That’s especially true for managing the health of employees’ adolescent children. Most of the attention goes to pre-natal and early childhood care. But a host of serious medical issues typically emerge during teenage years.

Physical issues

It’s every bit as important for employees’ adolescent dependents to undergo complete health assessments as it is for employees’ themselves. This is especially true for weight management issues.

There has been an epidemic rise in overweight and obese adolescents, which can contribute to (or worsen) a variety of physical and/or behavioral health problems.

Remember: These issues can create large-scale direct costs (treatments for the teenager) and indirect costs (absenteeism and/or presenteeism by the parent(s) who work for you). Other crucial factors:

• immunizations (shots or vaccines) to reduce the risk of getting diseases such as hepatitis, meningitis, tetanus and mumps
• preventive health counseling and age-appropriate health information (e.g., drug and alcohol abuse, sexually transmitted diseases)
• vision and hearing tests, and
• blood-pressure screening (especially if there’s a family history of high blood pressure).

Psychological issues

Regular physician visits provide an opportunity to discuss emotional changes and other challenges that most adolescents experience. In some cases, it’s also a front-line means of referring teenagers-in-need to behavioral counseling.

Remember: Proactive care greatly reduces the risk of a host of chronic and debilitating conditions. It can even be a life-safer in extreme cases.

Even if it’s not in the budget, you can adopt some of the newer employee education techniques used in successful plans.

What’s out: Harping on the message that smoking causes lung cancer, emphysema, etc.  Virtually every smoker knows the risks by now. That doesn’t mean you should ignore the issues of smoking and serious health conditions, but it shouldn’t be the only focus.  

What’s in: The employee education trend has moved toward teaching people strategies to overcome the barriers that keep them from quitting.

Common barriers

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality recommends that before smokers try another cessation attempt, they look at past quit attempts – what helped and what led to relapse. Three common relapse triggers:

• social drinking. Many smokers get their strongest cigarette cravings when they’re in social situations that involve drinking alcohol.
• smokers at home. Having other people in the household who smoke in the employee’s presence greatly reduces the chance of a successful quit attempt, and
•  the weaning approach. While some people can quit gradually, those who go cold turkey are usually better off once they get through the first few weeks of discomfort.

Identify non-health benefits

Your employees’ doctors likely already review the health benefits of quitting with their patients.
While it’s good to provide info that supports this message, you may want to make your focus the non-health rewards of quitting.

Example: Show smokers how much money they can save by quitting. Multiply the cost of a pack of cigarettes by the days or weeks of the year. Then add the cost difference between your health plan’s premiums for smokers and non-smokers.

One final step: Encourage people to set a personal “quit date,” preferably within two weeks. Many people respond best to deadlines – even when the deadlines are self-imposed.

If you are in business long enough, chances are that you’ll eventually be involved in at least one benefits-related legal dispute with an ex-employee.

The good news: There are ways to avoid common mistakes that get in the way of resolving disputes quickly. Even if you are sued, taking these three steps can keep things from going from bad to worse:

1. Focus on a narrow time period

Companies open the door for trouble when a poor-performing employee is given a raise or bonus – and then fired shortly thereafter.  Huge red flag: Employees who are terminated shortly after a dispute over paid leave or disability.

In many cases, the employers can’t fall back on a history of poor performance reviews. The problems are often more recent in nature.

Best practice: In performance reviews, supervisors should focus the documentation only on the time period the review covers – and not anything earlier. If an issue’s taken to court it may look like the employer’s retaliating against the employee for taking leave or claiming a disability.

2. Follow up promptly

It’s dangerous to terminate someone shortly after he or she has filed a complaint.  If an employee’s made a written or verbal complaint shortly before being fired, the employer is vulnerable to retaliation lawsuits.

Timing’s of the essence when it comes to following up on complaints. An investigation that’s started within a day or two of a complaint shows that the firm took the issue seriously.

3. Abide by plan documents

Sometimes the first time you’ll hear about a benefits or pay-related complaint is after the employ files a claim with the DOL or EEOC.

Emotions usually run high when this happens. But it’s crucial to follow to the letter the investigation and dispute-resolution procedures spelled out in your plan documents.  Failure to do so almost always puts the company in legal jeopardy.

The result is almost always a court case or an expensive settlement – even if the company was in the right. Reason: Under ERISA, the only thing that’s worse than deviating from plan documents is not having written dispute-resolution procedures at all.

Answer: Both groups worry equally about their out-of-pocket health costs, according to a PNC Services Group survey of 1,485 employees. Nearly 52% of all respondents — regardless of income –cited the unpredictability of medical expenses as their No. 1 financial-planning concern.

Other common financial-planning fears that affect employees of all salary levels:

• eldercare. Over half the respondents with children were afraid their offspring could be forced to pay for the parents’ long-term care, and
• financial stability. 47% of mid- to high-salary employees said they were concerned about sustaining or increasing wealth.

In tough economic times, how do you talk to employees honestly about the state of company benefits plans and finance?

More specifically, what is and isn’t appropriate to share? Here are four proven suggestions for breaking unpleasant news to employees.

1. Fill in the blanks before they do

If you’ve haven’t already done so, it’s worth your company’s while to schedule a state-of-benefits meeting to go over your plans with employees, says consultant Anita Campbell.

One of the biggest mistakes many employers make during lean times is to fail to explain the rationale for passing along additional benefits costs to workers or freeze salaries.

In the absence of information, employees will make up their own stories. The longer management stays silent, the more people believe things they hear in the rumor mill. In smaller organizations, employees are usually closer to what’s going on in the business.

That’s because there are fewer departments and layers of management. Even so, chances are that they don’t understand how the firm’s benefits and compensation expenses weigh into company finance.

Example: You know the additional few dollars a month employees pay toward their health premiums can help avert potential layoffs. But employees may not. Once people see the bigger picture, they can usually accept the need for benefits cuts or salary freezes.

2. Own up to uncertainty

What happens when you talk about a serious issue with family or friends?
They ask questions. You try to answer them, but you probably don’t have answers for every question.

The same thing goes for talking to employees about their benefits and compensation. You can’t possibly know what will happen in the next plan year. It’s OK to admit it.

It’s also important not to make promises you may not be able to keep, such as “The freeze in 401(k) matches will only be for this year.” Simply letting employees talk and ask questions helps them feel better.

In many cases ,you can shoot down false rumors (“We heard the next step the company is taking is to cut health coverage for our kids”). Just as importantly, hearing your employees’ questions lets you know which issues are important to them.

That goes a long way in helping upper management set budgeting priorities as the situation improves.

3. Show confidence

No company wants to make it  seem to employees like the sky is falling, which is why many firms  avoid telling employees bad news.

But there are proven ways to convey the information and admit you don’t have all the answers, yet still reassure folks the problems are being dealt with.

The best way to deal with your own emotions is to know what you plan to say in advance.  Your behavior in the meeting will go a long way toward how employees will feel when they leave.

4. Invite suggestions

Ultimately, you may want to invite employees to become part of
the solution to your company’s situation during tough times.

Example: Offer an incentive for suggesting useful ideas for cost savings or increased productivity.

A non-profit organization in Tennessee recently started a PTO-sharing program at the suggestion of employees concerned about cutbacks in leave benefits. The result has been a jump in morale and closer ties between management and employees.

The scariest part: Victims of benefits-related ID theft often make out worse than those who fall prey to the more common variety. The bad guys are ahead of investigators after such thefts occur, and are often very good at covering their tracks.

Also, because benefits ID-theft is a relatively new type of crime, there’s no well-established system for victims, plan sponsors and vendors to set things straight after the fact.

401(k) accounts a prime target

Not surprisingly, employees’ 401(k) accounts have become the primary target for benefits thieves. An alarming MSNBC news report showed just how easy it can be for thieves to tap into an employee’s 401(k) accounts: If an online account gets hacked into or account paperwork falls into the wrong hands, it takes only a few mouse clicks to wipe out the victim’s retirement savings.

With typical credit-card or bank account fraud, victims need only call their card issuer or bank, report the crime and refuse to pay for an item. But 401(k) theft is much, much harder to resolve.

Three huge obstacles:

1. Money in 401(k) accounts is not federally insured, like a bank account.
2. 401(k) accounts rarely — if ever — come with automatic identity theft protection from the vendor, like credit cards.
3. Even if the theft is successfully resolved, the situation becomes an ERISA nightmare for plan sponsors, because your company also has to account for the way the theft affected the growth of the employee’s account before the money was restored.

Seventy-one percent of employees lack basic knowledge of standard benefit programs, according to a new study by the American Payroll Association (APA).

Low participation rates

The ASA study focused on employees knowledge of their company’s pre-tax benefits. While nearly three quarters of employees say they live paycheck to paycheck, and would like to stretch their current salaries:

• 52% don’t participate in available flex spending accounts (and 6% of had never even heard of an FSA)
• 17% didn’t know their company offered a health savings account or health reimbursement arrangement (46% of those aware of the benefit still don’t participate), and
• 18% are unaware of existing transportation benefits or subsidies their company offers.

It’s not enough to make sure your education and job-training benefits are available to employees of all ages, ethnic groups and pay levels.

Your company also has to make sure the training itself gives everyone the same chance for success upon its completion. If not, you can be held liable for discrimination.

In one recent case, a Texas-based restaurant industry employer was cited by the EEOC for disproportionately hiring and promoting women from its bartender training program.

Believing that women would sell more drinks than men, the bar’s policy was to hire eight women for every two males, even when male trainees outperformed some of their female counterparts in training.

The employer had to pay $1 million to resolve the discrimination case.

In another case (Cross v. New York Transit Authority), an employee who performed poorly in a cross-training program convinced a court the program was biased against older employees. 

After a few sessions, the training supervisor sent the woman back to her regular department. He said the trainee couldn’t keep up with the most basic of assignments, so there was no point moving on to tougher tasks.

Because the employee didn’t complete the training program, she wasn’t paid for the time away from her usual position. She sued for age discrimination.

In her suit, the employee admitted she had trouble with the work assigned in the training program. But she claimed the supervisor set her up to fail. As proof, she pointed out the fact the other, younger trainees got to work on better equipment. The others received training manuals – she didn’t.

Finally, she said the training supervisor was supportive of other trainees and allowed them to learn at their own pace. But she was ridiculed when she made the same mistakes.

The court agreed with the employee. In his decision, the judge said the training program was unfair to its older participants.

The judge said it was possible the older employee simply wasn’t cut out for the work. But the supervisor didn’t give her a fair chance to prove herself.

Two keys to staying protected

If your firm has similar programs, remind supervisors it’s crucial to:

• make it results-oriented but provide all trainees with the same training materials and review process, and
• offer people guidance if they find the work confusing at the beginning.

A What’s New in Benefits & Compensation reader shared a real-life horror story of a 401(k) presentation that may have actually hurt enrollment:

The firm’s 401(k) vendor sent a rep with whom the benefits manager had never previously spoken. The rep who’d done the company’s presentation for many years had recently changed jobs.

 To put it politely, the new speaker was not nearly as accessible or well-prepared as the first.

On the day of the session, the rep showed up late, with barely enough time to set up before employees came in for the presentation. To make matters worse, he hadn’t done his homework on the company or its employees.

In the course of about 20 minutes, the rep forgot the company’s name, misstated the employer’s matching contribution rate (the firm offered a 6% match, but the rep told attendees it was 10%), and generally came across as a buffoon. 

The company’s benefits manager corrected the speaker about the contribution rate. Rather than smoothing it over by saying something along the lines of “six percent is still quite a generous match” — or even simply apologizing — he tried to make a joke.

He told employees that they ”should marry someone rich” in order to make up the other four percent. 

The bad standup comedy act continued, in the form of mime and insults.

“Having a 401(k) means you can sleep soundly at night when you’re ready to retire,” he said,  punctuating the point by making a pillow gesture with his hands and placing his head down on his hands.

Employees in the room rolled their eyes.   

He then wrapped up his presentation by dramatically pointing his finger at random people in the room.

“What we’d like to see is for you [point], and you [point], and you [point] and EVEN YOU [points at the benefits manager] to get started today, because every year you miss costs you money. Signing up for the 401(k) is the smartest decision we all [waves a pointing finger across the room] can ever make for ourselves and our families.” 

The benefits manager cringed. Nothing like asking employees to take time out of workday to have their intelligence insulted — and the generosity of their benefits poked fun at.

Needless to say, the employer wasn’t interested in an encore. The next time around, the company insisted the vendor send a different rep.  Thankfully, the would-be comedian no longer worked there by that point and the new rep was polished and professional.

What was the worst experience you’ve ever had in a benefits meeting or presentation at your company?

Here are four proven techniques for getting non-talkers involved in discussing their benefits.

1. Re-direct questions

When only a few people ask questions about the material, give a brief reply and then turn the question over to the rest of the group.

Example: Ask attendees to name some situations where they’d use a flexible spending account.

2. Use role-playing scenarios

Role-playing scenarios boost participation two ways. They enliven discussions of otherwise dry topics. And, by dramatizing issues, you get the group involved emotionally.

For instance, this technique is extremely effective in discussing FMLA and HIPAA privacy with supervisors at your firm.

3. Write comments down

You may want to write down participants’ comments on a marker board or chalkboard.

This validates people’s contributions and subtly pressures other attendees to offer insights or questions of their own.

4. Turn silence to your advantage

Many presenters rush to break silences in the room. But filling the silence with your own response robs the group of a chance to take over the discussion. The silence may seem uncomfortable, but you don’t always have to be the one to let attendees off the hook.
 

People often just need time to consider their comments. If no one responds after about 30 seconds, rephrase the question.