Archive for the 'for Employers' Category

GuideSpark Financial Wellness Webinar

Published by JLarocque on December 10, 2009 in Financial Wellness, GuideSpark and for Employers. 0 Comments Tags: , .

On December 8, GuideSpark presented a webinar called “The Need for Financial Wellness”.  In this webinar we discussed how poor financial health is affecting companies and their employees.  The webinar was well attended and definitely shows that financial wellness is becoming an important  issue at corporations across America.  In fact, the following poll shows that most attendees believed that 26-50% of employees are being negatively affected by financial issues.

Financial Wellness Poll Results

These results are not surprising based on our experience.  Financial issues are a productivity drain for corporations and is something we believe companies will begin to address in the coming years.  If you missed the webinar, please let us know and we’ll let you know when we have our next one.

Financial Wellness in 2010 – Open Enrollment Tips

Published by JLarocque on October 25, 2009 in Benefits, Financial Education, Financial Tools, Financial Wellness and for Employers. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

As November fast approaches, you are likely beginning to receive important communications about Open Enrollment. If you’re like many employees, you may have already decided to just stick with your current elections – after all, they seem to have worked out well enough. This year, more than others in the past, taking a passive approach to Open Enrollment may be an expensive decision.

A confluence of events, including substantial increases in the cost of health care and tough economic times have likely resulted in significant changes to many of your benefits. It is of supreme importance that you understand these changes, how they impact your checkbook and ways to optimize your benefits. Keep in mind that without a qualified change of status, you will be locked into your elections until next year’s Open Enrollment period, so the time to focus on your benefits is NOW. Don’t be surprised by the cost provision changes after they take effect and it is too late to do something about them.

Here are 4 tips for making the most of your Open Enrollment period and cutting your health care related expenses:

  1. Get reacquainted with your health care plan options. This may be the most important and likely the most daunting task of all. While employers have largely absorbed the skyrocketing cost of health care (which again will see a double-digit year over year cost increase) you are also likely shouldering some of the burden. Understand the changes that are being introduced and how they will ultimately impact your wallet. Taking the time to dig into the cost provisions associated with your medical plan options will not only help to determine whether you’ve made the right selection, it will also help you to understand how to minimize your out-of-pocket expenses throughout the year. Many employers are introducing low premium/high deductible plans which can be a very cost-effective option for you, particularly if you are not a heavy user of your health care plan. Lastly, if your spouse or domestic partner also has a plan, you will want to incorporate his/her options into the evaluation process.
  2. Use flexible spending accounts. So, you knew this one was coming. Any respectable list of tips for Open Enrollment *MUST* have this in their top 4 and despite this widely held opinion, only about one-third of you actually take advantage of them. Using pre-tax dollars to pay for qualifying health care (including medical, dental and vision) expenses can save you significant dollars. For example, assume a married employee with an adjusted gross income of $100,000 who files jointly and accumulates $4,000 in medical expenses for the family. This employee would save just over $1,300 in Federal taxes for the year by using a Health Care Flexible Spending Account. An added and understated benefit of an FSA is that it actually helps you to plan and save for your health care expenses through convenient payroll deductions.
  3. Optimize your prescription drug benefits. This tip has more to do with saving throughout the year, rather than a decision that you’ll need to make for Open Enrollment. I mention it because it’s a great way to save money and could potentially impact your health care FSA contribution. Generic drugs are copies of brand-name drugs that have exactly the same intended use, effects, side effects, risks, safety, strength… in other words, their pharmacological effects are exactly the same as those of their brand-name counterparts. Taking a proactive approach and requesting a generic substitution for your prescription medication can cut down your copayment significantly. Use of generic drugs may also allow you to waive your deductible and avoid costs that are incurred when you use a brand name drug when a generic is available. Additionally, you may also be able to cut down on prescription copays by utilizing the mail order prescription drug benefit for maintenance medications.
  4. Take advantage of Health Wellness programs. Wellness incentives have become hugely popular. In fact, almost two out of three U.S. companies offer programs to keep employees healthy, and 66 percent of those offering programs use incentives. These incentives come in a number of forms, for instance, a credit toward your health care premiums. It may be the case that your employer is introducing a similar program in 2010, so be sure to understand wellness program features, incentives and consider participation.

The Health Wellness – Financial Wellness Connection

Published by JS Wolff on September 1, 2009 in Benefits, Financial Wellness and for Employers. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

It’s been well documented that effective corporate health wellness programs have produced positive results for employees and employers over the past twenty years. Probably the most studied, extensive and longest running program is Johnson and Johnson’s “Live for Life”(now called the “J&J Health Wellness Program”) which was rolled out in 1979. Incredibly, due to both financial incentives and a corporate culture that actively promotes healthy behavior, 90% of J&J’s US employees have participated. And considering this includes a pool of 45,000+ employees, the statistics derived from the study are significant.

Defining that a successful health and wellness program, “…must demonstrate that they can improve the risk profile of employees as a whole, and, in particular, those employees at highest risk.”, the study found that J&J’s program has done just that.  Additionally, as I’m sure they had hoped, helping their workforce become healthier also helped J&J’s bottom line. Overall it was calculated that their Health & Wellness program saved J&J $38 million from 1995 – 1999.

When they detailed where the savings was realized, which approximated $224 per employee per year, over $70 of that figure was due a reduction in mental health visits.  Certainly, a significant portion of these mental health visits were stress related. A Yale University Study cited on the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health(NIOSH) website found that 29% of employees “feel quite a bit or extremely stressed at work”.

Apparently the J&J health wellness program did a good job addressing stress related issues. And they probably picked up a bonus here as well. While more difficult to measure, it’s not hard to imagine that someone who is less stressed is also likely to be a more productive employee.

But there’s good reason to believe that health wellness programs alone are not dealing with the primary root causes of stress. According to a 2007 survey by the American Psychological Association 73% of the respondents cited money as a significant source of stress in their lives. And a recent WebMD article cited an AP-AOL study which revealed that “debt-related stress was 14% higher in 2008 than in 2004. Those who report high levels of debt stress suffer from a range of stress-related illnesses including ulcers, migraines, back pain, anxiety, depression, and heart attacks.”

When law enforcement officials are trying to track down criminal activity, their first step is often to “locate the money trail”.  Similarly, I’ve found that for employees, their personal money trail is the source for all kinds of self defeating, stressful behaviors. While the term “work-life balance” implies a healthy lifestyle, gaining a “money-life balance” provides a vital dimension in the process toward personal wholeness and health.

The right Financial Wellness program can help your workers achieve this vital balance, while complementing and driving enhanced returns for your existing Health Wellness initiatives.

Here’s what to look for as you consider this critical addition:

- Its best to select a provider that is not associated with a financial provider even though it may be tempting to default to your 401(k) vendor. Trusted information is paramount here.  If someone has something to gain by selling more mutual funds, there is reason to suspect the objectivity of the education.

- You’ll want a program that reaches employees in multiple ways including leveraging current web trends. New “Web 2.0” formats are being introduced to deliver financial education in engaging formats that deliver lots of information in just a few minutes.  Blended with onsite workshops and personalized, education-only money coaching, employees can interact with the information however they feel most comfortable.

- And finally, to get buy-in from other key decision makers, look for a financial wellness program that provides the methodology, metrics and reporting tools to document year over year financial health improvement. While some measures may not be as direct as the Johnson and Johnson study, measuring a reduction in personal financial stress is doable.  In fact, there is a well researched assessment tool called the “Personal Financial Wellness Score” which measures personal financial stress and compares an individual’s results to national averages.

GuideSpark Announces New Hire Training and Open Enrollment Modules

Published by JLarocque on August 31, 2009 in Benefits, Financial Wellness, Solutions and for Employers. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Today, GuideSpark announced two new modules for its Benefits Learning Center solution.  These modules automate and streamline New Hire Training and benefits communications for Open Enrollment.  As companies continue to prioritize doing more with less, many employers are looking for more efficient and effective ways to deal with these resource-intensive processes.

Consider for a moment the staff time and dollars go into facilitating New Hire Training and Open Enrollment each year.  Many companies we’ve met with offer half-day New Hire orientations on a near weekly basis.  Not to mention the time and effort that goes into the creation of the stacks of paper that employees receive on their first day.  Open enrollment presents a similar situation.  Each year, HR staff offer a collection of live seminars to explain benefits changes, often preceded by brochures, mailers and the like.  Despite all of this effort, nearly 80% of employers believe that their employees do not have a good understanding of their benefits.

Many employers have asked us how they free up their valuable, and in many cases shrinking HR staff to work on strategic projects while improving rates of benefits understanding among employees.  In addition, finding ways to communicate effectively has become an even higher priority as employers prepare to make difficult announcements about cutting programs and/or asking employees to take on a greater share of health care costs.

Our answers to such questions naturally start with what we know to be true about today’s employees:

  • First, given the trend of increasingly distributed workforces and the importance of family decision makers, on-site seminars fail to provide reach
  • Next, given the explosion of web multimedia and sites like YouTube, employees have become accustomed to rich, short-form content.  The busy professional of today simply does not have the attention span to thumb through lengthy benefits documents.

GuideSpark’s Benefits Learning Center modules embrace these trends to provide a modern and engaging multimedia solution capable of reaching your distributed workforce and their families.  This online solution automates open enrollment and new hire training workflows to free up valuable resources.  Employees have on demand access to a library of multimedia benefits presentations, allowing them to direct and personalize their learning experience.  In addition, these modules offer custom checklists for open enrollment and new hire on boarding, so that employees can conveniently track their progress.

Please take a look at the New Hire Training and Open Enrollment demonstrations on our site to better understand the power of these new modules.

The $4.5 Billion Productivity Drain – Employee Financial Distress

Published by KKitani on August 10, 2009 in Financial Wellness and for Employers. 0 Comments Tags: , .

A recent BusinessWeek article “Helping an Employee in a Personal Financial Crisis” had a number of eye-opening estimates about the effect of financial distress on employees and employers.  The article sites the Personal Finance Employee Education Foundation estimating the cost of personal financial woes to corporations at $4.5 Billion annually and a Chicago consultant estimating a financially unstable worker can cost a company as much as $480 per month.

As a company focused on improving the financial health of employees, it’s good to see BusinessWeek covering small business examples, as it shows the depth of the problem.  While larger companies like IBM, Pepsi and Home Depot have received good press coverage over the past few years for their financial education and literacy programs, smaller companies are also taking notice and implementing programs.  I think this section from the BusinessWeek article sums it up the problem well:

As the recession grinds on, more companies find themselves managing workers facing personal financial crisis. And while employers like Humanix treat workers like family, taking care of them makes business sense as well. “I don’t want to make it Pollyanna,” says Humanix’s Nelson. “If an employee has a stressful financial situation at home, they’re not going to be fully engaged in their job.”

White Paper: Five Ways to Leverage Web 2.0 to Transform Benefits Communications

Published by JLarocque on July 14, 2009 in Benefits, Solutions and for Employers. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Today, GuideSpark announced availability of a new white paper on the ways to leverage Web 2.0 to transform benefits communications.

It may surprise you to learn that over 50% of employed Americans received a majority of their financial and health products from their employer, making employer-sponsored benefits a critical aspect of an employee’s overall financial wellness.

If there is one statistic that encapsulates the problem that GuideSpark is attempting to solve with our Benefits Learning Center solution, it is this one: “4 out of 5 employers believe that their employees don’t have a good understanding of their benefits.”

Amazing, isn’t it?

U.S. employers spent approximately $1.5 trillion on benefits (18.6% of total compensation) in 2007 and yet only 21% believe that they have been effective in educating employees on this key element of compensation.

So, the question becomes: with all that’s at stake, how do employers like you fix this problem? Well, the first thing to do is to admit that the benefits handbook and other text-heavy approaches to communications are failing you, your benefits investment and your employees. Now, accept that the way that employees learn and get information has fundamentally changed and in a Web 2.0 world, benefits communications must be:

  1. Accessible. Workforces are becoming more and more distributed each day and an employee’s family makes up 60-70% of an employer’s health care cost and are often the ones making the decisions.
  2. Engaging. The attention span of the busy professional is short and shrinking. Short-form, interactive education is what an employee expects in this world of YouTube and Twitter.
  3. Collaborative. The web has become a marketplace of ideas and experiences. Provide your employees with opportunities to understand what decisions colleagues are making and allow them to learn from one another.
  4. Ubiquitous. Stay in front of your employees by leveraging the latest forms of communications including blogs and micro-blogs (Twitter).
  5. Personalized. Integrate planning tools and calculators that allow employees to take what they’ve learned and apply it to their situation. Provide an easy on-ramp to personalized support from experts.

If you follow these principles and put together a highly effective benefits communications strategy, studies show that you can reduce the cost of benefits by 10-20% and significantly improve productivity and retention. To learn more about how to leverage Web 2.0 techniques at your company, please download our white paper.

New Solution for Benefits Communications and Financial Wellness

Published by JLarocque on June 17, 2009 in Solutions and for Employers. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

employee-benefits-open-enrollment-forms_smallToday, GuideSpark announced two core products focused on the issues of corporate benefits education and employee financial wellness.  Over the last 18 months, we’ve had a chance to meet with many employers – from small businesses to large enterprises, from Silicon Valley technology companies to retail chains to government organizations.  Not surprisingly, each of these employers carries a similar burden – how to reduce the cost of benefits while continuing to offer a competitive compensation package.

While many HR professionals concede that their employees have a poor understanding of their benefits package, most underestimate the impact of this situation on their bottom line.  Employees who don’t understand their benefits are more likely to:

  • Make poor election decisions, driving up benefit costs
  • Access benefits information in the most costly way possible – through calls to your human resources staff and call center
  • Be less satisfied with their compensation and more likely to leave

Benefits communications is a critical tool for managing costs in this environment.  Our offerings are targeted at improving the failing rates of benefits understanding among employees today to help employers realize the full value of their considerable investments in benefits.  We move far beyond the standard fare of thick benefits handbooks to provide a comprehensive curriculum of engaging multimedia education for today’s employee.  By providing more modern and more effective benefits communications, employers can cut the cost of benefits, while motivating and retaining employees.