This article is from RISQ Consulting’s MyWave Connect portal, a resource available to all RISQ Consulting clients. Please contact your Benefits Consultant or Account Executive for more information or for help setting up your own login.

The World Health Organization (WHO) now considers burnout to be a syndrome. In previous editions of the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), burnout wasn’t considered a serious condition, and its only listed symptom was exhaustion.

The WHO’s decision to upgrade burnout to a syndrome and provide a detailed set of symptoms communicates its serious stance on the dangers of burnout. Additionally, the WHO clarified in a public statement that burnout is an “occupational phenomenon” resulting “from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”

What is burnout?

According to the WHO’s ICD-11, doctors can diagnose an employee with burnout if they exhibit the following symptoms:

• Exhaustion or energy depletion
• Decreased engagement at work, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job
• Reduced productivity or efficacy

For some employees, the negative effects of burnout extend beyond their work life and into their home and social life. Moreover, burnout can increase an employee’s risk for getting sick or developing a chronic condition.

How to Prevent Burnout at Your Organization

Since burnout is the result of prolonged and chronic workplace stress, it’s important to know how to recognize the signs of workplace stress.

While it may not be possible to eliminate job stress altogether for your employees, you can help them learn how to manage it effectively. Common job stressors include a heavy workload, intense pressure to perform at high levels, job insecurity, long work hours, excessive travel, office politics and conflicts with co-workers.

You can implement various activities to help reduce employee stress, which can improve health and morale—and productivity.

• Make sure that workloads are appropriate.
• Have managers meet regularly with employees to facilitate communication.
• Address negative and illegal actions in the workplace immediately. Do not tolerate bullying, discrimination or any other similar behaviors.
• Recognize and celebrate employees’ successes. This contributes to morale and decreases stress levels.
• Encourage a positive work-life balance.
• Promote exercise at your organization, as it’s a proven stress reliever.

• Encourage employees to utilize their paid time off.
• Incorporate company-sponsored activities to give employees a reason to leave their desks and take a break.
• Train managers on how to keep employees engaged and motivated at work, and how to address burnout with employees.

For More Information

Burnout is a serious syndrome that may be affecting your employees. As such, it’s important that you recognize the signs of burnout and take steps to prevent it at your workplace.

For more information on stress reduction resources for employees, contact RISQ Consulting today.

By Teena Applegate

I feel fortunate that my company has allowed employees the opportunity to work remote.  Sure, we didn’t go full steam when it initially rolled out a couple of years ago.  We had a real trickle effect with one to two set days allowing employees to work from home and depending on position; it wasn’t available to all employees. There seems to be a continued surge for its continuum even with news of some companies pulling back or terming remote working.  If you’ve had an interest – be sure to see the recent article, Technology Risk Insights: Keys to a Secure Remote Work Program released on MyWave Connect (MyWave is an online employer resource RISQ Consulting provides to all employer clients. Contact your Benefits Consultant or Account Manager for a login). As always, we welcome your tips and shares on how you have implemented a work from home policy for your employees.

To implement a remote working policy in your company, here is another article with great information to get started:

https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/the-future-of-remote-work-is-happening-now-heres-how-to-make-it-work-for-you.html

This article is from RISQ Consulting’s MyWave Connect portal, a resource available to all RISQ Consulting clients. Please contact your Benefits Consultant or Account Executive for more information or for help setting up your own login.

Workplace wellness affects your company—and its finances—in several ways. Wellness programs have the potential to lower health care costs, increase productivity, decrease absenteeism and raise employee morale.

Because employees spend a large portion of their waking hours at work, the workplace is an ideal setting to address health and wellness issues, benefiting your employees’ personal lives as well as their professional lives.

What Is Workplace Wellness?
Workplace wellness refers to the educational resources and health programs that a worksite might offer to promote healthy lifestyles for employees and their families.

Examples of wellness initiatives include health education classes, subsidized use of fitness facilities, internal policies that promote healthy behavior, and any other activities, policies or environmental changes that affect the health of employees.

What Wellness Can Do
Wellness programs positively impact productivity and finances in several ways, all leading to a more efficient, cost-effective workforce. The following is a list of ways workplace wellness programs can improve your business.

Control coverage costs. Health care costs are a significant portion of a company’s budget, and many employers are taking a close look at those rising expenses, especially with the effects of recent health care law changes. Strategically targeting health-related expenses can significantly benefit an employer’s budget.

Employees with more health risk factors, including being overweight, smoking and having diabetes, cost more to insure and pay more for health care than people with fewer risk factors. A wellness program can help employees with high risk factors make lifestyle changes to improve their quality of life and lower costs, while also helping employees with fewer risk factors remain healthy.

Improve productivity. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) supports research that demonstrates that workplace wellness programs can lead to more efficiency in the workplace because healthier employees are more productive. Even when sick or unhealthy employees show up to work, they’re likely not operating at their true potential.

Improved health—fueled by workplace wellness programs and incentives—can reduce the problem of presenteeism, which is a condition where workers show up but produce inefficient or substandard work due to the adverse effects of their ill health.

Reduce absenteeism. Healthier employees means fewer sick days and less time away from work for doctor visits. For example, the CDC reports that overweight and obese employees miss considerably more days of work than normal-weight employees—a 56 percent increase in missed days for overweight and obese men, and a 15 to 141 percent increase in missed days for women who are overweight and obese, respectively.

Additionally, employees’ healthier behavior may translate into better health care and lifestyle choices for their families, potentially leading to less work missed due to caring for ill family members. Reduced absenteeism can yield significant cost savings and return on your wellness investment.

Trim workers’ compensation and disability expenses. Employees who make healthy changes and lower health risks have a lower chance of workplace injury or illness and disability. In both cases, this can save the employer money, not just on insurance premiums and benefits paid out, but also on the cost of recruiting and training a new worker to temporarily replace an employee who is absent due to ill health.

The CDC’s compilation of research suggests that employers can save as much as 25 percent on claims costs after implementing a successful workplace wellness program.

Boost morale and improve recruiting. Expressing a commitment to your employees’ health can improve employee morale and strengthen retention. A company that cares about its employees’ health is often viewed as a better place to work, and wellness programs can also help attract top talent in a competitive market.

Employees can experience many potential benefits after joining a wellness program, including improved well-being, better coping skills for stress, reduced risk for developing or worsening diseases and illnesses, lower health care costs and fewer doctor visits, access to social support through co-workers and a healthier work environment.

Overall, employees who experience positive changes and benefits from a wellness program will often feel more loyalty to the company and demonstrate increased productivity, leading to a stronger, less expensive workforce.

To learn more about workplace wellness programs and their benefits, to gain access to ready-to-go wellness programs or to obtain information on how to get started, contact RISQ Consulting at (907) 263-1401 or visit  www.risqconsulting.com.

This article is from RISQ Consulting’s MyWave Connect portal, a resource available to all RISQ Consulting clients. Please contact your Benefits Consultant or Account Executive for more information or for help setting up your own login.

An employee’s mental health includes how they think, feel and act, and includes their emotional and social well-being. While mental health includes mental illness, the two aren’t interchangeable. An employee can go through a period of poor mental health but not necessarily have a clear, diagnosable mental illness. Additionally, an employee’s mental health can change over time, depending on factors such as their workload, stress and work-life balance.

While 1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness annually, a recent study by Deloitte revealed that less than half receive treatment. A study from the Mental Health in the Workplace Summit also found that mental illness is the leading cause of disability for U.S. adults aged 15 to 44 and that more workdays are lost to mental health-related absenteeism than any other injury or illness.

Given its prevalence, you can expect that employees at your organization are experiencing mental health challenges or mental illness. That’s why it’s so important that your organization creates a culture that is supports employees’ mental health. While this may sound complicated, creating a workplace that is supportive of mental health and illness is easier than it seems. Here are five simple ways that your company can support employees and their mental health.

Promote Mental Health Awareness in the Office

The first step to creating a workplace that is supportive of employees’ mental health is promoting awareness and destigmatizing mental health or illness. Provide resources to help employees learn more about mental health or mental illnesses, and give information about how employees who may be struggling can seek out help. When you openly talk about mental health, employees are more likely to feel comfortable about the concept and reach out to managers or co-workers if they’re struggling.

You can also establish a workplace environment that is supportive of mental health by:

• Encouraging social support among employees, such as an organized support group that meets regularly
• Setting up an anonymous portal through which employees can reach out to let HR or managers know that they’re struggling with high stress and need help
• Providing training on problem solving, effective communication and conflict resolution
• Promoting your employee assistance program (EAP), if you offer one

Offer Flexible Scheduling

Work-life balance, or a lack thereof, can affect an employee’s mental health. To help employees better balance their work and personal lives, employers across the country are embracing workplace flexibility. While this looks different at every company, workplace flexibility can include flextime, telecommuting and unlimited paid time off (PTO) policies. Flexible schedules provide employees with job satisfaction, better health, increased work-life balance and less stress.

Address Workplace Stress

Nearly 80% of Americans consider their jobs stressful. Chronic workplace stress can contribute to increased employee fatigue, irritability and health problems. Additionally, workplace stress costs U.S. employers approximately $300 billion in lost productivity annually.

While it may not be possible to eliminate job stress altogether for your employees, you can help them learn how to manage it effectively. Common job stressors include a heavy workload, intense pressure to perform at high levels, job insecurity, long work hours, excessive travel, office politics and conflicts with co-workers.

You can implement various activities to help reduce employee stress, which can improve health and morale—and productivity.

• Make sure that workloads are appropriate.
• Have managers meet regularly with employees to facilitate communication.
• Address negative and illegal actions in the workplace immediately—do not tolerate bullying, discrimination or any other similar behaviors.
• Recognize and celebrate employees’ successes. This contributes to morale and decreases stress levels.

Evaluate Your Benefits Offerings

Review the benefits you offer to ensure that they support mental well-being, too. Evaluate your current health plan designs. Do they cover mental health services? Reviewing the offerings that your organization provides is essential to creating a culture that supports employee mental health.

In similar fashion, look to see what voluntary benefits you can offer to support mental well-being. Consider offering simple perks like financial planning assistance (as financial stress often contributes to poor mental health), employee discount programs (where employees can receive gym memberships, stress-reducing massages or acupuncture at a lower cost) and EAPs to support your employees.

Provide Mental Health Training for Managers

One of the most significant problems hindering mental health support at work is the stigma that surrounds mental health. Despite the recent moves in society toward destigmatizing mental health, issues still persist. To ensure that no stigma surrounding mental health exists at your organization, it’s important that you properly train management in recognizing the signs of mental illness, excessive workplace stress, workplace bullying and fatigue. Moreover, managers should be trained to handle potentially difficult conversations with employees surrounding their mental health. Ultimately, they should be prepared to speak openly about mental health rather than avoid the topic. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Workforce webpage to learn more.

For More Information

For additional resources on any of the strategies outlined above, contact us at RISQ Consulting today.

This HR Insights is not intended to be exhaustive nor should any discussion or opinions be construed as professional advice. © 2019 Zywave, Inc. All rights reserved.

By Alison Riggan

Death by PowerPoint. This is the phrase that’s used to describe those presentations that are the same ugly overflowing slide again and again and again, often accompanied by a presenter whose charisma makes you want to A) take a nap or B) take a long walk off a short pier. In the age of constant connection, how do we connect with our audience?

Earlier this year, RISQ Consulting was given the opportunity to give a three-hour presentation on insurance. We were then confronted with a question. How exactly can we make a three-hour presentation, about insurance no less, not just bearable, but actually enjoyable and fun? *Cue Mission Impossible theme song* In order to figure out how to make an awesome presentation, we first had to identify what about other presentations did we not like. The list looked something like this-

Death by PowerPoint Causes:

• Being talked at rather than talk to
• No audience participation
• Ugly slides
• Lots of jargon
• Too much information condensed on each slide

Step one was complete, we knew what NOT to do. However, we still were looking for a way to keep the audience on their toes and so immersed that three hours would fly by. That’s when a member of our team brought up the idea of finding a program that would allow us to poll the audience on various slides. The googling frenzy began. I found several sites that would allow us to engage the audience during presentations and did a cost and feature comparison before reviewing with our team and settling on Mentimeter.

Mentimeter allows the audience to follow the presentation on their phones, answer polls, and ask questions in real-time throughout the entire presentation. Here’s where it gets really cool, the presenter can ask questions to better gauge and understand the audience that will allow the presenter to connect more with the audience.  The presenter can also see if there’s an influx of questions on a specific slide and spend more time on that slide to make sure that the audience understands. There are also several poll styles available, which ensures that there’s a format for any question style you can think of.