Page 267 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

254B RE-ENGAGE

: IGNORE THIS TODAY AND RISK YOUR CORPORATE HEALTH

We recall a conversation with a corporate client who had partic-
ipated in a Best-Places event in 2005. The overall results for this
client were solid—good, with room to grow. We were facilitating
a planning session with the company’s senior leaders, looking at a
few issues that seemed worthy of action planning related to man-
agement, career development, and benefits. The company’s results
for the two benefits items on the survey were mediocre. Employ-
ees’ anecdotal comments indicated their concerns about the quality
of health-care benefits, including the portion employees were re-
quired to pay. There were also complaints about the retirement plan,
which, in this case, didn’t match up well with those of the company’s
competitors.
As the discussion continued, the CEO, after digesting all the data,
remarked: “I’m not happy about the concerns about our employee
benefits. But I don’t think we’re losing any employees, nor having dif-
ficulty recruiting employees because of this. I think we can prioritize
our efforts elsewhere.” The members of the executive group discussed
the matter and agreed that their energies could be best served ad-
dressing other recruiting and retention drivers.
At the time we didn’t offer much resistance to their reasoning,
agreeing with the CEO about the potential impact of the survey re-
sults for employee benefits and their impact on employee engage-
ment. With the passage of time and changing circumstances, the
sands of employee engagement have shifted under us. Consider the
following news items that have graced our media outlets in the ensu-
ing years,

: HEALTH-CARE SPENDING
According to a study published by Reuters, health-care spending
will hit $2.5 trillion in 2009, devouring 17.6 percent of the econ-
omy. The study reported: “That would mark the biggest one-year
increase recorded since the government began tracking the data in
1960.” 2