How the Affordable Care Act Can Impact Your Health and Wellness Programs
The Affordable Care Act is enabling employers to offer more health and wellness program options for their employees, while helping employers control their health care costs. Along with updated guidelines for how employee health and wellness programs need to be executed, the Affordable Care Act is increasing the maximum reward for employees to 20 to-30 percent of their total health care costs. These rewards increase to as much as 50 percent of health care costs for employees participating in any kind of tobacco cessation program. These types of changes make it easier for employers to get involved in health and wellness programs, knowing that they will be easing both the financial burden of health care on their employees, as well as improving the health and well being of their workforce. Below are 3 of the new proposed rules the Affordable Care Act introduces with regard to employee health and wellness programs. Take a look, and see how you could be helping your employees get healthy, stay healthy, and save money for both themselves and the organization. The rules below are being enacted to ensure health and wellness programs are run in a way fair to all willing employees.
Walk the Talk, Safety’s Bottom Line
GiftCard Partners is finding that more and more of our customers are working to develop or enhance their safety program and instill the value of safety within their organization. Doing this does not need to be difficult but it does need to be taken seriously. Business & Legal Resources is here to help, discussing the importance of emphasizing your organizations safety culture with workers. BLR explains that the cost savings that come with a successful safety program is just a part of what you need to assess. Take a closer look at the safety culture in your organization and join BLR’s safety webinar about accurately assessing, and improving the role of safety in your workplace.
Learn more about the Safety Culture Webinar here and sign up to attend on February 13th
Keeping Employees Happy and Loyal
The infographic below reflects a recent survey from Mercer of 2,400 people that represent a microcosm of the American workforce. Since almost one in three people are looking to leave their jobs, it is important to know who is most likely to be looking to move on, and why. An employee’s retention and satisfaction leads to their loyalty, so pinpointing and fixing those issues will be financially efficient and better for themorale at your organization. Loyalty and retention rates can be boosted by implementing an employee loyalty program, offering small incentives, such as small denomination gift cards to employees as loyalty rewards, or as a carrot reward for employee retention. Check out this infographic as a start to figuring out your organizations weaknesses and turn them into strengths. Providing employees support, career development, recognition and rewards can minimize turnover and increase loyalty. Knowing which populations are most likely to be looking to leave is a good way to start working to maximize employee loyalty.
The Importance of Personal Rewards
Everyone likes cash, but as a performance reward, it is impersonal and predictable. Giving employees personalized rewards can help your organization retain happy employees who know their organization cares about them and their individual interests. Richard Rosenblatt, Chairman and CEO at Demand Media goes to extended lengths to ensure his top performing employees receive personal rewards by spending a whole day with employees delivering reward experiences, such as a day with a personal shopper at an upscale department store for employees who like shopping and fashion. Rosenblatt explains the importance of delivering personalized rewards for top contributors because it shows that the organization takes a vested interest in employees, the way employees spend their time and energy investing in the organization they work for. This supportive environment keeps employees happy, satisfied, and contributing to your organization for longer. Reward personalization can be scaled down to a more streamlined system. Gift cards can serve as a great alternative to cash rewards, and can provide personalization to employees as well as a "trophy value" that cash bonuses cannot. Providing a choice of a diverse group of retailers for employees to choose their reward, as well as having one physical item to give employees makes gift cards a win/win choice for employee rewards. Being able to provide an AutoZone gift card to the auto enthusiast, and a Cheesecake Factory gift card to the restaurant enthusiast will allow your organization to deliver thoughtful rewards, while streamlining the reward system.
Keeping Top Talent in Your Company
A great company can’t be great without great talent. Take a brand new shiny sports car for comparison. Without key factors like high performance or hard workers and a sleek profile or thoughtful leaders; your shiny sports car or successful business isn't getting enough mileage. So how do you ensure that your ‘key factors’ or top talent won’t leave your company? Well it always mean you have to add another ZERO to the end of their paycheck. Most employees are simply looking for a little recognition, appreciation, challenge or leadership from their employers.
Forbes interviewed a number of employees and got some pretty interesting feedback:
