TM - January 2008 - (Page 30)

recruitment & retention assessment & evaluation compensation & benefits performance management learning & development succession planning increased by 7.7 percent — two times the rate of inflation. The annual premium for an employee’s family health plan is nearly $11,500, and for a single person, $4,200. A preventative wellness approach may help harness costs for employers and workers. A new study on wellness trends by Forrester Research and Employee Benefit News shows employers are increasing their focus on wellness initiatives, disease management and preventative Other companies with a more holistic view of wellness are starting to offer yoga, meditation and stress reduction spaces. Organizations that don’t have an on-site gym may offer health club subsidies that include travel benefits. Employees can have reciprocal rights to other gyms in a network so regardless of where they are, they can work out and keep up health habits. While traditional in academia, more companies, such as semiconductor equipment manufacturer Masston, are providing employees a multimonth sabbatical to “recharge their batteries” after a certain number of years of service. Apple Computer has long offered sabbatical benefits. Wellness coaching has been offered for some time, starting in the early 1980s when EAPs began offering such services. The programs are predominantly telephone coachingbased, and usage remains abysmally low for a variety of reasons. Most offer a limited number of calls in a year, usually from three to 12. Most don’t ensure participants the same coach, nor are their programs highly personalized. In such instances, major corporations report that of the employees who enroll, typically less than 40 percent actually engage in the coaching process. Even for those who engage, the majority of calls don’t occur, due to scheduling conflicts — in many cases, coaches are not able to reach the person. A newer approach to wellness coaching leverages the Internet. Some online wellness offerings merely use e-mail to send one-way health messages or offer limited e-mail support. Others provide Web sites stocked with health information and tips. While helpful, these tactics rarely provide the impetus to encourage real behavior change in employees. Other wellness coaching programs are more innovative in their online approach and philosophy. For instance, some programs involve multiple methods of communication besides phone, including e-mail, instant messaging and text messaging. Participants work with the same coach, which increases trust and accountability. The programs are highly personalized toward specific goals and provide highly tailored support. For instance, clients take online surveys and assessments at the beginning and throughout the engagement, either self-directed or assigned. All client interaction and all the coach’s notes are automated to save hours of documentation per client. Such features help clients learn more about themselves, and assist coaches with data collection, in order to help them make true behavior change. With such an integrated system, more than 70 percent of participants are actively engaged in the When participants are dealing with very personal topics, the anonymity of online coaching — through e-mail or instant messaging — encourages more honest feedback and self-reporting, contributing to higher success rates. care — 80 percent of companies listed such wellness benefits as ones they currently offer and plan to increase. Employers may have the added benefit of lower insurance rates over time as their employees use fewer health services as a result of preventative care. Accordingly, more companies are trying to encourage healthy lifestyles among employees. Such benefits like discounts on gym memberships, companysponsored or -promoted health fairs, bike clubs and fun runs can be extremely appealing, especially for young to midcareer employees. A lot of what to expect from wellness benefits depends on how the employer defines wellness. More traditional companies are increasingly offering such benefits as executive physical exams and spa retreats to encourage key leaders’ health and well-being. 30 January 2008 talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com http://www.TalentMgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TM - January 2008

TM - January 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Learning Connections: Working With Those People Leading Edge: Hub Caps for a Buggy Human Performance: Hawthorne Effect Revisited Beyond Affirmative Action: The Changing Face of Recruitment Assessment Centers in Talent Management: Strategies, Use and Value Nontraditional Benefits- How to Hook the Best Talent Intersection of Web 2.0 and Talent Management Cross-Training for Workforce Agility Mapping Talent Among Younger Workers Dashboard: Using Personality Data to Identify and Develop High-Potential Leaders Application: Shaffer Title Uses Myers-Briggs to Develop Common Corporate Language, Jump-Start Growth Insight: Dreier, Stein & Kahan LLP: Using Strategy to Bring Back the Law Profession Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Full Potential: Stop in the Name of Leadership

TM - January 2008

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