Category Archives: Company Culture

Effective Ways to Manage Employees in a Remote Environment: The Benefit Package

It’s hard to believe that just a few short months ago, our country’s unemployment rate was at an all time low. Pre-pandemic, keeping employees happy often involved pricey company perks like free gourmet lunches, massages, and elite gym memberships. Now because of COVID-19, our entire world has changed: unemployment is soaring and non-essential teams have gone remote (and may remain remote). The entire US workforce and workplace has dramatically changed, which means what we offer our employees in terms of benefits has to undergo a dramatic change as well. Today we’ll go over creative solutions to help shift your benefits package to suit the new economic environment.

The Danger

For employers, it’s absolutely vital to alter your current benefits package in order to adapt to the current economic climate. Choosing not to do so could leave your company in the dust. In the coming months, as companies begin cautiously opening up offices and rehiring, they’ll face the challenge of potential employees viewing these slimmed down benefit packages as weak. It’s important to strike the right balance of not overspending in this new normal, while maintaining an attractive benefits package. We’ve also found that many employers cut spending in the wrong places because they aren’t aware of important tax opportunities and fail to take advantage of them.

How to Avoid

A lot of employers have been spending over 80% of the employees’ health insurance premiums on expensive plans. You can still offer full health coverage but switching down to silver plans in lieu of gold can cut costs by as much as 20%. Health insurance is a big line item on most employer’s profit and losses statements. It’s typically in the top three, right behind rent and salaries. Being able to change employer contributions and trim 20% out of employer costs is a huge opportunity right now.

At the same time inexpensive benefit plans can be added with minimal to no cost. Employees value plans like dental, vision, life insurance, and employer sponsored disability insurance. Plans that feature these can help employers round out their offerings without being a high cost item.

At the end of the day, don’t sell your benefits package short. Sometimes offering an appealing benefits package is all about how it’s presented. Creating a benefits brochure that points out both the obvious and hidden benefits offered can help current and potential employees understand the full scope of their benefits package.

There is also another great tool called a hidden paycheck. What a hidden paycheck statement does is give the employee an overview of all the money that the employer is spending on them—like taxes, health insurance, retirement plans, and other fringe benefits. For example, if an employee makes $60,000 a year, there’s a good probability they are only pocketing $3,500 a month. On this employee’s hidden paycheck statement, they would see everything the employer is spending on them, often totaling up to as much as $80,000 a year. Employees can then gain a greater sense of their value to the company rather than looking at their $3,500 take home pay.

Opportunity

The opportunity here is to modify plans and contributions based on the current economic environment. Get creative in building your benefit package, use voluntary plans, use ancillary plans, and lastly, shift employee perks to support work from home needs.

You’ll find that many of the traditional perks like company lunches, free snacks in the office, or commuter stipends, are no longer useful, and won’t be viewed favorably. Shifting perks to include things like virtual fitness memberships, mental health and telemedicine, wellness checks, childcare options, are what employees will value going forward.

Finally and maybe most importantly is adding a work from home policy in your benefits package. Many teams have gone remote without a noticeable drop in productivity. This means employees both know it’s possible to work efficiently from home and want to continue working from home. Including a work from home policy in the benefit package is going to be vital for most employers going forward to continue to attract top talent.

Tip

As we mentioned at the beginning, this is not a one size fits all. There’s no cookie cutter or plug and play approach, every industry and every situation is going to be unique. It’s important for employers to work with someone who can bring fresh ideas, understand the market, understand the industry and can bring real solutions.

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See how CorpStrat can help you transform your Employee Benefits Package. Contact us at marketing@www.corpstrat.com.

Effective Ways to Manage Employees in a Remote Environment: Workforce Automation

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There’s no doubt about it: our workplaces are going to look very different post-COVID-19. This might mean keeping some of your team remote indefinitely, changing the layout of your offices, or switching up your workflow to fall in line with health and safety guidelines. We can’t force things back to how they were but we can focus on setting you and your employees up for success in the “new normal”.

A few weeks ago, we gave a webinar on “Effective Ways to Manage Employees in a Remote Environment” in which we shared how companies can streamline their HR processes and maintain company culture. We’re excited to bring you the webinar in four parts: Workforce Automation, the New HR, Benefit Package and Company Culture.

Part 1: Workforce Automation

According to Capterra, 91% of professionals who work at small and medium sized businesses say workforce automation software is crucial, but almost 58% of them are not using it. That’s a huge gap. In our post-COVID-19 new normal, we believe more teams will adopt work from home policies which will make automated HR management software even more necessary.

The Danger

What’s the danger of not having a workforce automation system? Companies have done it the old-fashioned way with paper for over 50 years. What’s the fuss?

The reality is too many things can fall through the cracks. The fact is, relying on paper processes when you have a remote team becomes inefficient very quickly. A simple paid time off (PTO) request can mean piles of paperwork, redundant requests, and scrambling to calculate accrued balances—all leaving opportunities for potential oversight. With the technology available today, it’s a no-brainer to make the switch to an automated workforce system. With an automated system in place, your employees can submit a paperless request via their self-service portal, their time gets deducted, and it automatically updates in payroll.

How to Avoid

Help your employees help you by giving them self-service logins that allow them to access and edit their information. There’s a dual-sided benefit: if employees are able to make edits to their W4, change their address, view and sign items, submit PTO requests, and enroll in benefit plans, then they’ll feel empowered AND it will relieve the stress of managing manual processes.

The Opportunity

In addition to making things run more smoothly, there’s also an opportunity to eliminate potential lawsuits. Instead of worrying that employees can cite “you never told me”, you can keep track of everything in one database. This ensures nothing gets lost in the mix. Integrating employee lifecycle events into one system means that events are readily accessible at all times.

CorpStrat Tip:

We’ve seen many employers embrace workforce automation, but only in part. The market is filled with systems that offer piecemeal solutions: some just do new employee on-boarding, others only do benefit enrollment. Adopting separate services that don’t work together creates more manual work for your team.

We think employers should focus on making sure to streamline all employee lifecycle events into a single database that connects payroll and employee benefits into one system and has a powerful mobile application.

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Interested in streamlining your workforce automation? Schedule a call with a CorpStrat agent: info@www.corpstrat.com

Your Company Employee Benefits – Will you need a reset?

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Shaking hands after job offer Will we return to business as usual post-COVID-19? Sadly, not as quickly as we’d like. Some businesses will resume however, many may never recover. Companies will be focused on revenue generation, resuming some business operations, and restructuring workforce and office environments. One area companies should focus on, that may be key to recovery, is their employee benefits programs.

Just two months ago, companies had to compete for talent by offering robust packages and supporting programs to attract talent and retain staff. Now that a large number of Americans are unemployed, companies will have their pick of talent, a phenomenon we have not seen in years. In the coming months, companies will be feeling the pressure to offer a competitive benefits package while struggling to put back the pieces of their business. Here are some simple, low-cost ways to ensure your employee benefits package is appealing in the new normal.

1. Ensure you are COBRA compliant

Every employee who has lost coverage is entitled to COBRA continuation rights. The question of “who” makes the offer is a function of your group size and state. If your firm has 20 or more employees, it is your responsibility to comply, as penalties for non-compliance are steep. Keep in mind it is not just a termination issue! Work with your broker to make sure you are completing all the necessary parts of the COBRA compliance.

2. Review current offerings and contribution formulas

As previously mentioned, companies were ferociously competing for talent pre-COVID. Benchmarking benefits were critical and expanding offerings was essential. Looking forward, you need to review what you offer, why you offer it, how you offer it, and what the market demands for retention and attraction. Companies will scale coverages back, look to change contributions for employees, and seek ways to manage their benefits budgets. What’s right for your company may be different from others – given geography and demographics. Note that COVID hasn’t helped the pricing of benefit plans. Expect to see increased costs for healthcare in the years ahead.

3. Explore voluntary benefits

These are the hidden gems of benefits—plans that can be purchased by employees, and many times pre-taxed. It’s not only Aflac, but a host of offerings from life insurance, sickness, critical illnesses, and even pet insurance. These plans can add up and the premiums can have a collective reduction in payroll costs for workers’ compensation and payroll taxes.

4. Expand pre-tax offerings for premiums and healthcare expenses

This includes health reimbursement accounts, dependent care expense accounts, and review of health savings accounts. Each of these can help employees use pre-tax dollars to pay for items they are likely to pay for and saves taxes for all. (FYI – for post-COVID, the FSA has been expanded to allow for over-the-counter health care expenses).

5. Deploy an HR system that integrates payroll, time, attendance, and benefits

Companies have quickly figured out that having a system that can integrate payroll, time, attendance, communication, GPS tracking, and benefits enrollment is an essential tool for companies—big and small. With that in mind, a fully-integrated Human Resource Information System (HRIS) is a powerful tool to be equipped with. Without one, companies won’t thrive.

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Want an experienced professional to help you map out your benefit package strategy? Get in touch with CorpStrat today.

Importance of Workplace Mental Health Initiatives

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Importance of Workplace Mental Health Initiatives

Did you know that 1 in 6.8 people experience mental health problems in the workplace? And that over 200 million workdays ($16.8 billion in employee productivity) are lost each year due to mental health conditions? With such a drastic impact in the workplace, mental health is no longer a workplace issue that can be sidelined. Large companies like Facebook and Google have already started offering mental wellness initiatives. So, it is now important, more than ever, for small to medium sized companies to take an active interest in employee mental health and create a supportive environment for their employees.

Why should you invest in workplace mental health initiatives?

Workplace wellness is important because poor mental health can affect an employee’s day-to-day work life. Poor mental health can affect an employee’s:

Job performance and productivity;
Engagement with work and coworkers; and
Daily functioning.

As such, workplace mental health initiatives are programs that employers need to invest in. And these wellness programs don’t even need to be costly; simple events like a wellness day require minimal investment but can produce effective results. Supporting mental health programs in the workplace lead to overall improved team performance and employee wellbeing.

Here are three main reasons why employers should promote mental wellness in the workplace:

Increased Employee Productivity and Motivation

When mental health is supported in the workplace, employees are able to perform better. Happy employees have improved decision-making, workflow, and engagement, all of which translate to increased productivity and motivation in the workplace. Employees will feel that they are supported, fostering a sense of loyalty to the company and reducing absenteeism.

Higher Team Morale

Mental wellness programs can lead to higher team morale. When teams engage in wellness initiatives together, both outside and inside work, they start having a shared purpose that builds camaraderie. These shared experiences can go a long way in keeping employees engaged with the team, leading to a positive workplace culture.

Decreased Stress

Work-related stress within employees can become debilitating and costly for a company. So, investing in programs that deal with stress management or mindfulness and meditation can help reduce stress throughout the workplace. Essentially, less stress in the workplace leads to satisfied employees, which, ultimately, creates a positive culture.

Bottom Line

Workplace wellness programs can be a valuable asset for employers and employees. With an increasingly competitive job market, how well a company responds to mental health issues is becoming increasingly important to employees, current and new. To learn how you can leverage wellness programs to the fullest, reach out to CorpStrat and see how comprehensive employee benefits can further attract, reward, and retain new and existing employees.

4 Simple Employee Recognition Ideas

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Employee Recognition Ideas Employee recognition is about acknowledging the hard work of the employees within your company. And it is a crucial element to employee engagement and happiness. Simply put, a solid employee recognition strategy leads to stronger engagement, increased employee morale, and lower employee turnover.

The best recognition tactics make employees feel valued and respected. But, creating an effective recognition strategy from the start is not as easy as it looks. Here are 4 simple tactics you can incorporate today to jumpstart your employee recognition program.

1. Positive Feedback

Give positive feedback to employees when they produce exceptional work. As simple as this may seem, positive feedback is an effective—and simple—way to recognize your employee’s and/or team’s hard work. Praise motivates people to work harder, so sharing positive feedback on a regular basis, whether through a quick shout-out in the meeting or through email, is a good way to jumpstart your employee recognition tactics.

2. Employee of the Month

Create an “Employee of the Month” program, one that recognizes the month’s top-performing employee. A formal employee recognition process like this can instill a sense of pride within the employee, encouraging stronger engagement and motivation. But we recommend making the nomination process an inclusive activity, not one that only upper management gets to dictate. Including everyone’s opinion in the process will make them feel valued and respected as employees throughout this process. Looking to go the extra mile? Take it one step further and create a “Wall of Fame,” with pictures of your past “Employees of the Month.”

3. Wellness Day

Show your support for wellness with an Employee Wellness Day. Creating a culture of wellness at your company is guaranteed to inspire, educate, and engage employees. Self-care activities, such as on-site massages, mindfulness sessions, or fitness classes will give your employees a much-needed break. And this refreshing break will create the understanding within your employees that their hard work and efforts are being recognized and valued.

4. Catered Lunch

Host an employee appreciation lunch for your employees. From fully catered meals to box lunches, there are endless ways to bring a catered meal to your company. Treating your employees with lunch is a great way to show that you appreciate them for their hard work. If catering a lunch for the entire office is too much, then try providing catered meals department by department, or team by team.

Bonus tip: Recognition and rewards software

Implement a recognition and rewards software to better track and reward your top-performing employees. Employee recognition tools can automate your strategy for a smoother employee recognition program. With hard data, these software platforms give a data-driven insight into which employees go above and beyond in their roles as well as automatically provide recognition and rewards to those who exemplify company culture.

With these simple tactics, your employee recognition program will have a strong foundation. Your employees will feel recognized and, therefore, motivated to work harder for your company. But, if you want to learn how to attract, reward, and retain your employees in the long-term, reach out to CorpStrat today.