Category: Human Resource

Prosperous business owners recognize that fuel for growth centers around attracting and retaining exceptional employees. Offering enticing benefits packages are an excellent method for appealing to employees who align with the culture of your company. However, negotiating the costs and managing the choices of employee benefits plans is time-consuming and multifaceted.

Designing and Implementing the Process

A valuable employee benefits program achieves several targeted goals. First, it contributes financial security for workers and their families in the event of unemployment, disability, illness, or death. Second, it fosters positive staff morale and boosts overall productivity. Finally, it serves as a recruitment tool to attract and keep quality talent. For many business owners, the task of a creating a solid benefits package that meets all of these criteria is daunting. Accordingly, following these five steps can provide management with the tools to craft effective benefits packages.

1.      Profile your unique workforce needs. Creating a custom-tailored and balanced benefits package based on your staffs’ needs provides quantifiable employee satisfaction and goal achievement data essential for recruiting and retaining top talent. Analyze your workforce case history and demographics to establish a profile of their requirements based on the average life stages and specific circumstances.
2.      Evaluate your current benefits. Review existing benefits plans to identify potential patterns impacting your options. Certain voluntary benefits are industry standards and businesses not offering these perks have significant difficulty hiring or retaining talented staff. For instance, paid and sick leave programs, life and health insurance, flexible compensation plans, and retirement plans are all benefits plan staples across many industries.
3.      Audit the rollout experience. After selecting benefits programs, performing an audit of current employees’ perceptions provides an accurate impression of the deployment experience. This process may involve email surveys, data collection from online job board comments, or live discussions. Lunchtime Focus Groups allow employers to determine what is important to employees and their overall experience of the rollout, including the presentation, communication, and enrollment.
4.      Manage the renewal process. Companies do not need to completely reinvent their benefits plans annually as long as they focus on industry trends and the needs of the current workforce. Re-evaluating messaging techniques, revitalizing communication as benefits strategies evolve, and continuing to conduct benefits experience audits ensures a culture of understanding and maximization of the value of benefits offered.
5.      Secure legal compliance. When evaluating benefits packages, business owners must take into account and ensure compliance with a variety of laws. Some of these regulations include ERISA, ADA, age discrimination laws, HIPAA, and various state laws.

Small businesses and large multi-state organizations alike choose to work with consultants who manage employee benefits and business insurance. Their support equips employers with the planning, budgeting, and communication tools necessary to convey the value of benefits programs to their workers.

Looking Beyond Employee Benefits

Productivity tends to increase when employees perceive overall satisfaction of their benefits needs. Businesses offering the best benefits may realize significant growth. Providing employees with the benefits they value enhances fulfillment, decreases sick days, improves retention, and creates a higher commitment to achieving corporate goals.

Some companies actively use drug-testing as part of their applicant screening process to prevent possible habitual drug users from joining the company’s workforce. It’s an effort to avoid employing candidates who’s mental and other abilities are impaired by the effects of drug use. In that situation, the person would be unable to fulfill the necessary tasks required of their job. This preventive measure is also intended to keep other persons within the working area safe. However, there are cases when drug testing can violate an individual’s rights. Here are tips to keep in mind to ensure the process is executed within ethical boundaries:

• Drug testing should be conducted in the proper environment.

As drug testing often involves urine samples, the applicant should be asked to provide it in privacy within a doctor’s office. Requiring it to be done in the presence of an observer is a violation of the applicant’s rights, unless under the justified concern this person would tamper with the sample.

• The process of drug testing should be uniform across all applicants.

When methods and factors vary, outcomes cannot be judged according to the same criteria. For fair and just evaluation of results and screening of candidates, the methods used for one should be the same for the rest. If an applicant is obliged to submit urine samples, then other candidates should also be asked to do the same. If one only needs a hair drug test, other applicants should be submitted to the same treatment.

• Choose quality drug test kits for accurate results.

These results could significantly impact an applicant’s eligibility for the employment position. A false positive would unrightfully eliminate the candidate from the list and a false negative would undermine the purpose of conducting the test. It’s the employer’s responsibility to ensure that tools used are of high-quality and the process is done under recommended conditions so no external factors would affect the outcome.

• The job applicant is properly informed about drug testing being a necessary part of the application process.

The candidate has the right to be briefed ahead as it can be seen as intrusive when there’s no prior notice given. The person should be allowed the option of not proceeding with the application if not comfortable with the method for whatever reason. Failing to inform the applicant might also give the wrong impression of cornering the individual into taking the test.

• An applicant is usually only asked to undergo the test when offered the position.

There’s no sufficient reason to collect sensitive samples regarding equally sensitive information on a person if it’s not likely the candidate would be joining the company. Hence, no applicant who is still undergoing the earlier phases of screening should be required to. The employer may ask the candidate to take the drug test when they’re about to enter a legal agreement, namely the job contract. Only then will the individual have a legal obligation to share such information with the company.

If you’re a business owner, there’s a huge chance that you will require your workers for a drug screen or have done so already. But keep in mind that there is various situation that your employers may have felt a little uncomfortable whether they have experienced taking drugs or not. There are also ways that they can prepare for it as well, so make sure that you see to possible of ways to avoid any problems in the future.

 

 

 

 

As an employer, you need your company and its workers to be productive. Keeping staff motivated, engaged, and happy on the job is hard enough—but when you factor in the many health conditions affecting the United States, balancing the challenge of keeping everyone healthy and happy so they can work (and you can save money) can feel overwhelming. Obesity and related chronic diseases are very costly to employers averaging $93 billion per year in health insurance claims. Many of these conditions are strongly linked to factors that include smoking, inadequate exercise and poor dietary choices—all of which can be modified with the help of company wellness programs.

Tips for successful wellness programs

Workplace wellness programs can help offset some of these challenges. After all, what’s more fun than competing against your friends and co-workers for bragging rights and fitting in to a smaller pair of jeans? For the best possible buy-in, allow your employees to have a say or suggest programs they would like to participate in. Send around a survey or list of some ideas and ask them for their own. Regular and short term programs. Activities that have a quick duration (usually no longer than a month) will help employees stay motivated and focused on the goal ahead. At the end of the challenge period, offer a prize for their efforts. Just make sure it’s something healthy and beneficial, not something that would set them back.

And one word of caution—encourage your employees to see their doctor for a checkup before they start any kind of health challenge. You can suggest employees get a broader picture of their health with a genetic wellness test. Genetic testing can tell employees about their personal risk factors the development of certain diseases, information on how they process nutrients, and even what diet is most effective for their body type before they start a wellness program.  Pathway Genomics offers genetic testing that can get your employees off on the right foot.  You certainly wouldn’t want anyone to go overboard and injure or harm themselves to win. Try to keep the tone positive and friendly and discourage going to extremes.

Ready to start planning? Here are 19 ideas to get you headed in the right direction:

1.  Host on-site yoga classes

2.  Start a walk to work challenge

3.  Offer standing desks

4.  Create a healthy office cookbook that employees can contribute to

5.  Offer healthy snacks on site instead of chips in the vending machine

6.  Give incentives for smoking cessation

7.  Plan a monthly healthy pot luck lunch

8.  Host a stair climbing competition

9.  Form a walking club over lunch

10.  Create an area for weights or a small gym

11.  Invite a chef to teach healthy cooking

12.  Encourage 10 minutes of daily quiet time to reduce stress

13.  Offer information on exercises to build better posture

14.  Encourage employees to get up and move around for 10 minutes every hour

15.  Hold a health fair

16.  Hold weekly healthy lunch-and-learn health topic presentations

17.  Remove soda machines and offer a flavored water bar

18.  Pass out pedometers and give a prize to the person with the most steps

19.  Start a monthly weight loss challenge following a specific program supervised by your company nurse or bring in a nutritionist

The path to better workplace wellness is paved with motivation, support and positivity. As a leader, your team will look to you to set the pace so remember—it’s mutually beneficial to get healthy and stay that way. Don’t be afraid to lead with confidence and watch your team fall in to pace too.

As a business owner, you may find yourself constantly wearing different hats. One minute you could be writing a business plan, but the next minute you may be doing sales, marketing, customer service or even IT.

Although this may be necessary initially in order to keep your costs low and your business running profitably, in the long-term, should you be considering other options?

Admittedly there are advantages of being a one-man or one-woman band, but as just one person, there are limits to how far you can go. It can be hard taking a step back and handing over the reins of certain tasks to someone else, but you have to decide whether managing the invoices, buying more toner, sending a tweet and answering customer queries is really the best use of your valuable time.

It may therefore be time for you to hire your very first employee, but before you make any decisions, it’s important to think everything through thoroughly. Here are some important things to consider:

What are the advantages?
If you want to grow your business, then you may need to come to terms with the fact that at some stage, you will need help. If your time is currently taken up with all the day-to-day running of the business, then delegating some of these tasks can help free up your schedule. This gives you the opportunity to focus on more top-level planning and development, to ensure your business can reach its full potential.

What are the disadvantages?
You will have a financial commitment to that employee and so it’s important to ensure your business is making enough money in order to pay their salary.

There is the risk that you hire someone who is not suitable for your business. This can be extremely damaging, but the risk can be reduced by following a clear and thought through recruitment process.

What else do I need to consider?
It’s important to work out how much work you actually have to keep your new employee busy. For example, you don’t want to hire a full-time employee during your busy period only to realise that the rest of the year they have nothing to do.

Make sure you are clear on why you are hiring an employee. This can help you to find someone that is suitable for the job. Do you want someone to help with admin perhaps, or someone who has expertise in a particular area?

Don’t forget that employee expenses are much more than just paying a salary. There are other financial implications such as taxes. You will also need to decide whether your existing office space is sufficient for a growing business, provide equipment to your new hire as well as training.

What should I do next?
If you have decided to hire your first employee, then you should create a job description, promote the role and start carrying out interviews. Ensure candidates have the relevant skills and experience, as well as the right personality and attitude to fit within your business. For a more detailed step-by-step process to follow, see this helpful infographic from Simply Business. This is a very important decision though, so make sure you take your time.

What are the alternatives?
If you’re not sure that hiring a full-time employee is right for you, then there are other options for you to consider. You could outsource key elements of your business to an agency. For example, you could hire a social media agency to run your Facebook Page, or an IT provider to maintain your systems.

Alternatively, you may want to consider hiring a contractor. This gives you lots of flexibility, as you can ask for as much or as little help as you need, depending on your workload and the peaks and troughs in the market. Do a simple search on Google to find freelancers in your area, or sites such as Freelancer, PeoplePerHour, Upwork and Fiverr are becoming increasingly popular.

Are you in the process of hiring your very first employee? We’d love to know how you decided it was time to take this big step. Leave us a comment in the box below. 

Author Bio

Elizabeth Harmon is a writer for Open Colleges, one of Australia’s leading online education providers. She discusses various subjects, including business, careers and online marketing. She is self employed as a Social Media Consultant and understands the need to prioritise tasks, delegate work and plan for the future. You can follow her on Twitter @Liz_Harmon or see more of her blogs here.

The movie Office Space should be required viewing for any business owner. It’s a cautionary tale of disgruntle employees that have become jaded after years of feeling like little more than a body in a cubicle. And that film was made 17 years ago.

Today the way we work has dramatically changed as well as our perceptions of how and when to work. Recent studies show that happy employees are more productive employees. Happy employees are also less likely to quit, another factor that can save companies a lot of money.

And it’s not a money issue. Randstad U.S. conducted a survey of 2,279 employed individuals, 36% of which said that they would give up $5,000 a year to be happier at work.

The cubicle concept is giving way to working from anywhere. The idea of 9-to-5 schedules is being replaced by project completion that isn’t confined to specific hours.

If you want to boost employee happiness and performance, here are five company policies worth considering.

Offer a Flexible Schedule Opportunity

Work-life balance is one of the biggest concerns for employees. They feel like they are constantly connected to work even when they aren’t being paid for it. Some employees also stress about having to put family needs behind those of work.

A flexible schedule allows employees to create a work schedule that works for their life. Some employees have children or parents that they have to care for and being able to work from home a few days a week would alleviate a lot of stress. Others may work better at night rather than during the day. Many employees simply want to make a slight adjustment so they can avoid nerve-wracking traffic before work every morning.

The Internet has made it possible for the majority of employees to work effectively from anywhere. Online management systems make the flexible schedule transition even easier. A cloud-based platform like Asure Software enables companies to keep everyone connected no matter where they are and gauge productivity in and out of the office.

No matter what the situation is a flexible schedule provides a better sense of control, which makes employees happier.

Stock Snacks Around the Office

Food makes people happy in most situations, and work is no exception. One surprising finding from a survey by the company Peapod is that 67% of people working at companies with free food say they are very or extremely happy. By comparison, 56% of employees at companies without free food said the same.

Free food is one of those extra perks that show employees the company is investing in their happiness. There’s also a biological basis for this happiness increase. When you’ve been working for hours on end your brain is going to get fatigued. Part of the problem is it’s being depleted of glucose. By having a snack you can boost glucose levels and cognitive performance. Instead of being hungry, employees will be happy.

Recognize Excellence

If all your hard work went unnoticed would you be happy? Probably not, and employees aren’t happy about it either. When an individual, team, department or the company as a whole does a great job make a point to recognize it. Being given recognition shows employees that you appreciate their hard work and motivates them to keep it up.

Encourage Employee Interaction

People who have friends at work are much more likely to be happy employees. Studies have shown that people who work with friends are 50% more satisfied and seven times more engaged in their work.

Instead of eyeballing employees that congregate and converse in common areas, encourage employees to take breaks throughout the day to interact. You can also foster friendships by hosting office lunches, happy hours and parties that are aimed a creating camaraderie.

Ask for Input From Employees

Employees that feel like they’re a valuable part of the company are going to be happier. One of the easiest ways to do this is to simply ask for their input. When employees feel that their voice is being heard and they are playing an active role in guiding the company’s course, they’ll be more invested.

Another option is to put an employee in charge of a small project. Even if it’s something simple or short-term, having ownership and being a decision maker will boost their happiness and satisfaction.

It doesn’t take huge procedural changes to make employees happy. Often it’s the little things that show appreciation and concern about their wellbeing that make the biggest difference.