NAPEO
For companies and employees around the world, the last few years have created opportunities to go beyond traditional ideas of where and how work happens. But, with these new opportunities comes risk. Staying compliant in a world of work that is changing daily requires businesses to be vigilant and proactive.
When it comes to signing up new employer groups in your PEO’s health insurance pool, collecting questionnaires has always been a sticking point. Today’s clients are like any other consumers; they demand seamless and nearly instant purchase experiences.
A PEO is only as strong as its client relationships. From ownership to worksite employees, we need to be engaged at every level of our clients’ teams. Of course, strong connections between owners and executives build trust that is needed to develop successful relationships.
Employers are recognizing that virtual care has not fully eliminated barriers to access, and that an exclusively virtual strategy can fragment the care experience and lead to wasteful spending. In articulating priorities for 2023 during the Fall 2022 roundtable session with One Medical, organized by the Employer Health Innovation Roundtable, more than 1 in 4 employers cited lack of access to care as a primary concern, and 1 in 4 employers expressed concern over fragmented care.
Employee engagement is a vast construct that touches almost every part of human resource management. If every part of human resources is not addressed in appropriate ways, then employees will fail to fully engage themselves in their job as a response to such kind of mismanagement. The idea of employee engagement is built upon the foundations of earlier concepts like job satisfaction, employee commitment, employee performance, employee retention rate, organizational citizenship behavior, and the like. Though it relates to and encompasses such concepts, employee engagement is much broader in scope and function.
There’s no single right answer to employee engagement, but at ADP, our client experience team has found that starting with empathy and leveraging design thinking helps to chip away at these colossal challenges. Starting with empathy is often easier said than done. Luckily, there are methodologies like design thinking that provide tried and true exercises and resources to help ground organizations in human experiences. Here are a few techniques that we’ve found particularly effective.
Diverse viewpoints and perspectives bring a lot to PEOs. A diverse workforce in terms of age, race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, gender, national origin, and gender identity can help you develop original strategies, and create new ways to cater to our diverse clients. Diversity can also generate higher revenue, and innovate our offerings. It’s the precursor to better decision-making, equal access, fair treatment, increased rates of jobs accepted by qualified candidates, and greater performance.
Many of the challenges of the contemporary and immediate future of work aren’t radically different than the challenges that have existed in corporate work environments for years. But, with each shifting generation, there are new ways of looking at the same challenges. As Chief Workplace Officer at Oyster HR, a global employment platform with 650+ fully-distributed employees, I’ve tried to prioritize workplace roles that support communication, transparency, and authenticity within our organization.
As a result of the workforce evolution in recent years, remote, hybrid and onsite work has been redefined, and is a top-of-mind subject in daily conversations. Many companies and teams like ours at LandrumHR have an employee base geographically widespread throughout the U.S. In our case, this pre-dates the pandemic, but like these other companies we, too, are still evaluating the pros and cons to re-engaging teams physically onsite where and when possible, without causing disruption to workflow and requiring facilities (re)construct.
n today’s post-COVID workforce filled with Millennial and Gen Z workers, mental wellness and mental health no longer carry the stigma of the past and have now become top of mind for employers and employees. No longer can we “rub some dirt in it” to get a fix when one in five adults each year is affected by a mental health condition and 55% of them go untreated1. The PEO industry has an amazing opportunity to further bring big business benefits to small businesses across the country by adding mental health solutions to product and service portfolios.
The pandemic was a wake-up call for many of the largest U.S. companies who have since implemented a wide range of initiatives to address mental health concerns among their employees. PEOs have a role to play in addressing the issue of stress in the workplace and the social stigma surrounding mental health, for our internal employees, for our clients, and for our communities.
When a PEO offers a 401(k) plan to clients, the company becomes a fiduciary on the plan and assumes numerous ongoing responsibilities. This is not an employee benefit that can be set up and delegated in its entirety to the 401(k) service providers; as the fiduciary, you always have ultimate responsibility for the plan and for participant assets. The number of 401(k) lawsuits has grown in recent years, and as a result, you should select a combination of service providers that helps optimally protect the company from claims surrounding mismanagement of the retirement plan.
PEOs are often on the forefront of new and innovative ideas to help employers and employees grow their enrollment. One idea that has recently gained traction in the health insurance market is the Individual Coverage HRA, or ICHRA1. ICHRAs are a new type of group health insurance that can provide significantly lower premiums and offer another avenue to win or retain business.
For today’s PEOs and the employers they represent, attracting and retaining talent requires facing challenges on multiple fronts. Workers’ priorities have shifted to center on health and wellness in the wake of the pandemic. Employers must recognize and support the “whole employee,”and attend to employees’ needs both on and off the clock. Runaway inflation has further raised the stakes, compelling small business employers to help their staff manage a higher cost of living amid steeper supply costs. And the Great Shuffle has heightened the competition for talent, empowering employees to leave if their needs are not met.
PEOs can contribute in a meaningful way to find and develop talent by offering internships. Many local universities have resources available to assist in starting an intern program, and talent is already in the pipeline waiting to be tapped. Since finding and keeping talent is a top concern for all employers, now is the time to do some research and begin developing a plan. With proper planning and implementation, an intern program can be very beneficial for the PEO, the student, and the PEO industry overall.
Whether it be the pandemic, the Great Resignation, or sweeping social and regulatory changes, there can be no denying that insurers and employers alike are going through a significant cultural change that hasn’t been seen since the passing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
As insurance brokers, we know we have to start getting some quotes from PEOs, but most brokers are too scared to make the call. Why? It’s partially because we still mostly have no idea what a PEO is among other reasons. So, it’s up to you, the PEOs, to seize the opportunity! Convince us we should want to get quotes from you and make it easy for us. Better yet, teach us how a PEO really works and how businesses thrive with PEOs. Just get group brokers to love your PEO.
PEOs are uniquely positioned to lead the conversation about supporting caregivers with their clients to ensure caregiving in the workplace is no longer stigmatized. It starts with providing an objective view of their clients’ benefit strategies as well as organizational structure, and identifying the gaps in support for the worksite employees that might exist. When considering the benefits to implement as we come out of the pandemic, begin with evaluating the culture and environment within your client’s organization so you can help them design a benefits strategy that is tailored to that specific workforce.
“I just can’t find the workers we need,” is an intensifying concern we hear every day from nearly every client. While the staffing function previously stayed in the middle-management court, it now has the appreciably driving attention of our clients’ most senior executives. In 2022, every employee counts.
In recent years, Congress, the federal agencies, and the Trump and Biden administrations have taken significant actions affecting health and welfare plans, and 2022 promises to be no different. This article discusses some of the primary issues we expect PEOs to be grappling with over the coming months with respect to their PEO-sponsored group health plans.
There have been many lessons learned over the last two years as we faced the pandemic and the new world of work. When the shutdowns were announced in March of 2020, ESC immediately put an action plan together that included how we could best assist our clients and what would be most helpful for them during that challenging time. Some clients were nimble and employees began working from home with little interruption, while others did not know where to start. We assisted them through the transition to work from home, and then many of them came back to the office. Currently, the majority of our clients are either working on-site or in a hybrid model, while a few made the decision to be fully remote. We wanted to share best practices and lessons learned as our team of HR business partners and clients worked together to navigate this new world of work.
It’s an “employee’s market.” That’s a phrase business leaders have heard over and over again during the past year. Many HR professionals and business owners alike were hoping to see a change after stimulus programs ended. Since then, employers haven’t seen a rush of candidates back to the workforce as anticipated, nor have companies experienced a widespread rebalancing of workforce supply and demand. A change in worker attitudes and a return to normal also have been slow to materialize. That has left employers questioning whether these trends are here to stay. Regardless, these employment challenges can’t be ignored. To remain competitive and to continue business operations, organizations need to bridge the gap between employee expectations and workplace realities.
The Great Resignation or the Turnover Tsunami—however you refer to this period of change in the workplace—is a historic moment for the workforce. As the quitting rate continues to increase along with the number of open positions, employers are being forced to take action to counteract the labor shortage.
Many issues stem from the current labor shortage crisis. Many long-term employees who are great at their specific skill sets have their eyes set on retirement. These employees are consistent, yet some are stagnant and slow to embrace change. This may pose a challenge for contribution to forward-thinking strategies. Leaders need to push long-term employees from becoming stagnant, which is especially important when these workers are in charge of hiring and training.
