Stuck and Stressed: The Health Costs of Traffic : Review Series Part 2

Frakt’s article on health effects of commuting resonated with my past life of an eight to nine Monday through Friday worker.  My commute to work became increasingly difficult and stressful when we had our first child.  Leaving in the mornings were filled with anxiety of getting our baby to daycare on time and missing traffic to get to work on time.  Then the commute home meant leaving work at a certain time to get the baby before the center closed.  That anxiety led to stress at work.  I was afraid meetings would run late as they often did or there would be traffic on the way home which would all delay me from picking up our son.  My husband’s commute was even worse so there was never a chance to switch responsibilities.  By the time we got home, we were both exhausted from the day’s stress, leaving us with little energy to really enjoy time with our son. 

We were on the verge of breaking down when we were both offered opportunities that allowed for flexibility and a significant cut in our commute time.  Working with EBC, I don’t have to commute and can work from home or my nearby coffee shop.  Eliminating our commutes thanks to our new flexible schedules gives us more time to take care of ourselves and our new baby boy.  In positions where a flexible work schedule was not offered, I felt an extra stress from my job plus a feeling that my employer did not care about my personal life outside of the office.  Those factors often lead employees like me to resent their job and care less about the quality of work they produce.  With this new opportunity for flexible work and less overall stress from a daily commute, I want to produce quality work for an employer I know cares about my well-being.  It goes a very long way to show your employee you trust them by offering options to help balance their work/life.  We can all benefit from less time in the traffic zone and more time at home.

Stuck and Stressed: The Health Costs of Traffic : Review Series Part 1

Austin Frakt recently wrote about the physical and psychological affects of commuting to work in his article: “Stuck and Stressed: The Health Costs of Traffic”. Frakt explains that not only is our health being affected by breathing in a copious amounts of exhaust each day but we’re taking on unnecessary stress which often leads to angry and often violent reactions. To read the full article, Click Here.

In response to Frakt’s article, EBC employees want to give their perspective on how commutes affected their work and the changes they have made to practically eliminate the health cost of commuting.

The following is written by Lachelle Rodrigues, consultant at EBC:

For 2019, EBC’s mantra is “Work Life Balance”.  As business professionals, wives, friends, and moms, our personal mission this year is to find that important equilibrium to create a healthy and happy work-life balance.  

One factor that can contribute to a stressful work week is the commute.  With Hawaii having some of the worst traffic in the nation, one fender bender and your 3 mile commute can turn in to a 90 minute nightmare.  We are able to alleviate ourselves from this bumper to bumper hair pulling energy drain by allowing for a more flexible work schedule and working from home when needed thanks to our cloud-based filing and database system.  I personally find myself working at 6am before my daughter is awake, or after 8pm once she is asleep for the night. At first it was hard to adjust to working odd hours especially because before a baby I tried not to bring my work home with me. Now, I view my flexible schedule as a blessing and I do not mind working the odd hours if it means more time with my daughter.

Flexible hours or working at home is becoming more and more of the norm.  The use of the technology has greatly enabled this type of telecommuting, and also the mindset of having a life outside of work is becoming increasingly important.  I do believe this is an important consideration for all companies if it aligns with their business model. I feel less stressed about time, traffic and fulfilling my daily demands in this chaotic world.  I can be more present for my child and my family as well as spend a few extra minutes of me time – even if it’s tending to my orchid plants.

Prepare for 2019 with Employee Benefit Consulting

Prepare for 2019 with Employee Benefit Consulting

Another year brings another opportunity to assess your company’s needs.  Whether you’re an HR manager for a large company or a small business owner the anticipation of growth for the upcoming year is exciting but doesn’t come without some struggles.  Benefit News lists the Top 10 HR challenges for 2019.  We also sent a survey to our clients at the end of 2018 asking them what their biggest HR concerns were.  Among the top concerns were: tracking employee activities (i.e. payroll, PTO and leave), staying compliant on a federal and state level, ensuring costs are low for comprehensive benefits and the time it takes to do all these activities plus all other HR related duties.

We want you and your employees to maintain a healthy work/life balance.  We have solutions for you to help track employee activities, send updates on state and federal regulations and save time with documentation preparation and more.  

Please contact us with any questions, comments, concerns or if you would like a demonstration of the programs that we have available for you and your employees.

We wish you a productive, healthy and prosperous 2019!

Work Life Balance Opinion: The "Sandwich" Generation

The holiday season is upon us and as we reflect on this past 12 months, I find myself being truly grateful of life events that create memories and stories to tell for years to come.   I remember when I was my son's age (12 years old) and watching my parents take care of my grandparents.  This "sandwich" generation is now where I am today.  I have a son that has entered middle school with all its challenges in addition to making sure my father is maintaining his health and independence.  The difference from when I was growing up is the technology of keeping in touch with family.  I wouldn't say it is much easier to be in the "sandwich" generation but with the smartphones and other means to communicate with family, the daily texts and calls feel like we are living in the same place.  Telecommuting has been around for years and with integrating online cloud storage systems and virtual office platforms, the business needs and family needs can be manageable.   I have always believed in a work/life balance and in our business world today, we can have both.

I recently came upon this article about telecommuting.  The trends appear to show that telecommuting is increasing its ground with businesses.  I am curious to see where the trend will be over the next five years:

https://blog.ifebp.org/index.php/telecommuting-who-offers-what-why

Leave your comments below on your thoughts about telecommuting.

Laudra's Lessons - "AMERICA'S BITTER PILL" ANALYSIS PART 2

This article is a continuation. Click HERE to read part 1

…… What happened to the Affordable Care Act that made it so un-affordable for so many?  What stood in the way?

First, Ted Kennedy became very ill with a brain tumor and subsequently died.  Healthcare’s hardest worker, most effective and ardent supporter was not there to champion the changes that needed to be made.

COSTS and POLITICS: Doctors conflicts of interest: 94% of all physicians accept consulting fees and free samples and that amounts to 7 billion for pharmaceutical reps and 18 billion in the form of free samples to doctors.  Hospitals and insurance companies provide enormous salaries to their top executives which are not often publicized. However, because of a SEC lawsuit, it was publicly released that United Healthcare paid their departing CEO over a Billion (no that is not a typo dollars in his severance package.

Sixty votes were needed in the Senate to pass the bill establishing ACA and that left those designing the plan open to blackmail from Senators that wanted something special in the bill for their state.  As an example, the Indiana Senator wanted the medical device tax lowered as there were device makers in Indiana. Drug companies, the medical device industry, and the “non-profit” hospitals leaned on the Senators in their states to exempt them from cost cutting that was needed to make the plan affordable.  It needs to be said, “non-profit” hospitals are anything but; they are big businesses and in some states the biggest with huge profits. Steven Brill gives one example: University of Pennsylvania Medical Center in 2009 had an operating profit in excess of 580 million and the chief executive officer took home four million in compensation.  Every Democratic vote was needed to pass the bill, so no Senator’s demand could be ignored.

The lobbyists really went to work, one example AMGEN, the drug company that wanted protection for their name brand drugs, delayed acceptance of generics and protection for their super expensive biologics spent more than 38 million on lobbying in the three years leading up to the start of the ACA. This at the same time that the company was being investigated in fifteen states for questionable sales and marketing.

In addition, the Republicans were determined to stop anything the new president submitted and they are traditionally opposed to big government programs. It should be noted that the ACA was modeled after plans that were proposed by Nixon and Johnson and passed by Romney.

RESULT: Americans cannot import their drugs from other countries, Medicare could not negotiate drug prices, no cuts in Medicaid payments, biologics are protected for twelve years; and thanks to the Supreme Court, namely John Roberts, there is no individual mandate.  The whole idea of insurance is sharing the risk. We all pay into the pot and when one of us gets sick the insurance pays for our treatment. Those young people who don’t want the insurance do have accidents and someday they will be old and the next generation will subsidize their insurance premiums.

To be continued…

Work Life Balance Opinion: Parental Flexibility

In recent news, Starbucks has announced that they will start to provide subsidized child and adult day care via Care.com for emergency situations for their employees.  This small, simple benefit can end up yielding huge financial and cultural benefits since 70% of workers have said they’ve had to take time off from work "or make other work adjustments because of caregiving."*

Here at EBC this got us thinking about Parental Flexibility, especially for Lachelle with her 18 month old daughter and Jessica, EBC’s Digital Marketing and Client Services Manager with her 10 month old son.  

Starting a family while also working on a career began with the best intentions. Then baby was born and all my plans were thrown out the window.  Going back to work full time was more physically and mentally painful than expected. On top of that, our new little one with his new immune system got sick about every other week and daycare do not allow sick babies.  But myself and my husband had zero sick or vacation days since they were all used during maternity leave. I suddenly understood the stresses of working full time and being a parent.  

I immediately start talking to other mothers at my job to see how they cope with this lifestyle, but they all had their own complaints that were similar to my own.  It all begins with this feeling that we didn’t have enough time with our newborns before we even had to return to work. The time off wasn’t just for the sake of our newborns but also for our own health.  Recovering from birth takes time especially if surgery is involved.

Through all this, I ended up needing and wanting to quit my job so that I could have the flexibility to take care of my family when they got sick and take care of myself both physically and mentally.  My husband also became stressed with the amount of time that his job was pulling him away from our new family. The whole situation became strained which is not how we intended to start a family.

Luckily for us, my husband was offered a job in an industry he always wanted to be in and I was fortunate enough to begin to work at EBC from anywhere I needed to be during hours that worked for my schedule.  We packed up our family and moved to a small town so that we could have the life we always imagined we could. I am so grateful for the opportunities we were given and the life we now have. But it pains me to still see so many women struggle with the same issues I did.  

It is a horrible thing to be stuck between your family life and career ambitions.  It is even worse when a company does not have policies that offers flexibility. While there are no federal laws that require companies to have parental leave or flexible hours, these benefits are becoming increasingly asked for by employees.  Especially in the age of globalism, people are realizing what other countries are offering their citizens and wondering why those benefits can’t be offered here. Low unemployment rates also means that companies are competing for employees rather than the other way around and therefore, benefits are becoming a top reason to apply for a job or choose one job over the other.  Companies no longer have the upper hand when recruiting the right employee and will need to start listening to the outcries for better parental and family-centric benefits.

The information below is provided by Lachelle:

Family Benefits

There is a law currently in place to provide job-protection for eligible employees who take time off work for certain family and medical reasons. This is the Family Medical Leave Act.  The DOL’s website description says “ The FMLA entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons with continuation of group health insurance coverage under the same terms and conditions as if the employee had not taken leave.”

While this does offer job protection this only covers unpaid leave, therefore it would not be seen as a “fringe benefit”.  Also, only Employers with over 50 employees have to comply with this law so smaller employer groups are not required to provide any sort of family leave.  Lastly, this law has specific outlines for what type of leave is covered. The time off of work for a mother taking care of her child with chickenpox would qualify her under FMLA.  The time off for a mother who needs to take her child to the dentist would not.

In the interest of this article, what kinds of non-traditional employee benefits or “perks” can we think of that can be beneficial for new mothers, parents and families and are outside of the traditional benefit box?

• Flexible time off which can be used interchangeably for illness, vacation or whatever the person needs time off for (parent teacher conference, doctor’s appointments etc)

• Voluntary benefits – many voluntary benefits such as Accident products can cover spouses and children. This is especially useful for children who are active in sports and recreation.

• Option to work at home – even if it is just for one day a week or several hours a month, having the option to work from home for a new mother or father can be huge. It can relieve the stress of leaving their family or finding a sitter.  Thanks to the technology of this generation, many tasks can be done at home via phone, email, skype and the like.

These offerings can be provided by any sized Employer, in any industry, in any state and could potentially be that one differentiating benefit that draws and retains the employee talent you seek.

For more information on the Family Medical Leave Act, please go to the Department of Labor’s Website.

If you’d like to brainstorm on new employee benefits for your group such as the ones mentioned in this article, please reach out to us at Joni or Lachelle.

CNN Article Regarding new care benefits: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/09/business/starbucks-care-benefits/index.html

*2016 study by the National Survey of Children's Health