HR Insights

When a company loses an employee, HR has terms like "Voluntary" and "Involuntary" to explain what happened.

While this may help account for company-wide turnover rates, these terms do nothing to explain why an employee leaves. 

Many employees choose their place of work according to more feelings-oriented thinking, and turnover-aversion methods that don't acknowledge this will miss the mark.

At various times in history, work was viewed as a necessary evil. "Compensation" was so-called because it was a way of softening the blow for a worker having to spend time doing something she'd rather not be doing.

Today, the feeling that one's work is meaningful is twice as powerful than the sense that one's pay is fair in determining a worker's satisfaction on the job. A sense of meaningful work also determines how innovative an employee is likely to be.

It's time for 2016 open enrollment. This year, many employees are about to learn that they are going to be responsible for larger portion of their healthcare costs. 

Since 2010, the American workforce has seen healthcare costs grow far faster than wages. Many employees are cutting into their retirement savings to make up the difference.

What's more, as deductibles continue to rise, most individuals will not hit their deductibles in 2016, meaning that most medical expenses will come out of pocket.

In one of the largest studies of its kind, causal linkage has been established between stressful, unsafe work conditions and reduced lifespan.

According to researchers from Stanford and Harvard, where you work could shave years or even decades off of your life.

While the past fifty years have seen certain American populations living much longer, 1950's life expectancies persist in other groups.

Businesses around the country are losing money, providing healthcare benefits that go unused. 

It's not that the benefits are junk... Far from it — smoking cessation and personalized nutrition counseling are both valuable and desirable.

But such programs are poorly introduced to employees in many cases, usually due to outmoded onboarding models.

The American Society of Training and Development reports that companies spent $1,195 per employee on professional development in 2013.

That amounts to $164 billion, and this proves to be one of the most important measures of employee satisfaction.

It's a way of showing that their personal growth is an end in itself — that they're not just grist for the mill.

Gleaning from research at companies like American Express, the Integrated Benefits Institute concludes that improved employee health correlates with increased profits.

Releasing recent findings, the IBI cited healthcare premiums and "presenteeism" as two large costs which can be avoided if general employee wellness is attained.

The company also connected instances of poor employee health and poor customer service.

Employers tend to put a lot of attention and money into their healthcare programs, in an attempt to keep their employees happy and healthy, but there are a whole host of modestly priced benefits which may offer a lot of satisfaction to workers of all sorts.

Workplace health insurance costs are on the rise, but some expenses are growing faster than others.

In general, national deductible costs are exploding, growing three times faster than premiums, and seven times faster than overall wages.

While workers and employers are finding ways to cope, this is proving to be a dire situation for chronically ill individuals, whose health care costs are swelling much faster than their salaries.

After years of smoking bans for restaurants, bars, and workplaces, the restrictions have had a marked effect.

American teens are smoking tobacco at much lower rates than in previous decades, reports the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.

But of these three smoke-free locations, the study found the American workplace to have had the biggest impact on teen smoking reduction.