Benefits Buzz

An Apple A Day or A Bad Apple? Where Health and Productivity Meet.

An Apple A Day or A Bad Apple?

I was recently listening to an episode of This American Life entitled, "Ruining It For The Rest of Us" where they featured stories about how easily one person's behavior can have a contaminating effect on others. One particularly haunting story covered the research of Will Felps, a professor at Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands, who placed a confederate in a group and observed the impact that this "bad apple" had on the rest of the group. In nearly every case, the influence of even one spoiler tarnished the productivity and the morale of the group.
One thing that the researchers in Felp's study didn't look at, however, is that poor health can impact mood. Could an apple a day and a brief jaunt outdoors help the bad apple get his mood back on track? Or could workplace health and wellness be a protective means of coping for those who might otherwise be affected by a bad apple?

How do health and mood interact in your workplace? Have you seen an instance where a bad apple lowered the productivity of a work group and subsequently led to more sick days or a reluctance of team members to show up for work?

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

 

Shocker! - COBRA Subsidy To Cause Increase In Utilization

Last week, I wrote about the fact that scared employees are motivated to use benefits to a higher degree, in essence "stocking up" and getting procedures that could easily be classified as voluntary in nature.  The reason?  The economy has many scared that they may not have a job for long, so they're using the benefits to a larger degree while they have them.  Makes sense...

The only thing that motivates an employee to use benefits more than economic fear?  How about the fact that you've lost your job, and you're on a subsidized form of COBRA?  From Employee Benefit News:

"This likely won't come as much of a surprise, unfortunately, but new survey numbers from Aon show 60% of employers expect their overall health care costs to increase as a result of implementing the federal COBRA subsidy.

Polling some 300 employers who attended recent Aon COBRA webinars, the consulting firm finds 40% expect their overall health care costs to increase 1% to 5% because of the subsidy; another 40 percent expect costs to spike between 6% and 10%; 12 percent forecast increases from 11% to 15%; 8% expect an increase of 16% or more.

“Typically, 5% to 10% of former employees enroll in COBRA, and we expect that number to increase to 14% to 18% as a result of the subsidy. As employers begin to plan for their 2010 health benefits, they must take the new COBRA subsidy costs into consideration,” says Tom Lerche, Aon’s health care practice leader. “Most plan sponsors continue to experience a 7% to 11% health care cost trend rate, so additional costs from this subsidy will impact overall health care plan strategy for 2010.”

So, add the COBRA factor to the list of reasons why your trend rate will be greater than it might have been for 2009, as well as 2010.  The only saving grace?  It's the COBRA subsidy mandated by the stimulus package itself.  It could be that former employees who know they have a 2/3 subsidy for the cost of COBRA for the better part of a year might be less inclined to get the optional knee operation right away due to the security of the package.

We'll see. Of course, you'll have to fork over that $600-800 per month for the 2/3 cost of family coverage up front. 

See you at tax time.

Comparing the Cost of Google Daycare with the Rest of the Free World...

The price tag bandied about regarding Google Daycare - 57K for 2 kids under Google's new bundling plan - sent a shockwave out across parents in the working world.  Relax everyone, it's got more to do with the cost of stuff in the valley than it does with any Google desire to stick it to working parents.

For some perspective, let's rely on economic data supplied by yours truly and trusted subscribers to the Capitalist:

-First, there's me.  I live in Birmingham, Alabama, a metro area with a population of a little over one million.  The southeast/sunbelt is known as a pretty affordable area to live, and the magic city was recently rated as the 3rd most affordable housing market in America.   I had two kids in high end, education-first day care for four years, and the biggest annual bill I ever had was around 16k.  That's 8K per kid, and that came down a bit as the youngest one got out of infant care, etc.  (total annual cost per kid - 8K).

-Then, there's my friend Evil HR Lady, who hit us in the comments to the original post.  I don't know where she lives, but my guess is it's a metro area bigger than Bham that's not on the west coast.  She gave us the weekly cost of $300 for one kid, which is $1,200 per month or $14,400 annualized (assumes 2 weeks out for a trip to the EHRL beach house) (total annual cost per kid - 14.5K).

-Next, friend of the Capitalist, Meg, gave us the baseline cost of daycare in the Silicon Valley area, providing a figure of $10/hour or 20K annually for solid daycare.  Ouch.  (total annual cost per kid - 20K)

So, those are the market figures, and it's important to note that those prices represent parents paying 100% of the cost.

And, that's where the math gets freaky when comparing the market to Google's subsidized daycare. 

Let's start with what's easy.  Daycare at Google, for those fortunate enough to get the benefit (supply/capacity issue) use to be able to get 2 kids in daycare for 33K a year, or 16.5K per kid.  That made it twice as expensive as Birmingham, but comparable to where Evil HR Lady lives and cheaper than what folks could buy on their own in the Valley.  With the price increases, that figure goes up to 57K, or 28.5K per kid.  That makes it twice as expensive as EHRL, and significantly more costly than what Meg reported as a baseline.

But, that's not the full story, since Google was subsidizing and continues to subsidize the cost of their daycare.  According to the NYT article, Google was subsidizing the cost-per-child, before the change, to the tune of 37K per child, meaning the total loaded cost was 53.5K per child (wow).  The article suggests that Google was making changes to the childcare operation that included raising the child per caretaker ratio.  That would naturally drop the total cost.

Assuming Google made changes to the childcare operation that resulted in them providing a subsidy per child similar to Cisco and Oracle (12K per child), the total cost of the Google daycare solution would be 40K per child (28.5 per kid plus 12K - I rounded down).

And that's roughly 5 times the Birmingham price, 3 times the EvilHRLadyville price, and 2 times the normal Silicon Valley price. 

Which means if I ever work for Google, I would be... how do we say it....

...a Telecommuter, from Birmingham.

WOW.      

The price tag bandied about regarding Google Daycare - 57K for 2 kids under Google's new bundling plan - sent a shockwave out across parents in the working world.  Relax everyone, it's got more to do with the cost of stuff in the valley than it does with any Google desire to stick it to working parents.

For some perspective, let's rely on economic data supplied by yours truly and trusted subscribers to the Capitalist:

-First, there's me.  I live in Birmingham, Alabama, a metro area with a population of a little over one million.  The southeast/sunbelt is known as a pretty affordable area to live, and the magic city was recently rated as the 3rd most affordable housing market in America.   I had two kids in high end, education-first day care for four years, and the biggest annual bill I ever had was around 16k.  That's 8K per kid, and that came down a bit as the youngest one got out of infant care, etc.  (total annual cost per kid - 8K).

-Then, there's my friend Evil HR Lady, who hit us in the comments to the original post.  I don't know where she lives, but my guess is it's a metro area bigger than Bham that's not on the west coast.  She gave us the weekly cost of $300 for one kid, which is $1,200 per month or $14,400 annualized (assumes 2 weeks out for a trip to the EHRL beach house) (total annual cost per kid - 14.5K).

-Next, friend of the Capitalist, Meg, gave us the baseline cost of daycare in the Silicon Valley area, providing a figure of $10/hour or 20K annually for solid daycare.  Ouch.  (total annual cost per kid - 20K)

So, those are the market figures, and it's important to note that those prices represent parents paying 100% of the cost.

And, that's where the math gets freaky when comparing the market to Google's subsidized daycare. 

Let's start with what's easy.  Daycare at Google, for those fortunate enough to get the benefit (supply/capacity issue) use to be able to get 2 kids in daycare for 33K a year, or 16.5K per kid.  That made it twice as expensive as Birmingham, but comparable to where Evil HR Lady lives and cheaper than what folks could buy on their own in the Valley.  With the price increases, that figure goes up to 57K, or 28.5K per kid.  That makes it twice as expensive as EHRL, and significantly more costly than what Meg reported as a baseline.

But, that's not the full story, since Google was subsidizing and continues to subsidize the cost of their daycare.  According to the NYT article, Google was subsidizing the cost-per-child, before the change, to the tune of 37K per child, meaning the total loaded cost was 53.5K per child (wow).  The article suggests that Google was making changes to the childcare operation that included raising the child per caretaker ratio.  That would naturally drop the total cost.

Assuming Google made changes to the childcare operation that resulted in them providing a subsidy per child similar to Cisco and Oracle (12K per child), the total cost of the Google daycare solution would be 40K per child (28.5 per kid plus 12K - I rounded down).

And that's roughly 5 times the Birmingham price, 3 times the EvilHRLadyville price, and 2 times the normal Silicon Valley price. 

Which means if I ever work for Google, I would be... how do we say it....

...a Telecommuter, from Birmingham.

WOW.      

The Utilization Gold Rush - Scared Employees Rushing to Use Benefits...

In a down economy, there's plenty of humanity to go around.  Layoffs, how to find the next job, financial stress, etc.  One thing you may not have added to the list.  A mushrooming utilization of your medical plan, including big ticket items, as employees rush to have procedures that (1) they might have put off having done, or (2) are borderline necessary.

Bad knee?  Sure you might be able to work through the issue with some therapy, but if you're worried a job loss might be in your future, you might want to go ahead and get that 30K knee surgery performed next month.

Multiply that by 10% of your employee base and you've got an issue.  From Time Magazine:

"When Sophie, a financial analyst in Paris, learned that her bank would lay off 50 employees by this summer, she didn't react by mailing out résumés or trying to ingratiate herself with her managers — she scheduled arthroscopic knee surgery. "I'm doing it now because I won't be able to if I wait and lose my job," says the 27-year-old, who, fearing questions from her employer, spoke with TIME on condition of anonymity. By going under the knife ahead of her potential job loss, Sophie can use the firm's supplementary health insurance to cover the $4,000 procedure. As she says: "Insurance is one of the parts of having a good job you take for granted until you realize you may lose it all."

Sophie isn't alone. As the global economy continues to tank — the U.S. shed 663,000 jobs in March, and millions of jobs are disappearing from Madrid to Mumbai — employees are scurrying to exploit company benefits while they have them, scheduling dental exams, indulging in massages, utilizing company-covered therapists and buying bicycles at discounted rates. "People are petrified," says Dai Williams, an occupational psychologist at Eos, a career-consulting firm in the U.K. "It's a question of grabbing what you can while you can."

You can't really stop the thought process, and for the most part, you won't be able to stop the marginal calls on whether to have a procedure performed.  The economy's doing what I always thought about employees who opted for COBRA - my take was that if an employee takes COBRA, why wouldn't they take every opportunity to get procedures completed ASAP, in case they couldn't afford the payments down the road?

Now the economy's taken that same fear to employees who won't be impacted by layoffs, etc.  Nice...

Do It Pro Bono: Getting the Most Benefit From Time Off to Volunteer

Volunteering is definitely hot right now. President Obama has made it part of his national agenda and laid-off workers are flooding nonprofits with applications to volunteer. Many many companies have time off to volunteer as part of their benefits program and vocal companies like Salesforce.com tout their volunteering + donations so much that they even teach other organizations how to follow their model.

But, what's really exciting (and, just in time for National Volunteer Week), is the growing appreciation that giving employees time off to volunteer is not only good for the community, but good for your employees--and good for business.

Talent Management's April cover story Volunteerism’s Impact on Talent Management says it all:

"Organizations should encourage, value and support extracurricular volunteer efforts, not just because it is the right thing to do but because these volunteer activities will increase employee engagement, underscore the employer brand, support recruitment and retention initiatives, and develop valuable workplace skills that ultimately will help the employer succeed."

Now, that sounds like a business case any CFO can appreciate.

Limeade, a wellness company, is taking that one step further and linking volunteer efforts to productivity in their health risk assessment. Instead of just asking employees for their BMIs and cholesterol levels, Limeade asks the employee what he or she wants to achieve--from health to social to career goals--and lets the employee pick up to three. "Giving back" is one of these. Others are things like "get more sleep" and "have more energy."

Henry Albrecht, the CEO of Limeade, says that Giving Back option is there because it is linked to higher productivity. "Giving Back is a goal on the Limeade assessment because altruism predicts better business and personal performance. Including factors like these allows Limeade to predict more than 10 times the variability in productivity than just looking at health factors alone. It's about being a high-performance company--not just flagging health risks and 'singling out the costly.' Our own rigorous statistical analysis shows that 'Concern for Others' predicts both productivity and well-being (both of which are connected to other positive business outcomes like profits and customer satisfaction)." 

So, volunteering can increase engagement, develop talent, improve recruiting efforts and even bump up profits and customer satisfaction. Wow. But, how do you get the most bang for your volunteering buck? Two ways:

--Promote your volunteering benefits. (And, promote your donation and gift-matching programs, too--they're all benefits!) This seems like a no-brainer, but plenty of companies give their employees 2 or 3 days a year off to volunteer and then forget to remind their employees to take the time off. Or, worse, their demanding work environment doesn't allow for it. Promote this benefit--and encourage managers to do the same. (If your company doesn't have this benefit, now is a great time to add it!)

--Encourage pro bono work as the most valuable way to volunteer and link those volunteer opportunities to learning and development. Pro bono projects use employees' professional skills. I would never discourage volunteer work like cleaning up parks or building homes for Habitat for Humanity, but pro bono work has so much more potential to engage and develop employees--and pro bono work also delivers the most value to the nonprofit sector, which is desperately in need of the skills your employees have. Most people find donating their unique skills more rewarding than "stuffing envelopes" and other fewer-skills-required jobs. And, pro bono projects and pro bono consulting can often be integrated into employees' day-to-day work rather than having to take everyone off-site for a day or two for a concentrated volunteer project. Need some inspiration? Check out how Umpqua Bank quantifies the impact of all of their associates volunteering (they have nearly 70% participation!).

Not linking time off to volunteer to learning and development is a huge missed opportunity. From the 2008 Deloitte Volunteer IMPACT Survey, a nationwide survey for Fortune 500 HR pros: "Fully 91 percent of respondents agree that skills-based volunteering (which involves the contribution of business knowledge and experience to help nonprofits increase their capacity) would add value to training and development programs, particularly as it relates to fostering business and leadership skills.  However, only 16 percent make it a regular practice to intentionally offer these opportunities for employee development, suggesting a missed opportunity to boost learning in a way that offers substantial benefits."

More on that from the Talent Management article: As Peter F. Drucker wrote in the article "Managing Knowledge Means Managing Oneself," "The real development I've seen of people in organizations, especially in big ones, comes from their being volunteers in a nonprofit organization. I hope we will soon begin to talk about the nonprofit organization as the great social opportunity for business. It is the opportunity for business to develop managers far more effectively than any company or university can. It is one of the unique benefits that the social sector can offer."

Did you hear that? Pro bono work provides opportunities to develop managers far more effectively than any company or university can! (And, hey, it is way cheaper than an MBA.)

Pro bono work also has the ability to elevate everyday professionals to hero status, especially when you're helping organizations that are solving some of society's most challenging problems. That is the theme of a new childrens' book Mommy and Daddy Do It Pro Bono. Written by Aaron Hurst, the founder of The Taproot Foundation, an organization that engages professionals in pro bono work across the country, and his wife, Kara Hurst, a global corporate social responsibility leader, the book shows what typical professionals look like through the eyes of children--and how significant pro bono work can be. It is a fun look at the impact of volunteer work not just on the organizations and individuals involved, but as a way to be a role model in every profession.

It is also the first children's book to feature an HR Manager--perhaps the best roll model in a company for the value of pro bono work (especially since nonprofits need HR help now more than ever). And, it is on sale, just in time for National Volunteer Week, and just in time for you to add a promo about your volunteer time off program to your next benefits update.

Author's note - A big thank you to Liz Guthridge, Charlotte Graeber and Chip Abernathy who provided me with some of the examples above via Twitter.

Editor's Note - Jennifer Benz is founder and chief strategist at Benz Communications, a boutique consulting firm that focuses on employee benefits communication. She admits to not being even slightly impartial on the topic of pro bono work, having been involved with the Taproot Foundation since 2002.

When High STD Rates Are a Good Thing...

Is the glass half-full or half-empty?  When you're a public health department, you take wins where you can get them.  Case in point, if your STD rate is high, you may as well point to the fact that you're more aggressive than your peers in implementing testing programs.

More on the "half-full" lens from Wellness.com:

"Blue Earth County continues to have one of the state's highest rates of a common sexually transmitted disease. But, in a strange twist, that might be good news.  A state health official said it's likely that more aggressive testing in Mankato catches more cases of chlamydia than elsewhere, leading to the higher rate.

The state saw a new high in an epidemic of STDs in 2008. The Minnesota Department of Health said there were 17,650 new cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis last year, a 3.5 percent increase.

Blue Earth County had the fourth-highest rate in the state, behind Hennepin, Ramsey and Beltrami counties. Blue Earth County had 212 new cases of chlamydia, the most common STD, a rate of 379 cases per 100,000 people.

Peter Carr, head of the health department's STD division, said the county could have slightly higherrates because of a larger college -- age population. Most cases of STDs are in those younger than 25.

"But it's very likely that health- care workers there are doing a much better job of screening. Chlamydia, in women in particular, doesn't produce symptoms, so there has to be good routine screening," Carr said.

"By doing what they are supposed to do, it makes theproblem look worse than it is."

If left untreated, chlamydia can lead to infertility in some women and cause complications in giving birth and possible infections in newborns.

Note to reporter - check year over year trends next time around, or at least moving forward <sigh>.

Is It The Government's Job To Make You Aware of Calories?

Generally speaking, I like to know the nutritional data of the food I eat.  I'm more hung up on fat grams than I am calories, because generally I think my calories are under control for my activity level. 

With that in mind, I respond well to seeing nutrition information at fast food outlets, and I think it's good business for those outlets, especially for return business from me.  If I know I can get something I like that's relatively healthy, by sharing that data, those chains have generally won loyalty from me over time.

That's how I roll.  BUT, I'm not sure restaurants should be required to provide that data, because I think 80% of the folks ignore it anyway.  Here's a snapshot from Forbes of what's going on in West Virginia, not known as a health mecca, regarding the posting of calorie/nutrition data:

"West Virginia state Sen. Dan Foster should have known his bill to require restaurants to post calorie counts was in trouble Tuesday when he walked into a House of Delegates committee room and found lawmakers scarfing down doughnuts and breakfast sandwiches from fast-food locations.

Before Foster could defend the bill, delegates were asking questions with their mouths full of complimentary food from fast food restaurants that had been laid out on a committee table before the meeting.  Ninety minutes later, the committee voted to kill the measure, which was billed as a way to combat the state's obesity epidemic.

"It's disappointing," Foster said. "The industry certainly spread their message."

Foster, a Kanawha County Democrat and physician, had been one of the bill's most passionate supporters. He helped secure its passage in the Senate and attended the two House committee meetings on the bill, answering questions from delegates about its intent and provisions.

"They clearly don't want people to know the calories, otherwise they'd do it voluntarily," Foster said.

A call to the West Virginia Hospitality and Travel Association, which lobbies for restaurants and opposed the measure, was not immediately returned Tuesday.  In previous meetings, lobbyists from the group have said that most large chain restaurants provide nutrition information, whether on the Internet or at their physical locations.

The bill would have applied to restaurants with more than 15 locations nationally. The goal was to post calorie counts on menus or menu boards in a bid to steer West Virginians toward healthier food choices. West Virginia has the second-highest obesity rate in the country, and ranks high in linked ailments like diabetes and high blood pressure.

Members of the House committee said even the watered-down version created by the committee's amendment would hurt free enterprise.  "I worry that what's in here is blaming the cause of all obesity on restaurants," said Delegate Daryl Cowles, R-Morgan."

Would the bill have made a difference?  I doubt it.  I think the folks who are drawn to healthy lifestyles provide return business loyalty to outlets that provide the information, and the obese generally ignore calorie/fat data in the same outlets. 

If the obese ignore the data, there's really not an ROI for the burden of providing the data.

Sending Your Employees to Fat Camp...

Every kid can probably remember a schoolmate who was sent away to fat camp and forced to endure not only the mockery of fellow children, but also bland, paltry portions of undressed salad and other "diet" foods. Losing weight was never cool, but with the mercurial rise of reality shows, even fat camp has been buffed to a high gloss.

Shows like The Biggest Loser and other reality diet shows feature diehard trainers who effectively supplant the participants' "lack of will" with their own shrill and uberfit war cries. They harass participants through boot camp-like workouts (4-6 hours worth at a pop) and analyze their every bite. The results are - well - dramatic enough to capture the attention of a rapt television audience.

Corporate wellness programs seem to be picking up on the trend. Home grown Biggest Loser competitions are popping up all over in America's offices. Sure, this approach can work. Particularly when on someone else's dime and when exercising 4-6 hours a day, but for the average working Joe or Josephine, expecting dramatic weight loss can be a setup for disappointment.

And for the ambitious wellness program director? For starters, your program might not actually be reaching the least healthy among your workers. A skinny pack-a-day smoker who does not exercise (unless you count lifting beer to mouth) and has a family history of illness may not have a lot to lose when it comes to shedding pounds.

While it may be tempting to assume that we can look at someone who is obese or overweight and judge their level of health, studies show that a moderately active obese or overweight worker is at less risk of disease than a thin co-worker with high stress, sedentary lifestyle, poor sleep habits, and a lousy diet. Some of the more serious risk factors for cardiac conditions and stroke (think: cholesterol and high blood pressure) are not necessarily something you can determine by looking at a scale.

On top of that, making weight loss into a competition with big prizes on the line not only ignores the fact that healthy weight varies greatly for every body, but there are actually plenty of unhealthy ways to show dramatic weight loss (think: dehydration, binging, diuretics, stimulants). About 65% of the human body is made of water. Do the math on that. Ask any amateur wrestler (you know the guys who basically wear garbage bags as they run around the block prior to being weighed in).  They can give you a few easy hints for ways to manipulate scale weight. Such tactics can dramatically alter scale weight; however, they put unnecessary stress on the body (dehydration and muscle loss) and the results are typically temporary at best.

Additionally, men have an advantage in the weight loss game. Men's hormonal makeup and body composition allows their bodies to rev up the fat burning engines. Women, and particularly those undergoing hormonal changes such as menopause, can still see tremendous benefits from exercise, but thanks to their hormones and body composition will see more gradual weight loss than most men.

So to recap:

• 'Skinny smokers' have little incentive to get healthy - there's not much to lose and have you ever tried running a mile after a cig? It's not fun.
• Weight Loss competitions unnecessarily shame larger people. Health and its relationship to weight is complex. You could be singling out otherwise healthy people based mainly on their appearance, which is not exactly a textbook team building approach.
• The fix is in. Offering prizes can emphasize unhealthy weight loss methods and put men at an advantage over women.
• The graph below shows average excess medical cost per employee of various health risks. Do you think the Biggest Loser is going to do much to reduce the first two?

If your wellness goal is to improve the health of your workforce, emphasize friendly competition and team spirit, while improving productivity along the way, then is fat camp really for you?

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

The Pefect Storm - Reporting ACTUAL Liabilities for Municipal Retireee Health Benefits...

If you've been in HR for more than 5 years, you've been a part of what I'll call the "Great Benefits Crunch", which has forced your company to reduce overall benefit levels and/or pass along greater costs to employees.

You don't have to explain it to me.  I've had to explain those decisions to employees, and I'm aware that you didn't create the economic problem that is the "state of health care".  Sadly though, if you're in HR, you're left to explain the realities to a set of employees that doesn't feel great about costs being shifted their way.

You and I can understand that, because we're employees too.  Just because you manage the plan doesn't mean your health insurance is free. 

With all that said, a crazy day of reckoning is probably on the horizon for city employees nationwide. From the Whittier Daily News:

"For the first time ever, cities in the San Gabriel Valley are providing realistic estimates on the future costs of retirement benefits for their municipal employees - and the amounts are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.  But in the San Gabriel Valley and Whittier areas, only 12 of the 24 cities that responded to public records requests seeking retirement cost estimates know what their actual anticipated employee retirement obligations are.

Of those 12 cities, only four have started socking away money in preparation for the increasing costs, which total more than $200 million in the two eastern county regions.This year alone, 24 cities in the Valley and Whittier area will spend nearly $11 million on retiree health benefits. That number is expected to grow exponentially as the number of retirees grows, life expectancy rates increase and health premiums continue to rise.

"Up until this point, no one knew how big these unfunded obligations were," said Dean Mead, research manager for the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), a nonprofit board that sets financial reporting standards for public agencies.

That changed three years ago, when the standards board implemented regulation GASB 45, which requires public agencies to report what retirees' health benefits will cost before they retire."

Just so you know, here's what the public meetings look like when the city in question comes to the conclusion that in order to survive the real cost structure, they need to reduce retiree benefits.  Watch it and ponder...

Caffeine - It Does a Body Good....

Caffeine - I know I like to load up with a venti before I go for a long run, and now I know why.  From the New York Times:

"Starting as long ago as 1978, researchers have been publishing caffeine studies. And in study after study, they concluded that caffeine actually does improve performance. In fact, some experts, like Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky of McMaster University in Canada, are just incredulous that anyone could even ask if caffeine has a performance effect.

“There is so much data on this that it’s unbelievable,” he said. “It’s just unequivocal that caffeine improves performance. It’s been shown in well-respected labs in multiple places around the world.” The only new questions were how it exerts its effects and how little caffeine is needed to get an effect.

For many years, researchers thought the sole reason people could exercise harder and longer after using caffeine was that the compound helped muscles use fat as a fuel, sparing the glycogen stored in muscles and increasing endurance. But there were several hints that something else was going on. For example, caffeine improved performance even in short intense bursts of exercise when endurance is not an issue.

Now, Dr. Tarnopolsky and others report that caffeine increases the power output of muscles by releasing calcium that is stored in muscle. The effect can enable athletes to keep going longer or to go faster in the same length of time. Caffeine also affects the brain’s sensation of exhaustion, that feeling that it’s time to stop, you can’t go on any more. That may be one way it improves endurance, Dr. Tarnopolsky said.

The performance improvement in controlled laboratory settings can be 20 to 25 percent, Dr. Tarnopolsky said. But in the real world, including all comers, the improvement may average about 5 percent, still significant if you want to get your best time or even win a race.

For years, researchers believed that you needed about 5 to 6 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight. An 80-kilogram, or 176-pound man, for example, would need about 400 milligrams of caffeine, or 20 ounces of coffee."

Here's the bummer - too much might hurt you, although I have to say I've never experienced that:

"It’s also possible to get diminishing returns.

Terry Graham, chairman of the Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences of the University of Guelph in Canada, found that at 9 milligrams per kilogram, athletes actually did worse."

 

 

 

If Food Were Health Care, a Pound of Bacon Would Cost $122....

Would you pay $122.48 for a pound of bacon?

If food prices had risen at the same rates as medical inflation since the 1930's, we would be paying an astronomical amount for common grocery items:

1 dozen eggs $ 80.20
1 pound apples $ 12.23
1 pound sugar $ 13.70
1 roll toilet tissue $ 24.20
1 dozen oranges $ 107.90
1 pound butter $ 102.07
1 pound bananas $ 16.04
1 pound bacon $ 122.48
1 pound beef shoulder $ 43.57
1 pound of coffee $ 64.17
10 item total $ 586.56

Source: American Institute for Preventive Medicine, 2007

Would you say we are getting more for our money?
Tell us what you think.

Why aren't we tackling this problem in the forum where Americans spend the majority of their waking hours?

If corporate wellness programs help employees and employers then what is the hesitation?

When some companies spend hundreds of dollars per employee per year on parties and other goofy events why is it such a stretch to offer programs on a regular basis that help employees reduce stress and live healthier lives?

So what do you feel is keeping your company from offering wellness?

And if your company is offering a wellness program what impact, if any, has it had on you during these rough economic times?

Editor's Note - It's hard to be humble when you're bloggin' straight out of Portland, Oregon.  Tanya Barham is the Founder and CEO of Recess Wellness, a company where all the staff works like little elves at Christmastime to transform their client's workplaces into healthy, happy, productive places akin to Santa's workshop at the North Pole.  Seriously.  Of course, Santa's fat, so they still have work to do.

Have You Tried to Relocate A Candidate Lately?

Cross one category of candidates off your prospect list - homeowners you have to relocate...

Relocating employees has always had a "haves" and "have-nots" type of feel.  Back in the 90's, most Fortune 500 companies had the "gold-plated" standard of employee relocation - covered physical moves, lump sums to handle all types of misc. costs and the ultimate in closing remote candidates - the home purchase program.   Throw that package at a candidate, and you were closing business regardless of their financial situation..

Flash forward to 2009.  Since the market crash of 2000, Fortune 500 companies have been steadily eliminating relocation packages including a home purchase program.  Eager to slash the expense associated with such programs, big companies first moved to reserve home purchase programs for director-level and above candidates only.  Over time, many Fortune 500s have restricted the availability of these programs even further, and many have eliminated the programs altogether.

That means most of us don't have a home-purchase program in our arsenal as we try and recruit candidates requiring relocation.    So we limp by with these components at our disposal - usually a physical move (perhaps capped at a certain $$ amount to limit the exposure) and a lump sum to handle misc. costs and to provide assistance, to the extent we can, with realtor's fees and the potential costs of having two residences at the same time (which frequently occurs until the candidate gets their house sold on their own).

That package worked OK when the housing market was hot.  Of course, now it's not, which means you won't be relocating many candidates for a while.    Here's data on the drop in home values from a couple of years ago via the New York Times:

"Prices fell 6.1 percent from October 2006 in 20 large metropolitan areas, according to Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller indexes, compared with a 4.9 percent decline in September. On a monthly basis, prices fell 1.4 percent in October, the fastest they have declined in at least the last seven years.

All but three of the 20 regions experienced a fall in real estate values, and even the three areas — Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Charlotte, N.C. — where prices were up from a year ago, had a decline from a month earlier.

Prices have fallen the most in Miami (down 12.4 percent from a year ago), Tampa (11.8 percent) and Detroit (11.2 percent). Prices are also falling in the nation’s two largest metropolitan areas — Los Angeles (8.8 percent) and New York (4.1 percent)."

That data means two things.  Homes are taking much longer to sell, and many candidates will find themselves scrambling to cover drops in overall home values.  Many will consider the potential loss unacceptable as they consider selling.

Which means they won't be accepting your limited relocation assistance offer.

Time to add "are you a homeowner" to your initial phone screen when talking to remote candidates, if you haven't already. 

I'll Be Back for the Meeting, After I Stretch Carl Out Before the Start of His Shift...

I'm increasingly becoming convinced that the best way to win the wellness game is to go "all-in" with on-site staff, etc.  That's bad news for small companies that can't afford those types of services. 

The situation with medical costs has now escalated to the point where it now makes sense to bring the doctor, or at least wellness folks who can do a variety of things, back on the campus of big companies.  Some previous studies have shown that especially when it comes to an on-site doctor to cut down on primary care costs, absenteeism, etc., you need at least 1,000 employees at a location to pull it off financially. 

A recent case study indicates the FTE count necessary for a big on-site wellness team might work for companies with far less than 1,000 employees - especially if they are primarily blue collar, manufacturing/production line environments with lots of worker's compensation risk. 

From CNN Heath:

"Lincoln Industries looks like a typical blue-collar plant: workers cutting, bending, plating and polishing steel for products such as motorcycle tailpipes and truck exhausts amid the din of machinery.

But the 565-employee Nebraska company is different.

Lincoln Industries has three full-time employees devoted to "wellness" and offers on-site massages and pre-shift stretching.Most unusual of all: The company requires all employees to undergo quarterly checkups measuring weight, body fat and flexibility. It also conducts annual blood, vision and hearing tests.

The company ranks workers on their fitness, from platinum, gold and silver down to "non-medal." To achieve platinum, they must reach fitness goals and be nonsmokers -- and the company offers smoking cessation classes.

For the company, the payoff is significantly lower health-care costs. The company pays less than $4,000 per employee, about half the regional average and a savings of more than $2 million. That makes the $400,000 Lincoln Industries spends each year on wellness a bargain.

The investment in "wellness" pays other dividends, according to Orme. He says fitter workers are more productive, have better morale and are safer. As evidence, he points to worker's compensation claims. Ongoing safety training and an increasingly fit work force have pushed worker's comp costs down from $500,000 five years ago to less than $10,000 so far this year."

In reading about this plant, I can't get an old Michael Keaton movie named "Gung Ho" out of my mind, where a Japanese company buys a plant and tries to get hard-core blue collar workers like George Wendt to pick up exercising before the start of their shift.

While the prospect of stretching Carl from the drill press team out before the start of his shift is a little daunting, I'd gladly get out of my comfort zone for a 50% reduction in medical costs.

I suspect you would as well.