HR Strategy – Page 13 – Pinnacle HR Solutions

Compliance: It’s Not Just About Avoiding Risk

Some businesses think staying in compliance is all about reducing risk and staying out of trouble. But companies that approach compliance as a way to help achieve their overall business objectives will do far more than avoid fines. They’ll build organizations that produce happy and productive employees, loyal customers, and a healthy bottom line.

The relationship between compliance and culture

For business owners, industry rules and regulations are a fact of life, and they can be used in several different ways:

As a threat to keep employers in check
As a set of rules to keep employees in check
As a helpful tool to make your workplace better, safer, and more pleasant for everyone

Now, which one of these three tactics do you think is going to make your business a more enjoyable place to work? Entice new employees to jump on board? Result in a more engaged and productive team?

Yes, you can control your team with threats and rules, micromanage behaviors with fear-based incentives, and rule with a culture of discipline. Or you can use compliance as a way to help you take care of your people and your business.

What’s your motivation?

Let’s think about some of the various aspects of compliance and approaches you may have taken or witnessed in the past.

Harassment

Is your main goal to avoid expensive litigation? Or is it to create a healthy workplace where everyone feels comfortable and respected?

Discrimination

Are you following EEO practices because you’re afraid of being sued? Or are you committed to fostering a diverse workforce with a variety of talents, viewpoints, and experiences?

Payroll

Are you paranoid about compliance because a screw up will cost you back pay plus any added fines and penalties? Or do you value your employees and want to make sure they feel appreciated and get paid correctly?

Benefits

Are you offering health insurance, sick time, and leave options because the law says you have to? Or do you want to invest in keeping your employees happy, healthy, and productive?

Privacy

Do you worry about data security because breaches are expensive and there are fines for releasing confidential information? Or do you truly care about your employees as people and want to protect them and their families?

Licensing

Do you require your staff to have proper qualifications because you don’t want to pay fines or be shut down? Or is it because you want to give your employees the tools they need to succeed and your customers the best service possible?

Safety

Are you checking the OSHA boxes because you’re terrified of the cost of a fine or accident? Or are you genuinely committed to making sure everyone on staff makes it home safely after their shift?

How you view compliance matters

The approach you take to compliance says a lot about the approach you take to running your business and taking care of your employees. If you’ve been looking at compliance as nothing more than a rigid set of rules you have to follow, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

Short-sighted businesses view compliance as a necessary tool to control staff and protect the organization. But merely wanting to avoid claims isn’t an inspiring motivator.

Innovative, big-picture organizations see compliance as a natural extension of their business philosophy and strategy.

They will find opportunities to align their compliance practices with their purpose, values, and vision.
They will look beyond the rules to see why they are important and how they can support the things that matter to their employees.
They will associate good compliance practices with good business.

These kinds of organizations will also involve their employees in their compliance processes, giving them a sense of ownership and accountability. Engaged staff members can then become happy advocates and active participants in the creation and implementation of policies that create inclusive, safe, and healthy workplaces.

Some companies will continue to look at compliance as a set of boxes to be checked off, and they will technically be meeting their obligations. On the other hand, businesses that choose to embrace compliance as an opportunity to live out their people-focused values are those that will build the best cultures and attract the best talent.

Why not be one of them?

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by Shopping King Louie

Are Self-assessments a Waste of Everyone’s Time?

Ugh. The dreaded self-assessment! Employees hate filling them out and managers aren’t quite sure what to do with them. Many on both sides will find themselves wondering if employee self-assessments are a useless, redundant activity.

If you’re in the yes camp on this one, it’s understandable. But perhaps you might want to start seeing them (and using them) in a new way.

There are two sides to every story

Employees may be asking themselves, “Why do I have to fill this stupid thing out? It’s my supervisor’s job to review my performance. Not mine.” And yet these same employees may come out of a one-sided performance review wondering if their boss even knows what they do all day.

The truth of the matter is that there are two perspectives going on at any given time. And unless workplace communication is interactive, clear, and happening on a regular basis, those two perspectives may not cross paths much. This is where a self-assessment can come in handy.

Upsides for employers

Alignment: Having your employees do self-assessments gives you a window into how they view their role, their priorities, their performance, and their strengths and weaknesses. If your team’s perspective doesn’t match what you’re seeing or what you expect, now you have an opportunity to talk about it and to create a plan to bring everyone to the same page. If your respective visions aren’t in alignment, that’s a problem. And one you may never hear about without this simple exercise.

Insight: Most leaders are responsible for more than just one person. In some cases, significantly more. Chances are you don’t have time to keep track of each of your reports’ actions and activities on a regular basis. Failures you will likely hear about, because they often interfere with progress. But every day successes can often slip by unnoticed.

Empowering your employees to track their own progress and results not only requires them to be more aware of and accountable for their progress, it also gives you additional insight and details. For even more impact, make sure your assessment encourages honest feedback on the challenges of the position. This will and alert you to specific issues that may be holding your team back.

Focus: A well done self-assessment won’t look like a freestyle diary entry. It will be a tailored questionnaire designed to track employee progress, successes, and challenges. To maximize the value of the exercise, you’ll want to create a self-assessment that addresses goals, priorities, processes, results, training, and career development. Give your employees enough time to thoughtfully fill out their assessments and turn them in well in advance of your meeting. This will help bring focus and structure to your performance management process.

Benefits for employees

The self-assessment process may seem uncomfortable for many. But evaluating yourself in the context of your work can have some positive upsides.

Establishing your worth: It’s easy to get caught up in the busy day to day of simply “doing your job.” If someone were to ask you spontaneously at the end of the day/week/month/year what you accomplished during that time period, you might just draw a complete blank. But filling out a self-assessment requires you to carefully review what you’ve been working on and what you’ve accomplished.

You may be pleasantly surprised at just how much you contributed to your team and your organization. Not only does this build confidence, it allows you to articulate your value and advocate for your future career path— at your current or future employer.

Creating a record: Not all supervisors are good about providing proper feedback and reviews. Proactively conducting a self-assessment will create a record of your performance, and a paper trail to back it up. If your boss is a fan of pushing off formal reviews or not doing them at all, a self-assessment can be a great way to bring up the subjects you want to discuss in another forum or with another manager or career mentor. Having this record will also help you update your resume if and when the time comes.

Providing perspective: Ideally, you and your manager will be on the same page about your job description, expectations, goals, and processes. But that’s not always the case. Taking the time to document your understanding of your role in the organization, what tasks and results are most critical, the key challenges you face, and how you see your position evolving can be enlightening not just for you, but for leadership as well.

Your experience and knowledge of the position puts you in a unique spot to offer constructive feedback and ideas. They key word here is constructive. If you decide to use your self-assessment as a vehicle to list off all of your complaints, it’s not going to serve you well. But if you use it to confirm, clarify, and develop your role, both you and your manager can benefit greatly.

What are you waiting for?

If you’re an employer, create an employee self-assessment system and start putting it to good use. If you’re an employee, stop dreading filling yours out! Instead, treat it like a helpful advocacy and communication tool it was meant to be.

Content provided by
Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by WAYHOME studio

20 Things That Matter to Your Employees

It’s no secret that many businesses are struggling to find and keep good employees. A common refrain is that this is due to a strong economy and low unemployment rate. And these factors are most certainly at play. But at the end of the day, employees choose to stay or leave for a variety of reasons.

Is there a way to make your organizational turnover magically disappear? No. But there are really just two basic steps to recruiting and retaining great employees:

Find out what they care about.
Do your best to provide it.

If you want to hang onto your best people, it serves you well to find out what they value and begin to shape your corporate culture around those key things.

What are employees looking for?

Don’t get stuck in the mindset that a paycheck is the only thing that matters. Yes, compensation is important. And it still ranks near the top of the list when it comes to reasons to take or leave a new position. But today’s employees care about a whole lot of things. And unlike during the recession, they aren’t afraid to venture out looking for new opportunities that provide them.

Lots of research has been done on what employees want out of their jobs and careers. If you want to take a direct approach that applies specifically to your team, business and industry, ask your employees what matters most to them. Survey your entire team regularly and commit to conducting exit and stay interviews with your best employees.

If you want some quick answers based on employee satisfaction research and studies, we’ve got you covered.

Here’s a list of 20 things that show up time and time again on the list of things employees want and need from their employers in order to be happy and satisfied at work.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Find out what it means to employees. Hint: Fair, honest, and respectful treatment of all employees at all levels has become a basic expectation.
Fair and adequate compensation – Employees will accept lower salaries in exchange for other meaningful things, but at the end of the day they need to feel valued AND be able to make rent.
Comprehensive benefits – Healthcare is becoming a larger driver of job choice and satisfaction. Today’s job seekers are expecting to see benefits information listed up front in job postings, and they are using that information to make career decisions.
Career development – Dead end jobs are so yesterday! If your employees can’t see a path for the future within your organization, they’ll start looking elsewhere.
Trust – Levels of consumer and employee trust are at an all-time low. A culture of transparency will go a long way toward increasing staff loyalty and engagement.
Meaning – Your employees want to be connected to something bigger than their To Do list. They want to work for companies who are doing good in the world, and they want to know how their work contributes to that vision.
Flexibility – Employees are balancing a variety of responsibilities, both at work and at home.
Balance – More and more people are prioritizing a healthy balance of work and rest. Your staff is willing to work hard, but they can’t (and won’t) do it 24 hours a day.
Recognition – Feeling valued and appreciated is critical to keeping your team happy. This doesn’t have to mean constant praise or raises. But they need to feel that their work is important and that they are valued both as people and contributors.
Communication – Poor communication and lack of information are top complaints of unhappy employees. It’s a basic thing that is often overlooked. Don’t be that employer.
Culture – Nothing chases good employees away faster than a toxic manager or culture. Tolerating a negative environment and destructive behaviors will encourage bad employees to stay and good employees to leave.
Leadership – Organizations with weak leadership will have a hard time hanging onto strong employees. Lack of clear direction, goals, and expectations leads to lack of engagement. Bottom line: positive, motivated employees want to work for positive, motivated leaders.
Autonomy – Employees want to feel like their ideas matter and that they are capable of running projects and making decisions. Micromanagement will crush employee innovation, creativity, and initiative. It will also destroy engagement and morale.
Teamwork – An environment of support and collaboration is far superior than working alone or in a vacuum. Even the most independently motivated workers want to know there’s a capable team behind them they can count on.
Technology – Your employees want to be good at their jobs, and they expect to be given the tools to do so. Outdated tools and processes will quickly frustrate those who strive for high performance and continued improvement.
Training – Developing your employee skill sets doesn’t just help you and your company. It shows your employees that they are worth investing in. And it keeps their work from becoming monotonous, boring, or stagnant.
Diversity – Employees come in all shapes, colors, sizes, and preferences. Your employees crave variety and so should you. Not only do diverse teams perform better, they open the door to a wider pool of talent.
Sustainability – Think people aren’t concerned about the long-term survival of their jobs, companies, communities, and the planet? Wrong. Sustainability has become a catch phrase for a reason, and today’s employees are factoring corporate social responsibility into their career choices.
Integrity – For better or worse, employers lead by example. Increasing numbers of employees are looking for employers who demonstrate things like honesty, fairness, and equality, and they can tell the difference between companies who talk a good game and actually follow through.
Security – Employees want to be part of financially sound and stable organizations. Yes, today’s workforce is mobile, but it’s not just about random job hopping. Career moves and decisions are often based on forward motion, increased opportunities, and the ability to get ahead financially. A chaotic, unpredictable, or volatile environment won’t feel like a safe bet.

How do you measure up?

Is your organization committed to providing some these kinds of things? If not, it’s time to start— unless you secretly enjoy higher turnover, lower productivity, and a constant struggle to find good people.

In that case, forget about this list and keep on churning through your staff. Your competitors will be more than happy to snatch up your best employees.

Photo by WAYHOME studio

Just Be a Better Healthcare Consumer, Will You?

As healthcare woes continue for businesses and individuals alike, there’s growing sentiment from some benefits brokers that patients just need to become better consumers of healthcare. But there are others who realize it’s not that simple, and who are committed to shouldering some of that responsibility— and making a difference.

Common healthcare consumer advice sounds something like this:

Spend more time shopping around!
Put as much thought and effort into looking for a surgeon as you do into looking for a car! Or a microwave! Or some other fill-in-the-blank item!
Get recommendations on hospitals and doctors!
Do price comparisons on procedures!
Just be healthy to start with!

Often, these things are said with much vigor and enthusiasm. And many exclamation points! As if it’s a simple, basic idea no one has thought of yet. Or as in, “Why aren’t people doing this already?!?!?!”

Well, for lots of reasons. Including the fact that the current healthcare landscape makes it nearly impossible.

It ain’t that simple

When employees think about employee benefits, they see themselves as patients, not as consumers. And that’s a very different dynamic.

Consumers have choices. And time. And alternative options.

Need a new car?

You’re not going to die if it doesn’t happen today. And you probably know a mechanic or two who can give you some pretty solid advice. You could also check out the latest Consumer Reports, which will provide extremely detailed information on which cars perform the best on every factor imaginable. Once you’ve decided what you want, there are all kinds of places you can go to make that purchase, and the MSRP and Kelley Blue Book values make it easy to know if you’re getting hosed or not. More importantly, if you don’t want to rush this purchase, you don’t have to. You can take the bus. Or carpool. Or get a Lyft.

Now, let’s say your appendix goes out.

It happens pretty quickly and you’re in extreme pain. And let’s be honest, it’s probably the middle of the night. Decision making is impaired at best, and comparison shopping is out of the question. There’s one, maybe two hospitals in your area. No sense in getting a recommendation or asking how much an appendectomy costs. You’re stuck with the doctor on call— and whatever random price point the facility decides to set. What’s it based on? You have no clue. You can request an itemized bill after the fact, but you’ll have to jump through hoops to get it. And then what? There’s no option to get your money or your old appendix back. There is only an arduous battle over charges, coverage, networks, and payment plans.

Comparing patients to consumers only goes so far

Patients are often at an extreme disadvantage, even when they don’t need emergency surgery.

The system isn’t set up to be patient friendly. It’s set up to be profit friendly.

And cumbersome
And inefficient
And mysterious

Have you ever tried to shop around for a doctor? There isn’t much to go on. Personal anecdotes from friends, relatives and the Internet— where we all know everyone is super reasonable.

Go ahead! Try to come up with a Consumer Reports style matrix with physician and hospital ratings, success and failure rates, accurate pricing, and comprehensive data based on specific experiential factors. An experienced employee benefits broker may be able to gain access to these kinds of numbers, but the typical healthcare consumer is straight out of luck.

Being better consumers of healthcare is difficult

Here are a few key reasons why:

1.) Lack of data

Navigating the healthcare system is nebulous at best, nightmarish at worst. Medical charges are based on a variety of factors that patients have little control over or even knowledge of: Contracts between doctors and hospitals, hospitals and drug stores, drug stores and pharmaceutical companies, employers and insurance providers, insurance providers and care providers, and the list goes on.

Plus, there’s that little thing called the Chargemaster, a comprehensive collection of prices for everything from alcohol swabs and IV bags to spinal surgeries and heart transplants. But here’s the fun part: Chargemaster pricing isn’t standardized and costs vary wildly from hospital to hospital. Historically, this information wasn’t even available to patients!

Recent regulations now require hospitals to post and update their price lists online. This may seem like a good fix, but it’s not as helpful as it sounds. This information can be extremely difficult to decipher, and exactly how these charges are calculated for each hospital remains a mystery.

Long story short: Your average Joe or Jane patient does not have access to the information necessary to make rational healthcare choices and decisions.

2.) Lack of power

The doctor/patient relationship is not an egalitarian one. The patient is sick, scared, and in perhaps in pain. They have no idea what is wrong or how to fix it. The doctor has all the knowledge, experience, authority, and power.

And yet somehow the frightened, confused, sick person is expected to take charge of the situation and become an informed consumer. How good are you at research, communication, and standing up for yourself when you have the flu? Probably not nearly as effective as when you’re well.

Expecting patients to take charge when they are feeling most vulnerable isn’t realistic. Their reasoning and decision making have been compromised. They just want to be taken care of. They want to put trust in their doctors and caregivers, not question everything they do.

3.) Lack of resources

If you’re lucky, you may be able to delay your elective surgery long enough to shop around. If you’re really lucky, you may have found a way to access reliable information on the best place to have it done. If you’re exponentially lucky, you have all of the time and resources you need to be able to go to that place.

The problem is that a lot of healthcare consumers don’t. Geographically, their options are limited. Physically, they can’t travel. Financially, they can’t afford to go to the next town or city or state. It’s quite possible they can’t even afford the visit they just had.

In a perfect world, everyone would be able to shop and spend where it makes the most sense. But in the real world, there are a whole lot of people who simply don’t have that option.

4.) Lack of control

“Just be healthier!” can be valid advice, but it’s not the ultimate answer.

The cold, hard truth is that even healthy people can become sick. Or get in a car accident. Or have a child with cancer.

Sometimes, stuff just happens. Despite the best of intentions. Blaming sick people for the cost of healthcare may seem reasonable— until that sick person is someone we know and love.

How employers (and brokers!) can help

A patient is just one person. But a business is a group of people with more resources and leverage, and access to an employee benefits advisor who knows the system inside and out.

Good brokers understand they can’t fix the problems at the core of the healthcare system.

Great brokers know they have the power to inch their way toward making positive change within it, and for the organizations and employees they are helping.

As an employer, you actually do comparison shop for healthcare. Every single year. And, you’re buying in bulk! This gives you a level of power that individual healthcare consumers don’t have. Use this leverage, and the knowledge of your benefits broker, to make choices that make sense not just for your business, but for those who need coverage and care.

Working with the right broker makes all the difference here. You can choose a broker that focuses on plans and premiums, or you can work with an advisor who is committed to helping you create the right healthcare strategy for your business and the build best benefits plan for your employees.

A quality advisor will also go the extra mile, helping to educate your workforce about the plan details, how to use it, and where to go for care— before they need it. The more your employees know upfront, the smarter choices they can make.

People really do want to be better health care consumers. They just need the tools to do it. Let’s all work together to make it happen.

Photo by Dmitriy Shironosov

Is Your Need for Speed Holding You Back?

Getting stuff done is great, right? Checking those little boxes feels super productive, and super validating. You’re happy because you’re cooking through your To Do list, and your boss will be really happy because surprise! You’re done already!

Except that you could be making more work for everybody on the team.

The myth of productivity

Many of us have been trained to think that it’s the volume and pace of our work that matters most. But in the frantic frenzy to finish first, we can miss a lot of things along the way.

I once worked with an intern who was a very stellar person. I liked her immensely. But she was super competitive and fixated on completing her work as quickly as possible. Popping her head into someone’s office to say, “I’m done! Got anything else for me?” was her favorite thing to do. Impressing people with her speed and productivity was how she demonstrated her value.

The thing is, she was so busy flying through her task list that she was skimping on processes and details. More often than not, the jobs she considered done needed to be fixed or redone. But because she would speed through those processes as well, she was often asked to do or fix things multiple times.

At this point, staff members would often get frustrated and take their tasks back. Over time, it became apparent this was more efficient than continuing to:

explain the assignments over and over
issue warnings about the consequences of mistakes
coach her on how to slow down and work more deliberately

Eventually, most of us stopped giving her anything of substance because it was easier and less risky to simply keep doing those things ourselves. I discovered I could take her for coffee instead of giving her work— and still save time in the long run!

As a result, she became the queen of mundane tasks: envelope stuffing, mail runs, office storage organization. She completed these things quickly, and with a great attitude. But at the end of the day, I’m pretty sure everyone would have liked to see her to get more out of her internship experience.

Unfortunately, her focus on speed and multitasking kept her from gaining more advanced skills and experience. And it kept us from using her to her full potential.

Slow down to improve results

Our society places a huge value on working quickly, doing multiple things as once, and being constantly accessible. But all of these things can actually cause your work to suffer.

If your team operates at a frenetic pace all the time, you could be holding your business back. People will become frustrated, mistakes will increase, and accidents will be more likely to happen. More importantly, goals that could be achieved through thoughtful intention, detailed planning, and diligent follow-through will remain unmet. And that’s no good for anybody.

So how do we retrain our brains (and our teams!) to work more carefully, thoughtfully, and efficiently?

Start single-tasking

There are lots of articles and studies about the myth of multi-tasking.

Research has shown that multitasking takes as much as 40 percent more time than focusing on one task at a time — more for complex tasks.
One study revealed that people who were considered heavy multitaskers were actually worse at sorting out relevant information from irrelevant details.
Still not convinced? Try this little exercise.

Get in the habit of focusing on a single task. Schedule time on your calendar or even set a timer if you need to. Commit to working on one thing in that time period and one thing only.

Ask questions

Is your mind starting to work on an assignment even before the person explaining it to you is finished? This is your first mistake. Pay attention. Listen carefully. Make sure you fully understand the project, the process, and the purpose.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions before and during the process. Clarity is your friend. Taking five minutes to discuss details as you go can save you tons of time in the long run. Many speedy employees have had to go back and rework things they thought were “finished” because they either jumped in too fast or didn’t slow down long enough to get the facts.

Prioritize

Yes, you have a million things to do. So does everybody else. But working in a scattershot manner won’t help you get the right things done at the right time. For that, you need a plan.

Work with your team to determine which items are the most important and the most time sensitive. Rank your daily or weekly tasks so that you know which ones to funnel your time, efforts, and energy into. Choose one thing that you will get done, no matter what. If you find yourself getting sidetracked or distracted, refocus on your priority item of the moment.

Reduce distractions

Even with the best intentions, we all get distracted. But some of us are better than others at letting those distractions in— or keeping them out. Are you constantly checking your phone, texts, and email? If so, you’re using up valuable time and brain space switching back and forth between your inputs and outputs.

Questions, phone calls, and emails take a huge toll on your focus.

According to one research study, it takes approximately 20 minutes to return to task after an in-person interruption, 15 minutes for a phone call interruption, and 64 seconds after an email interruption.
The same study found that workers were dealing with email interruptions about every five minutes.
This means we are wasting one out of every six minutes per day on email interruptions alone— not including phone calls and in-person questions!

Want to focus on a task? Put your phone on Do Not Disturb. Turn off your email alerts. Hide your Slack. The world won’t end if you’re offline for 15 or 20 minutes. And you’re much more likely to make real progress.

Quick vs. Quality

If you’re having brain surgery, do you want it to go quickly? Or do you want it to go well?

There’s a big difference here. And I think we can all agree which one sounds more appealing.

Photo by Earl Walker