Strengthening the Employee Holistically

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Employees have lives and needs outside the workplace—needs beyond a paycheck and benefits. The needs were always there – what is trending is the conviction that if their current employer isn’t fulfilling their needs, they’ll leave their jobs to work for an employer that will.

Employers can see increased talent retention and performance by understanding the importance of employees’ holistic wellbeing and learning how to design a positive employee experience.

Think holistically and strengthen the employee experience

Employers need a deeper understanding of what employee needs look like and how they can help their employees outside the workplace. Supporting employees’ holistic wellbeing includes providing support in these key areas:

  • Physical health:  Level of illness, injury, preventative care, and general lifestyle.
  • Financial health: State of personal and family financial security.
  • Mental health:  Condition of psychological and emotional wellbeing.
  • Social health: The ability to form satisfying interpersonal relationships with others.

If you want to support your employees’ physical, mental, financial, and social health, you’ll need a compelling employee experience. According to Met Life’s recent study, there are five key areas that will contribute to a good experience:

Purposeful work

Purposeful work is a top driver for employee mental, social, and physical health. Employees are interested in their employers having a clear purpose and a positive impact, which significantly influences retention. People also want to feel valued at their organization, so it is not only about contributing to purposeful work but also being valuable.

Flexibility and work-life balance

Flexibility and work-life balance have become a priority. Seven in ten employees rank work-life management benefits and programs like flexible hours and financial allowance for their home office as their top needs. It’s essential to recognize that flexibility means different things to different people. The key factors include:

  • Where they work (remote, hybrid, in-person)
  • When they work (setting working hours and “protecting” pockets of time)
  • What they wear
  • How Paid Time Off (PTO) can be used

Employees who are satisfied with the flexibility their employers provide are twice as likely to stay with their current organization for as long as possible or until retirement, and 82 percent of employees feel mentally healthy. 

Social and supportive cultures

Strong cultures bring people together and increase social health, resilience, and loyalty. People thrive off their connections with others, but it takes strong leadership and managerial support to bring that culture to life. For instance, 77 percent of employees with supportive managers say they feel mentally healthy versus only 47 percent of workers who do not feel supported.

Career development and training

Employees are serious about growing and advancing their careers and are not afraid to seek employers that will support their careers. Job seekers look for roles that offer development, training, and advancement opportunities and see them as a must-have. The number of job seekers looking for jobs with those coveted benefits has grown by 8 percent since 2020; employers that offer these opportunities are more likely to have successful employees.

Wellness programs and benefits

Regarding mental health, wellness programs and benefits are the best route. This may include fertility benefits, parental leave policies, pet insurance, and employee-assisted programs (i.e., mental health counseling, legal support, and credit counseling). These benefits support the inner workings of employees’ personal lives, produce resilience, and improve overall mental health.

Why it matters

Employers face a tight labor market marked by declining job satisfaction and loyalty. Only 66 percent of employees say they are satisfied at their place of work (a 20-year low). If you’re thinking, “Well, I know my employees are loyal and satisfied,” be cautious. There is a significant gap in employer and employee perceptions. While 86 percent of employers believe their employees are loyal and satisfied: 

  • 55 percent of employees say their employer has their best interests in mind
  • 39 percent of employees would recommend their employer as a place to work
  • More employees are quitting their jobs to work for an employer that meets their needs

The same study found that holistically healthy employees are more likely to be satisfied with their current job, feel engaged and productive, and intend to stay with the company for at least 12 months. Understanding the value of supporting your people can make a huge difference.

Pursuing wellbeing is good business

It is safe to say that employees expect more support from their employers in many areas, at work and beyond. The good news? Positive wellbeing is good business.

Organizations that care for their employees’ wellbeing, offer compelling benefits, and provide an attractive employee experience will seize the win-win opportunity. They will attract talent that will enable the organization to perform at its highest level. After all, employees are more engaged, loyal, and productive when their needs are met.

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

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What is Health Insurance? Why is It Important?

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As an employer, if you’re shopping around for the best health insurance plan for your employees and wondering, “what exactly is insurance? And why is it important?” you are not alone. Insurance can be confusing—you may wonder how it works, the benefits of insurance, and how you can find the best plan and benefits for your employees.

Let’s dive in.

What is health insurance?

Simply put, health insurance is a safety net that helps your employees and their loved ones stay healthy with preventative care and medications, as well as help them recover after something like an illness or an accident. When your employees experience something covered by their insurance, and they file a claim, the insurance pays the provider based on the terms of the policy.

You want employees to feel protected and to be proactive about their health. Not doing so can lead to greater health risks long-term and cost them financial security. Insurance protects them from this risk. You hope your employees spend more time using their insurance for preventative care than catastrophic care, but if they have no insurance, either scenario will put them in a difficult financial situation.

How does insurance work?

Insurance is, essentially, a “rainy day fund” that is shared by your employees and managed by what is called an insurance carrier. The insurance carrier uses the money collected, called a premium, to help fulfill its promise to your employees when a claim is filed. Insurance also has a policy limit, the maximum amount the carrier will pay under the policy, and a deductible, the amount your employees must pay themselves, out of pocket, before the carrier pays a claim.

What are the benefits of insurance?

Having insurance allows your employees to manage life events that inevitably come up. Insurance helps keep your employees’ lives on track as much as possible after something happens. Insurance also:

  • Helps your employees live their lives with fewer worries. Employees know they’ll receive financial assistance after an accident and have support to recover, and it provides protection for when the worst happens.
  • Increases employee retention rates. When you offer health insurance to your current employees, it shows that you care about their wellbeing—and when you offer it to potential employees, you widen your pool of candidates.
  • Helps maintain your employees’ current standard of living. If they become disabled or have a critical illness, insurance can cover their day-to-day costs and other expenses while they focus on their health and recovery.
  • Helps give your employees peace of mind. A study shows that when needed health care, such as medications, increased in price by ten dollars, people stopped buying those medications. Life happens, and your employees cannot anticipate what might come up.

How do I choose an insurance advisor?

Consider the following when choosing an insurance agency and advisor to help secure coverage for your employees:

  • Type of coverage. What kind of insurance does the agency offer? Can they advise and educate on a spectrum of policies such as fully insured, level-funded, or self-funded? Do they offer additional insurance options such as life insurance or ancillary benefits? The more you know, the better position you’ll be in to make educated decisions for your business and your employees.
  • Education and resources. What resources does the agency offer to help you manage your insurance and benefits program? Do they proactively share information and materials? Do they make resources readily available?
  • Customer service. Do others recommend this agency? What do others say about them? Look them up online to see Google reviews, explore testimonials and case studies on their website, and review their LinkedIn profiles.

Taking the time to research a company before engaging in a sales conversation is common for buyers today. But be sure you are also making time in your process to spend quality time getting to know your future advisor.

Great insurance agencies and advisors will take the time to educate you about different options. Get a sense of how capable they are at informing and educating, so you can feel confident and informed about a potentially unfamiliar topic. Make your advisor selection based on building a relationship with someone who will work collaboratively to help you make the best decisions for your business.

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

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Want to Maximize Your Marketing? Use These Marketing Statistics

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When you’re running a business or leading a team, it can be difficult to know where to focus your attention because everything feels important. That’s why making data-based decisions around where and how you spend your energy is important—it removes the guesswork. It creates clarity around where your time and energy will result in the biggest impact and generate the most value for your company.

In this blog, we’ll look at a few statistics and break down what we can take away from them so you can spend your precious time and energy where it counts the most.

  1. 54% of decision-makers say they spend more than one hour per week reading and reviewing thought-leadership content. (Edelman/LinkedIn 2021)

Creating content is time-consuming; thus, using data to help you make decisions around the most effective content to create is your best solution to optimizing your effort and time. This stat tells us that the people you care about the most (the decision makers behind who’s going to buy your product) are taking the time to read content that educates them. If you prioritize writing content, such as blogs, that focuses on educating people and solving their problems, you’re more likely to get your brand and organization in front of potential customers.

Thought leadership can sound scary, but you shouldn’t be in business if you’re not confident in what you’re selling or teaching people. So remind yourself that you’re the expert and focus on sharing your hard-earned knowledge in a format designed to help people and solve their problems. It’s great for building relationships, SEO, and establishing your brand.

  1. Virtual events, webinars, and online courses ranked first in the B2B content that yielded the best results in 2021. (Content Marketing Institute)

Another powerful way to generate leads and build engagement is by offering long-form educational content. Online courses and webinars are two great options if you’re trying to maximize the value of your time since they can be designed to be evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that will be available indefinitely, creating a pipeline that can generate leads well into the future.

Consider how you can offer a course or a webinar that solves your customers’ problems. Think ahead about where they’ll be in the buyer’s journey and consider how your content offer will meet their needs. Then you can design a follow-up strategy to capitalize on your now high-qualified marketing leads (or people who are more likely to buy your product because they are more educated about how it solves their problem).

  1. Email marketing has the highest return on investment for small businesses. (Campaign Monitor, 2019)

Email marketing is one of the top performing forms of marketing today. It’s a great way to maintain engagement with your contacts, gain helpful insight into your contact database using analytics, and move leads through the funnel.

But you shouldn’t email for the sake of emailing. As much as email can be a great tool for building relationships, it can also ruin relationships. Make sure your email content is relevant, useful, and timely. Over-sending emails can become a nuisance to your contacts and result in unsubscribes. It’s also critical to take the time to design and format your emails intentionally. Email design, like web design, will significantly impact whether your emails get read.

If you’re in doubt, ask the data

Time management and marketing go hand in hand. Make sure you’re paying attention to what’s working and what isn’t. Use defined metrics and goals to decipher what content generates the highest value for your business and make decisions around what you’ve learned.

It takes time to collect enough data to make these decisions, so stick with each activity for at least a few cycles so you can accumulate enough data to make qualified decisions – because data tells a much more accurate story than your gut does. Creating content and managing a brand online takes time and effort, so spending your time in the right place makes or breaks your success.

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

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Get Your Marketing and Messaging on Track

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Developing powerful messaging can be one of the toughest challenges businesses face in marketing and branding. You do so much, and you know it all, but how do you convey your organization’s value to your audience? How do you tell them the 1,000 reasons to work with you in under 50 words?

Many businesses focus on the wrong things to try and connect with their audience, leaving them no closer to their goal and with a whole lot of wasted time and effort on their hands. Gone are the days of people caring how old your business is; gone are the days of long stuffy bios and dense, technical language.

Effective messaging doesn’t have to be a mystery. It simply takes the right approach to get to the message you’re looking for.

Start looking toward the future

When hiring someone outside your organization to help with marketing, a common tactic is to research your top three competitors and base your messaging on what they learned. They’re hoping to find out what you’re up against, what is successful for others in your industry niche, and where the bar is set.

But this strategy is deeply flawed. It starts on the premise that your competitors know what they’re doing, which very often they don’t. (They probably looked at competitors’ websites, too!)

The second problem with this approach is that it only reflects what has already been done and will only work to ensure your messaging becomes a copycat of theirs, undermining your unique perspective and value. Essentially, it puts another company’s words in your mouth—and your competitor’s at that!

So, instead of looking back at the lagging indicator created by what other organizations have done in the past, start by looking to the future. Your future. Ask yourself where your organization is now and envision where you want to go. Your message should reflect where you are now and project the future with you and your client in it.

Figure out who your audience is

Before you write anything, start by defining your audience. Identify who your ideal customer is and what brings them to you. What are their worries, challenges, and pain points, and why are you the organization to help them overcome those things?

Once you’ve identified the face of your audience and you’ve identified their challenges, envision their future. Envision how their future will be improved through what you can offer them. Create a message that allows them to see a better version of their future selves. Work to reflect their pain points back to them in the form of their aspirations, enabled by you.

Keep it simple

One of the quickest ways to lose someone’s attention is to overload them with information. Read through your message from the perspective of your ideal customer. Are you providing them with information they don’t need at the moment? Are you getting wordy about your excellent organization and all the fantastic things you do?

While it may make you feel good, it only makes it harder for your ideal customer to get what they need. People are busy. They have a lot to do and little time to do it, and they want the easiest, most transparent, most obvious solution. They shouldn’t have to expend effort to understand what you do or know the obvious next step. If they do, they’ll leave and probably never come back.

 

Your message should only give people precisely what they need at that moment. No more, no less.

Let your messaging evolve

As your business develops and grows, so should your messaging. Consider it a living, breathing part of your organization that needs to be fed and allowed to evolve.

Don’t hold your messaging hostage to old, stuffy language just because that’s the way you’ve always done it. Keep coming back to it, evaluating its effectiveness, and giving it room to change. It takes serious effort, but with every inch of messaging effort you put in, your customers receive a mile in value.

 

Content provided by Q4iNetwork and partners

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