Quit Boxing Yourself In With Self-Limiting Thinking

/in ,

People are prone to categorize, label, and sort themselves into little boxes.

Think about it. How often do people say they’re left-brained because of their analytical and verbal skills and not right-brained because they aren’t visual or intuitive? What if people are trapping themselves in a box by creating walls and barriers that aren’t there? An evaluation of the left-brain vs. the right-brain found no proof of a dominant side. The two sides function differently, but they work together and complement each other.

The same idea relates to people who think they aren’t creative because they aren’t “artistic.” Creativity is not limited to the arts. Creativity can come in formulating ideas, thinking innovatively, problem-solving—all of which are essential for organizational growth.

Everyone has the potential to be creative. The key is to help your team build their creative confidence. By fostering a creative organization and assisting others in tapping into their creative potential, you can help your team unleash their inner creativity and lead your organization to overall results and growth.

Create a creative team culture

To harness your team’s inner creativity, you need to create an environment that makes it safe for others to engage and participate in creative thinking and action by:

  • Adopting a participatory approach: Everyone has so much creative potential that it is dangerous to assume all great ideas come from the top. The most innovative companies have minimized their hierarchy and transitioned to a participatory approach that involves collaboration and teamwork. They absorb ideas and insights and actively listen to people on the front lines of their operation. They nurture their team members’ innovative, creative spirit so that ideas trickle up through the organization.
  • Actively listening: Encourage others to voice their ideas, and remember to defer judgment and actively listen. For example, instead of saying, “That’s a bad idea” or “That won’t work,” keep the momentum up and create a snowball effect of new ideas. Ask yourself, “What would make this idea feasible or better?”

When people’s ideas and contributions are rejected, ignored, or shot down, their creative confidence withers away, and they will produce fewer ideas to help the organization. Companies that minimize hierarchy and encourage the exchange of ideas produce creative momentum. When people embrace the concept of building on the ideas of others, it unleashes all sorts of creativity. Most importantly, this creates an environment where people feel comfortable taking risks, experimenting with new ideas, and finding innovative ways to help the company grow.

Help others reach their potential

Harnessing an individual’s creative confidence is not like switching on a light. It takes practice and continuous improvements. Fortunately, you can help others access their inner creativity in several ways.

  1. Encourage your team members to embrace continuous learning and curiosity. Perhaps, offer your team the chance to take online classes where they can tap into their creative potential.
  2. Help others seek out new experiences. If you’ve noticed employees not using their paid time off, encourage them to volunteer in their community, meet others, or get another stamp on their passport!
  3. If a team member likes a challenge, find something that motivates them to stretch their creative thinking. For instance, if they excel in planning, allow them to help plan your annual work party or conference.
  4. For those team members who need to ease into challenges, ask them to accomplish a familiar task in an alternative way to lead to successful results.

Another strategy is fostering multidisciplinary teams that bring different backgrounds, life experiences, or perspectives to the team. Bringing together various people results in a positive tension that often leads to more innovative and exciting ideas, which can be valuable when facing complex and multidimensional challenges. Most importantly, this can lead to collaboration as ideas begin to snowball.

Finally, the creative mindset!

Once your team becomes more confident, they adopt a positive work attitude, push themselves to think innovatively, and become vulnerable in a creative context. This vulnerability fosters an ability to trust themselves and helps them break down the barriers to their creative thinking. 

And a team with a newfound creative mindset contributes to a company’s ability to innovate and grow as they apply their imagination to paint a picture of the future! You will see people using their creative mindset to solve problems, improve existing ideas, or find new ways to approach your target audience.

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by dorian2013

6 Employee Benefits to Consider for 2022

/in ,

Employee priorities have changed because of the pandemic, which has led employers to examine their employee benefits offerings for 2022. Key concerns brought up by employees include physical wellbeing, peace of mind, and financial health—huge issues challenging employers to consider benefits they might have ignored in the past.

Here are six employee benefits trends to consider for 2022.

Paid Time Off (PTO)

The balance of work and personal life is an essential consideration for employees in today’s workplace. SHRM states that US workers rank Paid Time Off (PTO) as the second most important benefit after healthcare. Also, according to Project: Time Off, employees who work for companies that encourage PTO are happier with their jobs. If PTO is something you want to consider for your employees, decide what works best for them and your organization.

Flexible work hours and location

When a whopping 40% of workers would consider quitting if their jobs offered no flexible hours or the opportunity to work from home at least a few days a week, it shows how vital remote work has become. Remote work benefits, such as time saved commuting, more personal time, better sleep, and better overall health can be attractive options to employees. Employers who want to attract and retain the best talent might offer flexible hours and remote work locations as an employee benefit.

Financial wellness

Financial stress skyrocketed during the pandemic, as 32% of people said the pandemic still affects their finances. Stressed employees are more distracted and less productive, making it a lose/lose situation for both employees and employers.

However, 80% of people who feel employers are committed to helping strengthen their financial resiliency are more likely to stay with their company. If, as an employer, you want to show your company is people-centered, a financial wellness benefit is something to think about.

Family planning

Currently, 10% of employers with 50 employees or less offer family planning and fertility benefits, and more than 30% of employers with 500 or more employees provide these benefits. Considering millennials are the largest generation in the US workforce today, and many are at the age where family planning plays an important role in their lives, offering family-focused benefits could be a smart move for employers. Employers who create strategic benefits plans that meet the current needs of their workforce will have an easier time attracting and retaining talent.

Student loan repayment

The number of people in the United who currently have an outstanding student loan debt is 44.7 million. A student loan repayment benefit aims to reduce the burden this debt has on employees and could attract millennial employees, as 28.9 million people in this age group are indebted borrowers.

Such a benefit would help with loyalty and retention, as 4 in 5 young people would commit to employers for 5 years if the employer helped pay their student loans. 

Mental health and wellbeing

During the pandemic, mental health issues such as anxiety and depression rose when the United States first went into lockdown. This is not an issue to ignore, both for the sake of employees’ mental health and an employer’s bottom line—depression, for instance, costs employers about $17 million to $44 million in lost productivity. With this in mind, think about expanding your employee health and wellness benefits to go beyond offering employee assistance programs (EAPs). An EAP is a type of employee benefits program that helps employees with personal and/or work-related problems that may impact their job performance and overall physical/mental wellbeing. For example, Joey Price, CEO of JumpstartHR, explained how companies are investing in mindfulness apps “to help employees balance the tension of work from home and life from home.”

Let your employees be the driver of your decisions

Now, more than ever, benefits that help with overall wellbeing and wellness are key trends to consider in 2022. But the best way to know what benefits your employees want? Ask them.

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by imagehitevo

How to Stop Reacting and Avoid Burnout

/in , ,

Whatever role you play in your company, you know how hard it is to avoid the creeping sensation of burnout, even if you love your job. Burnout has steeply risen over the last two years, meaning it’s more crucial than ever to find ways to fight back.

It’s easy to get stuck in a snowball effect of trying to do too much at once, then failing to do anything well, then scrambling to fix errors and keep moving ahead. There’s a saying you might have heard: “Throw ten balls at someone at once, and they’ll catch zero. Throw ten balls at someone one at a time, and they’ll catch them all.”

Over the past year, you may have felt like too many balls were thrown at you at once—managing requests, maintaining forward motion, and producing quality work. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to do all three things for an extended period. It can damage your wellbeing and the health of your organization.

So what can you do about it? It starts with taking command of how you respond to new tasks, ideas, and requests.

1. Pause

When you receive a new request, your first reaction might be to add it to your to-do list and start working on it right away. Or you might want to set it aside and forget about it, thinking, “This is just another thing I can’t get done.”

Before you do any of that, pause. Take a moment to reflect on your state of mind and your initial reaction. Give yourself the time to perceive your reaction, then set it aside so you can respond with more intention.

This is a crucial step because it can illuminate how you’re already feeling and how that might be affecting your work. If your first response was to start immediately, then you might be stuck in a frantic, disorganized state, feeling a sense of urgency to move forward quickly without reason. Alternatively, if your first response was to sigh heavily, this might mean you’re already feeling the effects of burnout. This self-awareness is the first step to taking the necessary steps to protect yourself.

2. Evaluate

Before starting on any task, take the time to evaluate its level of importance and urgency. President Eisenhower created a strategy for this that’s still useful today. While the person handing the task to you might be extra excited about getting it done, it may not fall into an urgent and critical category in the grand scheme of things. This can come in very handy when you’re trying to balance a busy schedule and endless to-do list.

3. Prioritize

Once you’ve identified the level of importance and urgency, take a moment to review the task in the context of your other work. Where does it fall on your to-do list? Depending on the structure of your organization, this might be different for you than for another team member. You might have cross-departmental duties, or maybe you’re working on several various projects that are all competing for your time.

4. Assess

Now that you’ve moved through the first two steps, decide the best course of action. No one likely knows the full shape of your to-do list, so you’re the expert on whether you’re the best person for the job and when and how it should get done. Maybe it makes more sense to hold off until the next quarter or to have a different team member work on it. Or perhaps the timeline needs to be adjusted, so you have a reasonable time to complete it. Steps two and three should provide you with confidence when deciding the best next move.

5. Respond

While you may be thinking, “I’m not the boss, how am I supposed to respond to requests if I’m not in a position to say no?” Whether or not you’re able to say no, your opinion and evaluation still hold weight. Good leaders trust their team members and will welcome your insight. A well-balanced team means a productive and happy team, leading to quality work, retention, and satisfaction.

Your manager has probably heard the saying you can have it fast, cheap, or good, but you can only pick two! The same goes for getting work done. You can get something done quickly, but it may mean other things need to be pushed to the side. Your valuable insight can help them do their job better, clarifying challenges and creating a clear path forward.

These five steps will take you out of frantic reaction mode and put you into a leadership mindset. They’ll help you gain confidence and control over your workload and empower you to set and identify crucial boundaries to protecting your wellbeing as an employee (and a human!).

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by stockbroker

Is a Pharmacy Carve-out Right for Your Group Health Plan?

/in ,

Pharmacy spend in the US is significant. Six in ten adults tell KFF.org they are currently taking at least one prescription drug and a quarter say they currently take four or more prescription medications.

PwC’s Behind the Numbers predicts a 6.5% medical cost trend in 2022, while drug cost trend reports show ongoing increases year over year and make up 20% of overall medical costs for employers.

Besides the cost burden on employers, employees can find that certain medications are not covered by their health plan. This increases pressure on employers to develop a sustainable strategy that provides cost-effective pharmacy benefits.

As a solution, many employers consider pharmacy carve-out plans as an option; however, carve-out plans are debated vigorously by health plan experts. By understanding what a pharmacy carve-out is and considering important factors, employers and brokers can work together to make the right decision.

What is a pharmacy carve-out?

A pharmacy carve-out is when an employer separates (carves out) their prescription drug benefits from their medical plan and contracts directly with a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM). A pharmacy carve-out is commonly used under the self-insured model. In comparison, fully insured medical plans typically have the pharmacy benefit as a built-in feature (bundle).

Advantages

Pharmacy carve-outs can provide transparency, flexibility, control, and accessibility to employers in the form of:

  • Better control over pharmacy benefit costs.
  • Access to the costs and data to evaluate program performance.
  • Greater flexibility to customize solutions in plan design and clinical programs to help reduce costs.
  • Standardized language in the PBM contract to allow increased transparency into pharmacy benefits, allowing employers to better understand and control spending, negotiate better deals, and ensure the program performs as promised. The contract itself can allow:
    • Access to pharmacy claims data.
    • Audit rights, such as a claims audit, operational assessment, and rebate audit.
    • Annual review to ensure rates are competitive.
    • Service performance guarantees.
    • Credits to help cover administration expenses or costs incurred when switching to a new vendor.

Disadvantages

There are a lot of variables that affect whether a pharmacy carve-out is the right solution for your company. It’s critical to understand the disadvantages of carve-outs before making your next move:

  • Carved-out plans offer short-term savings, though the savings might not be beneficial to an employer over the long term.
    • A July 2021 study compared the costs of bundled and carve-out plans and found that bundled pharmacy benefits are associated with reduced medical expenditures over the long term, resulting in annual per-member, per-month savings compared with a carve-out.
    • Another study found that savings from a carve-out plan may seem beneficial on the surface, but medical costs are 7.5 times higher in the long run. Therefore, any savings promised by a carve-out should be weighed against potential increases in medical spending by employers.
    • Managed Healthcare Executive also reported carve-outs could deliver short-term savings, but not long-term savings, due to PBM vendors’ approach to utilization management. For example, many employees are denied access to their prescribed medications and are unlikely to have their denial overturned on appeal. This results in employees paying for medicine out-of-pocket, added costs for employers if they pay multiple vendors, and a poor member experience overall.

Besides long-term costs, carve-out contracts for medical and pharmacy require multiple vendors, increasing the administrative burden on the employer.

Thoughtful considerations

After reflecting on the advantages and disadvantages of carve-outs, making the decision may still be no small feat. Fortunately, you can ask yourself important questions to help you with your decision.

  1. How much are pharmacy benefits currently costing your plan?
  2. How are you currently overseeing the pharmacy benefits program?
  3. What changes would be necessary for the new arrangement?
  4. How will the fees from your medical health plan vendor be impacted?
  5. Is now the right time to search for a PBM vendor (and possibly a medical health plan request for approval)?

When deciding to carve-out pharmacy benefit programs, employers and brokers should work together to consider critical factors such as internal staff expertise, current and future costs, and appropriate timing. However, your top consideration should be, “Does this make the most sense for our organization and our employees?”

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

Photo by volody10