I just noticed the fitness month abundance when I was following up on an email I got from my health insurer, letting me know that I could celebrate “National Fitness Month” by enrolling in their fitness program.

Because this fitness program discount offer might end up working (kudos to the Blue Cross marketing guys, right?) I started thinking about wellness program incentives and what it would take to catch the attention of different employees.

Maybe someone like me?

Never mind the whole participation vs. engagement debate—I’m just talking about the communication/offer it would take to get an employee to start thinking about wellness.

After all, the wellness program incentives game is going to be changing soon. Beginning in 2014, employers can increase the amount of money they can spend on incentives. Whereas they used to be able to use as much as 20% of the health benefit cost on incentives, they’ll be able to use as much as 30% after the start of the new year.

Anyway, because wellness programs can help reduce health care costs (employers have seen medical costs fall, on average, $3.27 for every $1 spent on wellness programs) I expect to see a lot of activity on the incentive side of things.

At least that’s what I think. What about you? Are you in charge of or work on the wellness program where you work? Do you anticipate any changes in the way you try to incentivize employees? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

photo credit: Abdullah AL-Naser via photopin cc

Are you sympathetic? I am. Actually, I’m a sucker. Over the years, I’ve helped re-write more resumes and cover letters than I can count, and I’ve done my fair share of interview preparation and “you better nuke those keg-stand photos from your social media accounts” advice-giving.

Like I said, I have soft spot for recent grads. Not all people do. In fact, a new hiring manager survey from Adecco Staffing US shows that recent college graduates aren’t exactly held in the highest of esteem.

According to the results, 66% of those surveyed feel that recent graduates are not prepared for the workforce when they finish college.

Ouch.

Of course, I wonder what this means. After all, I think a certain amount naivety is expected among people who are starting their first jobs, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect colleges to churn out baccalaureates in “everything you need to know to work here and hit the ground running.”

But that’s just me. It’s a competitive job market, and young people aren’t entitled to exciting entry-level jobs. Obviously, the candidates whose resumes and cover letters and interview demeanors shine are the ones who’ll be fielding offers.

According to that Adecco survey, some of the biggest job seeker turnoffs include:

• Crummy Resumes
• Inappropriate Interview Attire
• Lack of Eye Contact
• Checking Phone/Texting
• Fidgeting
• Bad Posture
• Sharing Interview Details on Social Media

And, yes, of course those behaviors are massive job-seeking no-nos. You can’t do that kind of thing if you want to make a good impression.

But how is a clueless young person supposed to find that out? Trial and error? How would you advise a recent graduate on his or her job search? What kind of tips would you give, or would you? Do you agree with the surveyed hiring managers that colleges should be doing a better job of getting people ready for resumes and interviews and other job-seeking tasks?

Share your thoughts and opinions in the Comments section below.

photo credit: AdamLogan via photopin cc

(Flickr Commons/Charles Williams)

I saw something in the news today—a new study on prescription drug attitudes—that may have changed my point of view about people who have a hard time taking their meds.

Although I know plenty of people in my personal life who have groused about taking their prescribed medications to manage chronic conditions, I’ve never understood the behavior. Even after I started paying attention to things like health care challenges and employee wellness initiatives, I could never wrap my head around this particular issue.

I mean, medication non-adherence (fancy doctor talk for not talking your pills) is linked to upwards of 125,000 deaths a year in the United States alone.

People die from this!

And this behavior is very expensive to boot. People who don’t take their prescription medications cost $290 billion in otherwise avoidable medical spending per year. Oh, and don’t get me started about preventable health care costs.

After all, many of the employee issues driving health costs are preventable. Hypertension is preventable. Adult-onset diabetes is preventable. Smoking-related illnesses are preventable. Anything mapping back to an employee who does not take her or her meds to manage a disease is absolutely, 100% preventable.

Now a reasonably healthy person might look at preventable disease scenarios and wonder why employee wellness programs are even necessary. The solutions are right there in front of you.

A sensible diet is common sense. Exercise is a no-brainer. Smoking? Come on! And taking your meds? The medicines you need to treat the diseases that afflict you? The ones that prevent you from getting even more sick? The ones that help keep you from dying? Those drugs? You have a hard time taking those? Why are we even talking about this?

Well, it turns out medication non-adherence is more complex than what I had previously understood. There are complicated emotions involved.

“Taking medication is a daily reminder of your illness and your status as a ‘patient’ so it’s a negative experience that people instinctively want to avoid,” explains Dr. Katrina Firlik, cofounder and chief medical officer of HealthPrize.

“Psychologically, people tend to prefer actions that offer short-term benefits but most chronic medications provide no short-term benefits—only short-term annoyances. So people may skip taking or stop refilling their medication altogether even if the long-term risks to their health are enormous.”

According to this study, people aren’t avoiding their medications because they’re lazy or irresponsible. They’re avoiding their medications because having to take them all the time is something that makes them feel bad.

And suddenly the employee wellness program goal of improving employee medication-taking behavior becomes a lot more serious…and challenging. At least that’s what I think. Do you agree? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

So what’s the big deal?

Well, last week I wrote about the dismal results of the latest Aflac survey, which stated (among other things) that 72% percent of the nation’s workforce has never even heard of the term consumer-driven health care.

Oh, and there was that whole bit about the 75% of Americans who expect to get health care reform education from their employers. That was important too because it helps show the general confusion about health care reform among American workers.

Unfortunately, today’s news from the Kaiser Family Foundation highlights just how deep that confusion runs.

Perhaps most disappointing is the fact that 42% of those surveyed don’t know that the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. Yikes!

Of course, 100% of those folks are going to be surprised when they find out what’s going on, but the 7% who think that ACA was overturned by the Supreme Court and the 12% who believe Congress called the whole thing off are going to be extra confused come October.

Sadly, the confusion extends beyond those who simply don’t know about the law in the first place. Even more-informed individuals report not having enough information to understand how ACA will affect themselves and their families. In fact, about half of the public (49%) requires more information.

So who will provide the education to bring everybody up to speed? Better yet—who will people be looking toward for information when they realize how little they know?

I realize that health care reform education may not be on the radar for many employers, but they should at least be ready for when those questions invariably come.

Do you think your employer will be prepared to handle health care reform confusion when it finally rears its head? Share your thought sin the Comments section below.

(Flickr Commons/San Diego Shooter)

We call it “Consumer-Driven Health Care,” but are consumers actually the ones behind the wheel? A new survey from Aflac shows that employees are poorly prepared for the coming changes of health care reform.

Ok, so what does that mean?

Well, let me put it this way—the study reports that nearly three-quarters (72%) of the workforce have never even heard of the phrase “consumer-driven health care.”

The survey shows that 72% of the nation’s employees are going to start their health care reform education from scratch.

It’s a terrifying thought, and I think the Aflac’s Audrey Boone Tillman really sums up the whole situation when she says, “It may be referred to as ‘consumer-driven health care,’ but in actuality, consumers aren’t the ones driving these changes, so it’s no surprise that many feel unprepared.”

Oh, and that’s not all. A good majority (75%) of employees are expecting their employers to help teach them about the ways their health care coverage is going to change as result of the reform.

That in itself isn’t so surprising. After all, who else would employees turn to for information about their health insurance benefits than their employers? What is surprising, though, is the fact that a scant 13% of American employers say that educating employees about health care reform is not important to their organizations.

Yikes! So what are the other 87% of employers going to do when employees stick with the most costly health plans or underestimate the cost of health care?

“The bottom line is if consumers aren’t educated about the full scope of their options, they risk making costly mistakes without a financial back-up plan,” says Tillman. I happen to agree.

And what about you? What kind of health care reform education do you have planned where you work? Let us know in the Comments section below.

(Flickr Commons/Welshdan)

I was reading the always-awesome Fistful of Talent blog today and saw a post by R.J. Morris on the topic of humor in HR that really got me thinking. Morris’s post, titled “When Can HR Be Funny? Rarely,” asks whether it’s really ever appropriate for formal HR communications to be funny.

He says the answer is no. What a bummer.

Of course, Morris is cool with cutting up on an individual, informal level—the man’s not made of stone (and he’s clearly a funny guy—anybody who appreciates Kmart’s new “Ship My Pants” ad is OK by me)—but he does write that humor can cause major trouble when the message does not match the company.

Part of me can see the sense in that kind of thing. After all, there’s a time and place for funny, and some types of humor will never match a company’s brand, but does that mean that HR is doomed to be humorless in all its communications?

I mean, I get the point made in the article. Ads like Kmart’s “Ship My Pants” or Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” or Go Daddy’s …well, advertisements also serve as recruiting pieces. When the humor matches the brand, magic happens. When it doesn’t, customers leave and talent backs away.

I just don’t follow the leap from “bad humor is bad for business” (which is totally true—it is) to “HR really should avoid humor if it knows what’s good for them.”

Morris writes, “Other companies [the kind that can’t get away with ‘edgy funny’ humor] and their HR folks are like first term presidents trying to win reelection…steadily moving toward the center to avoid alienating too many people.”

I disagree. While I understand the fears around using humor in HR (you have to get it right, and that can be scary), I don’t think those fears are necessarily rational. I’m not saying that everything coming out of HR should sound like the writer’s room at Comedy Central; just that it’s possible to be occasionally funny and always professional.

Do you agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the Comments section below.

(Flickr Commons/herzogbr)

Have you had a chance to check out our newest ALEX case study? It’s a real beaut! In it, we basically show how ALEX helps the APi Group, one of the largest union subcontractors and fire protection companies in the United States, with its complicated benefits communication needs.

Of course, since this is a case study (a tool for making you and other good-looking, insightful benefits administrators want to check out ALEX) we took special care to describe all the amazing benefits APi Group got from using our solution. I mean, they did get all kinds of amazing benefits—don’t get me wrong—I just want to be up-front about the point of the case study.

Anyway, APi Group was really happy about a lot of things coming out of their ALEX experience, but were especially jazzed about not having to organize as many group benefits meetings.

See, a good portion of APi Groups 2,800 benefits-eligible employees work in remote or hard-to-get-to locations throughout the United States, and that makes organizing real-time meetings a drag.

Thanks to ALEX, they no longer have to drive across North Dakota in November unless that’s something they really want to do. On their own time. For fun.

So why am I bringing this up on the blog?

Well, I read something today about group meetings that really surprised me. I mean, APi Group isn’t the only ALEX client that’s happy to reduce the need for group meetings. Medtronic is one that comes to mind, but there others too. The point is, lots of clients—particularly those with multiple locations or shifts—tell us that in-person group meetings on company time are not the best benefits communication option for their needs.

Imagine my surprise when I read that many employers—a majority in fact—just adore group meetings and think they’re the best way to get benefits information out to their employees. In fact, according to research presented by Prudential in its Seventh Annual Study of Employee Benefits: Today & Beyond, 69% of surveyed employers think group meetings are the most successful form of benefits communication available.

Group meetings, guys!

You know, the group meetings that require real-time attendance of every single person in the company’s employ, where everyone sits down, in person, to listen to a detailed description of company benefits like medical insurance, retirement savings, accidental death & dismemberment, I hope this is going to be over soon, maybe I can just play around on my phone for a few minutes, this meeting might have snacks if I’m lucky, oooh—I hope that bit about co-insurance wasn’t important, I like pizza, and look at the time! That was great.

Yeah, those group meetings.

Amazingly, surveyed employers think group meetings beat out communication options like one-on-one meetings, email, benefits hotlines, webinars, online presentations, social media, and everything else. Basically, apart from the plan materials themselves, employers overwhelmingly use group meetings as their most trusted form of communication.

Of course, employees have a different opinion.

Not as surprising (to me, anyway) is the fact that employees prefer to benefits communications they can review on their own time. Only 21% of surveyed employees say that they prefer having group (or one-on-one) meetings during the workday. The rest would rather review everything in an email, in a printed packet at home, or in an online format they can view at any time.

But what about the employees where you work? Have they expressed any sort of preference? And those group meetings? Does management (or you) feel strongly about keeping such communication methods around? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

(Flickr Commons/ToniVC)

A few months ago we invited HR communications consultant Fran Melmed to contribute a guest post on the topic of wellness programs. She did not disappoint. Her article, a response to Bob Merberg blog post on the concept of wellness program engagement, considers the value of half-hearted, nominal “participation” in a company’s wellness program.

She says this “technically, I’m participating” kind of activity is worth something. I happen to agree. Sure, you’d hope to inspire the kind of spirited engagement that can actually change employees’ lives for the better, but just getting folks to show up is actually pretty great.

No, really—it’s probably one of the biggest barriers to a program’s success. In fact, the 2013 Global Workplace Health and Wellness Report, a study commissioned by the folks at the Global Corporate Challenge, finds that wellness initiatives can overcome participation barriers simply by appearing to be fun and easy to incorporate

That’s seems doable, right? Right?

OK, so figuring out what looks like fun might be a bit of a challenge, but I think it’s one worth pursuing. In fact, I think anything that inspires employees to participate is worth considering. Anything that gets people to give wellness a shot—even if it’s just a one-time thing—is a step in the right direction.

But what about you? How would you respond to the employee who says she doesn’t have any time for wellness? Do you sympathize? Share your thoughts in the Comments area below.

Of course, you know what these bloopers are when you see them—the birthday cake with the tragically misspelled message, the comically confusing pictograph instructions for some newfangled bathroom hand dryer, or billboards and posters whose messages are ruined thanks to environmental hazards their makers could have never planned for.

Consider, for instance, this simple poster advertising job opportunities.

I found this gem today on one of my internet adventures, and haven’t been able to stop giggling since. On its own, the “Accepting Resumes” poster is totally useful, encouraging, and energetic. With a garbage can in front of it, though—something for which the poor folks at Verizon could have never planned—it’s simply hilarious.

I want to see more of this stuff, and need to ask you for your help. Have you seen any particularly worthy examples in your life? Nothing mean-spirited, mind you. I’m more interested in the sublimely ineffective than anything else.

You can send me something via email at Justyn@jellyvision.com or post your finds directly to our Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google + accounts. Of course, you could also share right here by posting a URL in the Comments section below.

(Flickr Commons/Alan Cleaver)

So the unofficial Jellyvision weight loss competition has come to close. Results are still being tabulated, and the champion has yet to be announced, but people in general are looking a lot more slim and trim. Really, everyone who participated is a winner.

I, for one, am grateful for the experience. I can’t say the same for the pizza and sandwich joint where I used to grab my daily lunches, but somehow I think they’ll manage just fine without me.

The funny thing is, I knew I had to do something about eating better around the time the competition began. I just couldn’t motivate myself to get started. A friendly competition with my coworkers proved to be just the thing I needed to get moving in a healthier direction.

I wonder what else might have worked…

Look, employees (take me, for example), aren’t completely clueless about where they are on the wellness spectrum. They know where they need to make improvements—they just sometimes need some help getting to take the first steps.

Now there’s plenty of ways for employers to provide this kind of help. You can’t attend an HR conference these days without tripping over some wellness company’s eager sales rep, and everybody with a wellness program seems to be ramping up their efforts to efforts to increase engagement with employees.

In fact, a recent survey from Buck Consultants about employee health engagement shows reveals that employers are finding success with key technologies like gamification, mobile apps, and social media. That’s a good thing.

Whatever gets people started (and sticking to it) is valuable. The trick is understanding what motivates employees to make changes in the first place.

“Technology offers unprecedented ways for employers to motivate and enable employees to become more effective health care consumers,” explains Scot Marcotte, managing director of talent and HR solutions at Buck Consultants. “But employers need to better understand what drives their workers to make the desired changes.”

And that’s the biggest wellness program challenge of all, isn’t it? Understanding what motivates people to change their behavior?

I think this topic is far too complex to wrap up in a simple blog post, but I’m really interested in continuing the discussion, especially in light of studies like the one from the journal Health Affairs which question whether wellness programs can save companies money at all.

We all agree that having healthier employees lowers health care costs. There’s not much to debate about that. But can anything be done to get people in the right direction (that is, anything that makes business sense)? Do you think wellness programs are a bunch of hooey? Is the one you have working for you? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.