Category Archives: Benefits

Get Your Employees to Stop Sleepwalking Through Open Enrollment

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Hey gang! I’m doing another SHRM Webinar to help you get your employees more involved in this year’s Open Enrollment, and give you some of the background to what frustrates them the most, along with some tips on waking them up!

Do way too many of your employees default into exactly the same plan they chose the year before…just because it’s easier? Is their reluctance to even consider making changes to their benefits costing them — and your company — serious money?

If so, you’re going to love the advice I have to offer about waking up your benefits sleepwalkers in this lively one-hour webinar.

Specifically, you’ll learn:

  • Why the same old, same old is so appealing to people, and how to make change seem less intimidating
  • Smart ways to deal with the blowback you might get if you take away a plan option
  • Why employees find making benefits decisions so dang hard – and how you can help alleviate their stress
  • What you can do to jolt your benefits sleepwalking employees awake once and for all

In short: if you’ve ever struggled to get employees to embrace a new plan or to take any action at all during open enrollment, this is the webinar for you!

August 20th at 2pm EST – just in time for your afternoon nap on the East Coast, and your lunch nap on the West Coast!

Free Webinar (Sponsored by SHRM and ALEX) –  How to Get Your Employees to Stop Sleepwalking Through Open Enrollment—And Help Them Make Better Decisions! 

REGISTER HERE! 

Taking a Vacation from my Vacation

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I’ve got three sons, which I mostly love.  My youngest will ask frequently who I love most.  I always tell him I love him the most, unless his brothers are around, then I tell him it depends on the day.  Of course my wife, she takes the easy route and says she loves them all equally, which I think is scientifically impossible.

Taking a vacation with three kids is not a vacation.  There should be a different name for taking a vacation with three kids.  It doesn’t matter where you go with three kids, it’s not relaxing, in fact it is the opposite of relaxing.  If you go on vacation with kids coming back to work is the real vacation.  We all know it, but no one wants to admit it because you just burned valuable days off and giant pile of cash.

This concept of vacation is very personal to your employees.  It has a huge impact to helping your employees keep a good balance in their lives.  That’s why I was excited to read about some research being done to determine the what is the perfect amount of time on a vacation to get to an ideal state of relaxation.  From the WSJ:

“In a study of 54 people vacationing for an average of 23 days, Dr. de Bloom and co-researchers found that measures of health and wellness improved during vacation compared with baseline, peaking at the eighth day before gradually declining.

“It could be that eight days is the ideal to fully gain the benefits of a holiday,” said Dr. de Bloom. The study was published in 2013 in the Journal of Happiness Studies.

Laura Beatrix Newmark, of New York, has tried getaways of different durations. Her ideal vacation: nine days. “You really feel like you can get into a different zone and then when you come back you feel like you’re in a different mind-set,” said the 38-year-old entrepreneur and mother of two young children.”

Eight days. Seems about right. You take off on a Friday after work, maybe sneak out a little early. You then have Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Eight days.  The problem is that first day never seems like a vacation as you get settled in and try to unwind and that last Saturday you need to start packing and getting stuff together because you leave on Sunday. That final Sunday might as well be a work day because you definitely aren’t on vacation any longer!

One other thing the study found that could really help your employees if getting people to think and visualize their vacation in the days leading up to their time off. We’ve all heard that: “Oh, Tim, he’s already on vacation!” But, I’m sure it helps people start to unplug from the job and get ready for the full time role of just enjoying some down time.

Those who are working like mad right up until the time they leave, have a really hard time shutting if off!  A great engagement idea would be getting employees little care packages of things that will help them on their vacation: some extra sun screen, bug repellent, a Starbucks card, etc. Help them start to get their mind on having a relaxing time.

If they’re parents, select a safe word they can text you to call them and tell them they are urgently needed back at work!

 

 

The Power of Written Notes

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My oldest son graduated from high school this spring and we had one of those big old traditional open houses with a tent and tables and a slushy machine.  It was a nice gathering of 200+ family, friends, neighbors, teachers, coaches, people I don’t recall ever meeting, kids looking for a free desert, bums looking for a free drink, etc.

The whole idea of an open house is so your kid can get cash to start off their life in the ‘real’ world.  Invite as many people as you can. Update and clean your house for a year.  Decide on a menu that won’t break your bank account, but will impress all the other moms in attendance who are also throwing open houses.  Put up a lot of pictures and awards.

Side note: My wife won the 2015 Open House competition.  It wasn’t an unanimous vote, but she pretty much ran away with it. Also, she is a front runner for 2016 and my middle son’s graduation open house. We’re Sackett’s, we only get bigger and better!  I’m already having the back-2-back Open House Champs shirts printed up! #Confidence

We got lucky.  His real world consists of a college scholarship to play baseball.  The big expenses like tuition and books will be paid for, he has to pick up some living expenses, but his hard work paid off.  He now feels what it’s like to have more than a few hundred dollars in his bank account.  Which basically means he eats out almost every meal. He’s ghetto rich.

One really cool thing happened from having the open house.  Our son had to write thank you notes to all those who came, and all those who sent cards and cash.  He was lucky to have to write a ton of thank yous!

I voted on just getting the preprinted Thank You notes.  I bet half of the thank you notes we received of were this variety. Thanks for coming. I’m so grateful! Here’s a post card that was preprinted and my mom addressed the envelope. I probably would have went with a 10% off your next appetizer at Applebee’s or something to make it more special, but again, Sackett’s go big!

My wife is a traditionalist, he was going to be hand writing his notes.

It took some time to get them done, but to his credit, he really put in some time and thought into writing these notes.  I’ve heard from so many people congratulating me on his thank you notes!  Most commented on how much detail he added, and how he made it personal to them specifically.  That definitely makes us proud parents!

The entire experience just reminds me of how important it is to sometimes take the time to write a note out by hand.  In our world of messaging and emails, it just gets so easy to tune out so many of these communications.  Rarely, does a handwritten note get tuned out.  Remember that kids when you go looking for a job.  Your resume might get eaten up by an ATS, but most handwritten notes and cards get passed on directly to decision makers without being opened by a gatekeeper!

T3 – @RocketLawyer

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This week on T3 I take a look at legal benefit provider Rocket Lawyer.  Rocket Lawyer allows your employees to manage, virtually, all of your legal needs online. Employees can create legal documents and legal forms instantly with safe & secure storage, e-signatures and lawyer review.

This is one of many fringe benefit options that an employer can pick up for their employees, like pet insurance, dry cleaning, free lunch, etc.  Some employees will find this service invaluable, and some will never find a use for it.  What I know is HR pros get way to many inquiries from our employees for legal advice and help!

While my employees might like a free lunch, the HR person in me really would like them to have another outlet for legal advice and services!

The one issue that I see happening constantly, and it’s only going to get worse based on demographics, is employees having to care for aging parents.  Rocket Lawyer can help your employees set up power of attorney, ask real lawyers in their state and area about their legal rights and advice in regards to dealing with their parents estates, etc.  This is one issue I just continue to hear from more and more employees on, where they need real legal advice, not my ‘legal’ HR advice!

Rocket Lawyer is not an EAP.  It’s a full blown legal technology that allows employees to take care of a ton of legal documentation on their own for no additional fees.  Handle landlord and rental contracts, Immigration and Visa issues, Pre-nuptial agreements, set up a will, etc. It’s self serve legal services, online, for a few dollars per month, per employee.

The other piece I like about Rocket Lawyer is that as an organization and HR the service is totally separate and confidential.  This takes the burden off you and your organization in dealing with your employees legal issues, but at the same time you are giving the professional support to help them take care of their business.

I was impressed. Great, easy to use interface.  Simple to set up documents online.  The service could easily save your employees thousands of dollars in basic legal fees.  Check them out, and get a demo.  Could be a great add to this years open enrollment plan!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

Live from #SHRM15 – Secret Sauce Recipes!

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Yeah, I know it’s Sunday and I normally don’t post on a Sunday, but I’m at the annual SHRM National Conference in Las Vegas and it starts today. The opening keynote speaker is Coach K, the Duke University head basketball coach.  I’m not a big fan.  His team beats my team way too often! So, he’ll be painful to listen to as I remember each defeat.

The SHRM expo floor also opens today with a big reception.  The SHRM expo is hard to describe.  Part flee market. Part carnival. Part car show. All HR and Talent.  Everyone who ever wants to sell stuff to HR is here.  They hand out pens, stress balls, mints, hand sanitizer, t shirts, frisbees, candy, basically, anything to get you to stop and talk to them.

My favorite free stuff that vendors give out is information!  You see, all of these vendors have clients that actually pay these vendors money to use their products and services.  These vendors know what others are doing to be successful.  If you take a few minutes they’ll gladly share the secret sauce recipes of all kinds of organizations!

We all want secret sauce recipes!

It’s probably the greatest weakness of HR and Talent Acquisition, in general, from industry to industry, is we suck at getting competitive data on what other organizations are doing in their HR and Talent shops.  We don’t network with our competition. We think if we share what we are doing, we’re somehow sharing national secrets. So, we fumble around through life, trying to figure it all out on our own.

That is why I spend most of my time at SHRM meeting with vendors.  I treat them like normal people, and they in turn give me great insight to what is working and not working in the world of HR and Talent.  I get smarter. I learn what I can take back to my own shop.  I gain some understanding of what the best organizations are doing that is successful. That’s valuable!

I don’t really care what Coach K does to cheat his way to national titles and stealing recruits.  What I care about is being on the cutting edge of what the best companies are doing to gain an advantage with their employees and getting the best talent.

Check me out on Pericope, where I’ll be live streaming during the conference!

*image credit to Gaping Void.

The #1 Way to Communicate Success of a HR Change!

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Adobe recently changed their annual performance review process of the traditional once-per-year review to a more modern design of having frequent feedback throughout the year:

So, based in part on ideas crowdsourced from employees, Morris and her team scrapped annual evaluations and replaced them with a system called Check In. At the start of each fiscal year, employees and managers set specific goals. Then, at least every eight weeks but usually much more often, people “check in” with their bosses for a real-time discussion of how things are going. At an annual “rewards check-in,” managers give out raises and bonuses according to how well each employee has met or exceeded his or her targets. “Managers are empowered to make those decisions,” says Morris. “There is no ‘matrix.’ HR isn’t involved.”

A big change for any organization, for sure, but that’s not what this post is really about.  You see, Donna Morris, Adobe’s Sr. Global VP of People and Places could have easily just said it’s been a great success and shared stories from employees and hiring managers about how much they loved it. She could have shared retention metrics and employee engagement scores to show its success, but she didn’t. What shared did was absolutely brilliant! She shared this:

Getting feedback in real time, so everyone stays on track and is pulling in the same direction, has helped make Adobe’s 13,000 employees far more productive, Morris says. Adobe’s stock price has increased from about $30 to over $80 since Check In began.

Drops mic, walks off stage.

You want to really communicate the success of HR change, tie it to direct financial outcomes!  Yes, it’s a major leap to say “Check In” created $50 per share of shareholder value.  Let me say that again, MAJOR LEAP!  In fact, I don’t even think you could scientifically correlate this one HR change to the raise in shareholder value, but she did!  What she did would be similar to saying global temperatures have risen 3 degrees on average since they started making Krispy Kreme donuts, so Krispy Kreme is responsible for global warming!

You see, success of a major program has little to do with fact, and ton to do with perception.  Here is a senior HR executive who gets it.   She wants to do other cool and innovative stuff at Adobe, and now she has her big-win to go back to when someone pushes back that it won’t work, or it’s not needed.   In the minds of Adobe employees, this program has increased shareholder value, and we need to listen to her other ideas!

Take note HR Pros!  If you get this opportunity, you take it 100% of the time! Because you won’t get it often.  How do you communicate your success of a HR program?  Wait until you have favorable financial data in your organization, then connect the dots for people!

Overly Loving Father, Rob Lowe #WorkHuman

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By now you’ve seen all the DirectTV ads featuring the funny characters of Rob Lowe. My favorite is super creepy Rob Lowe! I’m at Globoforce’s WorkHuman event this week and got to see Rob Lowe keynote this event.

When my friend, Laurie Ruettimann, told me Rob was keynoting she was really excited, and I was like, okay.  I’m a dude, I don’t really get the fascination. I mean I’ve liked some of his movies and TV shows, but not overly so (one of my favs is Youngblood, because as a teen I was in love with Cynthia Gibb – don’t judge me it was the 80’s!).  So, I was interested in seeing Rob speak, but it wasn’t one of bucket-list must sees!

Before I got to WorkHuman, though, I purchased Rob’s latest book. It was an impulse buy. I was going on vacation, needed something to read on the beach and just had heard he was going to be speaking at this event.  Rob also had a great story to share about his oldest son going off to college, just as my oldest son is graduating and going off to college.  Slate did a great piece on it, you can read here.

It felt like his story was my story. The great thing about Rob is he’s a great storyteller and I like storytellers!

To me Rob Lowe gets the concept of work-life balance better than most.  Here’s a guy who because of a famous celebrity career couldn’t have normal work-life balance like we think of it for most of us.  But that’s what I really like, there isn’t any normal work-life balance. Working 9-5, Monday through Friday is a myth.  It’s not the way the majority of the world works anymore.

It’s a concept from the 1950s and 40s that just is no longer relevant.

Rob taught us, through his own experience, that you can find balance, but it has to be a balance that you define.  Rightly so, it’s all that really matters, but we struggle with this as leaders and HR pros. We want to define work-life balance in one context, and make all of our employees fit into this little paragraph. It’s just not reality.

You work the way you need to work to live the lifestyle you decide to you want to live, then you live your life around that the best you can.  It’s not always going to be perfect. Again, that’s life. I would rather show my sons that life isn’t perfect, that sometimes work is great, sometimes work sucks, but so is your personal life!  The balance comes from knowing when it’s time to work and when it’s time to focus on other parts of your life. Do too much of either, and you’re out of balance.

I know a bunch of people who don’t get this from the personal aspect.  They want their balance to be all about their personal life, and not about work. Which is fine, but you then have to understand you then need to lead the personal life that not focusing on work affords you.

I’m glad I got to see Rob speak at WorkHuman. I’m now more of a fan, because despite his celebrity he seems like a guy who gets it.

 

My Big Fat Recruiting Dilemma!

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Have you had an employee who had to stop working because they became too fat? Just wait, you will, it’s just a matter of time.

I remember when my biggest nightmare as an HR pro was going to tell an employee they need to bath and wear deordorant. I can’t even imagine having to go tell an employee, “Hey Bro, you have to go home, you’re too fat.”

The U.S. Army recently came out and shared some statistics about how the U.S. obesity epidemic is hurting their recruitment efforts:

“Just under three in 10 young people [ages] 17 to 24 can join the Army today – and the other armed services for that matter – and the single biggest disqualifier is obesity,” Major General Allen Batschelet of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command told CNN. “Ten percent of them are obese and unfit to the point that they can’t join the service. It’s really very worrisome.”

“The obesity issue is one of the most troubling because the trend is going in the wrong direction,” says Batschelet. “Ten percent are disqualified today, and we think by 2020, it could be as high as 50 percent, which would mean only two in ten would qualify to join the Army.”

Our national security is at risk because our citizens can’t put down a Big Mac. Our enemies don’t need to attack us with bombs and troops; they just need to keep sending us cheap junk food to consume!  Then one day they just come ashore and roll us over to the POW camps.  I sure hope they serve good food at the camps…

Big fat Americans just aren’t a national security issue; this is a major issue facing all employers.  The reality is, no one wants to hire unhealthy people. If given a choice between people with similar skills and abilities, one in shape and one obese, employers will always hire the person who is in shape.

You want to see hiring discrimination at its finest?  Put a minority in good shape, a woman in good shape and an obese candidate, all with similar skills, in front of a hiring manager and have them rank them on most likely to hire.

The obese person will always rank last. Why?  Your hiring managers fear hiring someone who might die on their watch, more than hiring a minority or woman.  Was that too real for you? Check your analytics, you know where your problems are.

How do we fix this?

Companies have failed at wellness across the board.  I think it’s just a matter of time until you begin seeing organizations tie performance and compensation into their wellness plans.  It seems extreme, but so is this problem.  When a company reaches the point where they’ll tie your job performance to your health ‘performance’, that’s when you have an organization that truly cares about you.

T3 – CoPilot by NuCompass

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Today on T3 I take a bit of a departure away from my normal talent acquisition technology offerings and review a new product from NuCompass called, CoPilot.  CoPilot is a new, affordable cloud-based solution for managing relocations. It’s a comprehensive platform that empowers employees to manage their move and access our vetted partners online, while giving you full visibility and budget control.

Being a person has gone through three corporate professional moves, I can tell you it can be a major stress and pain in the butt! Relocation is also a pain for TA pros who end up, usually in most organizations, doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to relocating new employees as well.  This is why CoPilot intrigued me so much.

When I relocated I used one of those traditional relocating companies. I had a ‘relocation’ agent I had to work with at a third party company, and having this middle person was more of a hassle than a help.  I constantly wished I could just get online and set this stuff up on my own and not have to deal with the middle person all the time. In today’s world, I think more people, especially younger employees, think I like I do. Let me do it myself!

5 Things I really like about CoPilot:

1. The obvious one! Employees get the flexibility to manage their own move, under parameters you set, in a really easy to use dashboard that lays out everything for them, with links to vendors that are pre-negotiated and they select who they want.  Don’t underestimate the power of the freedom of choice as a benefit in relocation!

2. Full estimation tool built in to the software to give you and the hiring manager an estimated cost of relocation, before you even make an offer. Full electronic signature and all forms are auto-generated. Makes starting a completing the paperwork process for relo a breeze!

3. Online expense reimbursement that let’s employees take pictures of receipts and upload them for reimbursement. Plus, the HR team has full access to all the reporting in real time through the dashboard.

4.  Dashboard allows HR pros to manage exceptions completely online, and you can choose what employees see and don’t see. You can also give the flexibility to allow employees to move dollars around to other benefits of the relocation they want to use more than others. Again, giving each employee the feeling this plan was designed specifically for them and their move.

5. Live online chat function for quick answers to questions. Face it, people don’t want to pick up the phone and make live calls anymore! But, CoPilot let’s them do that as well, if needed.

CoPilot was one of the cooler things I’ve seen the very uncool relocation space in a long time.  The other great benefit is the cost! The system costs like $250 per move! No matter how many people you are moving, so it makes it a great option for SMB HR shops that don’t make many moves, but still want a very professional well designed relocation plan.  Also, great for organizations that need to make a ton of mid-range moves and don’t want the full expense of a traditional professional relocation company.

If you do any amounts of relocation, CoPilot is definitely worth a demo!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

Delivering Benefits Bad News

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Hey, gang! I wrote a book! Well, to be fair it’s an eBook. I don’t think that actually counts when being considered for a Pulitzer but none the less it’s something I wrote!

The good folks at Alex help me get this done. Meaning, I did the writing and they did all the rest!  The concept is how do we as HR pros deliver bad news during open enrollments.  Most of us have been in this situation. As we begin to prepare for the next open enrollment, like many of us are doing right now, or very soon, we already know we have some challenges.

Costs will increase, we might have to get rid of a popular benefit, or reduce benefits, etc. These are things HR and Benefit pros face every year. It’s the rare individual that just keeps getting the opportunity to give more. Let’s face it, the majority of us don’t work at Google, or companies like Google flush with cash.

Real HR pros have to deliver messages that are tough.  That’s why I wrote this book.

You can download for free at: http://info.meetalex.com/Tim-Sackett_Benefits-Bad-News_LP_Benefits-Bad-News_A.html

It’s a quick read and because it’s written by me, there might just possibly a bit of snark! I hope you enjoy it, and that you can use some of the practical advice I give.

(I am not being paid for this promotion.  I think ALEX is a pretty cool piece of HR technology that many organizations could use to help them communicate their benefit message out to their employees.  We like to talk about great employee engagement, and culture, etc., but what is proven is that employees who actually understand their benefits are more likely to stay with your company. That’s real HR.)