Shortly after purchasing my first Fitbit, I noticed a change in my airport travel routine. Instead of looking for moving sidewalks or a comfy seat, I walked all over the airport during layovers for no reason other than to amass…
Healthcare
Will You Know What to Do If Your HR Data Is Held Hostage?
The recent data breach suffered by Equifax served as a reminder to businesses everywhere of the omnipresence of cybercriminals and the damage they can cause. While the Equifax data breach was reportedly caused by hackers exploiting a security vulnerability, cybercriminals…
Wellness Is Mainstream, Benefiting the Employer and the Worker
If you suspect wellness is something of a fad benefit, just a few minutes of walking around at the Employer Healthcare & Benefits Congress that ended last week would have disabused you of that thinking. It seemed like every other…
Fight Employee Burnout With These Tips
Every job can be stressful in its own way, but burnout takes that stress to an unhealthy, extreme level. The Mayo Clinic defines it as a state of physical, emotional or mental exhaustion combined with doubts about your competence and…
4 Ways to Deal With an Employee’s Social Anxiety
It’s relatively easy to manage the charismatic, sociable employee who gets along with her co-workers and clients. But what about the perpetually uncomfortable, quiet worker who clashes with colleagues and keeps to himself? Many employers might consider cutting their losses…
Court Sends Wellness Incentive Rules Back to EEOC
This week, a federal judge had some scathing words for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as he tossed back its rules on the wellness program incentives telling it to rethink the whole thing. Remind me: What are these incentive rules?…
How Silent Meditation Helped Me Succeed at Work
In this opinion piece published on the Wharton school website, Payal Sheth, a global marketing manager at the Boston Consulting Group, explains how an ancient meditation technique helped change the way she thinks and engages with people. ∼∼∼∼ Yes, you…
What the Chicago Cubs’ Clubhouse Teaches Us About Building Trust and Chemistry
On their way last year to winning their first World Series in more than a century, the Chicago Cubs did something unusual: They changed the shape of their clubhouse. Instead of stretching across a long rectangular hall, the new Cubs…
Boost Productivity With Fidget Spinners and These 4 Other Ideas
Are you looking to improve employee productivity in your organization? If so, you’ve probably done a lot of research and realized that this performance management consideration is a dynamic field. With every day that goes by, there appear new and…
Will Facebook One Day Monitor Your Employees’ Mood?
Journalist Kari Paul wrote an article in Vice about how creepy it was when Facebook’s analytics decided she was depressed and started feeding her ads on depression. Creepy yes, but if you’re interested in analytics you must have a little…
Are You Treating Open Enrollment as a Step-Child?
Benefits may not be the glamorous part of human resources, but for employees, benefits rank right up there with pay in importance. A mediocre benefits package can lose you a great candidate. Eight out of 10 employees would choose new…
Stressed Out HR: 7 Steps to Making Things Better
Human resource professionals are the “stress absorbers” for their organizations and often for individuals in the organization. They occupy a special niche in the organizational ecosystem — a critical one for the success of all companies. But how can the…
Stop Wasting Training On Stressed Out Managers
Your employees can be overloaded on training, exposed to more information than they can absorb — especially if they are stressed or burned out. Too much of a good thing can be a real problem. For people in corporate leadership…
Company Chaplains: Help In a Crisis
My first experience in workplace crisis, non-combat related, officially occurred in the spring of 2012. I had scheduled a mid-week meeting with a safety officer, who I will call Mike. It was a 9:30 a.m. meeting, yet by 9:40 Mike…
Who’s Taking Care of HR?
When the you-know-what hits the fan, “HR is expected to be the calm one; to be the voice of reason; to not let it get to us or at least show that it doesn’t get to us.” “Some days we…
How a University Wellness Program Improved Health and Saved Millions
Faced with surging employee health care costs, many employers have embraced the concept of wellness as a way to improve the overall health of their workers and reduce medical claims. Unfortunately, too many have simply doled out fitness trackers, hoping…
4 Steps HR Can Take to Protect Employee Medical Records
In April 2014, as electronic medical records became standard, the FBI issued a “private industry notification” warning health care organizations of an increased number of cyber intrusions targeting medical records due to, among other things, the higher payout for these…
What Do You Do If Your Employee Gets Sick Abroad?
In 2016, U.S. residents logged 457.4 million person‑trips for business purposes. Life on the road can give employees an opportunity to see new places and immerse themselves in a new culture, but it also can sometimes put them at a…
Communication Failure May Be Keeping Workers From Wellness Programs
A new study hopes to settle the debate regarding workplace health promotion and whether or not it’s good for employers to get involved with employees’ wellness. Turns out, good or bad, there’s a communication breakdown. Around two-thirds of workers surveyed are happy…
What to Consider When You Self-Fund Your Health Plan
When deciding to use a TPA (third-party administrator) to administer your self-funded healthcare plan, the first consideration is often what your healthcare provider network will look like. TPAs can help companies save more money and provide greater flexibility, but what…