Employee Engagement and Well-being

A Mediaplanet Guide to Boosting Employee Wellness

Employee Engagement & Well-being

Chloe Hakim-Moore The director of NEXT Memphis at Porter-Leath shares how employers can promote wellness in the workplace

The Muse Founder & CEO Kathryn Minshew explains why employee happiness is crucial for business success Learn how to adapt and innovate to better support a workforce MARCH 2021 | FUTUREOFBUSINESSANDTECH.COM

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How the Pandemic Has Exacerbated the Cost of Poor Health

Making Incentives Work to Improve Workplace Well-Being

There are many lessons to be learned over the past year, but one of the most important may be the value of health.

Chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, are among the leading causes of death in the United States. And now, these underlying chronic diseases also put individuals at higher risk for complications from COVID-19.

We’ve known for quite some time that investing in a healthy workforce can have profound impacts on the bottom line. Illness costs this country billions of dollars and we can no longer afford to ignore the health of our workforce. As the pandemic persists, likely evolving to an endemic, meaning that it will always be with us, the need to more effectively address the health and well-being of Americans must take on even greater urgency.

Our recent analysis found that illness-related lost productivity costs employers $575 billion each year.

To put that number in perspective, it’s greater than the combined revenues of Fortune 500 companies like Apple, AT&T, and Home Depot.

At the end of the day, the greatest asset for most organizations is their workforce. As such, it is critical that employers understand what ill health really costs their businesses. In doing so, future investments in health and productivity will be more informed and ultimately more effective for not only employers but their employees and families.

Kelly McDevitt, President, Integrated Benefits Institute

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Mary Imboden Ph.D., Director of Research, Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO)

An increasing number of employers are offering employees incentives to promote health and wellness, but which ones are the most effective?

We all need a little motivation sometimes to make the right decision for our health. That’s why an estimated 78 percent of large employers offer incentives that

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are designed to help employees take the first steps toward a healthier lifestyle through participation in corporate health and well-being initiatives.

Incentives can take a variety of forms — from rewards for completing health screenings to prizes for reaching specific health goals — but a new study from the Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO) suggests effective implementation of incentives requires careful consideration and a commitment to well-being that stretches beyond individual incentives to include the broader workplace culture.

Effective incentives The HERO study, which is among the first to

measure the impact of incentive design on both participation and workplace health outcomes at the organization-wide level, identified four primary approaches to incentives: Outcomes-focused incentives encourage participants to reach health-related outcomes; participation-focused incentives encourage participation in health behavior change interventions; combination incentives focus on a mix of outcomes and participation; and participation-to-outcomes incentives begin with a focus on participation but shift over time to focus on outcomes.

Not surprisingly, there were meaningful differences in the amount of incentives

associated with each design. Outcomes-focused employers offered the greatest maximum incentives at an average of $1,526, while average incentive values for combination design were half that amount.

Participation-focused and participation-to-outcomes designs had much lower incentive amounts, offered at $449 and $538, respectively.

While incentives are not a magic bullet for improving employee health, they can be highly effective when offered in a thoughtful and strategic way, and within a culture that supports employee health through consistent and comprehensive communications, and leadership support at all levels. n

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How Wellness Programs Must Change During a Pandemic Employees need new kinds of support and a younger generation of workers is making its feelings known. Here’s how employers can make a difference.

Employers have been supporting workforce well-being programs for years, but their value has been met with a new sense of urgency. COVID-19 and its impact have left many employees frayed, financially stressed, and physically and mentally unmoored.

Even with rates of infection trending downward, experts predict that the pandemic’s impact — particularly on mental and emotional well-being — will persist.

In a survey conducted for WebMD Health Services pre-pandemic, millennials (ages 26-39), who make up half the labor force, reported suffering from anxiety more than other generations. A follow-on survey toward the end of 2020 found that 90 percent of Gen Z workers (ages 18-25) are experiencing the greatest negative impact on their well-being. Moreover, 71 percent of Gen Z workers expressed that the pandemic has increased their levels of stress, compared with 51 percent of millennials, 46 percent of Gen Xers (ages 40-55), and 37 percent of baby boomers (ages 56-74).

Yet, our research found that despite employer efforts — nearly 70 percent had introduced at least one new wellness benefit during the pandemic — employees were largely dissatisfied with their wellbeing programs.

So, what’s going on here? Our survey found that few employees work for companies offering support for caregiving, pain medication addiction, or specific resources for LGBTQ+ employees, but younger employees want their employers to provide programs that address these issues by significant margins.

Still, both employers and employees share a belief in the value of well-being programs. Despite challenges, employers have an opportunity to rethink well-being strategies now. By listening to the needs of different generations, their efforts can reap both immediate and long-lasting benefits.

Christine Muldoon, Vice President, Strategy, WebMD Health Services

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How to Create a Company Culture That Sets You Apart

Kathryn Minshew is the founder and CEO of The Muse, an online platform that helps job seekers find employers that align with their values and vise versa. We asked her about the employee engagement and company culture initiatives that really matter to today’s workers.

What challenges have you seen companies face as employees are working from home?

Companies have always relied on their culture to compete for talent, but in the last few years, many have been allowed to become a bit lazy, assuming that a ping pong table or free snacks “counts” as a great culture or workplace. But with everyone working from home, companies have been forced to articulate their culture and values more explicitly, without relying on their office spaces, perks, or free food to do it for them. We’re seeing a trend toward greater authenticity, with companies relying on short, homemade videos of employees talking about their jobs and workplaces, rather than glossy, highly produced brand videos.

Kathryn Minshew CEO, The Muse

What are some strategies companies can employ to prevent employee burnout and retain top talent?

It’s a lot less expensive to keep your current employees happy and productive than to lose them and have to hire new ones. It’s why at The Muse we’re very focused on helping employers not only hire great people but also keep them. In fact, I believe companies need to completely rethink their relationship with talent — to understand what draws people to choose them as an employer, what keeps them happy, and what causes them to leave.

When we start working with a new partner at The Muse, we often encourage them to go through a process of tapping their current employees for insights and data about what it’s really like to work

there. We have a software platform that does this, but for companies that are running their own process, you can ask questions like, “What differentiates us from other places you’ve worked? What works well for you about how we get work done here? What might frustrate a new employee? What traits about how we work are most likely to cause someone to love working here or hate working here?” As much as possible, you want to identify what makes you different — and encourage your employees to be honest about the good and the bad.

Then, understand which aspects of your workplace and culture you want to change, and be clear and transparent in the steps you’re taking. It’s also critically important that you accurately and authentically communicate culture to candidates and prospective hires outside the company, so people can make informed decisions about whether you’re the right employer for them. Again, it’s so much less expensive in the long run to invest in getting the hiring process right rather than rushing it or trying to convince a candidate you’re something that you’re not — and paying the price later on. n

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Why Employers Need to Update Their Workforce Management Tech Former Uber product executives set their sights on replacing outdated workforce management practices. By using artificial intelligence, employees get a say in how and when they work.

While working at Uber, Arjun Vora noticed something interesting about the workforce he was empowering through his app design.

“People were not driving for Uber at that time because they were making a lot of money,” said Vora, who was the head of Uber’s driver design. “They were doing it because they were their own bosses in terms of having a voice and when they wanted to work.”

Together, he and Tito Goldstein (who was head of product design for Uber for Business) used this as inspiration to modernize the way employers manage their blue-collar workforces.

They left their jobs and built Zira, a workforce management company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to keep track of employee availability and preferences, create and optimize schedules, track performance, and much more.

The hope is that Zira can be used to give employees a voice in the way they work, eliminate biases inherent to managing shift workers, and create clear paths for upward mobility.

Giving employees a voice Adding nuance to workforce management has been commonplace for white-collar workers for a long time — giving workers the ability to work when and where they want, simplifying payroll and benefits, etc. However, management of blue-collar workers, who make up the vast majority of the world’s workforce, has lagged behind.

“This demographic — which is about 70 percent of the world’s workforce — has been forgotten by recent technological advancements. They are the ones left to handle the shortcomings of legacy technology. Whether it is unpredictable hours or inconsistent pay, the pain is very real and COVID has only made the

stress of managing the everyday harder.”

The old model of managing shift workers — which usually relies on managers creating schedules and keeping track of employee preferences manually — is prone to error and inconsistencies, and employees suffer. By automating the process, employees can know they’re getting a say in when, where, and how much they’re working, and employers save time spent on scheduling.

Eliminating bias That same automation in recording, scheduling preferences, and tracking performance can eliminate some of the bias inherent to blue-collar work.

As Vora puts it, a manager in an office job may oversee

5-10 employees and have close working relationships with each one of them. However, a floor manager in a factory might oversee 100 or more workers and know only a handful of them. Zira helps business take the manager conscious and unconscious bias out of the equation, and rewards employees based on their past performance.

“We looked at the data and learnt that not only do employees deserve a voice, but they also deserve to be treated equally, and be presented with transparent and consistent policies,” Vora said.

Automation takes that bias out of management, ensuring equity among how employees are scheduled and how their work preferences are considered.

Creating upward mobility Many people working blue-collar jobs have experienced difficulty advancing up the ladder, in part because it can be difficult for management to notice the good work individual employees are doing.

Through automation and AI, employers can create metrics that matter to them, track how employees are doing against those metrics, and then reward them accordingly.

“We provide them with that data, and you can let employees know that if you do X, Y, and Z things, you’ll be able to move on to the next level,” Vora said.

Vora says the aim with this is to move away from the traditional punitive model of blue-collar work — where the only acknowledgment employees receive is when something goes wrong — and move into a more positive, rewarding system of work.

Automation and technology are at the core of this revolution to empower 70 percent of the world’s workforce by giving them a voice. n Dustin Brennan

To learn more about Zira, visit www.zira.ai.com

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Shifting Benefits to Meet Employee Needs Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. SHRM-SCP, President and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)

Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. discusses how the benefits landscape has transformed to meet employee needs in 2021 and beyond.

What are the biggest changes to benefits offerings?

Employers have had to take a hard look at their benefits

offerings. Remote work was already trending upward, but the pandemic truly required employers to be innovative, agile, and flexible about how — and where — we work.

SHRM research found 52 percent of employed Americans would choose to work from home permanently given the option, with over a third accepting a salary cut if it meant they could work remotely full-time.

This is a significant change in employees’ perspective, and it requires organizations to reevaluate their benefits against a set of different employee retention and talent recruitment criteria.

How are employers learning to better support employees?

It sometimes takes a crisis to rethink the way business works. Employees’ unique needs have certainly become more visible to their employers in the last year. To that end, people managers and organization leadership are learning to support employees in new ways, including reshaping existing benefits and adding new ones, strengthening wellness coverage for staff, and creating a renewed focus on mental health resources.

Supporting the mental health of employees is critical for many HR professionals — and this is a positive development and silver lining.

HR must ensure employees understand the mental health resources available to them; they shouldn’t have to unearth these policies for themselves.

Telehealth services and employee assistance programs are benefits many employees very well might be discovering for the first time. While EAPs typically provide clinical counseling, many workers may be unaware they can also include child or eldercare, referrals, legal and financial counseling, and even resources for pet care.

What other employee benefit trends should we expect?

Overall, I believe employees are seeking more support as we all figure out what the new world of work will ultimately look like. Workers will continue to look to HR for guidance to better understand their workplace benefits and how to use them effectively.

We will also see additional changes to workplace policy to meet another need that ranks high among employees. Forty-one percent of HR professionals believe they can make an impact in 2021 by adapting flexible schedules and leave policies to better fit the needs of working parents, or those with eldercare responsibilities.

While some of the benefits I highlighted may be temporarily implemented at some organizations, I believe many will become a permanent fixture in benefits packages. HR professionals will continue to adapt, evolve, and innovate to better support our workforce today and into the future. HR will be there each step of the way, guiding workplaces through the ongoing change that is sure to remain. n

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Reimagining the Future Workforce The COVID-19 pandemic has been a workplace disruptor. But by embracing change, companies and employees will be more productive.

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ow is the time for businesses to prepare to support their future workforce and workspaces. The pre-pandemic days of working in an office are now unrealistic. After a year of working from home, many employees like the format and prefer its flexibility. While some offices may return to in-person work, others will adopt hybrid or fully remote models.

“Happy, enabled, and connected teams can work from anywhere,” says Lynne Oldham, chief people officer at Zoom Video Communications, Inc., who says hybrid workplaces are here to stay.

Collaboration tools In the last year, collaboration tools have become more crucial than ever, forming an essential linchpin keeping remote and hybrid workers connected.

Investing in collaboration technology will be essential for businesses to enable a successful hybrid workforce. Video communications have already played a significant role in keeping executives, employees, clients, and customers connected. Now they are poised to help bridge workplace gaps even more.

With Zoom Rooms’ innovative Smart Gallery feature, which uses AI to show in-room participants in their own indi-

vidual squares in the Zoom meeting, all attendees appear to be in the same setting, even though there’s a mix of in-person and virtual attendees. With this feature creating one consistent visual for all, it helps eliminate stress and reduces confusion around who is and isn’t in-office.

The upcoming rollout of Zoom Apps will allow meeting participants to do more during their meetings. With Zoom Apps, they’ll be able to use key business applications directly in the virtual meeting, helping improve workflows. Employees can be more efficient and effective before, during, and after Zoom Meetings — resulting in enhanced employee collaboration and engagement, and efficiency.

Building forward Legacy processes and technology can’t keep pace with the evolution of the workplace.

Instead, companies need to adopt agile technology that supports employees as they embrace a new way of working. Remaining nimble and eager to try new things will be fundamental for success.

Zoom’s latest initiative, “Building Forward,” focuses on three principles — talent, transformation, and trust.

Oldham says it’s essential for companies to get and keep great talent. That starts with listening to employees, meeting their needs, and being “far more flexible” than in the past.

“I call it radical flexibility,” says Oldham. “How we

can build our organizations around this hybrid workforce and empower our folks to decide when, where, how they work and really evaluate going forward, based on results, rather than whether you’re in the office from 9-to-5.”

She says while people miss the in-person experience, they don’t want it 100 percent of the time anymore. Instead, they want the ability to come into the office to collaborate with the team and then work remotely the rest of the time.

While flexibility is key for supporting the needs of new and existing talent, it’s also important for transforming traditional processes — such as how businesses sell, deliver services, and develop their workforce.

Oldham encourages companies to make the investment in technology now. She says doing so will give your team six months or more to get used to working with the tech, which will help them move into that new business model, whether it’s hybrid or fully remote.

While transformation doesn’t happen overnight, “it’ll drive consistency,” she says. “It’ll drive productivity.”

Supporting employees to work remotely or hybrid can empower them to stay focused and productive. Oldham encourages companies to gauge their employees’ mindset. For example, three times during the pandemic, Zoom has surveyed its employees to find out what their needs are.

“The culture of trust is really creating this thriving company culture where team members feel recognized, valued, and that they’re contributing,” she says. “It doesn’t live in the walls of a building, that lives in your people.” n Kristen Castillo

See how Zoom can help you develop the workplace of the future. zoom.us

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How Companies Can Build a Millennial Workforce

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To succeed into the future, companies must overcome their inability to attract and retain millennial employees.

Gary Vaynerchuk, serial entrepreneur and CEO of VaynerMedia, explains how.

Millennials are changing the work environment. The generation that grew up online, came of age during the height of the 2008 recession, and is saddled with student debt doesn’t expect the social safety net to be in place as they age. Their attitude about the workplace is different from older generations, and they won’t hesitate to skip from job to job if their needs aren’t met.

Workplace culture is very important to millennials, who will soon make up the largest segment of the working population as baby boomers retire.

Employers struggle with attracting millennials, as well as creating a culture to retain them.

Millennials aren’t that different Frequent turnover is expensive for any business. The best way to boost productivity and continuity is to create a culture that is welcoming. Content workers are more likely to stick around for years rather than months, says Gary Vaynerchuk.

“It’s shocking that companies don’t spend more time building a culture that encourages retention,” he said.

The millennial workforce isn’t much different from any other generation, Vaynerchuk points out. Every employee wants to feel like their employer cares and listens. However, millennials are used to more oneon-one attention and expect similar interactions on the job.

No company has the human resources to provide that, which is why Vaynerchuk believes each employee should act as if they are in the HR business. When everyone steps up their level of caring, it creates a

change over time,” Vaynerchuck said.

It isn’t always about more money. For example, sometimes employees seek increased responsibility or a better work-life balance.

2. Create Create serendipity and intermingling between employees. Encourage employees of different ages and roles to spend time together and learn from each other’s perspectives.

welcoming culture that produces better results.

Ways to inspire Building a good company culture benefits everyone, not just millennials. It

doesn’t even have to cost anything if you follow Vaynerchuk’s three tips to inspire a stronger workplace culture: 1. Listen “Understand that workers’ objectives

3. Be humble Don’t allow executives to live in ivory towers and make subjective calls.

“When a CEO learns that he works for everybody, the paradigm shifts,” Vaynerchuk said.

When the culture is positive, it will spread by word of mouth.

“Recruiting new employees gets easier,” Vaynerchuk said, “when potential hires witness positive employee engagement.” n Sue Poremba

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The Benefit Every Employer Should Offer More and more punch-clock and payroll apps are enabling smarter companies to let their workers get paid daily.

While most Americans still wait two weeks for their paychecks, an increasing number are getting their earnings much faster — instantly, as soon as they clock out of work. On-demand pay has started to become the new normal in employee pay.

“The No. 1 cause of stress in the United States is financial pressure,” said Nico Simko, founder and CEO of Clair, a social-impact financial technology company. “A lot of that is caused by the two-week pay cycle that

dates back to a time when people were receiving paper checks.”

On-demand payment Clair users are among the first in the nation to get instant access to their earnings, right from their punchclock or scheduling apps. They are also never charged any fees for these advances. That means workers can rely less on problematic solutions like payday loans.

“It’s not fair for any American who works a full-time job to have to take out a payday loan just to make ends meet,” Simko said. Most of these lenders charge upwards of 400 percent in annual percentage rates.

Simko also notes that Clair is the first product of its kind not to require employers to either pay for the benefit or make changes to their payroll processes. “We partner with an employer’s time-and-attendance and payroll systems,” Simko said. “It’s a benefit that basically administers itself.”

Benefits Clair doesn’t just offer wage advances; it offers a full slate of financial benefits designed for blue-collar workers. Simko thinks offering this sort of comprehensive financial benefit will soon be the new normal for employers. “Employers and payroll, and time-and-attendance systems are going to need a complete

financial wellness system,” he said.

“This is going to be a ‘need to have’ as opposed to a ‘nice to have’ in terms of attracting and retaining talent.”

For Simko, the bottom line is simple: Better financial services like wage advances means happier employees, and happier employees stay longer and are more productive. n Jeff Somers

To learn more about Clair, visit www.getclair.com

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Why Workplace Well-Being Is the Next Movement of Our Time The pandemic further exposed the need for systemic transformation to adequately support employees.

Modern American life revolves around work. We organize our lives around work schedules, rely on jobs for financial security, and, more recently, see the rise of workers looking to their jobs as a source of purpose, identity, and fulfillment.

We also know that work in the United States is uniquely stressful. Our nation ranks as the most overworked country on the planet, and toxic work environments, long hours, and eroding boundaries have left our country straining under a burnout epidemic.

In response, employers across the country implemented wellness initiatives, expanded benefits, promoted self-care, and even started shifting to more people-centric models of work.

In fact, there have never been more resources to support wellness — from workplace initiatives to the $4 trillion wellness industry. Companies recognize the ubiquity of these

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challenges, the urgent demand for solutions, and the lucrative opportunity to step in the gap.

So, what drives the gulf between abundant resources and record-high, climbing rates of burnout and workplace dissatisfaction?

Contours of the crisis Pre-pandemic data confirmed that burnout from toxic work cultures cost employers billions of dollars in annual turnover alone; discrimination and harassment in the workplace persisted; and workplace stress was making people physically ill.

If a crisis was mounting before 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic, protests against systemic racial injustice, economic depression, natural disasters, and an acrid political climate brought us into a fullblown disaster.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, rates of anxiety and depression more than tripled in 2020. The American Worker in Crisis report showed that 65 percent of the 2,000 surveyed reported that mental health issues impacted their ability to work, and 40 percent reported feeling close to being, or already, burnt out.

And in 2020, industry leader Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-

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Few things will define pandemic recovery more than how workplaces address well-being.

SCP, president of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), explained that “the workplace is more toxic than ever before.”

To navigate the challenges of the 21st century, businesses must move away from wellness programming as a means to mitigate stress, and reorganize our expectations and policies to situate well-being as the foundation of our workplaces.

It’s a transformation from reactive programming to proactive, capable of supporting employees to flourish in navigating the ever-increasing demands of American work and life.

Why the workplace?

Opponents to the well-being movement in the workplace

argue that people need to keep their personal and professional lives separate. There is merit in expecting individuals to recognize and proactively meet their personal needs.

These expectations alone, however, miss the fact that people are not able to perfectly compartmentalize stress, especially when enduring chronic stressors. We have clear data from industry experts like SHRM that unambiguously declare that employees bring the stresses of life into the workplace and vice versa. This also incorrectly assumes the stress level of each employee is manageable on its own.

Expecting every employee to fend for themselves or rely on inadequate wellness programming is akin to drilling

a hole in a lifeboat and hoping each of your employees brought buckets with them to bail out the water on the way to shore. In other words, these are unsettling survival odds.

As our country grapples with who we will be as we rebuild from the pandemic and dig deep into our values on the political stage, there is no better opportunity for the business community to redesign its organizations and advocate for well-being.

The hope moving forward is that it does not take another pandemic of national crisis to shake the cloak of avoidance and get employees the help they deserve. n Chloe Hakim-Moore, Director of NEXT Memphis at Porter-Leath

The Link Between Employee Engagement and Well-Being Most organizational leaders list “culture” as a top priority. They want a corporate culture that brings high energy, innovation, and agility to customer needs — in good times and amid crises. A thriving culture also attracts top talent.

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hen thinking about culture, many organizations emphasize policies, programs, and perks. If these were all that mattered, companies wouldn’t have a culture problem. It’s far more important and meaningful to build a culture around the elements that define a thriving life.

Gallup has discovered five universal elements of well-being: career well-being (you like what you do), social well-being (you have meaningful friendships), financial well-being (you manage your money well), physical well-being (you have energy to get things done), and community well-being (you like where you live).

Changing times Many organizational leaders think promoting employee engagement creates a thriving culture — and measuring engagement has become a norm in recent decades.

Numerous studies have shown engagement drives many outcomes, including financial performance, employee retention, safety, and customer service. But while engagement is foundational to well-being, it’s no longer sufficient for building a resilient and thriving culture.

Rather, Gallup has found there’s a striking relationship between engagement and well-being, with implications for employee performance.

First, Gallup discovered engagement and well-being are highly correlated with one another, but they are also additive — high well-being enhances the benefits of engagement, lifting employee performance to levels not achieved through engagement alone.

Studies also found well-being must be conceptualized and addressed holistically across all five elements listed above to realize its potential in driving performance — physical wellness programs alone

aren’t enough. Workers with high engagement and low well-being have 61 percent higher likelihood of burnout often or always.

Identifying the natural strengths of employees is a vital component of both engagement and well-being.

Workplace burnout is reduced to near zero among engaged, thriving employees who use their strengths.

Leadership at all levels Developing a thriving culture involves many important factors. It must be a priority of the CEO and carried out through well-thought-out benefits, well-being programs and coaches, and a thorough audit of practices and policies.

But the make-or-break variable is the front-line manager. Poorly skilled managers present the greatest risk in developing a thriving and resilient culture — especially now, with so many employees working remotely.

Managers are the most important factor in employee engagement and performance because they are best positioned to navigate ongoing organizational changes and threats, as they are closest to the day-to-day lives of employees.

Each worker’s well-being, and in many cases the well-being of their whole family, is dependent on the effective management of each individual.

Managers who give frequent and meaningful feedback have employees who are two times more likely to be engaged and 25 percent more likely to be thriving compared with managers who don’t. In fact, giving each employee meaningful feedback once a week is a basic requirement of a skilled manager.

Criteria for effective feedback Feedback is not just a manager-to-employee interaction.

While managers often initiate feedback, employees should

also be expected to ask for it.

In fact, the latter is often the least awkward approach.

Feedback runs two ways.

Feedback must be tailored to the individual receiving it. This means managers have to have a basic knowledge and understanding of each employees’ goals and strengths.

Timeliness is key to effective feedback. The traditional annual review features feedback that often comes months too late. Employees need ongoing conversations and continuous feedback, because it is far more immediate, relevant, and timely.

Finally, it’s important to understand that the intended outcome of meaningful feedback is inspiration, not just correction. Having inspiring conversations builds engagement and trust between employees and managers, which leads to more transparent conversations. The best managers in the world consider development of each employee an end in itself.

Gallup’s research shows a clear link between employee engagement and well-being, with managers serving as a conduit between the two. Engaged employees are more than twice as likely as actively disengaged employees to say they’re comfortable discussing their well-being with their managers. Designing an engaging and thriving workplace starts with skilled managers. n Jim Harter, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, Workplace, Gallup; Dan Witters, Research Director, Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index

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Why Happier, Healthier Employees Make for Better Business Alexi Robichaux Co-Founder and CEO, BetterUp

Liz Ryan CEO and Founder, Human Workplace

Arianna Huffington Founder, Thrive Global

Arjun Vora Co-Founder, Zira

Jeniffer Strub Director of Human Resources, Vyond

We asked our panel of experts about why it’s so important to promote employee engagement and well-being, and the best ways for employers to go about accomplishing this.

What are some key ways businesses have been able to boost employee engagement and where has this made a real impact?

Alexi Robichaux: Employers can boost employee engagement by investing in precision support to develop mental fitness, and unlock personal and professional growth and transformation.

By strengthening mindsets, skills, and behaviors, employees can increase resilience and productivity, decrease stress, and create a sense of shared purpose and belonging that has a ripple effect across their teams and other relationships.

Coaching is one of the fastest ways to build mental strength because it focuses on whole-person development — the vital intersection of well-being and human performance. This model

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addresses psychological behaviors (growth mindset, values, the ability to build relationships, etc.), as well as leadership skills that are most highly associated with employee engagement, inclusive cultures, and business performance.

Liz Ryan: Engagement springs from trust. It takes time to build trust between individual managers and their teams, and between the organization and its employees in general, but it’s a worthwhile investment.

You build trust more through your actions than through your words. Treating employees fairly, listening to them, acting on their suggestions, and resolving their complaints all generate trust and, therefore, engagement.

Why is company culture so important for employee well-being?

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Arianna Huffington: It’s important because we now know an enormous amount about how stress and burnout affect us, both at home and at work. The science is clear that when we prioritize our wellbeing, we’re more creative, productive, and resilient, and we make better decisions.

Well-being isn’t just a perk, it’s a competitive advantage.

And there’s a direct connection between the health of a company’s bottom line and the health and well-being of every company’s most important resource — its people.

So in the same way wellbeing boosts our immune system, culture serves as a company’s immune system, giving it the resilience to meet inevitable challenges.

What challenges have you seen companies face during this time as employees are working from home?

Arjun Vora: After talking to our employees, we learned that the line between their work life and personal life has blurred — and this is incredibly tough on employees. Companies have to move fast to provide more flexibility to their employees by allowing them to own their schedules. Companies have to evolve their collaboration and engagement models, and make sure all employees’ voices are still being heard.

Jennifer Strub: Since the pandemic began, millions of people have shifted to remote work. Some of the benefits remote workers celebrated in the early days of working from home, such as no commute and casual dress, are competing with the feeling of not being able to step away from work. Now, as we approach the milestone of one full year of working

from home, burnout is a real concern.

What made you realize your workplace burnout was beyond the point of comfort?

What steps did you take to reduce your stressors?

AH: My turning point came in 2007 when I collapsed from exhaustion and broke my cheekbone. I had bought into the idea that burnout was just the price we have to pay for success. But I came to realize that that’s just a collective myth.

So I learned everything I could about the connection between well-being and productivity. And I made a lot of changes to my life based on what I found out. I started getting more sleep. I started meditating again. And I became much more deliberate about building in time to recharge. n

Employers Feel More Responsible for Employees’ Financial Wellness COVID-19 has heightened employees’ financial stress, and employers are responding.

New research shows that more employers feel responsible for helping improve employees’ financial wellness as workers experience increased stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sixty-two percent of employers feel “extremely” responsible for their employees’ financial wellness, up significantly from 13 percent in 2013, according

to Bank of America’s 2020 Workplace Benefits Report. The findings are based on a March 2020 survey of 808 employers that sponsor 401(k) plans, compared with the results of previous annual surveys by Bank of America.

Employers are now more likely to address broad aspects of employees’ financial lives, often by offering advice, counseling or training on saving for retirement; planning for healthcare costs; budgeting; saving for college costs; and debt management.

Stephen Miller

Co-Founder, CEBS, Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Benefits are shifting.

Employers are adapting their financial wellness solutions to their employees’ evolving needs — and their own new budgeting constraints — according to the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research

Institute (EBRI). Worker satisfaction, employee retention, and stress reduction were the top reasons for offering financial wellness initiatives.

The responses showed how the financial wellness mix has shifted. Since 2018, debt counseling and incentives around savings and financial action increased in popularity among surveyed employers. During the same period, however, firms became less likely to offer tuition reimbursement, discount programs, or bankat-work partnerships, either

because of the expense or a perception that these benefits weren’t valued by employees.

EBRI found that the most common steps taken to understand employees’ financial wellness needs were examining employee retirement plan contributions and withdrawals, surveying employees, and analyzing aggregate health data.

Employees are approaching open enrollment with a newfound determination to prepare for what’s ahead, and their personal finances are top of mind. n SPONSORED

How Employers Can Ease Pandemic Financial Stress As coronavirus-driven lifestyles continue, employees look to reboot personal finances to increase financial resilience.

From concerns about public health to childcare concerns and to an unpredictable economy, pandemic stress has taken hold of many American families. That stress has impacted financial health in a myriad of ways, with some leveraging the time for an honest look at how to reprioritize spending and saving, and many still navigating how to best weather the storm.

With nearly three-quarters of Americans living paycheck to paycheck even before the pandemic hit, the scope of support needed to increase financial literacy and empower fami-

lies with a financial resilience plan is massive.

Providing meaningful support Resilience is defined as the ability to bounce back from adversity and grow from challenges.

When applied to personal finance, it leverages skills of self-discovery, honest reflection, and application of purpose to spending and saving habits.

However, getting started can be overwhelming and intimidating, so much so that nearly 80 percent of workers say high financial stress distracts them at work.

Many families still need support with financial fundamentals — budget, credit, and debt — as well as planning for emergencies and larger things like purchasing

a home and retirement. While financial wellness programs exist in a multitude of configurations, employees often don’t understand program benefits, struggle with complex navigation, or question the objectivity of advice provided. To support employees’ unique situations, modern programs provide judgement-free, simplified, and personalized support through discovery of individualized goals — minus any strings attached or sales pitches.

Understanding stress Framing financial health as a contributor to overall health enables employers to reduce stress overall, and support the freedom employees need to focus on their careers and families. Gen Z and millen-

nial workers are particularly driving demand for solutions that seamlessly integrate into their lives and help them with budgeting, investment advice, debt management, student loan repayment, retirement planning, childcare planning, and protection.

The return on such services includes an increased healthwealth connection. According to research across My Secure Advantage’s client base of more than 15,000 employer groups, an average of 44 percent of employees report that financial stress negatively influences their overall health. After deploying money coaches, who form a one-on-one relationship with employees and leverage motivational interviewing techniques to create a customized program supported by

digital tools, that percentage typically shrinks to half.

As planning for the future becomes more confusing than ever, offering unbiased financial insight and guidance are benefit strategy imperatives for a productive, engaged workforce, in addition to providing a pandemic necessity: hope.

My Secure Advantage is the industry-leading financial well-being company that connects employees to what’s financially possible through empathy, education, insight, and inspiration. n Brad Barron, CEO, My Secure Advantage

To learn more, visit us at msafinancialwellness.com or on Twitter @MSAWellness

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What Really Matters When Trying to Boost Employee Engagement

How Arianna Huffington Is Combating Employee Burnout

Through her company Jennifer Brown Consulting, Jennifer Brown has designed workplace strategies adopted by some of the world’s biggest companies and nonprofits. She shared the most effective ways to boost employee engagement and well-being.

Seventy percent of employed adults say work is a significant source of stress in their lives, which is higher than the portion of adults who cited this as a stressor in the 2019 survey (64 percent). Gallup analytics are finding unprecedented spikes in daily worry and stress, while overall percentages of people “thriving” have dropped to Great Recession-era lows. Forbes reports that disengaged employees in the United States cost companies $550 billion a year. The Gallup Center on Black Voices finds that about 1 in 4 Black and Hispanic employees in the United States report having been discriminated against at work in the past year.

What are some key ways employers can boost employee engagement and where has it made a real impact?

Leaders who have communicated openly and been transparent about the challenges COVID presents have seen increased engagement. According to a recent McKinsey report, “trust in leadership” accounted for a 48 percent increase in engagement. Compared with respondents who are dissatisfied with their organizations’ responses, those who say their organizations have responded particularly well are four times more likely to be engaged and six times more likely to report a positive state of well-being. It’s important to lead with empathy. According to a 2019 Workplace Empathy Study, 90 percent of all employees believe empathy is important in the workplace, and 8 in 10 are willing to leave an employer who isn’t empathetic.

In a recent Business Solver survey of 150 CEOs, over 80 percent recognized empathy as key to success.

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READ MORE AT FUTUREOFBUSINESSANDTECH.COM

PHOTO: THRIVE GLOBAL

Why is employee engagement so important today for overall business success?

Arianna Huffington has spoken often about the moment she, quite literally, collapsed from exhaustion. It sounds like an exaggeration — and Huffington says before her collapse, she, too, thought burnout was just the price she had to pay for success.

One broken cheekbone and many hours of restful sleep later, Huffington has come to understand the powerful correlation between personal well-being and productivity. Though many say the ubiquity of the internet and tech is why employees feel pressure to be constantly “on,” Huffington predicts technology will actually drive a more human-focused era.

“The rise of AI and automation will put a premium on what can’t be automated,” she said. “And the qualities least likely to be replicated by a machine are those that are the most uniquely human: creativity, emotional intelligence, compassion, empathy, agility, flexibility, complex problem-solving, wisdom, and intuition.”

As companies come to rely on their employees’ most human

qualities, Huffington predicts they will recognize the importance of nurturing those qualities.

That means ensuring workers maintain a healthy work-life balance and take the time to focus on their own basic needs.

“Employees also need time and space to recharge and reconnect with themselves, and return to work more productive and creative,” she said.

Business sense Indeed, there is already a business incentive for companies to prioritize mental health. Huffington points out, “According to one estimate, stress costs American businesses $300 billion per year.

And an analysis by the RAND Corporation found that in just five countries — the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada — nearly $700 billion is lost each year to sleep deprivation.”

Contrary to what Huffington believed before her own burnout crisis, businesses benefit when employees are operating at 100 percent, and that requires downtime and reduced stress.

“Well-being isn’t just a perk, it’s a competitive advantage,” she said. “And there’s a direct connection between the health of a company’s bottom line, and the health and well-being of every company’s most important resource — its people.”

Work is changing The average workplace in the United States is certainly changing, to say nothing of the gig economy and the millions of telecommuters working from home.

But Huffington argues for a push toward more in-person interaction at work.

“As qualities like creativity, collaboration, and teamwork become more central to success, it’s important for companies to create workplaces that nurture and enhance those qualities,” she said. “Technology can make us more efficient, but it can also isolate us. And as we’re finding out, there’s no substitute for face-to-face connection and human interaction.”

Any business leaders or managers still unconvinced need only look to the example Huffington herself is setting. Her start-up, Thrive Global, aims not just to raise awareness of the dangers of burnout and overwork, but also to provide actionable solutions to the problem. She says part of changing the conversation is simply showing others how it’s done.

“With Thrive Global, I very deliberately wanted to model the idea of a sustainable startup,” she said, “proving that burnout isn’t necessary for success, even for a startup.” n Lynne Daggett

SPONSORED

Are You Missing Your Employee’s Hidden Struggle?

The pandemic made financial stress even worse, but a new tool offers employers and employees a better way to deal with it.

inancial stress is at record levels. More than two-thirds of employees report financial stress, and 88 percent of American workers say the pandemic has negatively impacted their finances. That stress translates into distracted employees with lower job satisfaction and increased absenteeism linked with financial problems.

And the traditional financial tools employees have don’t always serve their needs. For example, 401(k) and other retirement plans are focused on long-term financial goals, and programs designed to assist with student loans don’t help those struggling with other forms of debt. That gap was underscored last year when the COVID-19 pandemic caused financial stress to soar nationwide.

Dwane’s story Like millions of Americans, Dwane had a plan — one that didn’t anticipate a global pandemic. “My wife wanted to retire early,” he explains. “Her plan was to do a partial retirement — substitute teaching to make up that gap. When COVID hit, she didn’t want to go back to the classroom.”

Even though Dwane, a senior business analyst in

Atlanta, Georgia, had a secure job and income, his household finances were impacted by this sudden, unexpected event. He also supports his son financially and wouldn’t be able to handle both without help. He decided to consolidate his debts to free up cash to cover their expenses. “Having my wife not going into the workplace right now while COVID is going on, I wanted to maintain our current lifestyle by shifting some things around without having to pay a ridiculous interest fee or initiation charge.”

His employer had recently introduced Salary Finance as an employee benefit. Salary

Finance offers employees easy, affordable loans that are paid back directly from their paychecks. Dwane looked into it and liked what he saw. “The interest rates were going to be fixed and extremely reasonable,” he notes, “and it was going to be a payroll deduction.

All of these things just made it appealing to knock out that last few thousand dollars that I just wanted to consolidate.”

Dwane estimates he is saving $100 a month because of Salary Finance. “To have an extra $100 a month doesn’t seem like an awful lot,” he says. “But that’s money I can put into savings or [use to]

make an additional payment on the principal of the house because I’m trying to get the house paid off. It just allowed me to make better long-term decisions as I’m looking to retire myself one day.”

Employee stress and satisfaction Making better financial decisions — and having better financial options — not only lowers employee stress, but it also benefits employers.

Employees with financial stress are more distracted, have lower attendance, and spend time at work thinking about and dealing with finan-

cial troubles. And existing financial benefits don’t always offer the flexibility that a product like Salary Finance has.

“Like most places, my employer offers a stock purchase plan,” Dwane says. “They do matching into your 401(k).

But Salary Finance is the only thing where you can take a look at your overall budget, and it has a direct, immediate impact.

You know, it’s really set up in a way to help you succeed with your financial goals.”

For Dwane, Salary Finance was the perfect solution for his financial stress. “Some tools are just better than other tools,” he says. “Salary Finance allows us as employees to say, ‘Hey, this is a need that I have at a particular time’ and just be done with the process. And from a financial security perspective, this was something that could assist without being predatory, and that is a secure feeling.” n Jeff Somers

To learn more about how Salary Finance can help make your employees financially healthier and happier, visit www.resources. salaryfinance.com/us

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