The Most Overlooked Critical Piece of an Employee Wellness Plan

Employee wellness is catching on. Organizations are creating employee wellness teams and displaying wellness posters throughout the facilities for their employees. Some employers invite their employees outside for an additional 15 minutes at lunch for Friday Frisbee. Others hand out pedometers and offer “Lunch & Learns” for employees on healthy eating and how to read food labels.

Notice, however, the key word – Employee. If all of the focus is on the employee then our wellness programs may fall well short of the intended results. The most successful wellness initiatives target the employee’s family in addition to the employee.

Why it is critical to target the employee’s family in wellness initiatives?

1.       Family members are

What Seinfeld Teaches Us About Employee Appreciation

Well informed managers, CEOs, HR Professionals and business owners know effective Employee Appreciation pays off in better customer service ratings, less turnover, higher productivity and increased profit.  The key, however, is knowing how to provide Effective Employee Appreciation.

An episode from Seinfeld illustrates how our appreciation must be personalized in order to be effective. In The Economics of Seinfeld we see a humorous 3-minute illustration of Kramer succeeding where Jerry Seinfeld fails in expressing friendship.

This clip provides the springboard for…

Four Simple Truths About Expressing Employee Appreciation:

1.   Employees desire more than recognition.

Jerry remembered Elaine’s birthday. While many would praise him for acknowledging the birthday, this scene shows he failed miserably.

What Sophisticated Employers Know

Who are the enlightened and sophisticated employers? According to Andy Webber, President of the National Business Coalition on Health, they are the employers who “see health management not as an operating cost but an investment in workforce health and productivity.”

Dee W. Edington wrote Zero Trends with the purpose of demonstrating that the improved health status of employees will not only reduce healthcare costs for the company, but also increase performance and productivity in the workplace. His book is about a new model of healthcare that defines healthcare as a combination of illness and wellness strategies that affect the bottom line of organizations far beyond simply striving to reduce the cost of insurance premiums. He contends “health management is a health strategy, but equally important, health management is a business and economic strategy.”

Avowing the cost of health is less than the cost of disease, Edington maintains that an unhealthy workforce cost an organization more than just

The Emotionally Intelligent Manager

I recently shared with the Accountant at our firm that it might be good if she was in a negative mood while working. While I said this in jest, there was an element of truth behind my remark. I made this comment shortly after reading The Emotionally Intelligent Manager by David R. Caruso & Peter Salovey.  Negative moods, I discovered, can be productive—particularly for those who are engaged in deductive reasoning problems, such as checking financial statements for errors. Positive moods, they contend, are more helpful for inductive problem solving where generating new and interesting ideas is needed. According to this line of thought it would be best to be in a positive mood if you are working on a new marketing plan and to be in a negative mood if you are

Supercapitalism Got Me Thinking

I must admit I strayed outside my typical reading boundaries when I picked up Robert B. Reich’s Supercapitalism. I am the richer for it.

Instead of casting blame for the economic maladies of the United States, Reich defines and clarifies the issues that have merged to create the gross inequality of wealth in America. He plainly displays the logical consequences that flow from our everyday decisions to increase profit, ROI, and save a dollar on T-shirts. His concern is that capitalism has triumphed as the expense of

Four, Possibly Five, Stages toward Embracing Diversity

“All those ethnics should just go back to their own homeland.” I’ve heard this statement several times. Yet, each time I hear it I chuckle because the person making the statement doesn’t realize that they, themselves, are an “ethnic.” Each of us has an ethnicity. Each of us is a part of some culture or race that provides some type of ethnic identity. Therefore, what is this person trying to say?

We could rephrase their statement like this, “All those people who are different from me should go back to their own home and people.” The bizarre thing about the people I hear making these statements is that they must have forgotten their American history. If they listened in school they would have learned that their ancestors are not from around here either. Yet, here lies the underlying problem. Some people simply do not like others just because they are different–the “different” referring to a different race, culture or ethnicity. The differences may be dress, food, language or dialect, skin color, communication nuances or any one of a million other things that make us dissimilar.

In this brief article my aim is not to validate the whys of embracing ethnic diversity. Rather, I begin with an underlying conviction that we should embrace ethnic diversity. Like an orchestra with the symphonic harmony of the percussion section, the brass and woodwinds, a healthy society entails an unabashed unity in diversity. Below are four, and perhaps five, stages toward embracing diversity.

Dwight Schrute Has Joined Our Team

I knew if I purchased the Dwight Schrute bobble head doll I would eventually find good use for it. It was pre-Christmas and online sales had an in-your-face presence. I saw the bobble head for 50% off and knew and I had to get one. I did, but what would I do with it?

Say What You Need to Say

Could it be that your organization is prevented from moving forward because of a lack of communication? If so, could it be that the lack of communication is born out of a desire to respect authority? Like many young Americans, I was taught that we are to respect those in authority. I still believe this. However, I now know “showing respect” doesn’t mean I idly keep silent and allow someone to blindly fail. For example, take the 1982 Air Florida plane crash outside Washington, DC.

The cold January crash provides a poignant illustration of how the errors of teamwork and communication can have devastating results. On takeoff, the 737 came down directly on top

Fire A Client?

Should you ever get rid of a client? I don’t know how you would answer that question, but I can tell you that I would answer it differently after reading Patrick Lencioni’s “Getting Naked.”

In the current economy, there are many reasons why businesses would want to keep any client on the books. Clients lead to revenue. Revenue leads to paychecks. We like paychecks. Many of us would say that we don’t have the luxury of selecting only the best clients. 

Lencioni raises a good question, however: Should we get rid of bad clients? Before we can answer this question, we have to define

HR Policies on Entertainment Expenses

This blog is a supplement to my earlier blog, Five Ways Your Business Can Engage in the Battle Against Sexual Exploitation of Children. Here you will find samples HR policies restricting reimbursements for entertainment expenses that include adult entertainment.