Launchways, a leading provider of human resources, employee benefits, and business insurance solutions for growing businesses, today announced it has added Rocketmiles as a client.
Rocketmiles has selected Launchways to review their plan performance and provide a comprehensive benefits educational experience for its employees. When asked why Rocketmiles decided to work with Launchways Gautam Kumar, Rocketmiles CFO, said “We chose to work with Launchways because of their ability to provide valuable insights into our plan performance and educate our employees to help them move to more affordable plans that met their specific needs. We also needed to streamline our enrollment process, and Launchways’ experience as a benefits broker enabled them to make open enrollment as painless as possible. We are confident that Launchways will continue to empower us to reduce costs while providing added value to our employees.”
Gary Schafer, Launchways President, noted “Rocketmiles is a fast-growing, Chicago-based company that understands that its employees are the basis of its success. They are the perfect candidate for Launchways’ services, and we are excited to work with them to provide clear and comprehensive benefits while reducing overall costs so that they can continue thrive as they grow.”
The Launchways team conducted a comprehensive review of Rocketmiles plan performance to identify opportunities for optimization. Based on this analysis, Launchways experts educated Rocketmiles employees to empower them to choose the plans that work best for them, saving both Rocketmiles and its employees money while increasing the quality of coverage. Using some of these savings, Rocketmiles was able to offer its employees strong new vision benefits to satisfy employee need. Launchways also streamlined the open enrollment process by creating a digital enrollment form and giving a formal open enrollment presentation to ease the enrollment experience for employees and Rocketmiles alike.
About Launchways
Launchways provides business leaders with the resources and guidance they need to build scalable people processes to support long-term growth. Founded in 2009, Launchways has helped thousands of businesses better approach the people side of their business through strategic solutions for human resources, employee benefits, and business insurance. For more information, please visit www.launchways.com.
About Rocketmiles
At Rocketmiles, we help our customers earn loyalty rewards through hotel bookings so they can travel more. We’re a group of energetic, web-savvy, creative, and analytical individuals with a track record for building new businesses from scratch. We work with loyalty programs worldwide, and attract customers from every corner of the globe. The user experience is curated in-house from start to end: our team includes front- and back-end developers, customer service, data analysts, designers and marketers, accountants, and partnership managers. We began as a start-up, and we were acquired by the Bookings Holdings Group in 2015. With a dedicated team, we’re aiming for the stars. Visit us at www.rocketmiles.com.
Launchways, a leading provider of human resources, employee benefits, and business insurance solutions, today announced that it will be opening its new headquarters at 303 W Madison Street Suite 2000, Chicago, IL on April 8, 2019.
The move comes amid a period of rapid growth for the company.
Launchways expects to double its size in 2019 to accommodate the growing demand
for its human resources and employee benefits solutions. Regarding the decision
to double the company’s size and relocate, Launchways President Gary Schafer
said “For years we have provided scalable solutions to ease companies’ growing
pains. I am looking forward to expanding our team so that we can continue to deliver
the highest level of service to our expanding customer base.”
Throughout its growth, Launchways has had a proven track
record of success. To-date Launchways has helped hundreds of fast-growing
businesses solve their human resources and benefits challenges. Launchways prides
itself on its personalized, hands-on approach to helping companies of every
size continue to thrive as they scale. At its core, Launchways believes
companies of all sizes should be able to offer cost-effective enterprise-level
benefits programs that help them compete to attract and retain top talent.
Launchways offers custom solutions for:
Human
Resources: build scalable human resources processes to unlock the full
potential of your workforce.
Employee
Benefits: provide innovative benefits packages that thrill employees
and make every dollar count.
Business
Insurance: protect your company with comprehensive, cost-effective
business insurance policies.
The location of the new headquarters provides the ideal venue
for Launchways’ continued success. “The West Loop is the heart of innovation in
Chicago, a hub of tech companies, startups, and other industry-leading
businesses. Our new headquarters puts us in the perfect position to continue to
deliver high-impact solutions for HR, benefits, and insurance to the
fastest-growing businesses in the city” said James Taylor, Launchways CEO.
Please visit www.launchways.com to explore our website and
learn more about Launchways’ solutions for HR, benefits, and business
insurance.
About Launchways
Launchways provides business leaders with the resources and
guidance they need to build scalable people processes to support long-term
growth. Founded in 2009, Launchways has helped hundreds of growing businesses
better approach the people side of their business through strategic solutions
for human resources, employee benefits, and business insurance. For more
information, please visit www.launchways.com.
While it is sometimes seen as a compliance chore, onboarding
is an incredibly important part of an employee’s journey with your company. It
is their introduction to life at your organization and it is important to lay
the proper groundwork for a long lasting and productive relationship.
A mishandled orientation can result in employees starting
work already looking for the exit. But a thoughtful, thorough onboarding
process can get them truly excited about working with you, causing them to be
engaged with their work and more likely to stay put for years to come. You’ve
already invested a lot of time and energy into bringing the new hire into your
business, it’s worth the extra energy to set a strong foundation for the rest
of their time at your company.
There are several foundational pillars to cover in a
successful onboarding: the employee’s knowledge base and their integration into
their new team, the company culture, and the mission/vision. You should provide
them with the tools they need to succeed in their new position, and let them
know where to go for help. At the same time, it’s important to connect them
with the people they will be working with for the foreseeable future, and get
them to buy into the mission and culture behind your work.
So you have to cover all of the bases getting a new hire
integrated into the company’s systems, setting up their benefits and employment
paperwork, giving them the knowledge they need to thrive at your company, AND
make sure you get the human side of orientation right? In case that seems overwhelming,
we have come up with two checklists to help you streamline and make the most of
the onboarding process. Let’s take a look at those lists and then tackle how
you can ace the “soft” side of orientation too.
New Hire Document Checklist
Form I-9
Form W-4
Confidentiality agreement
Emergency contact information
Benefit forms
Employee handbook
Offer letter and job description
Direct deposit form
Organizational chart
Phone list and office map
Safety instructions
Personnel action form
State-required new hire pamphlets
Other state or local documentation requirements
Any other material a new hire would find useful on the first day
Orientation/Onboarding Procedure Checklist
Review and discuss new hire paperwork
Schedule or conduct safety training
Provide tour and introductions with manager
Provide information on company logistics including work station location, break rooms, and restrooms
Provide instructions for phone and computer access
Sign agreements for security access and keys
Explain timekeeping requirements
Explain organization structure (provide organization chart and job description)
Discuss company mission, vision, values, and goals
Describe company products and services
Describe benefits of working at the company (employee benefits, job opportunities, etc.)
Get the Human Part of Onboarding Right
With so many technical details to cover during onboarding,
it can be easy to forget the interpersonal aspect of orientation. The first day,
and even the first few weeks, can be a stressful time for a new hire. They’ve
made a serious commitment, and they want to be sure that they made the right
choice. Since the onboarding process may well set the tone for the rest of
their time with the company, it’s important to do as much as you can to set
their minds at rest by showing what an awesome, supportive workplace they’re
joining.
The great news is that there is a reason why they chose to
work at your company, so you don’t have to do anything particularly different
to make their first weeks go smoothly. Instead, you can just build on the
energy that you developed during the hiring process. You have already convinced
the new hire that your business is special, now show them what that means for
their day to day life at your company and how they will fit into your mission
and your culture.
The best way to ensure that a new hire has a rewarding,
productive onboarding is to get buy-in from the rest of their team. Get all of
the team members involved in equipping the new hire with the information they
need to flourish in their new job and making them feel as welcome as possible.
There is no better way to show a new employee that they matter than to get the
people they will be working with for the next several years deeply involved in
their onbarding. It will make them feel welcomed and appreciated, connect them
to the people they will need to help them hit the ground running in their new
position, and jump-start their integration into your company culture.
Perhaps the most important people to get involved in the new
hire’s orientation are their direct managers and team leaders. These are the
people who will be guiding the new employee once orientation is over, so it’s
important to start with a strong foundation of trust. Don’t treat an
introductory lunch with the manager as a mere formality; encourage your management
team to take orientation seriously and really try to get to know the new hire.
As much as possible, make managers responsible for onboarding and orientation
to get them engaged in the process of integrating the new employee into their
team.
Finally, make sure that both HR and managers check in on new
hires regularly during orientation and the first weeks of work. You want to
identify any issues, fears, or misgivings as quickly as possible to ensure a
smooth onboarding process. Plus, it’s important to set the precedent of
communication and transparency, and to show employees that you care about what
they think, from day one.
Key Takeaways
Onboarding is your opportunity to show a new hire what makes
your company special and make sure that you start the relationship on the right
foot. Use our easy checklists to make covering your compliance bases easier so
that you can focus on the human side of onboarding. Just make sure to:
Provide a consistent experience from the first interview through the first months of employment
Equip new hires with the information they need to flourish in their new position
Show new employees how they fit into the company culture and how they will contribute to the mission/vision
Get managers and team members involved in orientation to build effective, productive teams
Like many parts of assembling your workforce and developing
your culture, onboarding and orientation can be a very personal experience. You
should tailor the onboarding process to your needs and priorities. But
hopefully these checklists and key takeaways will help you get started on
perfecting the experience for your new hires.
This post is a guest post written by Lauchways Diversity and Inclusion partner, Chanté Thurmond.
So, you want to learn more about diversity, equity and inclusion, generally referred to as DEI. That’s good news, because building a diverse and talented workforce is the best way to set your company up for success.
Recent
studies show that greater gender and racial diversity each are directly
correlated with increased profitability and value creation. Companies with the
most women and minorities in leadership positions are between 20-30% more
likely to achieve above average financial performance.
As a DEI consultant, I have a lot experience guiding
companies through the difficult and often treacherous process of tackling the
issues of diversity and inclusion. Every individual and company’s journey will
be different, and each faces their own challenges. But in this article, I will
share some of the biggest lessons that I have learned about implementing DEI
through helping my clients through their journeys. Most business leaders,
managers, and HR professionals can increase diversity and inclusion to build a
diverse and talented workforce by following these six basic steps:
Raising their awareness of DEI issues
Aligning their mission/vision and culture with
DEI
Making diversity part of their brand
Keeping all of their employees happy and engaged
Offering compelling and inclusive benefits
Building a diverse network
Who Should Learn About DEI?
If you are reading this article, odds are that you bear at
least some responsibility for the hiring or make-up of your company’s teams.
Let’s take a look at who can benefit the most, and have the most impact, by
learning about diversity and inclusion.
Diversity and inclusion efforts are most effective when they
are are built from the ground up, as a fundamental part of a company. For that
reason, the people who can have the greatest impact on DEI are the
founders/leaders of startups and SMEs – business leaders who still bear the
responsibility for developing their team and defining their culture. If you are
an entrepreneur or small business person, you have the power to implement the
principles of diversity and inclusion in every part of your business.
The second most important group of people to read this
article and learn about DEI in general are managers and HR professionals at
startups or high-growth organizations. These people’s jobs are to attract
talent and maintain effective teams. They are the front lines of any diversity
and inclusion effort at a larger company – and many smaller ones as well.
Finally, it’s important to educate anyone who has heard
about DEI and is interested in learning more. If everyone were well-versed in
DEI issues, companies wouldn’t have nearly as hard a time building diverse
teams and making sure that they are genuinely inclusive. So, please share these
ideas with anyone you think might take them to heart or learn from them, not
just key stakeholders.
Raise Your Awareness
The first step to tackling any new issue is to deeply understand
it. DEI can be an extremely complex and highly-charged topic, so it is especially
important that you have as nuanced an understanding of it as you can in order
to address it effectively. Misguided DEI efforts can alienate your employees
and hurt diversity, rather than helping it.
There are plenty of resources to turn to in order to
understand the topic. I encourage you to take it upon yourself to do some
research and learn about what DEI is and how business leaders can best foster
it. To get you started, here are some key terms that you should understand:
Diversity
Equity & Equality
Inclusion
Accessibility
Socioeconomics
Social Justice
Disparities
Privilege
Bias
Oppression
Marginalization
Also, think about what groups you are having trouble
attracting and retaining and do research into common challenges they face,
missteps that companies make to exclude them, and needs that they might have.
Just don’t forget to treat your employees as individuals no matter what their
race, gender, or orientation.
Align Your Mission/Vision
Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the concepts of DEI,
it’s time to put them to work in your organization. The best way to make your
company truly diverse and inclusive is to put the principles of DEI at the very
core of your company mission/vision and culture. Those three things drive the
direction, priorities, and very nature of your company, so orienting them at
least partially around diversity and inclusion can have a significant impact on
how well your company works for all employees.
Your culture and mission/vision are also important parts of
your hiring process: you want to hire candidates who fit into your mission and
who buy into the values behind your culture. So, basing them on DEI will help
you attract diverse talent and candidates who believe in diversity and
inclusion.
Make Diversity Part of Your Brand
What you tell the world about your company defines its
reality. So, make DEI a part of your brand! Make it clear to the world that you
are a steward of diversity and inclusion to attract diverse employees, clients,
and business partners.
Every social media post, blog article, and job posting
should reflect your key values and commitment to diversity. Bottom line: walk
the talk because consistency and integrity matter, and people are paying
attention to your words as well as your actions.
Keep All of Your Employees Happy and Engaged
This is where inclusion really comes into play. All
employees should be on a level playing field with equal opportunities for
advancement and equal involvement in the life of your company.
It doesn’t matter how diverse your hiring practices are if
you have trouble engaging and retaining employees of all backgrounds. If any
employees feel left out or alienated during their day to day experiences at
your company, are passed up for promotions or new responsibilities, or are not
sufficiently recognized for their accomplishments, then chances are they will
leave.
Keeping your employees happy and engaged also pays off in
more ways than just keeping them around. Happy employees are more productive,
more effective collaborators, and better representatives of your brand. Your
employees’ true feelings about your company will become clear in the ways that
they interact with their teammates and with your clients. Give them every
reason to be enthusiastic advocates for your company.
Offer Compelling and Inclusive Benefits
Generous benefits help retention and engagement across the
board, so are a good investment whether as part of a DEI initiative or not. But
when trying to increase diversity and inclusion at your company, targeted
benefits can be an extremely useful tool.
You should tailor your benefits to the unique needs of your
workforce. It is useful to listen to employees about what they need, don’t just
assume or assert what they need. For example, women still handle most of
the child-rearing responsibilities on average. As a result, they are more
likely to leave their jobs, whether or by choice or not, and be passed up for
promotions. Companies who are serious about retaining and cultivating female
talent would therefore be well-advised to offer benefits like work-from-home
options and parental leave so that women don’t have to choose between their
families and their work. Those benefits will also increase the inclusion and retention
of single parents of all genders. There are plenty of ways to tailor your
benefits package to maintain a diverse workforce.
Ask yourself who is being left out by your benefits package,
and if there are any areas in which you feel as though you could be doing more.
Addressing obvious gaps is a great start, and then take the time to get
employee feedback and adjust to their needs.
Build a Diverse Network
Lived experience informs our perspectives and actions. If
you, as a business leader, foster a diverse network, you will be much more
effective at building a diverse and inclusive company. Not doing so both makes
your DEI efforts seem hypocritical and calculated, and means that you will
approach the topic of diversity with blinders on.
Just like how a diverse workforce increases the creativity
and productivity of the whole team, a diverse network will help you create
original and effective business solutions and DEI strategies. Plus, they will
be able to spread the word about your business and its diversity efforts to
their trusted networks – which are also less likely to overlap with your own or
each other’s networks.
Key Takeaways
This article hasn’t covered every facet of diversity,
equity, and inclusion. But hopefully you now have a road map to guide you on
the journey of educating yourself about the issues and implementing DEI in your
organization. Don’t be afraid to get creative and go beyond the principles
outlined in this article, just remember to always put your employees and their
needs at the center of any strategy that you implement. And, to get started,
remember to:
Learn as much as you can about the issues
relating to DEI so that you can be the most effective advocate and policymaker
possible
Live DEI in your company mission/vision,
culture, and brand – and your own networks
Keep your employees of all backgrounds happy and
engaged, especially by offering the benefits that meet their unique needs
Hopefully this article has gotten you thinking about how you can make your company more diverse and inclusive. We’d love to hear about your experiences, questions, and diversity strategies in the comments section below.
About the Author Chanté is a fierce advocate of equity & inclusion; gender parity and social justice initiatives. She is on a mission to learn the backstories of underrepresented leaders and share their voice with the world. Her expertise is in Organizational Development, Social Innovation, Health & Well-being and Community Engagement. In a previous life, Chanté’s work centered around cultivating strategic alliances between public and private sector leaders to reduce public health inequities and improve population health outcomes. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) from Mount Mercy University and a M.A. from St. Catherine University in St. Paul, MN.
Launchways today announced a partnership with CleverRX to offer clients employee prescription drug discounts through the CleverRX Prescription Savings Card. CleverRX is a state-of-the-art pharmacy savings card provider that helps companies provide added value to their employees. Launchways is the first benefits broker in Illinois to offer the CleverRX program to its clients.
Launchways will offer CleverRX Prescription Savings Cards to its employee benefits clients as an added perk of being part of the Launchways benefits brokerage. “We are very excited to offer our clients this innovative solution to the challenge of rising prescription drug costs. Using CleverRX, our clients will be able to access significant savings for themselves and their employees” said Launchways President, Gary Schafer.
CleverRX can save users money regardless of their insurance plan by routing deep discounts on prescription drugs at the point of transaction, while also providing location-based price transparency through its user-friendly app. It can reduce the cost of filling a prescription by as much as 80%, and over 70% of Americans can save money using the card – including employees who opt for high-deductible health plans. As such, CleverRX is a worthwhile addition to any employee benefits package and can be a significant value add for employees. Best of all, CleverRX is completely free to use for companies and employees alike.
Launchways believes in helping our clients empower their employees to become better healthcare consumers. As Jim Taylor, Launchways CEO, noted, “We are proud to be the first benefits broker in Illinois to offer the CleverRX program. We believe in doing what’s best for our clients, and helping them do what is best for their employees, and CleverRX fits perfectly into that vision.”
Why CleverRX? What
Prescription Drugs Cost Employers
Why did Launchways partner with CleverRX, and why should you be excited about this new offering? Prescription drugs are one of the main healthcare expenses for employers, so reducing the cost of prescriptions using CleverRX is an effective way to address this challenge.
Prescription drugs are a major driver of healthcare costs
for patients and for employers. Drug prices increase an average of 4% a year
and specialty drugs, already the most expensive category, increase by
21% per year. Prescription drugs have become the second greatest
healthcare expense for companies and represent roughly a third of total
healthcare costs for employers.
In an age of rising drug prices, and higher co-pays and deductibles, many employers are cutting coverage to manage their costs. But the reality is that you can effectively reduce healthcare costs without sacrificing the quality of your benefits offering. We explored how to address prescription drug costs in a previous article, but one clear way to save is to reduce the cost of drugs directly through a program such as CleverRX.
CleverRx is about more than just saving money for employers. Because CleverRX reduces employees’ healthcare costs, it is a great additional perk for companies to offer their employees. Improving your benefits package is a great way to boost employee morale, engagement, and retention. In 2016, Aflac found that 60% of employees would take a job with lower salary but better benefits, and that 42% of employees said that increasing benefits would help keep them in their jobs. Given that CleverRX is free for you and for your employees, why not offer it to your employees as an added benefit?
From significant savings on prescription drugs to attracting
and retaining top talent, CleverRX can do a whole lot for your company. Ask our
benefits experts how you can integrate the CleverRX Prescription Savings Card
into your benefits package through Launchways.
About Launchways
Launchways provides business leaders with the resources and
guidance they need to build scalable people processes to support long-term
growth. Founded in 2009, Launchways has helped thousands of companies better
approach the people side of their business through strategic solutions for
human resources, employee benefits, and business insurance. For more
information, please visit www.launchways.com.
About CleverRX
CleverRX offers a pharmacy savings card that works for you
by partnering with the healthcare community to bring state-of-the-art,
money-saving tools to patients and employees. CleverRX saves 80% off
prescription drugs and often beats the average copay. It is also completely
free for patients and employers. Now that’s clever! Learn more at www.cleverrx.com.
There is no question that wellness benefits have become all
the rage in recent years. Companies of all sizes are offering benefits such as
on-site exercise facilities, healthy food during the workday, and flexible work
hours in order to improve employee health and morale. Wellness has been treated
as something of a cure-all for business ills ranging from healthcare costs to
high turnover rates. Are they worth the hype? We think mostly so, but that in
order for wellness programs to be effective they should be tailored to your
company’s values and your employees’ specific needs.
In today’s post we’ll explore the main reasons why you
should adopt wellness benefits including:
Decrease healthcare costs
Genuinely help employees
Adapt to and augment company culture
Increase employee engagement for productivity and retention
Let’s take a look at what wellness benefits are, how they
can help your business, and how you can get started creating a wellness program
of your own.
Benefits Overview
So what exactly are wellness benefits? Generally speaking,
they are any program that is intended to improve an employee’s mental or
physical health. Companies are increasingly adopting wellness benefits in order
to keep their healthcare costs low or increase employee morale.
Typically wellness benefits fall into one or both of two
categories: those that address mental health and those that address physical
health. Screenings and counseling can help identify both mental and physical
issues at the same time, but the wellness solutions to the two different
categories of health are generally different.
Some examples of physical wellness benefits are:
Contests for exercise, weight loss, or smoking cessation
Subsidized gym membership or on-site exercise facilities
Free healthy food in-office
Diet and exercise education and counseling
While mental wellness benefits can include:
Flexible vacation and remote-work policies
In-office breaks
Counseling and therapy
Support groups
Later we’ll explore how you can assemble the right wellness
package that best fits your company’s values and your employees’ needs. But
first let’s examine just why you should consider implementing wellness benefits
in the first place.
They Work
One of the main reasons why wellness benefits are catching
on so quickly is that they just work. In fact, wellness programs have an average
ROI of three to one. There are several reasons why the return on
investment is so high – the first one being that it doesn’t take that much of
an investment to create wellness benefits. Some programs can be expensive, but
benefits like education and competitions are easy to set up and require almost
no monetary commitment. Fundamentally, wellness is a form of prevention, which
is almost always more cost effective than treatment. So even benefits which
involve medical care, such as screening programs, save big bucks in the long
run.
The most obvious impact on your bottom line is decreased
medical expenses overall. Wellness benefits are especially effective at
targeting common ‘lifestyle’ issues, like smoking and obesity, and associated
chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. They have proven
successful in encouraging exercise, healthier eating, weight loss, smoking
cessation, and increased mental health; all of which lower medical costs.
But the financial benefit doesn’t end there. Because
employees become healthier and happier, they miss work less frequently and are
less stressed at work. This leads to increased productivity and decreased
turnover, which are major benefits to your bottom line and to the success of
your organization as a whole.
They Actually Help Employees
Unlike other methods of cutting healthcare costs, wellness
benefits are actually about making employees’ lives better. They decrease the
need for healthcare, rather than the coverage itself, and in-so-doing put the
employee’s needs front and center. Wellness programs only work for the company
if they succeed in helping employees; the ROI comes directly from improved
employee health.
This makes your job a lot easier – and more rewarding. You
get to think about what’s genuinely best for all of your employees and then
make it happen. And for once you won’t have to fight tooth and nail to get
employees to adopt the new initiatives, because the benefit to them will be
self-evident. Employees are the lifeblood of any company; make the most of this
opportunity to make their lives better while also helping the company succeed.
They Adapt to and Augment Company Culture
Every company’s challenges are different, and the solutions
need to be as well. Your wellness benefits can and should be tailored to fit
your company’s specific needs, goals, and values. They are also often most effective
when implemented with your company culture in mind; choose the benefits that
reflect what your company stands for.
If your wellness benefits are aligned with your culture,
they are more likely to be adopted by your employees and are more likely to address
your employees’ challenges effectively. And if you have a strong culture, then
your employees are already onboard with its values, so they will embrace
benefits that reflect those values.
Best of all, when you implement wellness benefits that are aligned
with your company culture, they will become an important part of the culture
over time. Wellness can be an enormous asset to your culture, serving as proof
that your culture is fostering a sense of shared values and commitments.
They Increase Engagement
Because wellness benefits are intended improve employees’
well-being, they generally make employees feel more valued. They are frequently
viewed by employees as quality-of-life benefits that are meant help them more
than they help the company.
The fact of the matter is that even if you were to implement
wellness benefits purely to cut healthcare costs, you would still have to make
your employees’ lives better in order to attain that goal. And your employees
would appreciate you, and their work, more for it. When your employees feel
valued, they will be more engaged with their work, increasing their
productivity and decreasing turnover.
Don’t just take our word for it – a recent study
found that 85% of employers saw an increase in engagement after implementing
wellness benefits, and that employee engagement was actually the primary reason
for providing wellness benefits for 42% of companies surveyed.
We probably don’t have to explain to you how much it helps
to have your employees engaged in their work. Wellness benefits can help solve
the retention crisis that many businesses are facing in today’s economy.
Turnover is a fact of life and an expensive problem that is only getting worse,
especially when it comes top talent.
And, a major driver of turnover is the difficulty of providing
meaningful work. So, when companies release wellness benefits that get
employees engaged in their work, they can do wonders for employee retention and
productivity. In 2016, Aflac found
that 60% of employees would take a job with lower salary but higher
benefits, and that 42% of employees said that increasing benefits would help
keep them in their jobs.
How to Create a Wellness Program
So, wellness benefits can decrease your healthcare costs,
strengthen your company culture, increase employee productivity and retention. But
you may be wondering how to get started setting up a wellness program. Well,
let’s explore the basics of introducing wellness benefits in your organization.
In order to develop an effective wellness program, you
should determine what health issues you need to address. You can do this in a
few different ways. The first is to consider the main healthcare issues
nationwide, particularly for the demographics that reflect your workforce. The
second is to look at your healthcare expenses over recent years for main
drivers of healthcare costs. The third, and best, way to figure out what issues
to tackle is to conduct a Health Risk Assessment, or HRA, company-wide. These
questionnaires provide you with the information you need to identify the issues
that most affect your employees. Third-party vendors can conduct the assessment
in order to maximize employee comfort and participation and can analyze the
results for you to give you the best possible insights.
Once you have determined what issues you want to tackle,
it’s time to decide on what programs you want to implement. We encourage you to
choose the benefits based on the issues you identified in conjunction with your
company culture. Don’t think too much about what other companies are doing to
address the same issues, try to think about how your company should
solve them. Every company is different, and you want your programs to be in
line with what your company values.
Wellness programs generally fall into four main categories:
screening, education, incentives, and counseling. Screening generally
encompasses preventative care beyond what is covered under the standard
healthcare plan and helps you catch potential issues before they start
affecting employee health and well-being. Education empowers employees to take
control of their health and can take the form of health fairs, regularly
scheduled health seminars or talks. Incentives directly encourage employees to
act to improve their wellness by making it easier to make healthy changes or
rewarding wellness accomplishments. Examples of incentives include contests,
subsidized gym membership, free therapy or guided exercise sessions on-site, or
rewards for participating in the other components of the wellness program such
as screenings or educational talks. Finally, counseling allows employees to
receive confidential advice about their physical, mental, or financial health.
Now that you have decided which programs can make the most
difference for your employees, implement them enthusiastically and
consistently. Get key stakeholders, especially executives and managers, deeply
involved in all of your wellness programs. Effective wellness should be fun and
rewarding, but they also involve challenging employee’s habits and lifestyles,
so your leadership teams can encourage adoption by getting fully onboard
themselves.
If you follow these guidelines, you should have a strong wellness program that is tailored to what your company stands for and what your employees need to be the healthiest and happiest versions of themselves. Just one last thing – listen to your employees once you have rolled out wellness. They likely know what they want and need better than you do, so you can continue to develop a more effective wellness strategy by encouraging and integrating their feedback.
Key Takeaways
We’ve thrown a lot of information about wellness at you in
this article. Don’t worry if you can’t remember it all – you can always come
back to refresh your memory. Just remember these key points when you start
thinking about developing a wellness program:
Wellness is worth everything you put into it and more
Your company culture should guide your wellness strategy – and your benefits will strengthen your culture in return
Wellness benefits actually improve your employees’ lives and make them more engaged with their work, increasing retention and productivity
There is no right way to implement wellness, do what makes sense for you and your employees, and don’t forget to have fun
There are many ways to integrate wellness benefits into your
business. We certainly have not covered everything in this article, but
hopefully you now have a better sense of what wellness can do for your
organization and how you can start putting together a wellness program. We
would love to hear from you about your wellness strategies successes, so post
any ideas we may have missed in the comments!
The healthcare industry is changing at a rapid pace, and it can be hard to keep up as an employer in order to minimize costs and maximize the well-being of your employees. That’s why it’s worth considering where healthcare is likely to go and what steps you can take today to set yourself up for success in the future.
Let’s examine how the healthcare industry is changing and key ways to prepare your company for the future of healthcare:
• Become a better healthcare consumer • Adopt telemedicine • Empower and engage employees • Embrace wellness
Healthcare: Where it is Now and Where it is Heading
The entire healthcare industry, and insurance in particular, has changed drastically over the past two decades. Consolidation, rising costs, technology, and government action have all contributed to a turbulent and challenging healthcare marketplace for employers.
At the beginning of the millennium, comprehensive insurance plans with low deductibles were still commonplace, but they ultimately failed due to the lack of an incentive for employees to reduce spending – which was especially vital after the recession. Insurance companies tried to solve the issue through carrier-managed plans which controlled access to care to reduce costs, but these plans proved extremely unpopular. As a result, carriers and employers are turning to consumer-driven health plans (CDHPs) to increase cost-sharing and decrease spending. The most common type of CDHPs are high-deductible plans paired with tax-deductible health savings accounts, which keep premiums low and give employees significant control over their healthcare costs.
The problem with these plans is that, while they provide employees with an incentive to manage and reduce their costs, the plans do not provide them with the tools they need to do so effectively. The rest of the healthcare pipeline, including employers, are struggling to catch up with ways to reduce costs and empower employees now that more of the healthcare costs lie on the consumer.
Throughout the healthcare industry, the focus is on cutting costs and increasing efficiency – resulting in the formation of conglomerates. The lines between insurance carriers, brokers, pharmacy benefit managers, pharmacies, and providers are all becoming more blurred. The most prominent recent mergers have been between insurers and PBMs; Aetna recently merged with CVS Health and Cigna purchased Express Scripts.
There is good reason to believe that this trend of consolidation will continue, and that major companies not historically associated with healthcare will get involved. Amazon has made it clear that it intends to enter the healthcare arena, partnering with reinsurers Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan and purchasing the prescription delivery service PillPack. As with so many other industries, Amazon is likely to change the way that the healthcare industry functions and take over a lion’s share of the market in the process. And once it has, it is likely that other tech giants will follow suit.
The current trend of consolidation and CDHPs are moving the industry towards a “direct-to-consumer” model, with fewer middlemen and greater focus on customer experience. There will be more opportunities for employees and employers to save time and money, but at the same time there will be an even greater burden of responsibility to be intelligent consumers. The more knowable the market is for consumers, and the more control that they have over their healthcare, the more important it is that understand it. Education, already a crucial and too-often-neglected part of the healthcare equation, will likely become even more vital to both employers and employees.
Employers have often borne the brunt of the burden of rising costs and an ever-changing healthcare industry. Future changes could cause further turmoil for companies that do not adapt quickly and effectively. However, change is not always bad news at all. You can set yourself up for success in the current and future healthcare markets by taking a proactive approach to your healthcare policies and adapting properly to every new development. The future is looking pretty bright – for smart healthcare consumers.
Become a Better Healthcare Consumer
In order to thrive now and in the future, it’s important to become a better consumer. The same trends that have empowered employees to take control of their own healthcare costs have also given employers greater responsibility for their own costs. So how can you meet this responsibility?
Education is the first step to becoming a smarter consumer. Knowing the ins and outs of the market, including which new options exist and could benefit the company and its employees, allows you to take control over your healthcare present and future. This is especially important when the relationships between every player in the healthcare industry are being thrown into turmoil. Proactive employers, armed with current knowledge, can negotiate better deals and carve out an advantageous space for themselves in the new market that is continuously forming.
An important part of becoming a better healthcare consumer is to take advantage all of the new tools that are becoming available that employers can leverage to minimize their expenses and provide value for their employees. For instance, mail-order prescriptions and other alternatives to traditional pharmacies can reduce your spend on prescription drugs. Modernized, alternative healthcare fulfillment will only become more common, so adopting them early will set you up to take full advantage of new developments.
Adopt Telemedicine
Telemedicine is perhaps the most significant alternative to traditional care that employers can leverage to reduce their costs while keeping employees healthier. In an age when offices are increasingly moving in the direction of remote work, remote doctor’s appointments just make sense. Plus, telemedicine is likely to become even more widespread and powerful, so making it part of your employee’s healthcare habits now will pay dividends in the long-term.
Like all other digital healthcare solutions, telemedicine saves employees – and by extension employers – time and money by offering a more convenient alternative to traditional options. It lowers direct costs by reducing the number of expensive emergency room and urgent care visits and is often even cheaper than a traditional doctor’s appointment. Also, employees commonly skip or reschedule preventative care appointments during work hours because they feel pressured not to miss work, which can actually lead to greater healthcare costs down the line (not to mention make employees feel mistreated).
Telemedicine also makes your team members better employees. Because employees can consult doctors from their home or office, they generally don’t need to miss work in order to get medical advice. And, because telemedicine allows employees to access the care they need more quickly, your employees will be healthier overall, raising their productivity when they are in the office.
Empower and Engage Employees
At Launchways, we strongly believe in empowering your employees to become smarter healthcare consumers. This is particularly important in healthcare because of the shift towards consumer-driven health plans. With the current trend of consumer-driven healthcare, employees need to be more involved in their healthcare decisions in order to minimize costs while maximizing their health. So, turning your employees into smart, proactive healthcare consumers can really set you up for present and future success.
Coaching and education are important parts of empowering employees, allowing them to choose the options that are best for their health and their wallets. Digital tools not only provide employees with the information they need to be smart consumers, they also make it easier to navigate the healthcare process – an important step in getting employees engaged in healthcare decisions. And engaged consumers spend a third as much on healthcare as passive consumers, according to the 2016 McKinsey Consumer Health Insights Survey. The same survey also found that 80% of consumers view digital solutions as the most effective way to perform many fundamental healthcare activities such as finding doctors and insurance plans, checking health information, and monitoring health metrics.
Because employees prefer digital options, they are more likely to take control of their healthcare decisions when offered digital solutions. And since digital options are streamlined and user-friendly, they genuinely make it easier for consumers to save money and manage costs through intentional consumption. Tools like HealthiestYou are already providing employees with one-stop-shop digital platforms to manage their healthcare. Just as Uber has revolutionized transportation and apps have modernized dating, healthcare apps make it easy for consumers to find the insurance plans, doctors, medications, and pharmacies that work best for their health and wallet.
Embrace Wellness
Wellness benefits are getting increasing attention due to their ability to reduce healthcare costs and make employees feel valued and engaged in their work. The cost-benefit analysis of wellness from a healthcare perspective is clear – the healthier your employees are, the fewer healthcare-related costs they will incur. Smoking cessation and weight loss programs are obvious examples of cost-saving wellness measures, but other health-promoting benefits can have almost as big an impact on your bottom line.
Because wellness benefits generally target lifestyle related health costs, they are often seen by employees as quality-of-life benefits. They show employees that you care about their wellbeing, which makes them feel valued. Given the challenges of high employee turnover and the difficulty of keeping employees engaged in their work, the morale boost from introducing wellness benefits can be a very welcome side effect indeed.
So wellness is important, but what exactly are wellness benefits? The first kind of wellness benefits have to do with physical well-being, such as: • Onsite gyms • Discounted or free gym memberships • Company-wide exercise or smoking cessation challenges • Nutritional benefits: eg. healthy meals and snacks on-site or access to a nutritionist
The second type of wellness benefits address mental health, which is an often overlooked area that can result in significant healthcare costs as well as reduced performance. Examples of these benefits include: • Time off to recharge: vacation time, sick days, “personal days”, floating holidays, summer Fridays • Stress relief breaks: naps, required breaks throughout the day, or even on-site massages • Meditation or mindfulness apps • Support groups (particularly for alcohol or smoking cessation) • Onsite or remote counseling
Wellness benefits can have a significant impact on your healthcare costs as well as your employee’s well-being and work satisfaction as a whole. If you’re interested in learning more about wellness programs and what they can do to empower your organization, keep an eye out for our upcoming article on the topic.
Key Takeaways
The healthcare industry has changed a lot in recent years, and there is every reason to believe that it will keep changing at an even greater rate. Employers have to adapt to face new challenges and accommodate new healthcare models in order to keep afloat. But by planning ahead and taking advantage of new developments, employers can define their role in the healthcare equation, minimize their costs, and maximize their employee’s health and well-being. Just keep in mind that a few key steps can help you manage costs now and prepare for the future:
• Becoming a better consumer by educating yourself, renegotiating relationships, and leveraging new tools • Adopting telemedicine to reduce direct costs and absenteeism and to increase productivity • Empowering and engaging employees to make them the best possible healthcare consumers • Embracing wellness to reduce long-term health costs and make your employees feel valued
Healthcare is an incredibly complex topic and there is no right or wrong answer for how to manage your employee’s healthcare. Every organization will face its own challenges and find its own solutions. But, hopefully this article has provided some insight into where the industry is going and some of the things you should consider doing for the present and future well-being of your company and its employees.
Launchways is excited to announce a partnership with Chanté
Thurmond, a leading Chicago-based D&I Expert and Executive Talent
Consultant, to create a new series of Diversity & Inclusion training
sessions and offerings scheduled to begin Spring 2019.
The goal is to leverage our mutual expertise to help our clients access
diversity, equity and inclusion resources that will empower their workplace
culture. We will develop webinars and training programs that will help leaders
navigate D&I topics such as: workplace inclusion and accessibility, gender
pay gaps, unconscious bias, employee resource groups, and more.
Launchways CEO Jim Taylor expressed his excitement for the
new D&I initiative, saying “Diversity and inclusion are vital to the long-term
success of any organization. Launchways is dedicated to helping companies
achieve sustainable growth through a strong company culture and effective talent
acquisition and retention. Chanté Thurmond’s expertise and the addition of
D&I consulting to our repertoire is a major step forward in our mission.”
In addition to her consulting work, Chanté Thurmond founded
The Darkest Horse in 2018 to change the national conversation about diversity
and inclusion by inviting business leaders to share their stories. One of her
aims in 2019 is to directly tackle D&I issues in the workplace through her
partnership with Launchways.
Of her work at The Darkest Horse and her partnership with
Launchways, Chanté Thurmond noted “Together, we stand in solidarity to commit
our time, energy and resources to address workplace disparities and workforce
inequities. 2019 marks a year of much-needed partnership, in which we forge onwards
with strategic partners who share our passions, values and goals to help make
workplaces become more inclusive. Jim Taylor and his team at Launchways are the
epitome of strategic partners and multipliers.”
Why You Should Care About Diversity and Inclusion
What is Diversity and Inclusion and how can companies
benefit by paying attention to them?
Diversity covers the area of inclusion, generally defined by
hiring and promoting processes. Diversity trainings have been around for a long
time, and many companies do include guidelines or quotas in their hiring
protocols to increase gender and racial equity on their teams. However,
companies frequently overlook promotion practices and long-term success of
employees of different genders and races. The result is that many diversity
programs function as damage control to protect the organization from
perceptions of bias, and do not result in stronger teams.
This is unfortunate, because physical diversity at every
level of an organization is a key driver of success. Recent
studies show that greater gender and racial diversity each are
directly correlated with increased profitability and value creation. Companies
with the most women and minorities in leadership positions are between 20-30%
more likely to achieve above average financial performance.
That is why inclusion is a necessary counterpart to
diversity. Companies thrive when all employees are full team members with equal
opportunities for advancement and share ownership over the company culture and
mission/vision. Team members need to feel that they belong and can thrive at
the company. Quotas and one-off trainings cannot achieve those results.
Instead, leaders need to put every part of their company under the microscope
to see how they can best serve all employees. Diversity and inclusion
need to become integral parts of the company that are valued and lived by every
day.
This can best be achieved through ongoing training and
strategic policy changes, under the guidance of experienced D&I
consultants. Every organization is different and solutions need to meet each
company’s unique challenges. But with consistent, concerted effort and the right
expertise, leaders can create more vibrant and successful teams.
Launchways is excited to offer the guidance that its clients
need to foster true diversity and inclusiveness through its upcoming training
programs, webinars, and consulting services in partnership with Chanté
Thurmond.
About Launchways
Launchways provides business leaders with the resources and
guidance they need to build scalable people processes to support long-term
growth. Founded in 2009, Launchways has helped thousands of companies better
approach the people side of their business through strategic solutions for
human resources, employee benefits, and business insurance. For more
information, please visit www.launchways.com.
About Chanté Thurmond
Chanté is a fierce advocate of equity & inclusion; gender parity and social justice initiatives. She is on a mission to learn the backstories of underrepresented leaders and share their voice with the world. Her expertise is in Organizational Development, Social Innovation, Health & Well-being and Community Engagement. In a previous life, Chanté’s work centered around cultivating strategic alliances between public and private sector leaders to reduce public health inequities and improve population health outcomes. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) from Mount Mercy University and a M.A. from St. Catherine University in St. Paul, MN.
Prescription drugs are a major driver of healthcare costs
for individuals in general, and for employers specifically. Prices increase an
average of 4% a year and specialty drugs, already the most expensive category, increase by 21% per year.
Politicians across the political spectrum have put drug costs at the center of
their healthcare rhetoric, but little action has actually been taken. In the
meantime, prescription drugs have become the second greatest healthcare expense
for companies and represent roughly a third of total healthcare costs for
employers.
Luckily, there are several ways that employers can reduce
their spend on prescription drugs, including:
Educating Employees
Empowering Employees
Providing Employee Incentives
Using Restrictions as a Last Resort
Managing PBM Relationships
Educating Employees
The number one thing you can do to reduce prescription
expenses is to make sure that your employees are well informed about their
coverage, prescription options, and best practices. Education is free, for the
most part, and will not only reduce costs but will also make employees feel
better about their benefits packages. Many employees feel that their companies
do not sufficiently explain their benefits and coverage, so they will
appreciate any effort to provide them with more information.
Most importantly, educate your employees about best
practices that will save themselves and, by extension, the company money. This
includes telling them about preferred pharmacies, generic alternatives,
mail-order services, and other cost-saving options. Healthcare costs are a
major source of stress for employees as well as employers, so telling employees
what they can do to cut costs will often be enough to cut your expenses
significantly.
You should also make sure that your employees understand
their coverage and the tools that are available to them. In the next few
sections we will explore various structures and tools you can use to reduce
costs. However, they will only be effective if employees use them, so education
is still key.
Every communication regarding healthcare and reducing
prescription drug costs should be framed in the context of the benefit to the
employee. Hopefully all of the best practices and all of your policies will
help your employees as well as the company – so make that the heart of your
messaging. This can turn a potential morale crisis into a boost in employee
engagement. Your employees will appreciate your efforts to give them the
knowledge and tools they need to manage their healthcare and save themselves
money – and may not even consider the possibility that you are also trying to
save the company money.
Empowering Employees
While education is vital, it is often not enough. You need
to provide your employees with tools and resources to help them keep the cost
of care low. Best of all, these tools can be presented as new benefits, making
your employees feel valued and appreciated.
An easy tool to implement is a prescription savings card
such as Clever RX. Here at Launchways, we partner with
Clever RX to help improve the benefits experience for our client’s employees.
Clever RX cards offer increased savings at pharmacies and work in conjunction with
most insurance. Users save up to 80% on prescription drug costs and generally
pay less than most copays. More than two thirds of people can save money with a
prescription savings card, especially during an era of rising deductibles.
In addition to giving your employees a prescription savings
card, you can also offer them a comprehensive healthcare planning tool like HealthiestYou. Launchways partners with
HealthiestYou to offer our client’s employees access to quality healthcare
services at a fraction of the cost of traditional healthcare channels. Using
HealthiestYou, employees can search for nearby pharmacies and in-network
providers and easily compare the prices of copays/deductibles at each option to
reduce costs. They also receive regular reminders about benefits and savings,
and can review their coverage information at any time through the app, making
your job of educating your employees that much easier. Perhaps the greatest
benefit of HealthiestYou is their telemedicine platform. With telemedicine, employees
have 24/7 access to teleconference appointments with board-certified doctors.
With telemedicine, employees can receive prescriptions for common health
concerns with a simple phone or video call. HealthiestYou and other apps can
save your employees and your company time, money, and stress.
The last way to reduce healthcare costs across the board by
empowering employees is to offer preventative benefits. If you encourage
healthy employee lifestyles, you can avoid many costs from medical visits and
prescription drugs. An Employee Assistance Program offers confidential
third-party guidance to employees to reduce their stress, help them cope with
their struggles, and hopefully keep them out of medical harm. More importantly,
wellness programs can reduce “lifestyle diseases”, a major cause of medical
costs in the US. Fitness competitions, standing desk options, and access to
gyms or nutritionists either onsite or at a reduced cost can help keep your
employees healthy and off of prescription medications.
Providing Employee
Incentives
While restrictions should be avoided whenever possible, as
we will explore in the next section, you can provide incentives to push employees
towards prescription drug best practices. There are a few key incentives that
are effective and not overly burdensome.
First, you can create additional tiers of insurance to
enable employees opt-in for greater coverage. This can increase cost-sharing
significantly, and offering increased care is an easy sell even if it is at a
higher cost. In particular, consider creating a tier that covers specialty
medications. Specialty drugs represent 38% of prescription costs but only 1-2%
of total prescriptions, so focusing on them can often be the most effective way
of reducing expenses.
Drug formularies offer another powerful incentive to keep
the cost of prescriptions down. They are essentially lists of drugs that are
eligible for increased coverage and available at lower cost to the employee.
You can work with your insurance provider and pharmacy benefits manager to put
together formularies that best meet the needs of your employees and your
company. Formularies are effective because they do not reduce coverage so much
as they encourage intelligent decisions by offering additional incentives for
generics and other cost-effective drugs.
Using Restrictions as a
Last Resort
Many common cost-cutting methods punish employees, shift
costs from the employer to the employee, or reduce the level of care. When
there are so many ways to reduce prescription drug expenses that actually
benefit employees, restrictions should be avoided whenever possible as they can
cause harm, or at least inconvenience, to employees and damage employee trust
in your company.
Even the perception that you are cutting coverage can cause
morale to plummet, driving poor performance and high turnover as employees look
for a company that they believe will provide greater benefits. This is why it
is important to emphasize the benefit to the employee throughout the healthcare
conversation, and avoid policies that genuinely reduce coverage.
That being said, some restrictions are acceptable options to
use as a last resort when you need to reduce costs significantly or the other
methods have proven insufficient:
Prior authorization before filling a
prescription
Mandatory mail-order for maintenance medications
Medical justification for name-brand
prescriptions over generic alternatives, or make employees cover the difference
in cost between name brand and generics
Step therapy: allow employees to access the
drugs they need but require them to try more cost effective treatments before
stepping up to more expensive drugs
Managing PBM Relationships
One of the most effective ways to cut prescription expenses
is to work with a Pharmacy Benefit Management company, or a PBM. These
organizations negotiate with pharmacies, drug companies, and health insurance
providers to secure rebates for specific drugs and keep costs low for their
clients.
Currently, 65% of companies use a PBM to reduce their
healthcare costs. If you are not one of those companies, then you should look
into how a PBM can save you money on prescription drugs. But if you already
work with a PBM, you can increase your savings by putting your relationship
under the microscope.
The first thing to keep in mind is that you should never
sign a long contract with a given PBM and you should retain the right to
renegotiate the contract at any time. This keeps them on their toes and ensures
that they will continue to work to get you new savings. It also empowers you to
take matters into your own hands to correct any abuse by the PBM.
Once you have secured the ability to monitor and correct PBM
behavior, you need to actively manage your relationship. Examine your contracts
regularly and renegotiate whenever possible to make sure that the needs of your
company and your employees are being met in a cost effective manner. Also, do
not be afraid to research current trends and price compare with other PBMs to
make sure that your relationship still makes financial sense.
Key Takeaways
We have covered a lot of cost-cutting strategies in this
article, so here are the key things you can do to reduce your prescription drug
spend:
Prioritize employee education around your
benefits offerings
Inform your employees of best practices and
coverage specifics
Empower your employees to save themselves time
and money with tools like Clever RX, Healthiest You, and lifestyle benefits
Encourage your employees to follow best
practices with new insurance tiers and drug formularies
Use restrictions as a last resort, because while
they can be effective you risk alienating employees
Partner with PBMs to reduce costs, but
consistently manage your PBM relationship to maximize the benefit to your
employees and your bottom line
Work with an employee benefits broker
that helps you build and implement a strategy to control prescription drug
costs
In an age of rising drug prices, and higher co-pays and deductibles, many employers are cutting coverage to manage their costs. But the reality is that you can effectively reduce costs while helping your employees receive the highest level of healthcare.
Whether you are looking to solve a retention problem or just
want to pump up your already effective team, do not pass up the opportunity to
show your employees what they mean to you on National Employee Appreciation
Day, March 1st. There are many ways to make your team members feel genuinely
appreciated, both on the day itself and through the rest of the year.
In this article we will explore why employee appreciation is
important and how you can make the most of Employee Appreciation Day this year,
as well as ideas you can implement for next year:
Why You Should Celebrate Employee Appreciation
Day
Think Outside of the Box
Follow Your Culture
Think Long Term
Pitfalls to Avoid
Why You Should Celebrate
Employee Appreciation Day
Your employees are what makes your company run; they are
ultimately responsible for every success, every goal accomplished and every
product or service. That’s something that is worth some appreciation. Beyond
deserving it, your employees also need recognition in order to perform at their
best so that you can achieve future successes. No one likes to feel like they
are a cog in a machine, being used for their labor and not appreciated for the
contributions that they are making. Even simple gestures can make a huge
difference in employee satisfaction, performance, and retention.
The fact of the matter is that about half of all employees would
leave their jobs for a company that gives employees more recognition for
their accomplishments, while eight out of ten employees say that being
recognized motivates them at their jobs.
At a time in which companies are struggling to provide
meaningful work and retain top talent, showing appreciation can be a cheap and
rewarding path to a more effective, sustainable team. That is why you should
use this National Employee Appreciation Day as an opportunity to take concrete
steps to building a happier more effective workforce. But how should you go
about showing your employees that you appreciate them?
Get Creative and Personal
Especially since March 1st is rapidly
approaching, do not be afraid to get a bit creative with your celebrations. You
do not have to do anything too major or complicated to celebrate National
Employee Appreciation Day, so long as it seems genuine and personal. Office
pizza is always nice, but it doesn’t really show that you care. At the risk of
sounding seriously cheesy (no pun intended), you want to fill your employees’
hearts and not just their stomachs. But don’t be too serious – the more fun you
have planning the celebrations, the more enjoyable and rewarding they will be
for your employees.
Your employees will feel significantly more appreciated and
valued the more personal and unexpected your methods are. If they are surprised
by the celebrations, your message will seem much more genuine. And the more
directly the appreciation comes from the company leadership or employees’
managers, the more heartfelt and effective it will be. You shouldn’t just
implement an idea that you find online in this or any other article – take time
to make it your own and your employees will appreciate the extra effort.
Also get personal when it comes to your employees; if your
team is small enough, tailor your messages, programming, and giveaways to
individual team members’ interests. If you are a larger company, get managers
involved so that they can come up with special ways to celebrate their teams.
Time might be short for this year, but even just getting managers to write a
personalized note to each of their team members, and letting managers choose
their team’s treat and activity for March 1st, is a quick and easy
way to make your employees feel truly appreciated.
Above all, remember that there is no right answer so feel
free to celebrate your employees in the way that works best for your company.
Just make sure that you come across as genuine, and that your celebrations are
in line with your company’s values.
Follow Your Culture
Speaking of company values, the best way to make sure that
your appreciation comes across as genuine is to express it in a way that aligns
with your company culture, mission, and vision. Sending a message that
conflicts with your company culture would be jarring and dishearten rather than
engage your employees.
The reason why you should follow your company culture is
that you will reinforce what already makes employees dedicated to their jobs.
If your employees buy into your company culture, then that means that they
share your values and care about their work largely because of the company’s
mission and vision. Celebrating those values when showing your appreciation for
your employees will create a grounded, consistent message that makes your
employees more confident in their choice to work at your company.
Similarly, it is important to avoid showing your
appreciation by just making your employees work less, or in any other way that
downplays the importance of what the company is doing. You want the focus to be
on the good work that your employees do, and your appreciation for that work,
not on making your employees happy by just giving them a break. It is important
for all companies not to downplay work on National Employee Appreciation Day. Consider
using the day to provide insight into what the company is doing, why it is
doing it, and how the team members contribute to those goals.
If, on the other hand, you have a robust company culture and
engaged workforce, your team members will already be proud of what they are
doing and will want their managers and company leadership to be proud of it
too. They will not want to work less, but be recognized for their work. Use the
Employee Appreciation Day to acknowledge and praise employee contributions
towards the company mission/vision, steps they have taken to safeguard the
company culture, and other meaningful contributions that they have made.
Think Long Term
No matter how much you celebrate your employees on March 1st,
long term engagement and satisfaction can only come from long term
appreciation. That is why you should take the opportunity to announce new
policies or programs that will engage and reward your employees year round.
If you already have a change in policies in the works that
might benefit employees, consider rolling the change out as part of the your
Employee Appreciation Day celebrations. This will help frame the policies as
being meant to benefit and reward employees. Even if you are not ready to
implement changes, consider announcing them accompanied with a rough roll-out
schedule.
Even if you do not have any changes in mind yet, consider
simple policies that you can announce on Employee Appreciation Day. Weekly
“props” at team meetings, other informal peer recognition policies, and monthly
appreciation events do not take much to set up and can be announced this year.
You can also start planning for other long term changes to introduce next
Employee Appreciation Day. Some examples of larger projects to start planning
include:
Employee Gamification: allow team members to
earn points for various perks in exchange for accomplishments
Competitions: reward top performing individuals
or teams for accomplishing specific goals
New Benefits: gym memberships, zoo or museum
passes, and other quality-of-life perks
Work Structure: introduce flexible work hours,
telecommuting options, or Summer Fridays
Avoid These Common
Pitfalls
While the best way to show your employees how much you
appreciate them depends on your company and there are no “right” answers, there
are some common mistakes that you should absolutely avoid. Two in particular
are sure to make your employees angry instead of making them feel valued:
First, don’t just send a card or email and fail to show your
appreciation in any more concrete or active way. While it is important to say
thank you, a form message from HR or the CEO never makes employees feel warm
and fuzzy about their jobs. That is not to say that you shouldn’t have the CEO
send a message about the company’s recent accomplishments and future plans, and
thanking employees for their contributions to both. Just make sure that the
content is meaningful and that it is accompanied by some form of action that
further makes your employees feel valued, listened to, and appreciated.
Second, do not roll out programs that are just obvious, and
insufficient, work incentives. Contests and gamification can be great ways to
engage your employees and reward them for hard work. Just make sure that they
are clearly intended to make employees’ jobs more fun and rewarding not to
encourage them to work harder and sacrifice more than they already are. People
can generally tell what your real motivation is so make sure that any incentive
programs come from a desire to make the company a more rewarding place to work.
Key Takeaways
National Employee Appreciation Day is your chance to have
fun, show your employees how much they mean to you, and launch programs to make
your employees feel valued year round. Get as creative and personal as you can,
emphasize your company culture, and genuinely thank your employees for their
contributions to the company mission and vision and you will reap the rewards
of employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention. Just remember to:
Be creative and personal
Align your celebrations with the company culture
Celebrate employee accomplishments and
contributions to the company mission/vision
Implement long-term programs to show
appreciation for your employees
And most of all, don’t forget to have fun. Share your favorite, wackiest employee appreciation ideas in the comments section below.
