NAPEO
Office culture encompasses the values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that shape the working environment. A positive and inclusive office culture fosters collaboration, encourages creativity, and drives employee engagement. When employees feel valued, supported, and connected, they are more likely to unleash their full potential, resulting in higher productivity and increased job satisfaction.
Some think that owning a company means it magically runs by itself. I enjoy and appreciate being an owner and there are many wonderful aspects, but there are also times when being an owner means sleepless nights, long days, and high stress. There are times that the risk versus reward tips toward the “risk” side (IFKYK). I have felt that scale tipping more this past year, even more than during the 2008 economic crisis and initial COVID shutdowns. Employees, across the country and across all industries, are burned out and have changed workplace behavior norms.
In the last few years, more than 2 million women have left the workforce, taking valuable skills and their expertise with them. The balancing act many employees, especially women, face in managing their caregiving responsibilities and jobs can be unsustainable at times, and it can feel easier to choose one or the other. Unfortunately, this is detrimental to these individuals and their families who rely on that income, and it is a significant loss to employers and the economy.
In a previous article, I encouraged PEO operators to take another look at group insurance brokers and even see some PEO brokers as channel partners. In this article I’m going to share with you another secret: How to protect yourself from us brokers. Remember, if you manage this channel correctly, brokers will be your lowest cost of new client acquisition, create longer retention, and create an endless and consistent flow of beautiful new deals. However, if handled poorly, your master plan medical loss ratios (MLR) could be very RED.
Rewards and benefits are a core part of the HR and People functions at any organization. As the Senior Director of People Experience at Oyster HR, a global employment platform with employees in 70+ countries, my team and I are responsible for the experience of our employees from the day they sign their offer letter to their last day with the company. That includes managing performance, progression, and total rewards.
Paul Nash is an employment practices liability (EPL) underwriter with Beazley. He is the EPL and Safeguard product leader for both the UK and US teams and was instrumental in developing the first SAM/SML policy issued by Beazley in 2006. He has more than 30 years of experience in the insurance. He recently spoke with Paul Hughes of Libertate Insurance about the state of the EPLI market, how he has seen the PEO industry evolve and more. PEO Insider captured their conversation.
Rewards and benefits are a core part of the HR and People functions at any organization. As the Senior Director of People Experience at Oyster HR, a global employment platform with employees in 70+ countries, my team and I are responsible for the experience of our employees from the day they sign their offer letter to their last day with the company. That includes managing performance, progression, and total rewards.
Paul Nash is an employment practices liability (EPL) underwriter with Beazley. He is the EPL and Safeguard product leader for both the UK and US teams and was instrumental in developing the first SAM/SML policy issued by Beazley in 2006. He has more than 30 years of experience in the insurance. He recently spoke with Paul Hughes of Libertate Insurance about the state of the EPLI market, how he has seen the PEO industry evolve and more. PEO Insider captured their conversation.
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).
