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An increasing number of employees in the “Sandwich Generation” are looking for benefits to help them manage the demands of caring for parents and children alike. A recent nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center found that nearly half of respondents in their 40s and 50s have a living parent and are either raising a young child or supporting a grown one.

“There’s an emerging recognition of the impact of caregiver stress on working parents’ ability to be productive at home and at work,” says David Lissy, CEO of Bright Horizons, a provider of dependent back-up care services. “Particularly as families wait longer to have children, there’s more at stake in their careers and they’re pulled in many directions, dealing with the realities of their aging parents.”

On average, access to Bright Horizons allowed employees to work six days during the past six months – productive time that otherwise would have been lost – and nearly 70% of these workers used the service for adult care.

Care.com, another provider of backup care services for employees, saw a three-fold increase last year in the number of clients that added senior care planning. IRobot, Inc. chose Care.com as an employee benefit because “we value our employees and want to support them in managing the demands on their personal lives,” says benefits analyst Cathy Blanchard. Since adding the service, iRobot has seen a 15% month-to -month increase in using the program, which has boosted productivity by reducing costs from care-related absences and distractions.

If you’d like to learn more about offering day care for adults and children as an employee benefit, just give us a call.

Voluntary Vision and Dental insurance is becoming increasingly popular among mid-sized companies as a way to bolster their employee benefits programs.

Since passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, benefit providers have been adding Vision and Dental care, giving mid-market companies a variety of choices among competitively priced plans that can help attract and retain quality workers. “We continue to see that benefits like these are good for driving employee loyalty and job satisfaction,” says Alan Hirschberg, vice president of dental and vision products for MetLife Inc.

Sales of Voluntary benefits keep growing: a survey last by industry association LIMRA International, Inc. showed that Vision coverage increased 75% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2012, while Dental care rose 1%.

To help curb costs, mid-sized businesses often ask employees to pick up at least 30% of premiums for these plans. Most workers are fine with this because the premiums are relatively inexpensive.

In addition to supplementing Group Health insurance, Vision and Dental plans cover tests and procedures that can reduce employers’ health care costs down the road. For example, eye and dental exams can be crucial in early detection and management of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

When it comes to Voluntary benefits, one size does not fit all. For instance, highly compensated employees might want a Dental plan that covers adult orthodontics, while lower-wage workers might prefer coverage for cleaning, fillings and other basic care. Companies can also offer multiple plans, allowing workers to select the premiums and coverage they prefer.

We’d be happy to work with you in tailoring cost-effective, comprehensive voluntary Vision and Dental plans that can benefit your business – and your employees.

Benefits experts have usually focused on the role of management in implementing programs that improve employees’ flexibility in balancing their life and work. However, researchers are now calling on workers to take the primary responsibility for a creating more flexible daily life by making small, shifts in their everyday behavior.

For example, a survey by Cali Williams Yost, author of Tweak It: Make What Matters to You Happen Every Day,” found that nearly 75% of employees believe that work-life flexibility is only possible if their employer and/or boss provide it. Adds Brad Harrington, Ph.D., executive director of the Boston College Center for Work and Family, “ultimately it’s the individual who must solve this problem, determine their fit, and manage the process of achieving it.

Although more companies are offering flexibility programs and policies that help employees manage such life transitions such as parenthood and illness, Yost and Harrington point out that many workers find it unrealistic to work regularly from home, revise their daily schedule, or use other flexibility options. Even so, they argue, this doesn’t make work-life balance a lost cause.

“Major life events matter,” says Yost, “but it’s the everyday routine we crave and where employees struggle the most with managing work-life fit. Employees themselves need to manage work-life as a daily practice. While this sounds counterintuitive, it starts by thinking small.” She encourages employees to “make small, consistent changes in how, when and where they manage their work and their lives… taking actions that over time build the foundation for a successful work-life fit that transforms their performance on and off the job.”

That’s sound advice to share with your workers.

As wellness and health management programs have become increasingly common, many employers who’ve seen the positive results of reward-based incentives wither have begun using financial penalties to encourage enrollment in these plans.

Although this can be an effective approach in boosting plan participation among at-risk workers, misusing it can lead to negative reactions from employees.

The logic behind penalty incentives is rooted in behavioral economics, particularly the theory of loss aversion, which holds that a person is more easily compelled to prevent the loss of something than to pursue a reward. The most common penalties for opting out of wellness plans are monthly or annual increases in employees’ health care premiums, copayments, and deductibles.

Some businesses prefer a carrot-and-stick approach, offering workers “gated benefit plans,” which limit employees who don’t take part in wellness programs to limited-coverage, high-deductible plans, while rewarding those who do participate with access to plans that provide better coverage and/or lower premiums and deductibles.

Despite the potential effectiveness of using penalties, this approach can easily upset or anger employees if they don’t understand the broader goals of your wellness program.

To minimize this risk, focus on the program’s overall goal of improving workers’ health, together with as a theme of shared responsibility for the long-term success of the company’s Group Health plan.

“You might need a year of lead time to begin the process of educating employees on why the company is sharing responsibility for their health care coverage,” advises one industry expert. “Only after you get through that incremental education process are you ready to implement the change, especially if it’s a penalty.”

To learn more, feel free to get in touch with the Employee Benefits specialists at our agency.