EverythingPeople This Week!

Michigan’s Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity will award more than $30 million to employers for worker training and development. If your organization is pursuing 2022 funds to assist with short term training for both new and incumbent employees, applications are accepted September 20 – October 15, 2021.

A new report from Arizent, The Future of Work: Employers, Employees, and the Long Road to Compromise, reveals that employers and employees don’t agree on what the new normal looks like.  To move forward, each side will have to compromise.

Last week, President Biden directed OSHA to issue an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure that their employees are either fully vaccinated or that the unvaccinated employees produce a negative test weekly before coming to work. The ETS will also require these employers to provide paid time off for their employees to get vaccinated or to recover if they are “under the weather post-vaccination.”

As businesses manage the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers have increased their focus on creating benefit programs that address the evolving needs of their diverse workforces, especially mental/emotional health, work/life balance, and financial health. Moreover, 80% of employers report that diversity, equity, and inclusion influence their corporate well-being strategies. This is according to Fidelity Investments® and Business Group on Health’s Employer-Sponsored...

How do we teach ourselves and our employees to reduce distractions that break their focus and drain their brains?  It’s tough to weed through the distractions of email, unnecessary meetings, and notifications.  Here are some tactics to use to stay focused and be productive.

Reminder – 2022 high deductible plans out-of-pocket maximums: Under IRS Rev. Proc. 2021-25, the following limits apply to high deductible plans in 2022:

For several reasons employee development is currently being left behind. One reported reason is training and development expenses have been significantly cut back during COVID-19. In addition to that, ASE is also hearing that employers are limiting employee training because of the labor shortage and business demands.

Henry Ford came up with the number one management idea of the 20th Century: pay the employees what they are worth.  On January 5, 1914, Henry Ford doubled his workers wages to $5 a day, which brings us back to the early days of ASE’s history as the labor exchange providing workers to Ford Motor Company.  By increasing the wages, it paid not only for the way the work was being done, but also valued the time the worker spent in a monotonous setting.  It also gave the...

Many workers are worn out and ready to make up for lost vacation time, new research from global staffing firm Robert Half suggests. More than 4 in 10 professionals surveyed (44%) said they are more burned out on the job today compared to a year ago, up from 34% in a similar 2020 poll. Nearly half of employees experiencing increased fatigue (49%) blame it on a heavier workload.

 

As a hiring manager, seeing the resume of an outstanding internal candidate land on your desk is the best-case scenario. Why? You can fill the job immediately, and because current employees know the organization and its quirks, they require less handholding in order to get up to speed quickly.

Return to the office leads to pet anxiety: As millions of employees across the U.S. anticipate a potential return to in-person work, those who are pet parents—including many who participated in the more than 2 million adoptions of dogs and cats from shelters last year — have some additional concerns beyond missing their favorite furry colleague. 

It is no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has strained our healthcare system.  Now as the pandemic enters a new resurgence in the United States and hospitalizations increase, employers and their employees might be in for a surprise: hefty medical bills.  

CareerBuilder recently shared findings from its latest survey about how the pandemic and its economic fallout continue to shape the workforce. The data shows that across worker groups, pay cuts are common and work from home is not a universal option.  This could be hindering recruitment efforts.

Recently Delta Airlines announced that it will charge employees on the company health plan a $200 per month additional charge if they fail to get vaccinated against COVID-19. 

Delta argues that the costs of hospital stays for COVID total, on average, about $40,000-$50,000 per incident thus driving up healthcare costs for all employees.

 

Many employers have taken action to address the financial well-being of their employees, and one of the most popular benefits companies have either expanded or begun to offer is student loan repayment assistance in addition to tuition reimbursement programs.