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Erich 00:01
I think it’s easy for employers just to lean on what the standard carriers offer and do. Try to be innovative. You know, challenge the status quo.

JoDee 00:15
Welcome to The JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast, where we help HR and business leaders embrace joy in the workplace. I’m JoDee Curtis, owner of Purple Ink, and with me is my friend and co-host, Susan White, owner of Susan Tinder White Consulting, also an HR consulting practice.

JoDee 00:40
Our topic today is benefit trends. Benefits are always evolving, and we often get requests from our listeners to do episodes to update you on the latest benefit offerings. Even if the newest trendy benefits don’t work for your organization, it’s always good to stay up to date, to know what’s out there, and to learn about what others and your competitors are offering. In a 2024 article by Lisa Reyes of Paychex, she noted eight top employee benefit trends in 2024. I’m proud to say that I looked back and we had covered almost all of these topics in recent podcasts, but I did think we’d do a quick review. Susan, let’s talk about these trends. What did Paychex say was number one?

Susan 01:36
Improving healthcare affordability. The rising cost of healthcare can be an obstacle to signing up for good coverage, taking advantage of preventative care, and seeking and following proper treatment of plans. Of course, the longer we wait and or avoid treatment can mean increased claims down the road and worse illnesses. Employers who actively make healthcare more affordable and accessible but also educate their employees on options and coverages are sending the message they really do care about their employees, attracting new ones and retaining those they’ve got.

JoDee 02:09
Number two trend was just overall total health and well-being. This is beyond the healthcare plan and can include a range of benefits like an EAP, behavioral health education program, suicide awareness, but also things like good sleep hygiene, regular physical movement, smoking cessation, addiction treatments, and/or financial wellness. All of these may be interconnected and offer opportunities to foster an emotionally, socially, and financially fit workforce.

Susan 02:49
Number three, and this one I hear about every day, support for hybrid and flex schedules, as well as putting real thought in what that work environment is going to be for the people when they’re in office. Offering remote work, flexible work schedules, job sharing, maybe shrunk hours, summer hours can really be an attractive benefit if employees are coming into the office any part of the week, really being thoughtful about that work environment. Is it comfortable? Is it warm in the winter? Is it cool in the summer? I know that sounds really basic, but oh my gosh, people need to be comfortable in order to bring their best self and to do their best work. We’ve had podcasts about the work environment, a lot of them, some of my favorite are about including plants and artwork, and really thinking about where you’re asking people to be productive and making sure they’re as best as can be.

JoDee 03:40
Number four is upskilling, reskilling, and professional development. All of these we’ve talked about through different angles as well, but to better meet the needs and expectations of all of your employees, think about reskilling them. Maybe it’s for a new role or just helping them to perform better can be especially meaningful to them. You might think about internal or external learning and development opportunities, job rotations, job expansions, and/or offering coaches. Employees who feel that their company is interested in their personal growth and development are more likely to stay.

Susan 04:29
Just makes sense. Number five, personalizing your benefits. Really thinking, do I understand the types of benefits that my employees want? If not, maybe we should do a benefit audit to offer some insights, because if we gather, gather feedback, we can then make data-driven decisions and implement solid communication plans that can really help convey the benefit value to employees. I think not too long ago in a podcast we talked about lifestyle benefit programs, really understanding our employees’ different desires, different needs, and not putting our money after stuff that we’ve always done just because that was a benefit most people wanted. Really figuring out, could we figure out what our employees of today want today? Personalized benefits can be a wide array of things, right? Some of the things that you might be thinking of is theft – ID theft protection, financial counseling, healthy lifestyle programs, public transportation passes, supplemental insurance packages such as supplemental life insurance, cancer insurance, pet coverage. Employers then may provide a monthly or annual expense allowance that employees use to offset their costs for what’s important to them.

JoDee 05:45
Susan, I love that you mentioned about a communications plan, too. I think what happens a lot of times that companies are offering a wide array of benefits and employees don’t even know that they have them, right? Or maybe when they learn about the, the option, you know, maybe they hear about pet insurance and they don’t have a pet, so they’re not thinking about it, but then they get a pet later and don’t even look back to think, do we have pet insurance now?

Susan 06:22
That’s such a good point. I don’t think annual enrollment is the only time we should be talking about the benefit offerings that you have. You always want to be re-recruiting your team, and so what a great way of periodically, during the year, promote different benefits that you have. Think it’s a super idea.

JoDee 06:35
Yeah. Number six is family-friendly benefits. Employers can extend family-friendly benefits through paid parental leave, paid adoption leave, fertility benefits, a dependent care savings plan, and more. Concentrate on those benefits that are most likely to reduce emotional or financial stress on your employees, because we know we lose productivity, we lose engagement when our employees are stressed.

Susan 07:10
Absolutely. My daughter-in-law works for a fertility benefit that they, that employers will offer, and it’s called Frame, F-R-A-M-E. It is amazing to me how popular it is. You can imagine if you’re wanting to have a child and it’s not happening naturally, easy for you, if your employer helps, gets involved and helps you with that, oh my gosh, you’ve got an employee for life, really.

JoDee 07:33
Yeah.

Susan 07:34
So. Interesting. This number seven on the list, retirement, debt payoff, and financial security benefits. You know, retirement plans, although a lot of companies have kind of moved away from offering a defined benefit plan, instead, so many companies are offering 401(k)s or 501(c)(3)s with some type of a match. Other organizations are ponying up to pay student loan and debt repayment of other kinds for their employees, and providing, at the core, financial wellness resources that can really help equip your employees toward getting that financial security that they really need and they want.

JoDee 08:15
And number eight, which I have to admit, I was surprised, not that I don’t think it’s a good one, but it was diversity, equity, and inclusion. You know, we heard so much about DEI and belonging in 2020, ’21, ’22, but in this past year, the conversations, the positions related specific to DEI have decreased, but it’s a good reminder for all of us that a company that prioritizes these initiatives and looks to foster a work environment that feels safe for sharing ideas and expression is attractive to prospective employees and a retention tool for those already there. I think we have to think more creatively about what we can do in today’s world to foster this inclusion and belonging. There may be – that are different than maybe what we thought we needed to do in 2020, for example. So look at your recruitment and your hiring strategies, your training around this, providing holidays, benefits, or acknowledge months that support different sexual orientations, religious, and/or cultural backgrounds. So those are the eight that were mentioned by Paychex, although I did do some other work looking at many other articles with trends and the core of most of these eight were mentioned. And most all of them – I think when we say the word benefits, though, most of us think first about health insurance, right? It’s the most costly, the highest price tag, not only for individuals, but for employer organizations as well. So today, we’re going to dig in a bit further specifically on health insurance and health benefit plans. We’ve invited a guest, Erich Veigel with The MJ Companies, to tell us more specifically about employer healthcare trends. With 18 years at The MJ Companies as a consultant and client executive, Erich is Director of Client Experience, where he leads a group of client executives and works closely with them to create a total benefits offering.

Susan 10:51
Erich, thank you for coming. We’re really glad that you’re here today.

Erich 10:54
You’re welcome, appreciate being here.

Susan 10:56
In your 18 years working with employers and the benefit program, their benefit programs, what has been the biggest challenge to healthcare in your mind?

Erich 11:05
Wow. Susan, that’s really weird to hear somebody else say that I’ve been doing this for 18 years. I say it, and then hearing somebody else, I can’t believe it’s been 18 years. Well, it’s just been, it’s been a lot of fun, but there’s been so many changes in employee benefits world. Gosh, I can’t believe it’s MJ Companies for 18 years. Yeah, I guess the biggest change in my career, and you guys will probably remember this, was the Affordable Care Act. Things were pretty status quo until the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010 under the Obama administration. There were many unknowns when that happened. How it would impact employer-sponsored health care, such as the removal of the pre-existing conditions happened, we had to now cover dependents ’til age 26, the additional state marketplaces that came into place, and even preventive care was covered – now it can be covered at 100% – and then employers had to pay attention to how much they could charge employees and how high their out of pocket maxes could be on their plan. So many consultants and employers like myself, we scrambled. We made sure that everyone was compliant so they could avoid penalties, which then those were removed later in 2017 when the Trump administration took away the individual mandate. So that changed a lot of things. Then we thought things were just status quo. We finally got our arms around this. And then in 2020 the pandemic hit, and then you had the CARES Act and the Consolidated Appropriations Act that came out of that. So legislation has really probably been the biggest impact in the last 18 years, and how we’ve adjusted to it and had to work with our clients and how employers had to really get their arms around it.

JoDee 12:49
Yeah, you know, Erich, I remember that year so well in 2010, because that was the year I started Purple Ink, and it was the first time in a long time where I didn’t have responsibility for an internal health insurance plan, right? And I never dreamed that the ACA would pass, and so I thought, oh, I don’t really need to learn the details of that.

Susan 13:24
It’ll go away. It’s not gonna last.

JoDee 13:26
Yeah. So yes, there has certainly been a lot of change.

Erich 13:33
I mean, I think back then, everyone knew we needed change, just nobody, I think, wanted it forced upon them.

JoDee 13:41
Right, right, right.

Erich 13:42
And there’s a lot of great things that came out of it. It’s, it was just a lot to deal with, and nobody knew what the outcome was going to be.

JoDee 13:50
Yeah, yeah. So what are some of the biggest challenges that your clients are facing around benefits programs and, you know, all these changes and legislation that have gone along with it?

Erich 14:07
Yeah, great question. If, if I could sum that up in one word it’d be balance. You’ve got employers that want to offer a very attractive benefits program to attract and retain employees. At the same time, there’s a cost of that, and then they want to make sure they’re not charging employees as much, because they want to retain them and attract them. And then, like we were just talking about, then you have to now throw in all the legislation that they’re trying to get their arms around. And most recently with the CAA, there’s the new transparency law. So there’s new reporting that goes in place. You saw the 1095-C that’s lagging from the Affordable Care Act. And then for more legislation on the tap – on top of that, you now have all the state mandate leaves are going into place, whether it’s time off, whether it’s maternal, paternal. The whole landscape has changed. And those challenges, I think our clients and I think other employers are really looking for resources, you know, who can assist us, but at the same time, that’s an additional cost, and they’re trying to control the bottom line. You know, you’ve been in HR, nobody really looks at HR as a money maker for the company. They want them to control costs yet they don’t want them to have any additional costs for those resources. So, yeah, that whole landscape has changed. I think benefits departments are really challenged with, how do we balance all this? It’s no longer Employee Relations. It’s a lot of different things they have to do to attract and retain.

JoDee 15:42
Yeah, you know, that’s interesting. I think when we think about the federal legislation in 2010 to now, think about all these states that have different laws, that’s like a whole new world. At least we only had to learn one law in 2010. For your clients or organizations that have people in multiple states, how do they or how do you guide them around that?

Erich 16:12
Great question. Lot of times we and they will lean on the carriers. What I mean carriers, usually disability and leave carriers, but you can imagine, you know, their focus is more on short-term, long-term disability, family type leave, medical type leaves, right? But a lot of these leaves are now vacation leave, time off. So we partner with a couple different what we call leave administrators that are really good at layering over those carriers and just giving those employers resources to be able to use them and outsource kind of that role. And then you throw intermittent leave on top of that, and just leave is becoming a monster for, I think, our clients to really tackle. And it is what you said. It’s the states that are changing all that, that’s – federal is really staying out of it. That’s becoming a state legislation that is, my opinion, starting from the West Coast and East Coast, and really just kind of starting to merge here now to the Midwest.

Susan 17:11
So, Erich, what are the one or two or maybe even three trends that you’re seeing with employer health insurance plans? What are people doing tactically?

Erich 17:20
Oh, survival. No, I’m just kidding. Yeah. Well, I mean, it kind of started, some things that we saw in 2020, which we were a little concerned with, and we started to take some approaches to it, but then realized it was gonna be kind of short-lived. So if you can imagine, in 2020 we’re told to avoid doctors, stay in our home unless it’s emergency. So 2020 and 2021, coming out of that, we started seeing increasing in screenings, people going for the annual physicals. Unfortunately, when that started happening, people hadn’t seen a doctor for a couple of years, so then we started seeing increases in neoplasms and cancer treatments, things that you thought would be caught stage one and two have now progressed to two and three. So we were really concerned about that. We tried to look into different strategies around what we call the cancer care and things like that, but then realized it was short-term. Obviously, with advances in medicine, a lot of things can happen to treat those, even those more aggressive type cancers. But recently, the big thing is, and it’s really because of social media, mainstream media commercials, is everything around the anti-diabetic medications, what are called the GLP-1s, the famous Ozempic and Mounjaro that everyone is taking now, which does great things, right? It does reduce A1C very rapidly. A positive side effect a lot of people are seeing is weight loss, significant weight loss. So with doctors treating that and costing about $10,000 a year, we’re really trying to look at, how do we control that? So there’s been a lot of focus around pharmacy and really the anti-diabetics. They’re more expensive than the traditional insulins, and the drug that a lot of people took was Metformin at that time. But now, with these injectables quickly lowering A1C, quickly weight loss, there’s stronger prior authorizations around that. So a lot of our clients were instructing them and guiding them through, what do those prior authorizations look like? How do we lean on the physicians to, hey, can you start them at a lower, less costly anti-diabetic, and if that doesn’t work, obviously, let’s get to the more expensive one. We don’t want people having additional conditions that stem out of that if they don’t take their medications, but that’s even costly for them. I mean, traditionally, people have higher deductibles and larger co-pays for prescription. So how do we control and make it affordable for members, as well as not bankrupting employers, is becoming the real concern. Pharmacy is a big, I would say, a monster that we’re trying to attack right now. And all of our clients are looking to us as, what are solutions? What are strategies, just different things we can put in place around that?

JoDee 20:12
And Erich, GLP-1 drugs… I thought in general that a lot of insurance plans weren’t covering those, but I know they’re super costly, but are they costly for employers, or are the people taking those on, or are more plans covering them than I’m thinking?

Erich 20:36
I think where there’s, I think there’s kinda, like, all this confusion in what’s going on in the market, because the confusion is, and this is gonna sound really weird, GLP-1s, there are actually two. There’s anti-diabetic and there’s weight loss. And Ozempic is the equivalent of Wegovy for weight loss, and Mounjaro is the equivalent of the newest Zepbound for weight loss. Typically, weight loss medications are not covered by health plans. Okay, so the GLP-1s gets confusing, because they’re, those drugs are literally the same. They’re just FDA approved for different things. Typically, again, the, the Mounjaro and the Ozempic should be covered by most health plans. It’s going to be the Wegovy and the Zepbound that aren’t, because many health plans don’t cover weight loss medications.

JoDee 21:26
Okay.

Erich 21:26
Even though they’re the same drug, different names, the weight loss medications typically cost $200-300 a month more than their sister equivalent for anti-diabetics.

Susan 21:36
I can only imagine the difficulty in your job, because I think about – I find the whole medical care costs just heart-wrenching, and from the, from the individual’s perspective, and the medications that people, you know, struggle to pay for, often don’t take their full dosages so that they can, you know, make it last for the period of time, it’s just absolutely, in our country, just heart-wrenching. And yet you’re trying to help employers, because they have to sustain themselves. They can’t, they can’t pay for everything. If they did pay for, you know, the heavy load of what their employees truly need, and employees’ children need, and their… on and on, they would not be able to survive. So what a tough, tough place that puts you, I’m sure, many times as you guide these employers, you’re trying to do the right thing, but you know, behind that, there’s employees out there that are suffering.

Erich 22:23
Yeah, and you make a good point. I mean, all this is – the focus is the member. That’s why we have healthcare, right? And they get hung up in this because they go to the provider, and it’s not on the provider level. The providers don’t know what these medications cost. They just know there’s this new drug on the market, it treats what I’m trying to treat, they prescribe it. Then the member goes to the pharmacy, and then they either get hung up in a prior authorization or denial, and then they’re upset because they can’t take this expensive medication that they have no idea that’s why it’s being denied or if the provider has followed the right step therapy. It is becoming, gosh, a big, hairy monster. And what’s, what’s really interesting, you know, we talked about the Affordable Care Act. We’ve actually seen the medical trend be single digits for a lot of our clients. It’s the prescription side that is now becoming double digit increases, and it’s really the cost of these new specialty medications, which is crazy. In my time, I’m gonna date myself, but we had a conversation around this a couple days ago here in the office trying to think back, older people like me, not our younger people. Do you remember seeing commercials as a kid or even a teenager for medications? And now you can’t watch anything without seeing a new jingle about a medication that nobody understands that that medication costs anywhere from $10,000 – 50,000 a month.

JoDee 23:47
Yes, yeah. Erich, I went to the seminar that MJ put on a few weeks ago about pharmacy drugs in particular, and I know one of the panelists mentioned that she can’t even watch a sporting event anymore without walking away thinking she has some, she surely has some kind of disease that she needs a drug for, right? It – You gotta imagine people are now calling their doctors and saying, “I want this drug because I saw it on TV.” And…

Susan 24:26
I don’t know, I watch those drugs and I hear what the side effects are, I’m like, “Just give me the illness. I do not want all those side effects.”

Erich 24:34
Funny you say that, Susan. I mean, the jingle starts and you’re excited, and you’re like, hey, this is a fun place, and look at the life they’re leading. I want to be on this drug. And then you hear 15 side effects where you’re afraid to leave your house. It’s like, do I really want to take this?

JoDee 24:49
Yeah.

Susan 24:49
Oh my gosh.

JoDee 24:50
Yeah.

Susan 24:51
So, so Erich, what’s one tip you could give to employers about their benefit programs? One takeaway.

Erich 24:56
I just kind of, you know, just kind of thinking through the lens of what we do with our clients, just don’t follow the traditional path of benefits. I think it’s easy for employers just to lean on what the standard carriers offer and do. Try to be innovative. You know, challenges the status quo. There are so many alternative solutions out there that don’t fit neatly in an Anthem or a Cigna or an Aetna or a United Healthcare bucket. They sometimes can integrate with them. You have to push a little bit, but just look for ways to get that done. And I think also in communications with employees, we’ve made benefits very difficult for them to understand, and they just care, now, when I go to the doctor, I go to the dentist, or wherever I go, I just want to make sure what I’m doing is covered and I’m not going to have a massive out of pocket for it. So keep that communications, benefits simple. Provide them ways to navigate, and what I mean by that is how to understand. Give them resources about their benefits. Educate them so that at the time that they need it, they know where to go to find it, versus did I print out that benefit guide, or do I have to go to the company website… especially with spouses, they don’t know what their spouse enrolled in, and especially if you have somebody at home taking kids to the doctor… So really, keep it simple, give them resources and navigate and, you know, think outside the box.

JoDee 25:30
Great advice. I do I think that education is so important, but I also understand that employees don’t necessarily want to be educated unless they’re in the thick of it, right? They, they might not be paying attention at your annual enrollment meeting, but three months later, when they get a diagnosis or a prescription, then they’re like, hey, I have a lot of questions. So how can we help them? And…

Erich 26:58
We are now living in – I hate saying this – a TikTok world.

JoDee 27:02
Yeah.

Erich 27:02
It’s gotta be short. It’s gotta be quick and easily accessible.

JoDee 27:08
Yeah. And Erich, we always like to ask a joy question to all of our guests. What do you think is one small step people can do in this area of benefits or health insurance specifically, that can help them to create or find more joy at work?

Erich 27:28
Ever since I’ve known you, JoDee, and Purple Ink, I’ve always appreciated that joy is your driver, whether it’s in your own life or what you guys want to reflect on others and have people really find their joy. It ties back to a lot of why – we call it the why here at MJ, you guys call it the joy. And I think that’s awesome that you’ve always kept that foundation. I think for me it was, you know, getting older in life, realizing, you know, you got to be more vulnerable. You don’t know everything, even at my age. And embrace change. I mean, organizations, people are changing every day. As I said, as I get older, I gotta be willing to be flexible. I’ve got to be open to change. I gotta realize that there’s other perspectives out there. Perception’s reality. I can either choose to listen to what somebody’s saying about me, or I can just turn a deaf ear and walk away, but that’s the reality of what people see. So for me to be successful and fulfilled, I just realized I’ve got to be vulnerable and just embrace change and that, that’s how, that’s how I found my joy with inside the walls of The MJ Companies and in my personal life.

JoDee 28:44
Awesome. Thank you for sharing that and thank you for joining us today. If our listeners would like to reach out to you, how, what’s the best way to get ahold of you if they want to talk about their plans, or different ideas, changes they might make in their plans?

Erich 29:07
Well, if they’re local, Central Indiana, we’ve got a beautiful office here in Midtown Carmel, and we’ve enjoyed being here for the last couple of years. But real simple, the first name, last name, not easy, so I’ll spell it out. E-R-I-C-H dot Veigel, V-E-I-G-E-L at, and we just recently rebranded, so it’s the MJ C-O-S dot com, or as I like to say, them J Cos is an easy way to remember it, dot com. And we’ve gotten away from desk phones, so people can always use my cell phone. 317-417-1792.

JoDee 29:47
Alright, thank you. And I know, although you’re locally here in Carmel, The MJ Companies is a national company, so.

Erich 29:57
Yeah, we’re very proud to say we now have our third office in Colorado. We’ve been in Phoenix for 20 plus years. Colorado’s recent, very successful office. And I don’t know exactly where, but stay tuned in the next 24 – 36 months, we’re hoping to get into our next market. We actually have two markets identified, so I’m not sure which one will pop. But yeah, we’re expanding and growing. We’re very excited…

Susan 30:24
Congratulations.

Erich 30:25
…where The MJ Companies is going. Thank you, Susan.

Susan 30:26
That’s great. Well, thank you so much. It was really, really interesting.

JoDee 30:31
Thank you.

Erich 30:32
Great.

Susan 30:33
JoDee, our listener question today came from a listener who listened to an April 2024 podcast. We welcome questions anytime from any of our listeners. Here it is. “I honestly could use some advice on the topic of generally problematic employee. Acting like they are dying when they have a simple cold; excessive personal social media use; excessive personal phone calls; amazing productivity when it comes to finding ways to be less productive; awful spelling and grammar; general lack of awareness except when it comes to taking vacation time around administrative holidays, effectively getting five days off for one day of PTO used and blocking anyone else from being able to take this time off; leaving the bathroom a vile mess every day.” Oh, man, here’s somebody I don’t want to work with. JoDee, what do we do? What advice do you have?

JoDee 31:29
Yeah, I think – I had to laugh at this question, because I know it’s real, and I know that every HR person or business leader who’s listening today has, is thinking about that one person, right? Hopefully it’s not five people or 10 people or 20 people, but just one person. But my advice is simple and short. It’s time for them to go. And I think so many employers feel like they’re held hostage by employees who act like this, and yet they maybe need staff, or they need help in certain areas, and so they feel like they can’t let them go, or they have this fear of being sued, but this is obviously a completely unproductive person who is now making the HR person completely unproductive, or their manager, maybe, or a combination of the two. And I think it’s so important for us to think not just about that one person, but the people who are working around them, because they know all this is going on too. They see it. They are living it even more than HR people are. You gotta cut the cord. You have to set standards and expectations that, that people can be good performers and not creating so much downtime for others around them.

Susan 33:11
You know, it’s so interesting. I think in a small organization, that works. I think it absolutely works, because you can pretty much say, we’re – we happen to be in Indiana, and my guess is… I don’t know where this person’s from, honestly, but if you’re in an employment at will state, which most of the US is, you can, as long as it’s not discriminatory reason, you can part ways any hour of any day. It’s just an employee can do the same thing. They can part ways with you any hour of any day. It does get trickier the larger the company. And I, I’d love to know from this listener, how size – how large the organization is, because you have precedent and you have policy and you’ve got a corrective action process that you will follow unless there’s something that’s dramatic enough for you to skip all of it and go right to termination. It’s tricky. I think it’s really, really tricky to do this, because when I, when I go back over the list of ailments here, none, no single one of them would probably be grounds for corrective action. It’d be tough. I mean, they, they are miserable to work with, and they are playing the system, and they are really sharp when it comes to following the rules. It’s tough. I mean, I, I, I would love to help this person realize they’re not happy where they are, that they are, they are making their life miserable, and they’re making everyone else’s life miserable. But I don’t know, I have a tough time just pulling the cord. I don’t know, JoDee. Any reaction? You’ve worked in larger and smaller organizations.

JoDee 34:39
Yeah, but I am – you know, I was just thinking, listeners, you’ve, you’ve been able to hear this over the years, right? Susan is our much more compassionate HR leader, and JoDee says, “fire them.”

Susan 34:55
I don’t know.

JoDee 34:56
I just don’t have much patience for people who aren’t working towards the good of the organization. So.

Susan 35:06
I would love to hear from more listeners, especially this listener, if you, I mean, I don’t know if you’d be willing to write back, but we would love to hear how large your organization is, what, what do you think the downside of the JoDee approach, about this is it, you know what, life’s too short for you and for us, for this to go on, you’re gone, or the Susan approach, which is, how do I help this person realize they are not happy here, and help them figure out where else they’re going to work. We’d love to hear from you and any other listener, any point of view you have on this, please. JoDee, the best way to reach us, would it be on…

JoDee 35:39
joypowered@gmail.com.

Susan 35:42
Listeners, we want to hear from you.

JoDee 35:43
Yes, yes. Good idea. In our in the news section today, in SHRM’s 2023 State of the Workplace Report, the top concerns for employers were inflation, employee mental health, the labor shortage, and the economic slowdown. Looking forward to into 2024, the top three priorities, per the same report, are maintaining employee morale and engagement, retaining top talent, and number three, finding and recruiting talent with the necessary skills. Now, I found all of these to be important, but the, the ones that fell off the list from 2023, inflation, the labor shortage, and the economic slowdown really are all connected to our economy, and then employee mental health, which we’ve made such great strides on – I hope that we’ve made so many great strides that it has… I hate to say, lessened the priority, but maybe we put things in place to combat that, but I think we’re back to some ongoing topics that we have all the time, right, that we are not really solving. Engagement, retention, and recruiting. So interesting report.

Susan 37:18
Very interesting.

JoDee 37:19
Thank you for joining us today. Please tune in next time and make it a JoyPowered® day.

Susan 37:26
Thank you.

JoDee 37:27
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