and team leaders in your
organization are already making constant performance assessments about
everybody they work with. When you transition toward a formal ongoing
assessment model, you’re just empowering those leaders to turn those insights
into action in the workplace.
When you change models, you’re not creating new anxieties
for your managers, you’re providing them with a framework to document their
concerns and use them as a basis for authentic discussion about what needs to
happen in order for organizational performance to improve.
Employees Want to Know How They’re Doing
Contrary to popular belief, most employees are hungry for
feedback. Feedback makes people feel more secure – even constructive feedback –
because there’s nothing worse than not knowing how you’re doing.
For many employees, timely feedback can be the difference
between feeling underappreciated or feeling entirely bought-into the organization’s
mission and vision.
Many business leaders assume buy-in and morale are major
hurdles to having more serious conversations about employee performance, but if
employees know they have an authentic voice in the system, they will engage.
How to Transition Toward an Ongoing Performance Evaluation Model
So now that we’ve obliterated the myth that ongoing
performance management is challenging, creates more work, and harms morale,
let’s take a look at what each business needs to do to create a successful,
powerful assessment system.
Provide Training to Turn Your Managers into Professional Assessors
For your ongoing performance evaluation system to work well,
your supervisors, team leaders, managers, and other assessors need to be really
good at giving targeted, thoughtful feedback, brainstorming solutions or
improvement plans, and talking to employees in a way that feels supportive and
positive yet firm.
Not everybody naturally knows how to do all those things.
While some of your supervisors might have gone to school for business
management, others have probably risen through the ranks or achieved their
position by demonstrating other key skills.
Getting performance management right requires ensuring that
each assessor is well-versed in best practices for performance assessment,
feedback creation, and so on. That will most likely require some professional
training from an outside consultant, but great coaching is the fuel that powers
strong performance.
Create a Data-Driven Assessment Process
In order for any assessment system to truly work, it must be
fair and based in a shared, objective understanding of the facts. That means
your approach to performance management needs to avoid over-reliance on
qualitative, observation-based manager feedback and focus on the data.
Thanks to the backend data from those HCM systems, project
management applications, and other tech-enabled work platforms we discussed
earlier, it’s easier than ever to gather data about work completion times,
project success, and other relevant measures of performance. If you bring in a
performance management consultant or similar professional, they can also help
you identify other easy-to-access data points that can tell powerful stories.
Build in Both Accountability and Mutual Protection
A bad or incomplete performance management system can potentially
get your business into a lot of trouble.
On one level, poor performance assessment leaves you
vulnerable to sagging business or employee disengagement. On the other hand,
bad performance management practices can also lead to wrongful termination
claims and other legal issues.
As you design your ongoing performance management system,
it’s crucial that you back up your new practices with appropriate, legally
compliant policies and provide employee training to guarantee awareness of best
practices and key accountabilities.
You need to be sure you’re building something that will hold
up to outside scrutiny, display your company values in a positive manner, and
help everybody appreciate the weight and importance of the work they do on a
daily basis.
Key Takeaways
As we move into 2020, we must augment our practices to
reflect the faster pace of business and the increased urgency of success and
profitability at scale.
Proactive, ongoing performance management has the potential
to strengthen any business and foster healthier discussions about work between
employer and employee. Just remember:
Constant assessment creates a feedback loop that
keeps employees, ground-level managers, and upper leadership on the same page
when it comes to talent and performance management
Regular feedback sets low achievers up for
improvement and provides high achievers with the recognition they need to
thrive
Making the transition to ongoing feedback isn’t
as difficult as you might think as you’re just formalizing and validating the
work that many of your managers are already doing in an unstructured way
Rolling out your new assessment system requires
appropriate educational support for both assessors and individual employees to
ensure strong coaching and good buy-in
Feedback should be based in measurable data, not
just qualitative observations or feelings
At Launchways, we pride ourselves on working closely with
each individual client to identify their workforce’s unique needs, navigate
their business model’s unique challenges, and leverage emerging best practices
to help them create employee benefit packages that truly support their workers
without breaking the bank.
As we near the end of 2019, we’ve been reflecting on the
most common client challenges we saw this year, and we’ve decided to share this
list of the Top 11 Employee Benefit Challenges Facing Today’s Businesses.
Here are the most pressing challenges we see assist our
clients with on their employee benefits programs:
Rising Healthcare Costs
Doctor visits, prescription drugs, and medical procedures
are more expensive than ever before, and it’s difficult to envision that
paradigm reversing in the near future. Media coverage surrounding healthcare
costs does a good job illustrating the impact on individual patients, but the
increased burden on businesses often goes unvoiced.
Every business wants to support their employees’ and their
families in times of personal and medical need, but the incredible costs
associated with certain long-term courses of treatment is causing some
businesses to feel nervous about the financial impact of offering comprehensive
coverage.
These tensions reinforce why it’s so important to partner with
the right employee benefits broker who you know is working in the best interest
of both your employees and your business to deliver maximum benefits value at
the lowest possible cost.
Understanding Employee Healthcare Needs
One of the biggest areas of loss in all of human resources
is the lack of alignment between employee healthcare needs and the benefits
packages offered. If benefits plans are too rich, it can cause undue waste of
business resources.
At the same time, however, shortfalls in coverage can be
financially and personally devastating to employees. That’s why tailoring your
benefit offerings to employee needs is crucial to hitting the sweet spot of
comprehensive coverage and well-scaled costs.
Analyzing employee healthcare usage data, available through
your carrier, can be extremely useful in this diagnostic work. Only when you
know what your employees truly need can you optimize your offerings.
ACA Compliance
The Affordable Care Act presents different challenges to
organizations depending on their scale, with specific regulations based on
employee headcount. Many growing or early-stage businesses break into different
tiers as they develop, and without proactive management, that can lead to
accidental non-compliance.
Knowing the ACA inside and out is a must for any employee
benefits specialist, and it’s also important to allocate co-planning time between
HR and finance to discuss how employee benefits programs will need to grow to
account for regulations as the business progresses.
If you don’t understand what the ACA demands of your
business, engage a compliance partner to help you navigate these complex
issues.
The Rising Relevance of Mental Health
Our shared cultural understanding of health and well-being
have shifted a great deal in recent years, and simply taking care of employees’
bodies is no longer enough. Mental wellness is just as important to success at
work and away from the office as our traditional understanding of physical
health and therefore must assume its proper place as a cornerstone of your
overall employee benefits strategy.
There are many businesses out there today who are failing to
provide their employees with an affordable and accessible framework to get the
therapy and medication they need, and businesses are often unaware this gap exists.
Across the industry, support for mental health must catch up to awareness.
Due to decades of stigma and denial, even talking about
mental health at work can be challenging at first, but in the 2020s, the
businesses with the strongest approach to mental health will be the ones with
the highest-performing teams.
Overreliance on Narrow Networks
A decade or so ago, benefits were trending toward narrow
networks, with the thought being that both patients and their employers could
save more money by staying relatively local and working with a tighter
healthcare team. In reality, narrow networks provide the most benefit to the
professionals who are doing the billing, not the paying, by ensuring a steady
patient flow.
Narrow networks can be a nightmare for new employees who
have existing relationships with out-of-network doctors or team members who get
life-changing diagnoses and want to pursue all options. They also prevent
patients from price shopping, which means you and your employees are stuck
paying whatever the in-network provider dictates, even if it’s not the best
deal.
Legacy narrow network healthcare is an underappreciated obstacle
to talent recruitment and retention, especially for organizations targeting a
younger or more diverse talent pool.
Offering a Qualified HDHP, but Not an HSA Strategy
High-Deductible Health Plans are always a great option for young
or single employees who do not require much coverage, and they also provide
tremendous savings for employers. With that said, however, an HDHP can easily
fail an employee who has sudden or unexpected medical needs that transform
their medical care into a mountain of debt.
If you offer HDHPs, it’s crucial that you protect your
employees by extending a Health Savings Account option. Using the HSA, you can
help your employees fill in the gaps in their HDHP coverage and limit their
out-of-pocket expenses, while still saving money compared to the price of a
lower-deductible plan.
As an employer, you must build benefits and incentives for
employees who have helped you out by selecting less expensive coverage options,
and the HSA is a best practice for returning that value back.
Educating the Workforce on Benefits
As we said earlier, one of the biggest areas of unnecessary
spend for many businesses is unused benefits. The root cause of that disuse is
often a lack of awareness, either because employees don’t know the benefits
exist or they don’t know understand how they would benefit from them.
Additionally, millions of workers who don’t know which
benefit package is right for them unwittingly set themselves and their
employers up for failure every year. As a proactive business leader, it’s your
job to give your team members the knowledge and tools they need to help
themselves (and you) when it comes to benefit elections.
Employee education is fundamental to any organization
getting benefits right at scale. Finding the right approach requires thinking
like a teacher and having a clear vision of what an optimized system will look
like.
Out-of-Date Dental and Vision Plans
People used to think dental and vision were “the easy part”
of employee benefits, but as technology has improved both fields, new
approaches have been innovated and care has gotten more expensive. For many
businesses with a legacy approach to benefits, their dental and vision plans
are simply out-of-step with the times.
Dental plans need to account for new approaches like implant
dentistry and cover a wider range of surgical procedures to make great
dentistry accessible to more people. Similarly, vision plans must account for
corrective laser procedures, innovative cataract removals, and so on.
Accessibility to dental and vision care greatly impact
employees’ and their families’ long-term health and well-being. If your
insurance offerings only cover procedures that were common in the ‘90s, you should
look at revising your plan.
Benefits Administration and Integration with Payroll & HRIS
As we all know, HR professionals balance an incredible
number of responsibilities, both human and administrative. One of the things
that makes those day-to-day tasks so frustrating is the lack of integration
between the tools they require to do their work.
For example, some HR professionals utilize an HRIS to
archive employee data, an HCM for people management, a benefits administration
system, and a payroll portal for financial transactions. Without backend
integration between these apps and tools, professionals have to do a great deal
of repeat data entry, leading to lost productivity and potentially costly
transposition errors.
In order to run an efficient HR department that can manage
benefits and other concerns in a daily, proactive manner, every organization
needs to move towards a single integrated system for employee benefits,
payroll, human capital management, and beyond.
Managing Short-Term Disability and FMLA
Disability and Family and Medical Leave provide a crucial
safety net for all workers. However, as an employer, you have a variety of
obligations and responsibilities when an employee applies for leave.
Too many organizations lack clear procedures for leave
application and approval, leaving themselves open to strained relationships
with employees and potentially costly lawsuits. The more proactive you can be
in laying out policy for giving employees the family or recovery time they need
while maintaining internal productivity, the better a support you can be for
your team members and your organization as a whole.
Each business should have a clear approach to the leave
application process, transparent approval criteria, and an established re-entry
plan for employees when their leave is over.
Finding Alternative Funding Strategies
As our first ten challenges have illustrated, providing
strong employee benefits is increasingly about flexibility and scale. The best
programs are the ones tailored to the specific needs of your employees with
maximum value and accessibility in mind.
With that said, it can be tough to achieve that bespoke feel
with a traditional fully-funded health insurance program. The total freedom of
self-funding might not be possible for all businesses, but there are a variety
of new and innovative ways you can connect with alternative funding to build
something more personalized.
If you’re intrigued about changing your funding model to
create a more open-ended, employee-centric approach to healthcare, talk to your
leadership team and benefits broker about exploring new possibilities.
Too many in management, from ground-level supervisors to
C-level leadership, have trouble answering questions regarding their team’s
performance in an honest, fact-driven way that speaks to actual performance and
not just day-to-day habits or cultural fit. This disconnect isn’t for lack of
trying– just about everybody understands that great work must be done to create
a great enterprise. It’s articulating what that performance looks like and
actually assessing it within your employees that’s so tricky.
Make no mistake: strong performance management is the
difference between a promising organization growing into a business juggernaut
or stagnating at not-quite-there. It’s what separates a solid leadership team
from an excellent one and determines who are the flashes in the pan and who are
the sustained innovators and disruptors.
Moving forward, we’ll explore:
Why industry standard approaches to performance
management are often not efficient nor impactful
Why all businesses must modernize their approach
to performance management in the near future to address the needs of the modern
workforce
Specific mindsets, tools, and approaches
organizations can use to begin transforming their performance management
processes
Why Most Approaches to Performance Management are Outdated
The way we work, interact with our colleagues, and use
technology on a daily basis has outgrown the traditional strategies that drove
performance management and assessment in the 20th century. Our
approach to accountability has fallen behind the pace of work, and that creates
risk.
Perhaps the greatest example of this is the fact that most
discussions about employee feedback and performance management are still built
on qualitative feedback from direct supervisors. Managers fill out a scorecard
for each employee, provide verbal or written comments, and, when applicable,
create plans for improvement.
Here’s what’s missing from this traditional approach: in
nearly every business where this legacy assessment practice is used, there are
tech-based work management systems in place creating data that could be used to
inform a much realer, more focused ongoing discussion.
That means many in business are choosing qualitative over
quantitative and giving preference to supervisors’ thoughts and feelings over
actual measures of worker quality and productivity. That method defies
everything we know about the power of data and analytics in the modern workplace.
Furthermore, the traditional performance management model
treats each individual employee as though they were an island, emphasizing only
their direct relationship with their individual work and their direct
relationship with their supervisor/manager/assessor. That approach is out of
alignment with what we’ve collectively learned about the power and importance
of teambuilding and company culture over the last twenty years.
Why Modernize Your Approach to Performance Management?
In order to gain the best possible understanding of the
potential of your team and asses your areas of strength, weakness, and need,
it’s crucial to have a modern, data-driven performance management and
assessment framework in place. Any organization articulating a performance
management strategy for the first time, or any business with a framework more
than five years old, should prioritize this work to support short- and
long-term viability.
Talent relations is increasingly an area of federal, state,
and local regulation. Outdated performance management frameworks leave
organizations open to lawsuits, sudden terminations, and potential
non-compliance issues. An up-to-date approach to performance management sews up
those holes in policy and provides better legal protection for the organization
as a whole and each manager or assessor as an individual.
Modern, responsive performance management demystifies the
process from top to bottom, creating better support for those in charge of
assessment and greater authenticity for those being assessed. Each stakeholder
has an appropriate voice in the process, the ability to provide documentation
to back up their claims, and the goal-setting framework necessary to ensure
everybody grows professionally together.
When you bring your performance management strategy into the
era of technology, it breaks down the traditional boundaries between “boss” and
“employee” to foster a more productive overall culture and push everyone toward
excellence.
Three Things You Can Do to Modernize Your Performance Management Approach
Stop Viewing Performance Management as an Annual Appraisal
A year is an incredibly long term. If you managed a sports
team, would you give every player a year of starting time before you assessed
their performance? The answer is, probably not.
Great players get the most playing time and the most
compensation, and the worst achievers are obviously sent packing, but it’s that
80% in the middle who the true coach can influence and push toward improvement.
Good coaches make constant, ongoing assessments, make constant, ongoing
feedback, and incentive the day-to-day work on a constant, ongoing basis.
Turning your management/supervisory team into “coaches”
doesn’t happen overnight, but it does have the potential to completely
transform what work and culture feel like in your business. The first step to
unlocking that potential is eliminating your yearly (or even quarterly)
performance management model and shifting toward an ongoing assessment
structure.
As we’ve said, the increased availability of worker data
thanks to technology makes this work much easier. Managers can use ERP
interfaces, project management systems, and so on to monitor what employees are
doing, how they are working toward goals and deadlines, and so on, each day or
week. It’s easier than ever to see when someone is falling behind and make a
correction or recognize an employee who is taking things to the next level at
your organization.
While it seems like that kind of constant supervision creates new work for
managers and new stress for workers, it actually streamlines and reduces both
over time.
Adjusting to these new practices can take some time for
supervisors at first, but once they’re plugged into performance management
practices as part of their daily work, there’s no more quarterly or yearly
assessment season crunch, and what was once a major stressor is now a harmless
daily task. For workers, ongoing assessment means no more nervously waiting to find
out how you’re doing, and each individual assessment or evaluation feels less
stressful or punitive.
Build Clear Expectations and Establish Clear KPIs
We’ve addressed the concept of data several times already,
but it cannot be stressed enough: The only way to turn performance management
into a true performance driver is to stay rooted in data and objectivity.
One of the biggest issues managers have when it comes to
assessment is that they might be responsible for assessing a team of 25+ people
in a variety of different roles and simply don’t know where to start.
Data-minded thinking absolutely obliterates that issue and provides strong
anchor/talking points for any employee evaluation.
In order to make that work, though, your organization and HR
departments must have a well-defined organizational chart with goals and
measurable KPIs established for each professional, team, or department. Again,
that sounds like a major task at first, but once it has been completed, there
is a much more comprehensive vision for the organization and talent in place,
and far greater clarity when it comes to who should be doing what.
When you have clear KPIs and measures of success for each
position or role in the company, it’s easier to onboard new hires in a
meaningful way, help laggards see where they need to improve, and identify
superstar leaders of tomorrow. Employees can track their progress over time,
and managers can mold each worker’s skillset or professional growth in
relevant, individualized ways. That data-minded thinking makes everything less
personal and less punitive, inviting each worker to create a vision of success
for themselves in their particular role.
Establish High Performance as a Key Company Value
One of the biggest reasons employees fall short of
expectations is because they didn’t fully understand those expectations. Either
the importance of the work or the
value of doing an exceptional job is unclear or employees
aren’t sure what great work looks like to you.
By making performance expectations clear, visible, and a
daily part of the work experience in your organization, you can create a
company culture in which your employees strive to be their best selves, meet
identified goals, and brainstorm new ways of doing work better. When doing
great work is a foundational pillar of what you do, employees will continuously
be encouraged to go above and beyond.
Establishing a culture of high performance is much more
complex than simply saying you want to do it. In order for that culture to feel
authentic and for workers to buy in, you must create a clear roadmap that shows
what excellence looks like and how collective excellence will grow the company
and improve the lives of each employee.
Getting that right requires strong employee education, both
to get new hires oriented and to provide veterans with the tools they need to
grab onto the evolving face of work in their organization, as well as
outstanding communication and a commitment to fostering a strong bond between
the organization and its team.
Key Takeaways
Performance assessment has the potential to help a business
become its best, most profitable self, but in order for that to happen, a
modern, responsive system is required. Remember:
Performance assessment must be an on-going
process to work well
When you get performance assessment right,
everybody gains value: the business, the individual workers, and the middle
management who does the assessing
Quantifiable data and KPI tracking make
performance assessment easier, fairer, and help the whole process stand up
better to scrutiny
The key to any performance-centric strategy is
making sure team members truly value excellence and know what excellence in
their role looks like on a day to day basis
How to Learn More
If you’re a business leader looking to build an impactful,
forward-facing performance management strategy, be sure to join us on
Wednesday, December 11th to learn about
The Future of Performance Management!
This free webinar from Launchways will be packed with
actionable insights about emerging best practices for performance assessment
including…
How to assess the impact of your current
performance management program and get started on building something even
better
How to recognize the common pitfalls of
performance management
How to replace an annual assessment system with
a continuous feedback loop
How to deliver difficult feedback and establish
a shared view of reality
How to manage both high- and low-performing
talent effectively
The hour-long learning experience will feature presentations
and Q&A time with an all-star panel of veteran business leaders who know
what it takes to build, manage, and continuously improve a great team.
Presenters will include:
Jodi Wellman, Co-Founder of Spectacular at
Work, a leading executive coach who specializes in helping business leaders
maximize their teams to build success and balance.
Adam Radulovic, President at XL.net, an
experienced entrepreneur and small business leader with a track record of building
and managing profit-driving teams.
Gary Schafer, President at Launchways, who
has built multiple businesses from the ground up and specializes in scaling
high-performing teams for growing organizations.
Jon
Howaniec, VP & HR Director at Clark Dietz, who has over twenty years
experience building high-performing HR processes at fast-growth organizations.
Any business leader, HR Director, or manager hoping to
improve their skills as a coach, mentor, or accountability partner should make
time to check out The Future of
Performance Management: How to Modernize Your Approach and start the
process continuously improving their team this December.
This month, Launchways formally announced our partnership with Rippling, the software company unifying employee systems such as payroll, benefits, devices, and 3rd party apps. Launchways formed this partnership to give our clients unique access to Rippling’s industry-leading solutions and provide a centralized software layer to our already robust service offerings, improving the overall user experience for our clients.
As a leading provider of strategic HR and Employee Benefits solutions, Launchways is always looking for the newest solutions that will empower our clients’ sustainable growth. Launchways CEO, Jim Taylor, said, “The partnership with Rippling is a natural step for us, as their scalable, centralized, and customizable model dovetails perfectly with the Launchways philosophy of taking a boutique approach to developing HR and Benefits solutions.”
It’s important to note what makes Rippling unique among modern all-in-one HR platforms and what we hope to accomplish through our partnership. Let’s take a look at the details of how Rippling will empower our clients, including:
Rippling’s hybrid approach to HR and IT
Full-lifecycle employee management through Rippling
Rippling’s versatility and scalability
The mission of the Rippling + Launchways partnership
The Rippling Effect: A Unique Approach to HR Technology
Human Resources Meets Information Technology
Rippling is the first software platform to enable companies to handle their HR and IT in a single system. Management of payroll, benefits, physical devices, and software applications like Gsuite, Salesforce, and Slack is all just a click away in a centralized and streamlined interface. This creates one system of record across departments and functions, avoiding duplicated effort and inconsistent data storage.
Growing businesses often operate with a lean team and need to run as quickly and efficiently as possible. A centralized system like Rippling connects all employee data into a single system of record, enabling business leaders to automate time-consuming HR tasks. This centralization and automation allows teams to run faster and work more efficiently.
While there are other competitive systems with dedicated HR solutions and IT solutions, Rippling is the only software solution to manage both of these functions in a single platform. Rippling’s Payroll, Benefits Administration, and FSA/HSA/Commuter Debit Card tools operate seamlessly within the same platform as its Access Management and Computers & Security tools for IT. HR professionals can manage their people, their devices, and their accounts all within the same easy-to-use platform.
Employee Lifecycle Management
Rippling is dedicated to providing full-service solutions throughout the entirety of the employee lifecycle. From onboarding and offboarding to payroll, PTO, and benefits, Rippling streamlines every process through centralization and automation of data, resulting in the elimination of all of the unnecessary paperwork and manual entry that makes these processes so arduous.
The platform enables employers to onboard new employees in just 90 seconds, including adding them to payroll and benefits, ordering necessary hardware, creating user accounts in any of 500+ applications, installing the employee’s software and security, and assigning onboarding tasks. What’s more, companies can configure “smart rules” based on employee attributes. For example, if you hire a sales rep in California, their employee attributes (their computer, the apps they use, the payroll and benefits options their offered, etc.) will automatically be populated within the system. Rippling eliminates the need for paperwork and manual data entry during these processes, so your team can focus on the human and cultural side of onboarding.
Once employees are part of the team, Rippling’s platform provides time-off tracking, a team task manager, full-service payroll and benefits administration. Additionally, if Rippling doesn’t do it, their third-party integrations with hundreds of additional applications complement the entire employee experience.
And offboarding employees leaving the company is just as easy. Rippling will automatically remove the former employee from all systems, including benefits and payroll, administer the employee’s COBRA, and disable employee accounts and devices.
Versatility and Scalability
One of the pillars of the Launchways approach to benefits and HR is that our solutions are scalable, so they can accommodate our clients as they grow their businesses. We know that changing systems as a company grows can cause painful business disruption, inevitable system inefficiencies, and bureaucracy that stunts growth.
In partnering with Rippling, it was important to Launchways that their solution accommodate the growing businesses that we serve. Rippling’s platform works seamlessly whether your business has two employees or a thousand. Painless integrations allow users to evolve their business processes transform over time. For instance, Rippling works just as well with QuickBooks and Xero as it does with Intacct or NetSuite. So you won’t have to change your HR or IT software when you’ve outgrown your accounting solution. Additionally, unlike other all-in-one HR platforms that can take months or even a year to roll-out, Rippling can be deployed in a matter of days or weeks, and is fully-equipped to import your existing data.
In total, Rippling has over 500 third-party integrations, including Slack, Microsoft Office, Dropbox, and Salesforce. This highly collaborative approach meshes perfectly with Launchways’ fervent belief that no two clients’ needs are exactly alike. Every business is unique, and its processes, pain points, and solutions are too. Rippling’s module approach allows our clients to choose the solutions that work best for their business and budget, while Rippling’s robust network of integrations allow businesses to create the software suite that works best for their team.
The Mission of the Launchways + Rippling Partnership
This powerful partnership combines the hands-on, tailored service of Launchways’ benefits brokerage with best-in-class HR technology that eliminates the need for tedious administrative work.
It’s a true partnership, meaning that Rippling provides a dedicated service and support team for our clients. At Launchways, we pride ourselves on our dedication to personalized service and boutique benefits approach, no matter what size the client is. This partnership allows us to deliver the same level of service for our clients’ HR and IT software needs. Rippling Head of Channel Sales, Matt Donaldson, added “Partnering with benefits brokers, like Launchways, has enabled us to present a unique option in the market. There isn’t another solution that can pair best-in-breed technology with the knowledge of an industry expert. It truly is a game changer for our customers.”
At its core, our strategic partnership with Rippling affords our clients access to cutting-edge HR technology, while still allowing them to rely on our team of top-notch benefits consultants for a hands-on approach to employee benefits. An additional perk of the partnership is that Launchways clients will be able to purchase the software at a significant discount. Launchways CEO, Jim Taylor, said “All too often, business leaders are forced to choose between the costly, comprehensive solution that works best for their needs and the less expensive, less robust solution that works best for their budget. Launchways’ goal with this partnership is to make sure that our clients get the best of both worlds by taking advantage of our heavily negotiated rates and dedicated service team.”
Key Takeaways
Launchways’ partnership with Rippling represents an exciting opportunity for our clients. Rippling’s innovative approach to HR and IT won it the PC Magazine Editor’s Choice Award and made it the top-ranking Payroll Software solution and HR Software solution on Capterra, G2 Crowd and GetApp. By working closely with the Rippling team, we can offer our clients significant discounts on Rippling software and personalized support from a dedicated service team. When considering whether to make Rippling part of your Launchways solution, keep in mind:
Rippling is the only software provider that lets you manage your HR and IT functions within the same platform to eliminate wasteful processes and create a single system of record
Onboard and offboard employees in just 90 seconds with Rippling’s streamlined processes
Rippling’s versatility and scalability match Launchways’ approach to benefits and HR
This partnership provides our clients with unique advantages compared to general consumers
Diversity and inclusion are the keys to creating a truly
modern team that’s built to maximize each individual’s skills, shore up
individual weaknesses, and build a powerful unit that can thrive, brainstorm,
problem-solve, and celebrate achievements together. With that said, getting
diversity and inclusion right is such an important responsibility that many HR
and business leaders continue to hire for cultural fit, leaving a coordinated,
purposeful D&I initiative for another day.
In order for businesses to succeed and innovate into the 2020s, that kind of thinking needs to stop. Each and every employer should be doing something at scale to encourage diversity and foster inclusion. The businesses that do not will soon stand to miss out on some of the world’s best talent and leave themselves exposed to costly lawsuits.In order to demystify the complexity of D&I and connect business and HR leaders with actionable strategies, Launchways recently held a free one-hour webinar, “Everything You Wanted to Know About Workplace Diversity & Inclusion but Were Afraid to Ask.”
The webinar featured an all-star panel of four of the
Midwest’s leading experts on diversity and inclusion, each of whom provided
crucial considerations and actionable strategies for businesses of any size or
growth stage looking to improve their commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Rebekah Wolford of Paylocity began the conversation
by articulating the importance of diversity and inclusion as prized values
baked into the core of what your organization does and represents. She
explained how D&I initiatives all about building the “We” that’s going to
maximize company potential and customer experience.
Rebekah also provided a valuable real-world case study for
D&I success by walking through how she and her team planned, initiated, and
built an impactful diversity and inclusion program at Paylocity. She discussed…
How to use surveys and HCM data to build an
understanding of the current state of D&I at your organization
Which data points should be most important to
your D&I planning and assessment
How to create a comfortable space in which
employees and leadership can challenge each other
How to be sure you’re practicing inclusive
behaviors and creating a strong culture
How to use employee resource groups (ERGs) as an
on-going part of a D&I strategy
How to create and provide meaningful D&I
training for your team
Rada Yovovich of The Darkest Horseshared
some of her wisdom as an expert diversity and inclusion consultant, expanding
on the vital importance of strong company culture and discussing how businesses
can work towards getting there from any starting point.
Rada stressed that the workplace is an unintentional “bias
factory,” which presents an unwelcoming or additionally challenging situation
for diverse talent. She specifically discussed how organizations can work to
identify and eliminate bias in their job postings, hiring interactions, and
performance management evaluations. She also explained…
How to build buy-in for your D&I program by
making it authentic to, designed for, and reflective of your organization’s
existing culture
How to use employee engagement to drive forward
the culture and team you aspire to
How to recognize, address, and eliminate the
unconscious bias that works against diversity and inclusion
How to provide non-judgmental employee
assessments by staying grounded in functional competencies
How to create a documentation trail that protects
your business in compliance scenarios
Dr. Renee McLaughlin of Cignadrew upon her years of
experience as an LGBTQ+ inclusion and healthcare professional to emphasize the
importance of proactive planning in corporate D&I. Whether it’s an
early-stage organization devising a plan for maintaining their strong culture
if a merger or buyout occurs or choosing which healthcare offerings will
ideally support your team, the best answer is to have a clear, powerful plan in
place.
Renee also provided tremendous insight into the necessity of
transition resources for professionals in any workplace. That means having a
policy-backed transition plan, proactively working to ensure the safety of
trans professionals, and providing healthcare offerings that provide trans team
members with the best opportunity to be their authentic selves at work. She
specifically discussed…
Why
diversity and inclusion are especially relevant for early-stage businesses
How
to work toward combining cultures in a positive, authentic way during a
business merger scenario
How
early stage companies can plan proactively to reduce these challenges
How
to proactively address the needs of LGBTQ+ employees, particularly transgender
team members, through company policies and insurance offerings
Which
specific terms need to be included in your policies
How
to plan to address resistant beliefs in LGBTQ+ inclusion scenarios
The
importance of understanding all local laws related to LGBTQ+ rights, particularly
for multi-site corporations
Alex Koglin of Launchways
applied his expertise as a leading employee benefits consultant and LGBTQ+
rights activist in the Chicago area to provide specific insight into how you
can build alignment between your benefits offerings and your commitment to
diversity and inclusion.
Alex provided specific employee benefits recommendations
that organizations can use to build the necessary support for diversity,
inclusion, and transition that Renee, Rebekah, and Rada discussed. He
explained…
How to create a strong, supportive D&I framework regardless of your personal feelings through employee benefits and healthcare offerings
The importance of benefits offerings that account for domestic partners and same-sex spouses
How to ensure your transgender employees’ healthcare needs are met
The importance of providing robust mental health coverage as well as physical healthcare
How to provide on-going health and wellness education to maximize team-wide well-being
HR practices and policies must evolve over time to reflect
emerging best practices, changes to regulations, and shifting cultural values.
Throughout the last decade, our shared understanding of what
the workplace looks and feels like has gone through significant alterations,
and as we near 2020, it’s a logical time for organizations of all sizes and
industries to reassess their HR policies and procedures.
With that said, many of HR’s biggest challenges are baked
into the nature of the work, but new technologies and innovative approaches are
turning those challenges into areas of new opportunity.
Moving forward, we’ll take a look at the biggest HR
challenges that growing businesses must have on their radar as we prepare for
the new year.
1.
Employee Performance
One of any HR department’s main responsibilities is creating
a team and an environment in which people can do great work. No human resources
department can operate at its highest level unless there’s a company-wide
awareness of expectations and accountability. As a business, you can’t correct,
reprimand, or discipline anybody with any real authority unless you’ve clearly
articulated goals, KPIs, and an evaluation framework that everybody knows and
cares about.
2.
Terminations
Getting termination right is just as important as getting hiring
right. The way you separate from former employees affects your reputation in
the talent marketplace and the morale of your remaining team.
If you don’t have a codified, iron-clad termination
procedure that’s been vetted by your legal team, you could be leaving your
organization open to potential lawsuits and fees. Regulations on termination
practice vary from state to state, so it’s important to be aware of your local
laws, especially if your organization has offices in various states.
The dialogue around planned employee leave has changed
tremendously in recent years. The aging population means that many professional
age workers are medical or legal custodians of older family members, and shifts
in parenting practices, mental health awareness, and beyond have an increasing number
of employees requesting time away from the office.
As the employer, you must be prepared for every conceivable
leave request and have policies in place that explain when and how much leave
is permitted, what process employees must go through for approval, and how their
return to the team will be arranged and executed. Any gap in your explicit
policies is a potential legal liability.
4.
Harassment Prevention, Training, and
Investigations
As we approach the fourth year of the #MeToo movement,
public and individual awareness of harassment has never been higher. That means
your prevention training procedures and reporting/investigation frameworks must
be stronger and more comprehensive than ever in order to provide the best
possible protection for you and your employees.
With that said, nothing is more important than
follow-through. If you have great policies on the books but don’t honor them,
you’re compromising your company vision and creating greater opportunity for
your organization to be hurt by legal disputes. If there’s one area of your HR
practice that you are targeting for improvement this year, make it your
harassment prevention, training, and investigation policies.
5.
Training for Managers
Team- and department-level leadership has the capacity to
build great engagement and motivation or send employees running for the door.
The best way to ensure the former happens (and to avoid the latter) is to
provide your management teams with consistent, explicit training on how to
approach coaching, mentoring, feedback, discipline, staffing, etc.
Managers in even the best organizations – especially
fast-growing ones – often have gaps in their knowledge of new employee management
strategies and best practices. That’s because many of them were promoted into
their positions for being all-star workers. While they still have the knowledge
and perspective that they showed off in that role, they don’t have the same
degree of experience and preparation regarding management responsibilities. By
providing them with impactful training, you build your management team into
more valuable leaders.
6.
PTO/Sick/Vacation Policies
One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is not clearly
articulating how different absences from work should be planned, coded, and
compensated. Depending on the state where your business is located, there may
be specific definitions of “Paid Time Off” versus “Sick Time” versus “Vacation
Time” that you must obey.
Policies must clearly establish a rate of PTO/sick
day/vacation time accrual, procedures and appropriate contacts for approval,
carry-over maximums, buy-back maximums, and so on. Remember, if you leave any
of those considerations out in your official policies, you can be subject to a
substantial legal penalty.
7.
Attendance
We’ve already discussed employee leave and PTO, but in
addition to those policies, every organization should have clear expectations
regarding employee attendance on record. Procedures should exist for
maintaining appropriate communication about attendance and building dialogue
around excessive absences with an eye towards creating a rich, clear
documentation trail for future discipline, termination, etc.
Of course, your exact framework must be dictated by the way you
track attendance. Policies must exist to explain expectations for both hourly
workers who have a timecard as well as salaried employees, temporary workers,
contractors, etc. The better a job you do articulating expectations, the better
you can do holding people accountable, keeping them at their desks, and
removing team members whose absenteeism affects overall team performance.
8.
Reimbursement Policies
Many states have recently added or changed legislation about
reimbursement of business expenses. As 2020 approaches, it’s crucially
important that you review your local regulations to double-check that your
employee reimbursement policy is up to date.
Your policies need to explain which expenses are
reimbursable, what documentation and forms are required for reimbursement
application, how applications for reimbursement will be approved, and how
reimbursement will be delivered to the employee. The entire program must be
spelled out in specifics, or you risk noncompliance.
9.
Legalization of Marijuana
State laws surrounding the use of cannabis have shifted en
masse over the last decade, and many jurisdictions now allow for legal medical
and recreational use. With that said, marijuana is still illegal at the federal
level, and as an employer, you need to understand how that could potentially
affect your business and employees who use cannabis.
As state and federal marijuana policy continues to evolve
and take shape, you must articulate a clear company policy for today and start
proactive planning about what tomorrow’s policy might look like, depending on
the results of elections and general direction of the culture.
10. ADA
Amendments Act (ADAA) Compliance
The Americans with Disabilities Act was a monumental piece
of legislation when it was passed into law in 1990s, and its scope and
complexity only grew with the ADA Amendments Act of 2008. As we near 2020 and
our understanding of “disability” continues to evolve, it’s crucial that every
corporate organization in America has a specific plan and support framework in
place to ensure compliance.
Of course, compliance isn’t just about workplace
accessibility; it’s about inclusion and providing team members with services to
ensure their needs are met. If you don’t have official policies describing how
employee needs will be assessed and met on a continuing basis, you’re only
halfway there. At the same time, it’s important to remember how employee leave,
absenteeism, and disability can all be interconnected, which means your
disability policy must account for leave and vice versa.
At Launchways, we know that what makes us different is what
makes us strong and that our team members thrive when they can be and share
their full, authentic selves at work. Supporting and encouraging each of our
team members as whole people, not just as productive employees, is one of our
top priorities and fundamental values. We think it’s not just the right thing
to do, but also the best way of creating a positive work environment and a
productive team.
So what does living this principle look like at Launchways,
and what effects does it have on our work? Here are some of the key points I’ll
explore:
The reasons behind our approach and how it fuels our creativity
Authentic communication between Launchways employees
Work styles as unique as our team members
Why We Value the Individual at Launchways
Many companies are talking about diversity and inclusion
nowadays and language about inclusion is making its way into more business’
value statements and employee handbooks. But how many employers put these words
into action and do everything they can to support each employee and what makes
them unique?
At Launchways, we understand the struggles that companies
face tackling D&I and building a thriving, productive team. We’ve seen first-hand
what works and what doesn’t. We know that divisions and conformity are toxic to
a company’s culture and that businesses do better when they make sure that
every single employee feels comfortable to be themselves without fear of being
judged or penalized. We know that helping your employees succeed is the best
way to make your business succeed, and that means supporting their growth and
fulfillment in all aspects of their lives and all facets of their
individuality.
Now, we know that saying we want all of our employees to
feel comfortable and encouraged to be their 100% authentic selves may sound cliché.
But living this value every day and in every aspect of our business makes an enormous
difference for our team members, our culture, our clients, and our bottom-line.
Communication is clear, morale is high, and we all work together to build up
ourselves, each other, and Launchways.
From an employer perspective, this approach makes good
business sense. Having diverse voices at the table is a surefire way to develop
more successful strategies and initiatives. Studies show that greater gender
and racial diversity leads to increased
profitability and value creation. But to see the business results of
your gender, racial, sexual, and culturally diverse team, you have to create a
safe space where every employee is free to be and express themselves. When
people are comfortable being themselves, they bring their whole selves to work
and share their unique perspectives that can result in innovative solutions.
And bringing your whole self to work doesn’t just increase
your value as an employee: it also results in a positive workplace and culture
that is as vibrant as its members. Who wants to work somewhere that you can’t
be yourself? A culture of lived openness invites the human back into business.
We can genuinely communicate and build richer, more valuable connections with
each other and with our partners and clients. At Launchways, our dedication to
openness and authenticity is what makes our jobs so meaningful and makes going
into work every day worthwhile and enjoyable.
How Launchways Encourages Employees to Share Their Authentic Selves
Simply put: just saying that you value something won’t make
it a reality at your business. That is why at Launchways, we have taken
concrete steps to shape our practices and policies around the value of making
our employees feel comfortable sharing their authentic selves.
Authentic Communication
Communication is the key to encouraging our team members to
share their authentic selves at work. After all, communication is how we
express ourselves and our perspectives and if an employer does not support open
and individualized communication, they won’t be able to foster a truly
inclusive workplace.
At Launchways, we go out of our way to acknowledge and
encourage different communication styles. Our team members value intent rather
than presentation, which prevents plenty of common office misunderstanding and
interpersonal drama. If someone tells it like it is, we acknowledge and support
that without taking it as a personal attack. And if someone has a hard time
voicing their opinions, we recognize that as well and try to amplify their
voice and pick up on the messages they are sending. Now, there are still
standards regarding acceptable and unacceptable behavior, but we work hard to
acknowledge a wide range of communication styles.
This philosophy goes hand-in-hand with another of our core values,
being thoughtfully
candid. We don’t just believe in personalized communication, we also
support open and honest communication and feedback: being candid. But we also
stand for keeping the humanity and feelings of our coworkers in mind, being
thoughtfully honest rather than brutally honest and always speaking from a
place of trust.
It’s just as important to us that our team members are
comfortable sharing their needs and struggles. We want to know the difficulties
that our employees are facing and make every reasonable accommodation possible.
We understand that our team members will be more productive if they are
comfortable speaking up when they need help personally or professionally. We
don’t want people blustering and covering up the fact that they are having
difficulty on a project: we want them to step up and get the resources they
need to get the job done. So we always encourage our team members to be
comfortable telling their managers when they are going through a tough time,
having a family emergency, or need additional help/support in the office or
outside of it.
Work Styles as Unique as Our Team Members
At Launchways, we have implemented two main principles
regarding our work that help our team members thrive as their authentic selves.
The first is that we get to work how we feel most
productive. We have an enormous amount of flexibility regarding when, where,
and how we work. While it’s important to have face-to-face interactions and
meetings, we have flexibility determining our daily work hours so long as we’re
getting the job done. And we can work from home when necessary: whether it’s because
our kids are sick or because we just need to take a break from the office chatter
to be our most productive selves.
The second principle is that we get to work on what most
interests us. Launchways provides our team members the opportunity to pursue interests
and passions. That means that if any of us has an idea for a project or
initiative that we care about and think will contribute to the Launchways
mission, we get the space and resources we need to make it a reality. You’d be
surprised how many game-changing strategies develop when all team members are
free to exercise their creativity.
Key Takeaways
At Launchways, our workplace environment, culture, and
communication styles are all designed to allow us to share 100% of our true,
authentic selves. This freedom has an impactful ripple-effect throughout all
aspects of life and work at Launchways and makes us a better, more successful
company. As we’ve explored, for us, the dedication to supporting employees’
whole selves means:
Our team members can grow and succeed as individuals, which helps our team and company succeed in turn
Employees share their unique perspectives, generating diverse conversations and innovative solutions
Everyone can communicate in their own way without causing misunderstandings
We can be open about our challenges and get the support we need
We work how we want, on what we’re passionate about
We think that our way of doing things is pretty great. We go
into work every day to collaborate with our friends and fellow humans, forging
deeper connections and producing unique solutions that we get to own as ours.
If you’re interested in joining the Launchways team, view
our current openings here.
The open enrollment period between November 1 and December
15 can be one of the most challenging times of year for HR professionals.
Getting enrollment right in a timely manner is crucial to supporting your
workforce and maximizing the two-way value of employee benefits.
With that said, open enrollment is tricky because it is such
a complex challenge. There’s no one thing an HR leader or department can do to
make the enrollment season go smoothly – it requires proactive planning and
strategizing for a variety of factors and concerns.
Moving forward, we’ll explore:
Introduce five of the biggest challenges,
concerns, and areas of opportunity for HR professionals before and during open
enrollment
Provide actually strategies HR leaders can use
to navigate or plan for these challenges
Open Enrollment Challenge #1: Logistics
Part of having a successful open enrollment period is having
a very clear vision ahead of time for what that enrollment is going to look
like and how you will ensure success. Without a logistical vision for how
you’re going to pull off enrollment, you’re leaving your ability to have a
successful open enrollment up to chance.
As a department, your first concern is understanding whether
you’ll be leading an active or a passive enrollment. If you’ve recently
rehauled your benefit offerings or you have internal data suggesting that many
employees are on suboptimal plans, then an active enrollment can make a big
difference for your benefits program On the other hand, passive enrollments
work best in organizations with many long-term employees who are generally
happy with their coverage.
If you’re going to leverage technology to streamline your
enrollment procedure (and in 2019, you definitely should) that means your
logistical planning needs to involve your IT team, as they’ll be the people
determining the actual look and feel of the system that your employees will use
to enroll in their benefits. HR and IT must work together to ensure the user
experience is easy, clear, stress-free, and built right into the systems that
employees use for their day-to-day work to maximize accessibility and invite
engagement.
Open Enrollment Challenge #2: Communication
Communication is the probably the single biggest key to a
great open enrollment season, but it may also be the single biggest challenge.
As an HR professional, it’s your responsibility to ensure
that nobody can forget about open enrollment season. At the same time, however,
benefit election time is also when HR departments can actually harm buy-in and
hurt long-term employee engagement by providing the wrong kind of communication
or using the wrong tone with employees.
For example, weekly email reminders to make benefit
elections are useful for employees who have not completed the process, but they
can seem annoying or impersonal to professionals who were sure to make their
elections early in the cycle. Creating a communication strategy that maximizes
that valuable communication while eliminating repetitive or unnecessary messaging
is key to short-term success during enrollment and long-term success
maintaining a great relationship with your talent.
One of the best ways to be successful is by spreading your
message across multiple platforms. If your organization uses an ERP that all
employees work through, partner with IT to get reminders in highly visible
spaces that your team members can’t help but see. If your company has a
preferred messaging system or bespoke communication app, you can use those
channels to send enrollment reminders as well.
Open Enrollment Challenge #3: Education
Education is your greatest weapon to ensure employees choose
their ideal benefits package, maximizing two-way value for talent and the
organization alike. With that said, out of all these challenges, education can
be the toughest one to truly embrace and hold yourself accountable to because
it takes a lot of work.
In order to provide employees with the information they need
to select the plans that are best for their families, you need to think like a
teacher, providing multiple access points to the information and presenting
things in a variety of ways to make sure that everybody understands the
material, regardless of their personal learning style. That means just passing
along the literature from your provider isn’t nearly enough.
Employees require a blend of independent learning
opportunities (like brochures and manuals), large group learning opportunities
(like formal training sessions), and small group (or even one-on-one) support
from benefits-savvy HR team members to maximize their educational level and
resultant engagement potential. Making time for those initiatives requires
buy-in from senior leadership, but education is truly the difference between
setting up your team for enrollment success and leaving them dangling in the
wind.
Open Enrollment Challenge #4: Engagement
Engagement is the special sauce that makes every single
aspect of operations at your organization run smoothly. When it comes to open
enrollment, engagement means a workforce that cares about maximizing the value
of their benefits and getting those elections made in a timely manner.
Health and wellness are crucial points of employee
engagement for any business, but when they are active pillars of the employee
culture, it significantly streamlines the yearly dance of open enrollment. When
talent is engaged in terms of health and wellness, they work toward building
their own understanding of how they’re using their benefits, what they need,
and how they could be making smarter selections. That translates directly into
making the right choices in November.
If that culture doesn’t already exist in your organization,
the lead-up to enrollment season is a great time to brainstorm some incentives
that invite engagement and build a positive, empowered attitude toward
enrollment throughout the organization. The more you can create a positive buzz
for health and wellness, the more active a role your employees will take in
enrollment.
Open Enrollment Challenge #5: Picking the Right Benefits
Partner
Of course, the over-arching challenge that hangs above the
other four is the challenge of offering your employees the very best, most
valuable benefits you possibly can.
Many employee benefits providers try to build a standardized
definition of a “great benefits package,” but for your open enrollment to be
successful in the long term for your department, your organization, and your
talent, you should never settle for a one-size-fits-all approach. If you’re a
small or medium-sized business, this can require working with a white glove
service to help you connect with exactly the coverage you need to support your
team.
Partnering with the wrong benefits broker can and will cost
the organization in the long-term, whether it’s over-spend on unused benefits
or employee dissatisfaction with limited offerings. Finding a benefits partner
who understands your organization, your team, and your goals is crucial to
maximizing employee experience and business value through enrollment.
Key Takeaways
Open enrollment is a complex challenge, but when you
understand each individual aspect of the challenge and can formulate a
proactive strategy that addresses each concern, you maximize your chances to
deliver wins for your employees and organization as a whole. Remember…
You must plan ahead in the lead up to
open enrollment and create a roadmap for success
You must communicate positively with your
team in a way that guarantees awareness and provides them with the information
they need to enroll
You must educate your team in a way that
ensures they are able to make the best benefit enrollment selections for their
families
You must engage your team in a positive
manner that builds their enthusiasm for wellness in general
You must find the best possible benefits
partner for your size and goals
If not, now is the time! Illinois just became the 11th state to
permit recreational cannabis. Governor Pritzker signed this legislation, as
promised, on June 25, 2019. Beginning
January 1, 2020, the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act (“Act”), will allow
adults (21+) in Illinois to possess and consume cannabis. While there is a lot
“rolled” into the 600 plus page law (pun intended), there are
significant employment pitfalls for employers with regard to enforcing drug
free workplaces. We are here to assist
you in avoiding these pitfalls and give you some practice tips in preparation
of the new law taking affect.
The good news is, the Act expressly permits employers to adopt and enforce
“reasonable” and nondiscriminatory zero tolerance and drug free workplace
policies, including policies on drug testing, smoking, consumption, storage,
and use of cannabis in the workplace or while on-call – which is obviously good
for employers.
However, on the flipside, the Act’s language indicates that employers are not allowed to take an adverse action against an applicant or employee for their marijuana usage outside the workplace. This is bad for employers since it makes it much more difficult for employers to identify and address use of marijuana by employees due to issues with marijuana testing not being like alcohol testing which calculates more accurately impairment at the time of testing. In particular, the Act amends the Illinois Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act (“Right to Privacy Act”), which prohibits employers from restricting employees from using legal products outside of work. Specifically, the Right to Privacy Act is amended to provide that “lawful products” means products that are legal under state law, indicating that recreational and medical marijuana are legal products that must be treated like alcohol and tobacco. Thus, employers may not discriminate against an employee or applicant who lawfully uses cannabis (recreationally or medically) off-premises during nonworking and non-on-call hours. Again, a difficult task given a test for marijuana alone will not be enough since testing does not include current impairment.
Much like with the Illinois medical marijuana law, this Act changes the
emphasis from whether an employee “used” marijuana while employed, to whether
the employee was “impaired” or “under the influence” of marijuana while at work
or working. As a result, drug testing without any other evidence of the
employee actually being impaired at work or while working will open the door to
legal challenges. Specifically, refusing
to hire, disciplining, terminating, refusing to return an employee to work or
taking an adverse action against an employee or applicant who fails a
pre-employment, random, or post-leave return to duty drug test for marijuana
will arguably create a claim for the employee against an employer for a
violation of Illinois law.
For example, an employee who undergoes a urine drug test (which shows use
of marijuana within 30-45 days) following a workplace accident may argue that
“recreational cannabis was lawfully used outside of work, and the
accident/injury was unrelated to the employee’s legal use of cannabis outside
of work.” Without more than the drug
test result, the employer would be in a vulnerable position to argue against or
defend such a claim. However, if the
employer completed a post-accident report, which included a reasonable
suspicion checklist, in which a trained
supervisor observed and recorded symptoms/behaviors of drug use, the employer
would be in a much better position to take an adverse action against the
employee and dispute any such claim by an employee based on the observations
and positive drug test.
With the changes to the Right to Privacy Act, it is important for employers
to understand the potential exposure and damages. Under this Act, aggrieved
employees can recover actual damages, costs, attorneys’ fees and fines. As
such, employers should make sure their practices and procedures are practical
in light of these changes, until and unless the legislature or a court provides
further clarity.
Interestingly, the Act neither diminishes nor enhances the protections
afforded to registered patients under the medical cannabis and opioid pilot
programs. The catch here is that while
cannabis use is not protected under federal law, the underlying medical
condition for which the employee is using cannabis is likely an ADA and IHRA-covered disability! Much like
under the Illinois medical marijuana law, the Act appears to require employers
to take an additional step before disciplining or terminating an employee based
on a “good faith belief” that the employee was impaired or under the influence
of cannabis while at work or performing their job. After the employer has
made a “good faith belief” determination and drug tested the employee – but
before disciplining or terminating an employee – the employer must provide the
employee with a reasonable opportunity to contest that determination. Once
the employee is provided a reasonable opportunity to explain, an employer may
then make a final determination regarding its good faith belief that the
employee was impaired or under the influence of cannabis while on the job or
while working, and what, if any, adverse employment action it will take against
the employee without violating the Act. Requiring an employee to go through drug
testing is still currently the best practice as a positive drug test will
provide additional support for a
supervisor’s reasonable suspicion determination.
Here Are Some Practice Tips to Protect Your Workforce
and Diminish Risk:
Educate yourself and evaluate all Company policies and practices that touch on providing and ensuring a safe workplace, including job descriptions (especially those safety-sensitive positions). Speak to legal counsel on an intimate basis. Assess workplace cannabis-tolerance and implement policies that can be enforced consistently amongst similarly situated employees. Policies that should be reviewed (and that could be affected) include those addressing health and safety (including accident reporting, smoking, and distracted driving), equal employment opportunity policies, workplace search/privacy policies and drug testing policies. You should also review with legal counsel, your drug testing vendor as well as your Medical Review Officer, the drug testing methodology being used to make sure that such is producing results that are useful, accurate and well vetted (e.g., using a test that determines cannabis use within the last 30 days is not as helpful as one that may test usage within 6-12 hours).
Ensure managers and supervisors are well trained and capable of enforcing policies. Remember – exceptions and favoritism lead to discrimination claims. Conducting training, especially training on reasonable suspicion detection, will be necessary to avoid legal challenges to a supervisor’s reasonable suspicion determination. Creating and/or updating forms for accident reporting (including witness statements), reasonable suspicion checklists, and established protocols for addressing suspected impairment in the workplace, is now more critical than ever.
Clearly communicate management’s position and policies to employees, especially where there is a shift in current policy or practice. Educate employees on the effect of lawful and unlawful drug use and the employer’s policies regarding marijuana. Remember, marijuana is still illegal under federal law, and, thus, you may have a zero tolerance policy within your Company. We now just have to balance that right with Illinois’ newest law.
If your Company does not have a process already, institute a reasonable accommodation process and policy for employees who are medicinal users of cannabis. While a Company is not required to keep an employee who must use marijuana while on the job or report to work under the influence, you still have obligations of going thru the ADA process with the employee to determine if you can or cannot reasonably accommodate their disability so that they may perform the essential functions of their job while not being impaired.
Engage competent legal counsel to assist you in this process and in addressing difficult situations before they lead to costly and time-consuming litigation.
Also important to note: more changes are coming to Illinois for employers on January 1, 2020! On August 9, 2019, Governor Pritzker signed Senate Bill 75 – the Workplace Transparency Act – into law. Effective January 1, 2020, major new changes will forever alter how Illinois employers manage harassment and discrimination issues as well as other workplace controversies. This new law requires mandatory sexual harassment training for employees; reporting and disclosure requirements; restrictions on employment agreements and several other mandates related to sexual harassment in the workplace. Be on the look out for an upcoming blog on these details so you are prepared for the new Illinois world of dealing with sexual harassment prevention.
About the Author
Heather A. Bailey, Esq., a partner with SmithAmundsen LLC, focuses her practice on labor and employment law issues for employers for the past 18 years. Heather may be contacted directly at: Direct Dial: 312.894.3266, Email: [email protected].
Building and maintaining an effective team is one of the
greatest challenges that growing businesses face. It’s a constant struggle to
hire the right people, keep the team engaged and productive, and keep top
performers from jumping ship. Given that 80% of full-time employees are living
paycheck to paycheck, taking an interest in your employees’ financial wellbeing
can be an effective way to stand out as an employer.
Most people acknowledge the importance of
employee benefits to winning the war for talent. But they frequently
overlook the potential that financial wellness has to attract, engage, and
retain great employees. Let’s explore why investing in financial wellness can
help growing businesses succeed and how to create an effective financial
wellness strategy, including:
The importance of financial wellness
How to effectively leverage 401(k) plans
Which benefits you should consider in addition to 401(k) plans
Importance of Financial Wellness
Financial wellness benefits can have a significant impact on
employee productivity. Seventy-percent of employees currently experience
financial stress while at work, which should be no surprise given the fact that
most American’s don’t have $500 to cover an emergency expense. What comes as
more of a surprise, though is the fact that employees spend an average of 28
hours a month worrying about their finances at work. That’s almost an entire
week’s worth of productivity every month! Addressing these concerns and
allowing employees to focus on their work should be a top priority for any
employer.
You aren’t just losing hundreds of hours of productivity each
year from your employees’ financial stress either: you’re also risking losing
your most valuable employees to turnover. Employees who are worried about their
finances, and especially those who feel their current employer is not dedicated
to their financial stability, are much more likely to start looking around for
a higher paying employer. This can be an especially potent threat to growing
businesses who frequently cannot compete with major companies when it comes to base
salaries.
Luckily, financial wellness is an extremely cost-effective
way to improve your employee’s financial stress and actual financial wellbeing.
Instead of sinking tens of thousands of dollars into increased salaries, you
can invest in financial planners, 401k plans with optional matching, loan assistance,
financial education, and more.
Financial wellness is not just about avoiding the negative
effects of employees’ financial concerns, either. Your benefits package is a powerful
tool to attract, engage, and retain the talent you need to thrive as a
business. Many employees would accept a lower salary in exchange for better
benefits, and that includes wellness benefits. Once again, this is great news
for growing companies who can’t always compete on salaries. Stellar benefits
show employees that you care about them and will go above and beyond for them,
and they will return the favor.
It’s also a good idea to consider not only whether or not to
offer financial wellness benefits, but also what financial wellness approach
will work best for your business. For financial wellness benefits to work, they
have to meet employees’ financial and psychological needs. Which means that
employees have to actually use the benefits. It also means that there is no
one-size-fits-all approach to financial wellness: your strategy should depend
on the specific needs and demographics of your employees.
401K: Taking a Deeper Look at the Cornerstone of
Financial Wellness
If you had to implement just one financial wellness benefit,
a 401k plan would be a clear choice. According to the 2018 Jobvite
Recruiter Nation Survey, 401(K) plans ranked just after medical and
dental benefits in their ability to attract top talent. That should make them a
top priority for any employer looking to beef up their benefits package and
assuage their employees’ financial concerns.
And the importance of 401k plans makes sense. Almost
two-thirds of employees do not have any retirement savings and those who do
have saved an average of just $40,000. No wonder retirement readiness is a top concern
for employees. But just like any other benefit, 401k plans are only
as effective as employees make them. How can you make sure that your investment
in a 401k plan pays off?
The first thing you can do is implement automatic enrollment
to make sure that all of your employees adopt your new or existing 401k plan:
this removes a major barrier to saving. You can even automatically deduct
contributions from your employees’ paychecks to spur their savings, allowing
them to opt-out if they wish. And if you have the budget for it, 401k-matching
is a time tested strategy that is sure to both encourage your employees to save
and win you major points as an employer.
However, your 401k plan should be just the first step in
your financial wellness strategy. By themselves, 401ks struggle address
employees’ immediate day-to-day financial concerns which are often the cause of
stress and decreased productivity. Many employees are so burdened by debt or
day-to-day expenses that they cannot bring themselves to think about saving for
retirement even if their company offers good 401k benefits. And they are likely
to raid their retirement accounts to pay for emergency expenses without
planning and assistance to give them greater financial stability.
Looking Beyond 401k Plans
So what are the other financial benefits that can make you
stand out against competitors?
One of the biggest financial concerns for today’s employees,
especially for younger employees who are especially prone to switching
companies, is student debt. America’s graduates owe a total of over $1.5
trillion in student loans and most Millennials would trade vacation time for
student loan repayment assistance. Now, there are plenty of pros and cons
to repayment assistance, but you would do well to consider offering
these benefits, particularly if you have young employees. Only 11% of employers
provide any kind of help or guidance on student loan repayment even though
about half of workers want help with the repayment process. But when employers
do offer loan assistance, they hire faster and increase average employee tenure
by more than a third.
So how can you help your employees with loan repayment? The
easiest method is to help them set up dedicated accounts with automatic
contributions to make repayment easier for employees to manage. This approach
incurs few direct costs to you as an employer, so it should be a viable option
for just about any growing company. If you have a bigger budget, you can also
match employee contributions to these accounts. Alternatively, you can work
with lenders to refinance private student loans at better rates. Finally, you
can provide educational materials regarding loan repayment and access to financial
advisors so help make management easier for your team members without directly
assisting repayment.
A robust financial wellness strategy should also include
financial planning and retirement advice. Providing employees with one-on-one
financial counseling can help them build their short-term savings as well as
plan for retirement, holistically supporting their financial well-being. They
can stop worrying about their finances at their desks and put their trust in
the experts who you connect them with. Best of all, this can be significantly
more affordable than matching contributions and other direct benefits.
Financial education is often the most cost-effective financial wellness benefit
and growing businesses can use it to improve employees’ financial wellbeing
with minimal investment.
Key Takeaways
Today’s employees are having more difficulty saving for
retirement, let alone emergency expenses, than in the past. It is probably no
coincidence that they are also changing jobs at an unprecedented rate.
Financial wellness benefits can be extremely effective at retaining the talent
you need and making your employees as engaged and productive as possible. Just
remember:
Your financial wellness strategy should match your employees’ actual needs to minimize costs and maximize effectiveness through utilization
401(k) plans are still the cornerstone of an effective financial wellness package and you can make the most of them through automatic enrollment and contributions, as well as employer matching
Loan repayment assistance is a rare but highly effective financial wellness benefit that can especially increase hiring, engagement, and retention of top Millennial talent
Financial counseling and education provides holistic financial support to remove employee stress and improve wellbeing
As with all benefits, it can be difficult for growing
businesses to provide competitive financial wellness benefits without incurring
excessive costs. The right partners can help you develop a strategy that
minimizes those costs while maximizing the impact on employees wellbeing.
Sean Condon of Windgate Wealth specializes in helping entrepreneurs build a culture of financial wellness by offering their employees unprecedented access to a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ as well as low-cost 401(k) plans. Part of an employee-owned team, Sean takes an owner’s approach and does his best to understand the many elements of his clients’ own entrepreneurial journeys. Sean has more than ten years of experience as a financial planner & wealth advisor.
