In a recent piece published by startup-focused, European media company Sifted, the Chief Marketing Officer for a mental wellness platform offered some interesting thoughts about how best to conceptualize employee benefit package composition and where to best incorporate creativity and outside-the-box offerings into the mix, in addition to providing some creative examples. 

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According to Sancar Sahin, CMO and Co-founder of Oliva Health, there are three categories of employee benefits that companies need to be thinking about in order to have a more holistic view of their package offerings.

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The first category is the foundational tier benefit offerings, which should help employees stay productive and in good health. If an employee isn’t able to properly function at the required level because of disability or illness - whether bodily or mental - that can obviously have far reaching and sometimes compounding effects that inhibit that person's and the company’s ability to operate. 

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The range of offerings that fall into this category of benefit is quite large, including many of the core offerings available in most benefit packages, like access to healthcare and psychological services, as well as other more tangential benefits that can help facilitate employee health and/or productivity, like comprehensive child/senior care support and providing healthy snack options in the break room. 

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The second category of employee benefits are those that further instill and/or reflect company values, like schedule flexibility and professional development opportunities, which underscore employee autonomy, employer trust, and a commitment to continuous improvement and growth on behalf of both employers and employees for example. 

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The third group of benefits for plan designers to consider are the benefits that allow employees to thrive beyond the bare minimum of being capable of meeting expectations, but instead becoming the versions of themselves best equipped to achieve both professional and personal goals. This third category of benefits is often the best place to get creative and explore ideas/perks/benefits that may be less common or untested. 

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When it comes to creativity, of course, coming up with a good idea is typically easier said than done, which is why it’s often advisable to start with an existing idea and tweaking it to better meet your needs and/or repurposing it in a different context to achieve a different aim altogether. 

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Some of the examples of creative employee benefits that were highlighted in the piece are broadly applicable and could be easily incorporated into existing benefits packages, like ‘pawternity’ leave for example, which is one brewery’s practice of giving employees one week of paid leave once during the course of their employment to take care of a newly adopted rescue animal. 

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Other examples of creative perks from the article are a bit more specific to the company that devised them, like the e-commerce brand that awards employees who stay with the company for 15 years with busts of their own heads delivered by the company’s newest hires. While that kind of quirky gift and ceremony is not so easily transferable to a company where it didn’t organically grow from an inside joke, it serves as a reminder of the value that can be mined by leaning into the cultural touchstones that naturally arise out of your own company culture. 

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While there is no way to guarantee the generation of a creative idea when it comes to employee benefits strategy, of course, utilizing this framework to conceptualize your company’s employee benefits strategy overall and seeking out creative benefit and perk ideas that help employees thrive in their work and personal lives is a great place to start, whether borrowing good ideas from outside the company or formalizing organic ideas that are generated internally.

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You can find that piece and read more about this topic here.

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According to a recent survey from institutions including Stanford University and the University of Chicago, more than 25% of work hours during the month of February 2023 were clocked by someone working remotely.

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Despite many widely publicized, company-led pushes to get employees back in the office, remote work clearly has a strong foothold in the workforce mix that seems unlikely to change significantly any time in the near future. 

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It's also worth noting that the workers who are avoiding commutes, saving on gas expenses, and spending more time in the places where they’re most comfortable as a result of remote work are not the only beneficiaries of the rise of off-site and hybrid working arrangements, with the same study finding that working remotely increased productivity by 13%.

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With the proportional balance of employees shifting away from in-office workers, some managers across a number of industries are finding themselves on relatively unfamiliar ground when it comes to integrating remote workers into their traditional management workflow and aligning everyone’s goals and incentives. 

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To those ends, these are 5 potential ways to better motivate remote workers in order to keep your company operations running smoothly regardless of where employees do most of their work:

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1. Set goals that are achievable. The fastest way to burn out your remote employees is to ask too much of their time, which can be more difficult to gauge when those employees are off-site - especially with new hires who may not yet feel comfortable raising the issue even if they are overloaded with work. 
2. Establish a clear incentive program. Not only can well-constructed incentive programs help make expectations clear for remote workers and better align priorities among a spatially disconnected working unit, it can also further encourage remote employees to keep up the good work via financial rewards and/or other earned perks that coincide with work-related progress.
3. Enable transparent feedback in both directions. In order for remote workers to grow within their roles, they not only need regular check-ins and evaluations of their work product as it progresses and evolves, but they also need regular outlets through which they can raise issues, concerns, and address questions they have that might not be obvious from an office-centric perspective. 
4. Include praise and recognition among regular feedback. Out-of-office employees don’t always experience reward for quality work the same way their in-office counterparts might via social recognition or personal expressions of gratitude from teammates for making their jobs easier, so it’s especially important to provide platforms to recognize achievements and contributions made by remote employees that incorporate in-office employees as well, and vice versa. 
5. Encourage physical health and mental well being. Performance on the job is directly linked to health - both of the body and mind - so employers are well served by actively building the environment and creating the necessary conditions to best enable employees to tend to these needs as they see fit, including arranging regular mental health activities as well as expressing clear support for employees to utilize their sick leave and mental health days afforded by the stated company policies. 

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Putting into practice strategies like these can significantly help managers and HR professionals better integrate remote employees both into their respective teams and the larger company as a whole. Setting goals that are in line with employee time and ability expectations as well as initiating incentive programs, providing feedback that’s transparent and includes both praise and identifies areas for improvement, and prioritizing health across the organization will benefit not just your remote workers, but also everyone else who relies on the quality and timeliness of their work. 

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You can read more about how to motivate remote workers here.

Several weeks ago, more than 400 professionals from all over the insurance industry gathered for the 2023 Global Insurance Symposium to share thoughts and ideas on some of the potential opportunities as well as potential pitfalls that the industry currently faces.

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The theme of this year’s event was “Thriving In A Changing World” and perhaps unsurprisingly given this change-centric focus, issues involving emerging technologies popped up in a number of the main symposium topics, such as the role artificial intelligence will play in shaping the industry going forward, how data can better inform the regulatory environment, and the nature of the symbiotic relationship between insurtech companies and insurance carriers.

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Still, although tech was certainly a hot topic, some other main areas of discussion and focus were considerably more analog and included the important role that people still play and will continue to play in the insurance business as well as how crucial it is for companies to build resilient portfolios, especially in times of financial and economic uncertainty. 

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In terms of AI, the need for comprehensive regulation was often the bottom line to which speakers and attendees alike kept returning. While many state insurance commissioners that were present acknowledged the amazing potential for artificial intelligence to increase efficiency and expand fairness in the insurance market, they also repeatedly stressed the need for transparency and accountability when it comes to managing compliance and ensuring bias doesn’t become even more formalized via AI processing. 

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The apparent wide-ranging willingness to allow more and better data to drive changes in regulation was another common idea that emerged from the event. This sentiment was shared by panelists from insurance regulatory bodies as well as others who recognize the potential that greater incorporation of data into regulatory decision-making has, which panelists believe will should ultimately yield easily digestible rules that both protect consumers and also enable innovation and fair competition among insurers. 

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The importance of collaboration was probably the main message conveyed by insurtech executives, who underscored the mutually beneficial partnership that exists between insurtech companies and carriers, which they stressed must be strengthened and expanded upon in order to optimize innovation and the implementation of the resulting technological advancements.

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Beyond the important role of tech throughout the industry going forward, however, one message that insurance professionals repeatedly emphasized is that people remain the most important asset in the insurance business and that any company not investing significant time and resources into providing opportunities for employee growth and development are missing the bigger picture. Upskilling and creating an environment that encourages innovation and knowledge dissemination among and between employee ranks were some of the specific means discussed for companies to maximize the value they have in their staff’s abilities and experience. 

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Proper preparation for turbulent economic conditions was another running theme, with panelists reminding attendees that insurance remains an effective hedge against destabilized markets, and that maintaining healthy balance sheets and resilient portfolios is all the more important in the event of economic downturn. At the same time, however, periods of turmoil also represent prime opportunities for innovation and for carriers to expand upon their product offerings to better suit the needs of customers as they evolve to the changing circumstances, as well. 

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While change may be inevitable, and the insurance industry is no exception of course, how one approaches that change can vary quite widely. When it comes to thriving in the face of that inevitable change, the consensus coming out of the Global Insurance Symposium this year seems to be pretty strongly in favor of anticipating the coming challenges to whatever degree possible and embracing them. 

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You can read more about these topics and the 2023 Global Insurance Symposium here.

Each month, Mployer Advisor collects and presents some of the most relevant and most pressing recent changes in law, compliance, and policy in areas related to employee benefits, health care, and human resources. 

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OSHA Wants Your Input To Craft New Heat Exposure Safety Standards 

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is collecting data and conducting research into heat-related illness and injuries that occur on the job with an aim to establish a new standard that can help reduce the number of incidences of these kinds of heat-caused accidents. 

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As one component of their research process, OSHA will be hosting Small Business Advocacy Review Panels this summer in order to bring together commercial and governmental representatives to share their insight and experience with the aim of helping shape the new standards while creating minimal disruption to business workflow. 

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While representatives from any and all industries are welcome to participate, the most-sought-after input is from people involved in the industries where heat exposure illnesses are most common and dangerous, such as agriculture, landscaping, construction, manufacturing, warehousing, oil and gas, utilities, waste management, and food services - particularly restaurants with hot kitchen working spaces.

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You can find more information about OSHA’s development of new heat-related workplace standards and how you and your company can participate here. 

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Minnesota Creates New PFML Coverage Statewide

Minnesota is the latest state to enact new paid family and medical leave legislation. 

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Under the newly signed law, employees will be able to take up to 12 weeks for personal medical issues per year as well as 12 weeks per year for caretaking, bonding with newborns, managing emergencies, and other qualifying circumstances. That said, in any given year, each employee is limited to 20 weeks of paid leave total under this bill.

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These new provisions will become available to qualifying applicants beginning in the fall of 2026.

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You can read more about this legislation including how payments are calculated here. 

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New Legal Battle Highlights Common Misconception About Cybersecurity Coverage

A medical practice in North Carolina had submitted what it believed to be all the necessary paperwork in order to renew its cybersecurity insurance, but the policy lapsed just two days before the company suffered a serious ransomware attack. 

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Given that recovery from the attack cost the practice more than $300 thousand on top of nearly $700 thousand in lost revenue while their internal systems were out of operation, the practice is now suing their insurance provider for negligence in failing to inform them of the lapse in coverage with sufficient notice to prevent it.

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While the insurer has not yet commented publicly on the matter, a cybersecurity expert in the field claimed that the depth of infrastructure analysis and risk assessment required before a policy can be issued or renewed would have made it unrealistic to renew a policy effective immediately, and any accidental lapses/gaps in coverage as a result can instantly become extremely costly mistakes.

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You can read more about that case and its implications here. 

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2022 was a banner year for the cyber insurance market, which saw premiums grow by 50% - bringing the size of the total market to $7.2 billion. Much of that growth is a direct result of improved underwriting practices which led to better loss ratios that were down by 23 points (from 66% to 43%) on standalone policies and down 18 points on packaged policies, falling from 66% to 48%.

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This growth continues a trend of steep upward trajectory over the past three years during which time premiums written in the cyber insurance space have tripled on a wave of increasingly high demand. The growing demand for cyber insurance is inspired in part of course by the perceived threat that hackers and other bad actors working online pose as well as the increasing damage that those bad actors are capable of doing with more and more business processes relying on digital data, cloud access, and other vulnerable platforms in order to function. 

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In actuality, ransomware attacks were down in 2022 from years prior, but those numbers are expected to rebound to previous expectations throughout 2023. Further, as the cyber environment continues growing in both complexity and user base, magnified by the emerging risks posed by artificial intelligence, most experts forecast the demand for cyber insurance to keep climbing for the foreseeable future. 

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Some of the main factors that made possible the significant improvement in calendar-year results recently in the cyber insurance market are ongoing rate increases, increased retention amounts, better-performing data-guided risk selection processes, and more disciplined underwriting, which has involved deploying several tactics including reduced limits.

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Another emerging trend is the movement in the market toward standalone policies, which now constitute more than 7 out of 10 cyber insurance policies that are being written. In fact, more standalone cyber insurance policies were written last year than the total amount of all cyber insurance policies written in 2021, and this trend toward standalone policies is generally considered a positive development as it can lead to reduced disputes and litigation expenses. 

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Even with ransomware attacks down last year, 3 out of 4 reported claims were still first-party claims. Further, a growing proportion of those claims coming from policy-holders were with regard to compromised business email issues, although the number of third-party claims certainly remains significant, as well.

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Though the cyber insurance industry is evidently evolving right alongside cyberspace itself, there are still some major systemic risks in the cyber insurance market that should not be ignored. While property/catastrophe coverage in any given event is typically limited to a geographic region, large or small, the scale of that risk is very different from the global exposure and injury that a single worldwide cyber catastrophe could potentially create, just as one example. Cyber coverage as it pertains to war is another gray area with difficult-to-assess risk that will become increasingly relevant as the means and methods of war are increasingly accessed and implemented via remote, digital connections. 

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Cyber insurance has clearly come a very long way from its infancy in the relative early days of the first dot com boom, but, as with the contents of the internet, crafting cyber insurance policies to provide optimum coverage will likely remain a work in progress indefinitely. As long as the internet continues to change shape and there are those who will exploit any resulting vulnerabilities, cyber insurance will continue adapting too, and demand will likely continue to grow in proportion to that increasingly varied and prevalent supply. 

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You can read more about this topic here. 

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Motherly released its 2023 State of Motherhood survey, which includes a number of insights about what’s working and what’s not for working moms.

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For one, mothers are leaving jobs and in some cases exiting the workforce at a quickening pace, with 25% of respondents identifying as stay-at-home parents, which is up 10% from the 15% of respondents who identified as stay-at-home parents in the 2022 survey. In total, 18% of respondents had left their job or the workforce entirely within the last year.

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Given that more than 40% of women who left their jobs (or the workforce in general) did so either to be with their children or because they were unable to find childcare, it’s no surprise that the best way to entice these job-leaving mom’s back to your company (or the workforce in general) is to allow for schedule flexibility according to almost 2 out of 3 respondents (64%). 

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More than half of respondents (52%) also cited access to affordable childcare as a top factor that could make returning to work eminently more feasible. Access to affordable childcare is a major consideration for mothers currently in the workforce, as well, with nearly half of respondents relying on outside childcare in order to meet their work demands, and 63% paying for more than 30 hours of outside childcare per week.

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For those respondents who do currently have access to childcare, most are satisfied with the quality of the service provided, yet a substantial portion amounting to more than 1 out of 5 respondents is not satisfied, and for nearly 7 out of 10 of respondents who aren’t satisfied with their childcare, cost is the main factor. More than 2 out of 3 respondents spend in excess of 1 thousand dollars on childcare each month, while 18% of respondents spent between 2 and 3 thousand dollars each month, and 13% spent more than 3 thousand dollars on childcare expenses monthly. In total, more than 3 out of 10 women are spending over 2 thousand dollars each month on childcare. 

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The cost of childcare is having effects on working moms that extend outside their pocketbooks, as well. Some of those effects involve well-being, both physical and financial, given that 33% of survey respondents say that childcare expenses are often or always a source of distress. Businesses’ bottom lines also bear the brunt of some of this burden whether the company is providing employees with any childcare support or not, considering that more than half of working mothers (53%) claimed that childcare costs had made them think about leaving the workforce altogether, which will obviously impact businesses and the market in multiple ways. 

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It’s also important to note just how important childcare has become, especially in recent years in the wake of the pandemic’s onset. In light of both a heightened sensitivity about presenting illness symptoms in school as well as lingering Covid variants on top of a particularly bad resurgence of flu and RSV in 2022, 6 in 10 respondents reported having had to miss 6 or more days staying home to take care of sick children, equating to more than a full workweek away from their job as a result of insufficient childcare. That kind of lost time and efficiency in operational workflow compounds over time as it seeps down to your company’s bottom line. 

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At a time when the labor market remains critically tight, it’s important to remember that the very same labor shortage applies to childcare services too, and the inability of your employees to access those services will have repercussions that go well beyond just the families that are directly impacted.

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You can read more about this topic here.

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