A few years ago, the Walt Disney Co. launched a Twitter hashtag, #CastCompliment, for the express purpose of promoting the good work their employees do. The millions of visitors to Disney parks are encouraged to tweet about their positive experiences with performers who embody the company’s movie and TV characters across the grounds.

“The employee’s supervisor retweets the compliment, along with a picture of the employee,” according to Inc.com. Bruce Jones, a senior programming director at Disney who blogged about the program, called it “an opportunity to create some magic with the positive tweets.”

That kind of recognition—praise for good work that fellow employees and even the public can see—may be a surprisingly effective way to help address a disturbing trend in business today. Though unemployment in the U.S. is at about its lowest point in 50 years, worker satisfaction remains alarmingly low. Gallup, the polling organization, "reminds us every couple of years that nearly 70% of employees are actively disengaged” at work, reported Forbes. The Conference Board, a business think tank, found that only 51% of American workers report overall satisfaction with their job, according to its recent poll.

Companies have strong business reasons for keeping employees happy, since it reduces employee turnover and boosts productivity. Many factors play into worker satisfaction, including compensation and benefits, but "the No. 1 factor in job satisfaction is not the amount of pay but whether or not the individual feels appreciated and valued for the work they do," wrote psychologists Gary Chapman and Paul White in The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace.

Recognition can be a big part of showing appreciation, according to a study in the Harvard Business Review. Among the 512 U.S. employees surveyed who said their company has strong recognition practices, 87% reported feeling “a strong relationship with their direct manager.” That number tumbles to 51% out of those workers who reported “a lack of such practices at their companies.”

“Recognition’s frequency also plays a role,” the report continued. “For those who say they receive some form of appreciation more than once a month, 82% describe a strong bond with their bosses. When that occurrence drops to less than once a month, only 63% feel those strong ties.” The study also found that public recognition in the workplace not only has “a powerful effect on those being called out, it also has a significant impact on peers who see great work being rewarded.”

If idea of public praise has proven merit, then what methods are best? The execution needs to be tailored to the organization and the worker. It can range in style from ostentatious to subtle—and even silly.

Red Velvet Events, an Austin-based company, awards a small plastic troll doll, reports Entrepreneur. During weekly staff meetings, a Red Velvet team member hands over the doll “to another employee and describes the recipient’s work efforts during the previous week. Each person who receives the doll gives it another accessory (earrings, a tattoo, a bow tie, etc.) and presents it to another team member the following week.” The “quirky tradition” reflects the company’s “fun-loving culture” and “ensures employees are consistently being recognized for their hard work by the people who see it first hand: their team.”

The team at Nooklyn, a Brooklyn-based real-estate firm focusing on apartment rentals, collectively participates in employee recognition on its digital platform. Because all the company's stakeholders are plugged in to the platform—the agents, the accountants, the legal team—they all can see how a potential closing is progressing.

Harley Courts, Nooklyn’s cofounder and CEO, says the company has incentivized teamwork by increasing commissions for members of a group who collaborate in getting a deal done. Those efforts can be seen by all. (Courts, a lifelong skateboarder, says he wanted to generate the sense of community typically found in that world, in contrast to the often individualistic nature of the real-estate trade.) When a closing is on the books at Nooklyn, it sparks a gif- and emoji-fueled celebration on the company’s Slack feed, with employees customizing the artwork to reflect certain details of the deal, including its players.

“Everyone cheers everyone on,” Courts says of the time when a closing at Nooklyn is finalized. “Everyone is psyched. … It’s so embedded in our culture that when you join, you’re like, ‘Wow, I really just went to Mars; this completely is not normal,’ especially people who come from the real-estate industry.”

Yet in giving shout-outs, managers need to be sensitive to the personalities of the recipients. Management consultant Ted Boyce says worker recognition in general is a good way for executives to get engagement out of its team members, but not everyone welcomes it. “There are some people who just don’t like that kind of attention, so something that is intended as a positive becomes a negative,” Boyce says. “They get a little embarrassed.”

At the same time, he cautions against a phenomenon he calls the “Awards-Show Syndrome,” where “those that feel that they are worthy of recognition feel left out,” he said. “So you may be recognizing one person at the expense of others who are feeling … undervalued,” Boyce observes. It takes a certain level of knowhow to carry out employee recognition successfully, he added. “What I worry about is you’ve got folks who may not have expertise in human behavior that may be going about it the wrong way.”

The right way to do it, said Joe Robinson, a noted work-life balance trainer and speaker, is to personalize the praise, offering "not just off-the-shelf ‘Way to go!’ Or ‘Great job!,’” he wrote in an email. “The key is recognition that goes to the competence, a core psychological need, of the employee.” A better way is something along the lines of “I like the way you did that job.” Such a framing “speaks to the talent and effectiveness of an employee,” Robinson said, “and that lasts, unlike the generic ‘nice work’ kind of recognition.”

The leaders at Geocaching HQ, a Seattle-based company that produces a GPS-powered, outdoor treasure-hunting game, are certainly mindful about how they recognize employees. Their managers are encouraged to ask employees how they would most like to be recognized as part of a questionnaire called a “fire starter.”

The fire starter is filled out during periodic reviews to generate expectations and “set the manager and employee up for direct success,” according to Eileen Kim, a human-resources manager at Geocaching. Other fire starter questions, according to Kim, include “What do you feel passionate about developing this year?” and “What do we need to ramp up in your role?”

The collected data about how their workers might want to be recognized has led to what Kim describes as “a public kudos system” where employees can write “Beyond the Everyday” nomination notecards for peers of their choice. “These notes are posted publicly throughout the month in our community kitchen,” Kim says, “and during our monthly company meetings, three cards are randomly selected. They are each read aloud, and the nominee and nominator get a coffee gift card to spend together.”

The methods of employee recognition at Geocaching HQ don’t stop there, and aren’t limited to direct responses to a job well done either.

When Kim recently lost her dog, the company’s pet-bereavement policy allowed her to take a week off from work. When she returned to the office, she says, her desk was covered with cards, flowers and cakes.

“My CEO actually planted a tree in my dog’s honor,” Kim says, and recounts that another employee started a GoFundMe campaign in Kim’s dog’s name to raise funds for a senior-dog rescue house. The coworker raised more than $400.

“How do you encapsulate that feeling?” Kim says, her emotions palpable in her voice. “The whole team just rallied and swarmed [around me] to make me feel supported.” Kim says that experience contributed to her feeling more like she was part of a family, as opposed to any old corporation.

Employee experiences like Kim’s may be one of the reasons Geocaching HQ has been recognized each of the last eight years by Outside magazine as one of the best places to work in the U.S.

They seem to be doing something right.

Michael Stahl is a freelance writer and editor. A former high school English teacher, he has written for Rolling Stone, Vice, The Village Voice, Narratively, Splitsider, Outside and other publications.

Workers Want Weight-Loss Drugs, But How Can Employers Pay the Bills?

When consumers see splashy TV commercials for weight-loss drugs, they often find the the pitch irresistible. But for HR and benefits executives, they may trigger an uneasy feeling. That's because the revolutionary weight-loss drugs like Wegovy bring with them both magic and mystery–the magic is how well they can work; the mystery is how to pay for them.GLP-1, or glucagon-like peptide-1, drugs have historically been used to treat diabetes. But the development of stronger drugs like Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic in recent years, and now the approval of Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound specifically for weight management, has led to a sharp increase in demand. That’s particularly true as more research emerges showing the drugs may also reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, and potentially bring other long-term health benefits. Yet the medications can cost as much as $1,000 to $1,500 per month–a price that few Americans can afford unless they have generous health-insurance coverage.And unlike expensive drugs for rare conditions, the potential number of patients for GLP-1s is vast. More than 40% of Americans have obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and that is expected to reach 50% by 2030.Many doctors are thrilled about the potential for GLP-1s to change how obesity is treated, but that puts employers–where nearly half of Americans get their health insurance–in a tricky position. Here’s what employers need to know as they consider coverage for these drugs in the quickly changing landscape:High Costs, Low CoverageWhile employer health plans widely cover GLP-1s for the purpose of treating diabetes, coverage for weight-loss purposes is much more spotty right now. A survey last fall by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans found that 27% of 205 employers covered GLP-1s for weight loss and another 13% did not yet cover them but were considering adding coverage. Meanwhile, Willis Towers Watson (WTW), a global insurance benefits-consulting company that serves many large employers, found about 38% of employers it surveyed cover the weight-loss drugs. Those that do cover them are seeing significant cost increases. The retail price for Wegovy comes out to $15,000 to $16,000 per year, and after rebates and discounts from manufacturers, health plans still pay about $9,000 per year, says Cody Midlam, a director at WTW’s pharmacy practice. The cost per member per month for GLP-1s has doubled each of the last three years, according to WTW’s analysis, amounting to an extra $11 per member per month last year, or about 9% of all pharmacy costs.Companies are aware of the research showing the drugs’ effectiveness at tackling obesity. Yet while doctors say that helping people lose weight could lead to less cardiovascular disease, fewer mental health issues, and savings from avoiding knee replacements or other surgeries related to obesity, long-term data on clinical outcomes remains limited. With high employee turnover in many industries, it’s tough for these employers to factor in potential future savings in healthcare costs over the life of the employee.“Those outcomes take a very long time to manifest,” says Midlam. “It’s not something that’s easily measurable on a short timescale when plan decisions are being made.” Andrew Witty, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, the largest U.S. insurer, said his corporate clients see the benefits, but first have to deal with the short-term costs. “We’re very positive about the potential for another tool in the toolbox to help folks manage their weight. We recognize that has potential benefits,” Witty said in the third-quarter earnings call last year. “But we’re struggling.”Employers Meet the DemandDespite the high costs and headlines about some insurance plans scrapping GLP-1 coverage, plenty of employers see the upside to covering the new obesity medications. Ninety-nine percent of companies already covering GLP-1s said they planned to continue doing so next year, according to a fall survey from Accolade, a healthcare navigation and advocacy company. Employers reported that after they added GLP-1 coverage, they saw higher employee satisfaction, increased engagement in other well-being programs, and improvements in other or comorbid health conditions. Midlam of WTW says his firm’s corporate clients want to “avoid member disruption” wherever possible.Doctors agree that should be a priority. Dan Azagury, M.D., medical director for the Stanford Lifestyle and Weight Management Center, says GLP-1s have been a “game changer” for many of his patients. “If you stop it overnight, whether it’s insurance, or financial, or shortages, the rebound is ferocious,” he said. “So it’s really very frustrating that they encounter that situation.” Some companies have expressed concerns about the idea of paying for a drug that employees essentially have to take forever to maintain its benefits. But while side effects, including vomiting and gastrointestinal issues, can be unpleasant for some people, doctors like Azagury say they know how to help patients manage them, and that they are seeing more patients have a positive response to GLP-1s than to previous generations of weight loss medications. Holistic Care, Not Just PrescriptionsEven when employers decide they want to help their employees lose weight, there are still lots of details to consider. As companies approach designing their insurance plans for 2025 and beyond, they are trying to figure out how many employees are likely to use GLP-1 drugs if coverage is offered, whether there should be limits on who can get the drugs, and what kind of requirements they should use to prove the drugs are medically necessary. Most companies that cover GLP-1s use some cost-control strategies, according to the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans survey. Many use prior authorization, step therapy during which patients must try lower-cost drugs first, or specific eligibility requirements.Typically, eligibility requirements have been tied to the standards on the FDA labels for these medications. But some employers are considering restrictions such as only covering the drugs for people with obesity but not those who are overweight, says Tracy Spencer, a pharmacy practice leader for benefits consultant Aon. If they add those limits, she warns that employers should be aware that could change or jeopardize the rebates they get from the drug manufacturers, so they need to predict whether the savings they get from limiting the drugs’ use will offset the loss of the rebates.Benefits consultants like Aon and WTW are also seeing employers shift the way they look at GLP-1 drugs to view them as one piece in a broader strategy to address cardio-metabolic issues.That might mean employers choose to cover the drugs for targeted indications, such as covering Wegovy not for weight loss on its own, but for people with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, which Medicare recently announced it would do. It can also mean pairing GLP-1 coverage with required lifestyle modifications or participation in a virtual weight-loss or coaching program. Employers often have access to virtual health programs through their pharmacy benefit managers, and many have tried these to target diabetes in recent years. The biopharmaceutical company Moderna, which offers coverage of GLP-1s for diabetes and weight management, is one company that has tried this strategy. “In 2023 we saw a spike related to weight-loss management: We looked at claims data, and after mental health, obesity and weight management were the second drivers,” Jeffrey Stohlberg, Moderna’s director of corporate benefits, said at a From Day One conference earlier this year. So the company started using the virtual weight-loss management program Wondr Health, where an employee can work with a physician specializing in weight loss. “It’s not a path to GLP-1s, but [the physicians] can provide medication for that person,” Stohlberg said. Labcorp also announced in February that it would provide U.S. employees on GLP-1s with virtual care and medication management through WeightWatchers for Business. Other companies such as Omada Health and telehealth providers like Teladoc and Ro have launched similar offerings over the last year. Medical providers agree that a holistic approach is needed, but Angela Fitch, M.D., president of the Obesity Medicine Association and co-founder and chief medical officer of the obesity-focused primary care startup knownwell, worries that requiring a standard weight-management program for every person is another barrier and potentially a waste of money if the program doesn’t have solid evidence behind it.“You can offer lifestyle [strategies] in addition to medication,” she said, “but it should be driven by that shared decision making discussion with the clinician.” If insurers want to make sure patients are getting holistic care, she would rather have them require patients to get their prescriptions from a qualified physician who does a true evaluation so that solutions can be personalized. In her role with the Obesity Medicine Association, Fitch often advises employers on their health plan designs, so she understands that costs are a major concern for companies. But in her primary-care practice and others like it, she says her staff are “burning out” as they spend hours each day trying to navigate all the new and often strict and confusing insurance requirements for these medications. “We have got to deal with costs,” Fitch said. “But it should be transparent and flexible.” She worries that overly rigid restrictions are “adding to the bias and stigma of obesity” by signaling to patients that their weight is their responsibility to treat on their own. Her major advice is to view obesity with the nuance that people view other chronic conditions. “You do not need a GLP-1 management solution. You need a comprehensive obesity-care solution.”Abigail Abrams is a health writer and editor. Currently she is the senior manager of content operations for Atria. Previously, she was a staff writer on health and politics for TIME magazine. Her freelance work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Guardian, and other publications.

Apprenticeships: a Classic Solution to the Modern Problem of Worker Shortages

The U.S. labor market has become like a crazy quilt: mass layoffs in certain industries, along with dire shortages of workers in businesses ranging from accounting to trucking. To close the critical gaps, industries are turning to modern versions of an age-old institution: the apprenticeship. “Apprenticeships are the most promising solution to addressing the current labor shortage. Why? Because apprenticeships are jobs first and foremost–jobs that pay a living wage–not just training programs,” Ryan Craig, author of Apprentice Nation: How the Earn and Learn Alternative to Higher Education Will Create a Stronger and Fairer America, told From Day One. “They’re accessible to anyone with the potential and willingness to work hard–and much more accessible than tuition-based, debt-based college, or other training programs.”Causes of the labor shortage are many: A workforce quickly aging into retirement, the slowing of population growth, the burdensome cost of post-secondary education, lack of access to affordable childcare, and an increase in entrepreneurship. All of these have contributed to a shrinking workforce. As of January, the U.S. labor force participation rate is 62.5%. A couple decades ago, at the beginning of 2001, it was 67.2%.Employers are attacking the problem on many fronts. Some are pulling out the stops to retain older workers who might otherwise retire, and some are coaxing the semi-retired back to the office with flexible new arrangements. Others are dropping four-year degree requirements to broaden their talent pools, or bulking up benefits packages to include childcare, paid leave, and fertility benefits to attract and retain workers. Apprenticeships have joined that medley of solutions, with employers, advocacy organizations, and policymakers exploring and investing in the “earn-and-learn” model to fill talent pipelines from hospitality to healthcare to finance. Apprenticeships Beyond Blue CollarsApprenticeships represent a mutually beneficial way of hiring and training workers. Apprentices get on-the-job training, related instruction (often in a classroom or virtual classroom), and a paycheck all at the same time. Employers get the workers they need, trained to their specifications. In the U.S., apprenticeships are most often associated with skilled trades–it’s normal for plumbers, electricians, construction workers to complete apprenticeships–yet white-collar professions are only beginning to forge a connection with earn-and-learn programs. In 2020, professional services firm Aon announced that it would invest $30 million in its apprenticeship program over the next five years, with a goal of creating 10,000 apprenticeships in the U.S. within Aon and its partner organizations by 2030. In 2022, IBM committed to putting $250 million toward apprenticeships and other “new collar” programs by 2025.Aon’s program includes three tracks: insurance, HR, and IT. Apprentices take courses in insurance and business administration at partner colleges. Francheska Feliciano, the director of Aon’s apprenticeship program, told From Day One that career changers have found a home there. “We have found that those that thrive in our program tend to be career changers, but our program has a wide range of candidates with varied backgrounds, customer service, hospitality, or other service type roles.”Last year, the Biden Administration announced that it will invest $330 million to expand federally registered apprenticeships programs. In July, the Department of Labor awarded $17 million to expand existing apprenticeships and promote the model in new industries. In November, Maryland Governor Wes Moore committed $3 million to developing apprenticeships for public-sector jobs and $1.6 million toward the development of hospitality industry apprenticeships. “Maryland has set ambitious goals for expanding apprenticeship and we mean to meet them,” said Portia Wu, Maryland's Department of Labor secretary, in a press release. “Registered apprenticeship is key to our state’s economic success. We’ve already hit historic highs in apprenticeship adoption and today’s investments will accelerate our progress.”Alleviating the Local Labor ShortageApprenticeships could help solve local labor shortages for companies whose workers must be on-site–crucial for skilled trades like manufacturing or nursing–which are experiencing a pipeline problem of their own. Rather than recruiting the skilled talent from elsewhere, employers can use apprenticeships to develop the talent in their community. As housing inventory trails demand, employers who can tap their local talent markets will have the advantage, said Renee Haltom, the VP of research communications at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, during a panel discussion last month at the Richmond Economic Forecast “The regions that figure out housing are going to be ahead of the curve in terms of dealing with the coming demographic shifts,” Haltom said, referring to the aging U.S. workforce. Annelies Goger, who studies how to scale earn-and-learn models at the Brookings Institution, sees the advantages for local employers. Apprenticeships are a way to draw on local talent, and employers are more likely to retain locals than workers who have relocated, she told From Day One. “Rising rents have made it hard for employers to find and retain people only with the normal ways they’ve recruited people, so they’re looking into a lot of other ways and channels for finding talent,” Goger said. Apprentices Enter Finance and AccountingIn accounting and finance, more workers are retiring than are entering the field. According to a 2024 analysis by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “even if every unemployed person with experience in the financial activities or professional and business service sectors were employed,” the report reads, “only 42% and 44% of the existing job vacancies in these industries would be filled, respectively.”In 2022, the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA) and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) launched the first federally registered apprenticeship for finance and accounting professionals, and in its first year signed up 17 employers from 15 industries, including healthcare, industrial gas, banking, and manufacturing. One hundred apprentices have registered with the program in its first year.When AICPA and CIMA set out to create apprenticeships, the aim was to address the worker shortage in the accounting and finance field with early career talent. “When we started talking to employers who would want to hire people from these programs, we found that they were more interested in reskilling workers,” said Joanne Fiore, AICPA’s VP of pipeline and apprenticeships. Rather than recruit new talent, employers wanted to use apprenticeships to retain their current workforce and train them as strategically minded contributors. The purpose of the Registered Apprenticeship for Finance Business Partners is to develop management accountants for the finance function of the future–not just number-crunchers, but “key players in strategic decision-making and broader business transformation,” said Fiore.Even if this program is able to shrink the skills gap, the labor shortage is likely to persist. There just aren’t enough young people entering the field to balance out their retiring elders. One problem: the profession has a reputation for being, well, dull.To fill the talent pipeline, and help rebrand the profession, AICPA and CIMA have piloted a youth apprenticeship program in Maryland high schools, aiming to drum up excitement and interest in the field among young people.Customizing the Programs Organizations, employers, and educators have found ways to tailor apprenticeship programs to their needs. They’re not just for recruiting, they can be deployed for talent development as well. “With the digital transformation of our economy, tens of millions of jobs now require workers to use tools to build things–only the tools are digital and workers no longer need to wear hardhats,” said Craig, author of Apprentice Nation.Often, those skills are software related. Where hospitals and healthcare providers use Epic, marketers use HubSpot, and HR uses Workday. “Companies are increasingly demanding that applicants for these jobs already have these platform skills–skills which are much harder to learn in a classroom than on-the-job via an apprenticeship,” Craig said.“Apprenticeship brings an organic culture of learning into any workplace and helps business perform better,” writes Jean Eddy in Crisis-Proofing Today’s Learners: Reimagining Career Education to Prepare Kids for Tomorrow’s World. “An apprenticeship program breathes new life into workplaces and lets employers quickly tap into a culture of learning that so many now are desperate to build.”Scaling Earn-and-Learn to Quell the Labor ShortageApprenticeships are difficult to start, and they’re difficult to scale. Few employers have the infrastructure to both employ and train unskilled workers at the same time, and most require the help of intermediaries like the AICPA and CIMA, which provide the instruction and the infrastructure.While it may be a while before apprenticeships alone make a dent in the labor shortage, analysis of the success of existing programs is promising. Not only are retention rates high–Aon, for instance, retains 80% of its apprentices–the Department of Labor estimates that employers get a 44.3% return on investment for apprenticeship programs.“While traditional apprenticeships emphasized hands-on skill acquisition under a mentor, modern apprenticeships often integrate technology-based learning, including virtual simulations and online coursework, to complement on-site training,” said Katie Breault, SVP of growth and impact at YUPRO Placement, a recruiting firm focused on skills-based hiring. Finance and tech roles are particularly suited to apprenticeships, she told From Day One. “Industries undergoing digital transformation, for example, greatly benefit from such programs. They offer real-time learning opportunities, crucial for staying relevant in dynamic fields.”The problem with apprenticeships as a solution to the labor shortage is that we just don’t have enough of them yet, said Craig. Plus, in his estimation, they’re under-funded and under-marketed on both the demand and supply side. “Many young people and their parents think of apprenticeships as a ‘second tier’ option–if they think of them at all,” he laments in Apprentice Nation. White collar employers may be thinking much the same. Yet as investment continues and apprentices pop up in surprising places, like the finance department, enthusiasm may spread. “It certainly fits the accounting profession,” Fiore said. “And if it fits the accounting profession, my sense is that it will fit many professions.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.(Featured photo by Amorn Suriyan/iStock by Getty Images)

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