As many employees talk with their feet, what have we learned about what encourages loyalty? While compensation will always be a factor, which benefits and features are most important to workers in the post-pandemic era? From student-loan relief to job flexibility, what have been the most effective changes that employers have made? What innovations are on the horizon? From Day One gathered experts for a virtual conference in March. Among the highlights:

Who Benefits? Rethinking the Status Quo With the Employee in Mind

Traditional benefits came from a different era. Today workers have new needs and new attitudes, especially with the changes in the workforce that the Covid pandemic has brought. Marco Diaz, SVP and global head of benefits for News Corp., recommended rethinking the status quo of benefits in a fireside chat with Seattle-based broadcast journalist Josephine Cheng.

According to Diaz, the pandemic has brought a lot more attention to questions about how employers compete for top talent. How do we attract people? How do we retain employees? Are we shrinking or growing as a company? What does the workforce want? The concept of total rewards is a key piece to answering these questions. That encompasses everything from traditional compensation and benefits to career development, job flexibility, and even free potato chips in the kitchen.

“Most importantly,” Diaz said, “is that the expectations around an employer taking care of someone’s holistic social and emotional health are much higher these days. So it’s even how an employer communicates with his employees, flexibility within work, where you’re working, how you’re working. All of these things are part of what would today be considered a total-rewards package.”

While compensation starts the benefits dialogue when attracting new talent, it doesn’t necessarily clinch the deal, Diaz said. He spoke about a rapidly changing paradigm in benefits packages with reward immediacy, flexibility, mental health, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at the forefront.

Diaz pointed to reward immediacy as one of the biggest trends coming out of the past two years. “Historically, benefits packages were all designed to bring people in and keep them forever,” he said. That meant the payday for a particular benefit was often retirement. “There was, a lot of times, a very long graduated scale, where the value of a program would increase over time. But now, people want it all. And they want it right now,” he said.

Diaz believes it’s important for companies to look at legacy vesting, waiting periods, and time scales, to see if this system makes sense anymore. Particularly since some companies are, in fact, offering more upfront to job candidates. “The idea originally was, ‘I want you with us for five years, so I’m going to dangle this in front of you,’” he said. “But unless everyone is doing that, it becomes a competitive disadvantage. There are some arenas, like inequity, where that might still make sense, but there’s other places where I just think it’s a holdover and something we need to look at and re-examine.”

“Workplace flexibility wouldn’t have been in my wheelhouse three years ago,” Diaz said. “But now it’s probably one of the bigger benefits the company can give.” He went on to say that surveys show flexibility tops health care and retirement benefits as being important to employees and is right up there with pay. Flexible hours and work-from-home options to address childcare, elder care, and other work-life balance issues are all key. The degree of flexibility differs from industry to industry, and it’s a matter of finding a balance that works for the employer and employees.

Diaz pointed out that while benefits packages used to focus primarily on physical health, that has broadened to include social and emotional well-being over the past two years. “We’re in this weird nexus of both being less connected and more connected than we’ve ever been,” he said, pointing to the rise in virtual meetings and global workspaces. While mental health benefits used to mean coverage for a psychiatrist or therapist, that’s now expanded to a continuum that includes mindfulness and relaxation initiatives, and even policies limiting weekend emails and mandated overtime.

In terms of DEI, Diaz said, there are two equally important components to a reward journey: the portfolio of programs offered as benefits, and connecting with employee resource groups (ERGs). “For me, it’s almost like thinking of a restaurant menu,” said Diaz, who emphasized that benefits managers shouldn’t pretend to know every one of these cohorts or make assumptions about them. The menu of possible benefits is presented to the customers, the group leaders. “We are increasingly trying to leverage our groups to find out what resonates and matters. And by the way, if there are any gaps, we can know about that, too. And then our hope is they will put that message forward to their cohort, and they can package it in a way that may make more sense for that particular group.”

“I feel like the set of expectations about what is an employer’s responsibility in the life of employee is very high right now,” Diaz said. He sees a future with a much broader idea of what is considered as benefits, partially aided by emerging technology that allow for creating customized profiles of employees and their benefits needs.—By Jennifer Haupt

8 HR Predictions and What They Mean for You

We all wish we knew what’s coming at us around the next bend, and we all know people who seem to be adept at prognostication. Joe Burton, the CEO of Whil, a Rethink Division, is one of those. In a Thought Leadership Spotlight at the conference, he talked about what he sees coming at HR this year, and what you can do to meet those challenges head on.

Burton culled his predictions from sources as diverse as Deloitte and IBM to the Society for Human Resources Management. “There are so many things for us to stay on top of,” he said. “We can fight against the trends or build up skills and insights to manage the changes coming our way.” His predictions:

1.) In the corporate world, HR is at the center of everything. From diversity, racial divisions, politics, and culture–it all runs smack into HR at some point, Burton said. “When you think about all the functional domains that fall under HR, you can see the complexity this ecosystem, from talent acquisition to people analytics, to performance management, to compensation and benefits, and learning and development, on and on. Not every company understands that. Too often, C-level executives don’t understand what is going on in HR. There is lot of barking and demand, but no real understanding.”

His advice: Educate them on the complexity of the job and the resources you need to serve and support what just about everyone says is the biggest asset of a company: its talent, said Burton. “In the absence of that [education], we find that too often, HR becomes a dumping ground.” The connection of the well-being and happiness of your talent is related to every single aspect of your business, from sales and operations to product development and customer service. “If your most important asset isn’t happy, trained, supported and feeling cared for, that’s a problem.”

2.) Mental health impacts culture. Pandemic fatigue has shown that mental health care isn’t just something nice to have as a benefit, but is a must-have, he said. The company Whil was founded in 2014. There have been other events that have impacted mental health in that time, but the pandemic has “pulled back the curtain” in a new way, said Burton. It has highlighted issues like depression, anxiety, insomnia, and stress. Those are epidemics already, without the added stress of a global pandemic. “Add in an inflationary economy, a war, politics, and you see there is a lot that is feeding harm to employees.”

During the pandemic, Whil found that people were at 40% to 60% higher risk of clinical depression; there was a 90% increase in depression rates compared to pre pandemic; and a third of U.S. adults reported suffering from anxiety or depression. “These rates get worse the younger you go, which means your Gen Z employees are showing up at their first job with the weight of all of this on them.”

These employees can’t show up and be their best, most collaborative selves if they are unable to take good care of their mental health. “The recommendation is to double down on programs that help employees,” said Burton. Check the value of some big-ticket items like EAPs. They may tick a legal box, but are they providing employees with the benefit they need? “If only 3% of employees ever access that, is it really helping employees?” It’s better to focus on programs that provide skills to employees to manage everything going on around them and create a culture of well-being.

3.) It’s all about skills. “Change is the new norm, so building up the right skills is vital. No one has a job description anymore. No one has a job anymore. They have projects. Sometimes we are leading them, sometimes we are being led. And there is a constant need to build up new skills for new situations,” Burton said. Employees may tell you they are wearing five or ten different hats, when what they need is to be trained to think in a more project-based manner. “Don’t fight it. Build the skills you need to manage it.”

4.) Employee experience becomes a focus. Burton says that employees increasingly have an expectation of modern collaboration, where everyone has a voice. “This isn’t just your Gen Z employees, either. Everyone is expecting this idea of the consumerization of the workplace. How do we want it to be? How do we want to feel? Shouldn’t it be easy like all the apps I have that make my life easy?”

This is wildly different from the management decision making experience of yore. The skills of emotional intelligence, relationship management, and conflict management are all important. “Do we have the right experience and are people getting the right training so that they are equipped to manage the constant change?” he asked. It’s a difference between a business-centered versus a human-centered workplace. Employers are moving away from the goal centered, KPI-centered management. While goals and numbers are important, “doubling down on what kind of culture we want to have, enabling people to be a part of creating that, having the kind of organization that attracts people and makes them feel great about being here,” is taking center stage.

5.) DEI is about action, not talk. Burton says it’s not just about gender, or race, or disability. “It’s about whether we are inviting employees into an experience where the first call to action is to be yourself.” Research has found that diverse organizations outperform non-diverse ones by as much as 40% in every conceivable measure: top line, profitability, bottom line, employee retention. “There has been a whole lot of talk but not a lot of action. Here, we are doubling down on the kind of training and learning skills for understanding neuro diversity, relationships between ethnicities and genders, and how diversity drives innovation.” Younger employees will be especially vocal that diversity is a wonderful thing. “Don’t fight it. Embrace it.”

6.) Financial stress will soar. About half the country feels stressed about money right now, Burton says, and that won’t decline while we are in an inflationary economy. “Think about how to enable employees to manage this. There are a lot of players in this space, and new solutions that are coming out from being able to borrow against your salary, or to get cash advances in what amounts to be on-demand pay–you work a few hours, and you can withdraw that money immediately. These solutions are popping up out of necessity.” But many of them only exist because the people using them are not paid enough, he said. They have multiple jobs or side hustles to make ends meet. “Productivity is plummeting as people are half-engaged in figuring out how to make money elsewhere while they are on the job.”

Benefits and coverage can influence whether someone stays in a job that doesn’t meet their economic needs. “These are canaries in the coal mine. There’s a bigger issue here around helping employees manage their own financial well-being starting as early as possible in their career. It’s a whole new training area for us here at Whil, and we know it's critical based on what's going on.”

7.) Getting your tools to work harder. Most HR professionals spend a lot of time choosing the tools and technologies they and the employees they work with make use of. “The problem is, not enough of them work together.” Employees don’t have a single place to sign on to know what benefits are available and how to use them. “In the Whil platform, we think a lot about integrating our corporate wellness platforms and learning management systems. The idea is to make it easy for employees to find support for their personal well-being, professional resilience, parenting, and caregiving skills. If I have to go looking, well it’s easier not to. Ask yourself: With everything we have paid for, is it working together? These things absolutely should.”

8.) Analytics in the driver’s seat. HR analytics that look at how employees are feeling, where they are focused, the skills they need, and where they feel overwhelmed will be driving the business going forward, says Burton. “How can they improve relationships, emotional intelligence skills? How can they manage stress and learn techniques around mindfulness, sleep training–all these soft skills that are needed for them to show up and perform at their best, while still managing home life.” These soft skills have data attached to them which can be harnessed to recommend tools to employees before they need it in the moment. “This treasure trove of data and insights that every part of the organization is looking for should be coming through HR,” he said. “That can sound scary, but it’s also incredibly exciting. This kind of advanced people analytics, where you understand what’s going on with the whole person create a significant business opportunity from a competitive advantage standpoint and being more likely to create a sense of belonging, more likely to be named a great place to work, more likely to hire and retain employees.”

Burton says you should use these eight predictions as measuring stick for your organization. “Are we being very thoughtful about how we roll things out and how we implement? Are we giving people the training they need to feel to feel cared for with all this change going on? And are you giving them a voice? If they don’t get a vote, they may not be there that long. Use this as a checklist and to change the conversation at your company.”—By Lisa Jaffe 

Why Fertility Benefits That Cover All Genders Are a Must-Have 

Conversations around fertility benefits usually focus on addressing female infertility, but people of all genders need support from fertility and family-forming resources. “Men, trans and non-binary people all pursue parenthood, and they need support for it,” said Kirsten Ferro, associate VP of sales for Carrot Fertility, in a Thought Leadership Spotlight about how employers can provide inclusive fertility benefits that cover all genders—and ages.

In fact, for about 30% of different-sex couples experiencing infertility, male-factor issues are the primary cause. Trans and non-binary people also have specific fertility needs and struggle to find physicians with the right experience.

Ferro encouraged the audience to start thinking a little differently about fertility health and go beyond the most common piece of the puzzle: IVF for women. What, men experiencing infertility? “IVF is a route that they might go through,” she said. “But they might also speak with a urologist first to find out about other options such as diet and lifestyle modifications to help increase the likelihood of conception.”

And, she asked, what about same sex-male couples whose fertility health means getting a fertility assessment to understand the health of their sperm, followed by working with a gestational carrier,  commonly known as a surrogate? Or what about people who are just starting to explore their fertility, baseline health or have reached menopause and andropause, and your medical guidance on how to move forward? “These are just a few examples of what fertility health can mean to different employees within your workforce," Ferro said. ”Which is a major reason why it’s time to challenge the way we all think again about fertility, health and what it means.”

According to Ferro, first-rate fertility benefits are a must-have for employers to compete for top-notch talent in this tight job market. “Fertility benefits are becoming more and more common to help improve access to fertility health care, and more job seekers are actively looking to join a company that offers this type of coverage,”she said. Fertility and family forming is also incredibly stressful. “People who experience infertility indicate that it’s one of the most stressful or upsetting experiences of their lives. Through financial support and care navigation, the right fertility benefits can help to reduce stress and improve productivity for your employees.”

Still, despite fertility care becoming something that employers are paying more and more attention to, many companies are still focusing only on supporting IVF for women. “Limiting the definition of fertility health to cisgender women excludes an immense number of employees, and it means your company will miss out on making an impact on more of your team members,” said Ferro.

How can employers implement an inclusive solution that actually meets the needs of employees of all genders? The first step, according to Ferro, is fertility testing and fertility preservation for female, male, trans, and non-binary employees, because that's the first step many people take when starting to think about their fertility health. One consideration is that trans and non-binary employees have some very specific and nuanced needs, and difficulty finding knowledgeable medical providers. For example, it's common for trans men to hear from medical providers that they can’t get pregnant because they’ve been receiving testosterone, but that often isn’t the case.

Another problem Ferro mentioned with traditional insurance is that infertility diagnoses are usually required to access fertility care. And infertility is defined as a heterosexual couple trying to get pregnant for six to 12 months without success. A same-sex female couple or single intending parent would need to try to get pregnant using donor sperm six to 12 times at their own out-of-pocket expense–that’s tens of thousands of dollars to prove infertility. “To have inclusive benefits, the definition of infertility must be removed, and you must provide access to donor assisted reproduction, such as donor sperm, donor eggs, and gestational carrier services just commonly known as surrogacy,” Ferro said. This is just a starting point of implementing an inclusive fertility-benefits program.—By Jennifer Haupt

How the Definition of Total Rewards Is Changing

It’s more incumbent on employers to get compensation packages “right” than ever before. But given the current wave of American worker empowerment, the employee of today is thirsty for more intangibles than higher pay, traditionally the go-to tool for keeping workers on staff, while attracting the best talent. This shift in ideology on the part of employees is changing the definition of a desirable total-rewards program.

“Looking at the entirety of the employee, especially in the last 24 months, has just accelerated so dramatically,” said Matthew Tremmaglia, VP of customer success at Achievers, an employee recognition and engagement platform. “It’s strategically catapulted the rewards conversation.”

One significant element of any employee’s degree of contentment in their job, Tremmaglia has seen, is the sense that they “belong” on a given team. The “main drivers of belonging,” like feeling “welcome,” “included,” “known to the people around you,” and “supported by your manager,” he said, have proven to be valuable concepts around which a mindful employer can craft more profound, attractive compensation packages.

He made his remarks as part of a panel discussion among HR leaders on how they’re approaching total rewards programs to give them a leg up in what has become the most tumultuous, high-stakes job market in recent memory. Here are some key takeaways from the conversation, moderated by journalist Siobhan O’Connor:

When asked what’s changed in worker expectations and the adjustments leaders can make to meet their demands, Jesse Welsh, VP of total rewards for Southeastern Grocers, a large regional chain of supermarkets, said, “It’s really trying to meet the associates where they are.” When constructing total-rewards programs, he said Southeastern Grocers considers the employee’s stage in their career, in terms of both “timeline” (on-the-job experience) and “level” (the type of work they do). Southeastern also organizes their benefits into what Welsh called “five well-being strategies or competencies” that support worker well-being in terms of finances, health, social considerations, career path, and generally within the larger community.

“It’s bringing all these different moving pieces together and trying to make sure that our associates understand what they have, can share what they have with their co-workers, and actually can enjoy the benefits as the user,” Welsh said.

Another key to retaining talent is promoting them. Actively helping employees move up the ranks not only ensures they’ll be better compensated monetarily over the years, but they’ll also be challenged to learn new skills—something else workers crave in their jobs—and feel like a valued member of the team.

Emily Heckaman, director of total rewards at Primoris Services, a construction and infrastructure-development company, said her company recently launched a paid career-training program for the company’s emerging, most promising leaders. She said the “high-potential employees” are being treated to a “signature experience” in the program, and that “it’s just been a great way to get our leaders together and to talk about change and how we can make the organization better,” she said.

“We are talking about: What is that employee experience? What does that experience mean for the employee? How do we recruit, retain?” Heckaman continued. “In every aspect of the organization, with 10,000 employees, we have to have all our leaders out there, recruiting those employees and keeping them here. So it’s been a great advantage for us.”

The sudden shift to work-from-home arrangements due to the pandemic shed a brighter light on the employee need for caregiving, most prominently of children, but other relatives and loved ones in need as well.

“A lot of people carry very different loads in caregiving that prevents them from being able to thrive at work,” said Julia Cohen Sebastien, CEO and co-founder of Grayce, a platform that generates rewards packages centered around caregiving. “If you can’t thrive at work, you’re more likely to leave your job, of course, and caregiving tends to be hard and unfamiliar for most people.”

Cohen Sebastian observed that work schedule flexibility and leave are important considerations for employees, helping them to address caregiving concerns, but they may do so only temporarily. Flexibility and leave also don’t necessarily help workers advance professionally, she said.

According to Grayce data, when it comes to caregiving, people struggle most with the “emotional stress of the role,” Cohen Sebastien said. They also worry about “having the knowledge of what to do and having the time to do it,” as well as simply being able to afford whatever care they must help provide a loved one.

“Employers are going to win when they’re addressing root-cause stressors holistically and offering more active caregiving support programs,” Cohen Sebastien said. Companies must do so, she continued, “for all employees’ families, so not just young families, or people trying to have a family, but literally every associate’s family. And that also includes not just supporting American employees, but also global employees for those employers that have families around the world.”

Workers also want to see their companies prioritize diversity and inclusion, while seeing to it that more employees have job equity as well. Boosting DEI in the workplace helps employees feel safer, more respected and connected. When considering the “entirety of the employee,” which Tennaglia mentioned is an advantageous trend for all parties, there are few more vital feelings that leaders can deliver their workers than a sense being safe, respected, and connected to each other.

DEI and total rewards are “totally connected,” said Gloria Estrada, VP of total Rewards and HR services at Keysight Technologies. She suggested that leaders get granular with data analysis, looking at compensation and other considerations, not on a company level but within departments and perhaps even on a job-by-job basis. “That’s where it looks different,” Estrada said. “And if the female or the underrepresented minority is the lower paid, you should have a good reason for that. That shouldn’t just be because you didn’t know.”—By Michael Stahl

How to Create a Mentally Fit Workplace  

A few years ago, Shannon Hopkins was told a piece of medical news nobody wants to hear. She had cancer, an aggressive form of leukemia that usually came with a poor prognosis. “I was terrified,” Hopkins, who is now a regional VP at BetterUp Care, a comprehensive mental-health platform, told From Day One in a Thought Leadership Spotlight. She was swiftly admitted to a cancer institute and was told she could not leave for 30 days. By enduring three rounds of chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant, along with overwhelming support from her family, she learned early on how important it is to have a strong mental health foundation. “When my mental health was strong, I was better able to handle setbacks,” she said.

With the widespread mental health crisis in the workplace accompanied with the pressure to act like everything is OK, while there’s no indication of things ever reverting to the way they were in 2019, having a mentally fit workplace is of utmost importance. Mental fitness, it should be noted, is different from clinical management of mental health. “Despite the effort in investing in clinical mental-health services,” Hopkins said, “common offerings are not for everyone. Therapy is not for everyone.” Everyone needs help, especially getting ahead of stressful triggers. Mental fitness means learning how to “press pause in our personal lives, break free of the old patterns that are holding us back, and to rise to a new challenge.”

Data collected by BetterUp shows that the majority of the workforce is languishing, which has been described as “a sense of stagnation and emptiness.” An estimated 60% of wo