What are the big issues in work and benefits we’ll be dealing with after Covid?
A lot of the experts are starting to talk about “the end of the pandemic” and, even though the Omicron variant of Covid-19 is still running wild, we could be looking at a “return to normality” by the Spring, and a Summer quite possibly without any shutdowns, restrictions, masks or further booster shots.
Maybe. Hope so.
So, if we do manage to put Covid behind us, what are we going to talk about in the upcoming year? Here are a few of the things that keep crossing my desk.
- Personalized benefits: We’re hearing more and more about personalized benefits and – partly due to the big shake-up in all aspects of work and benefits during the pandemic – I expect to hear a good deal more about it in the future. A study out of the UK found that 42% of employers had already made changes to their benefits plans due to the pandemic. Personalized benefits were front and centre, but I thought it was particularly interesting that 61% of workplaces were moving to mobile apps for employees to manage their benefits.
I think we have to put personalized benefits in perspective: remember that one of the things we want to achieve with our benefits programs is retention and recruitment, and that another is the well workplace, where people feel valued and looked after.
Personalized benefits involve a range of choices – and not just any choices, but different options based on the demographics of your particular workplace. Old and young. Singles, couples, families with kids. Fit and healthy or facing challenges and differently abled. And so on.
Offering a range of choices can have a big impact in a couple of different ways. If you offer fitness classes, for example, be sure to include a choice – cooking or language classes, for example – that might appeal to anyone who is not going to be interested in the fitness classes.
Remember, we’re not talking about core insurance-based benefits such as LTD or prescription drugs. We’re talking about adapting core benefits to make them as flexible as possible, and we’re talking about adding some of the smaller benefits just because we can. I found a list of 101 possibilities online. You’ll like some of them, perhaps even want to add them – and laugh at others.
- Longer hours, longer week. The Society for Human Resource Management, better known as SHRM, reports some eye-popping data on just how many extra hours work-from-home professionals are putting in. Their study found that 70% of people who started working from home due to the pandemic now regularly spend time working on weekends, and 45% work longer hours through the week.
A different study, by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which looked at data from 21,000 companies around the world, found that the average work-from-home workday had lengthened by 48.5 minutes.
I think the elephant in the room when it comes to extra hours is the feeling that, “Well, you’re not spending an hour or two hours on your commute, so you’re still ahead of the game if you put in an extra hour or so ever day.” And there are other factors: just the fact that the office routine, which included packing up, shutting down and going home, has been broken; and, I think many people have a feeling that ought to be doing more to make work-from-home a success, to hold up their end, and to keep the workplace running through tough times.
But is this sustainable in the long run? Will it lead to burnout – if it hasn’t already – and will there be calls to regulate or at least manage working hours?
- The right to disconnect. Ontario’s new “Working for Workers Act,” passed into law in December, may be a part of the answer to the longer-hours question. It basically says that workers (for employers with 25 or more employees) have a “right to disconnect” from work after their regular hours. That, the Act says, means “not engaging in work-related communications, including emails, telephone calls, video calls or the sending or reviewing of other messages, so as to be free from the performance of work.”
The legislations says that affected workplaces have to create a policy around the right to disconnect, and to communicate it to all employees. In this, the first year, it looks like that policy will have to be in place by June. Things like expected response times for emails could be included, as well as encouraging employees to turn on out-of-office notifications at the end of the workday.
The government may in the future add a regulation spelling out details, such as how to handle occasional or emergency situations, or whether managers and executives are included.
- Hybrid working. We’ve reported before that a big majority of people who started working from home during the pandemic want to keep the option of doing so, at least part of the time, when things get back to normal. But – life is never simple – CBC is now reporting that, while 77% of people do want to keep that remote-work and flexible-hours option, 46% of people worry that not being in the office will undermine their chances of promotion.
The survey, by Angus Reid, also found that 72% of workplaces planned to continue some degree of work-from-home for their employees.
This – flexible work-from-home for part of the time – is being called the hybrid model, and it certainly looks like it will be the new normal.
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I really appreciate comments, ideas, suggestions or just observations about the blog or any other topics in benefits management. I always look forward to hearing from readers. If there’s anything you want to share, please email me at bill@penmorebenefits.com.
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