About a week ago, my friend and colleague Carol Harnett posted a video blog called “Should We Give Employees What They Want?” in her Work.Love.Play.Daily series. Carol is one of America’s leading voices in employee benefits, health and productivity management, and performance innovation. Her video struck a chord with me, because it touched on a topic I ponder every day. Ultimately, whether to “give employees what they want” is the pivotal question before HR, Benefits, and Wellness professionals today. So I created a video reply with my own thoughts on the topic, especially as it relates to wellness. The videos are below — first Carol’s, then my reply. I’ll have more to say about it in an upcoming blog post. In the interim, feel free to add your comments below, or create your own video response!
#1 by Carol Harnett on July 26, 2011 - 10:49 am
Thanks, Bob. Both for sharing my video blog post and creating your terrific video reply.
These videos seem to have struck a chord in tight circle of people who’ve gotten to know each other via social media and are also involved in HR, benefits, wellness and health.
I’ve largely been in the camp of trying to entice people to want what they need. I feel myself, at minimum, moving toward the middle.
If happiness and well-being are important components of employee performance and productivity, maybe we should give people what they want and not, necessarily, what they need – in the form of benefits.
Warm wishes,
Carol
#2 by Bob Merberg on July 26, 2011 - 10:08 pm
Great thoughts, Carol. I’d like to pose a hypothetical situation for you or anyone who wishes to chime in: Suppose you were an Employee Wellness manager hired to create and grow a program that helps contain health care costs. You review claims and health risk appraisal data and find that the biggest cost drivers — in terms of directs costs and productivity — are cardiovascular disorders (hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, heart disease), musculoskeletal disorders (mostly back pain), allergies, and depression. The leading risk factors are sedentary lifestyle, high consumption of unhealthy foods, and our old friend, obesity. You conduct surveys and focus groups, and find that the main things employees want from your program is resources related to complementary care — especially nutritional supplements, aromatherapy, and naturopathy. They also are interested in learning more about how childhood immunizations cause autism.
Is there a clear path to giving these employees what they want? (I hope this scenario doesn’t sound far-fetched. It’s not, in certain regions and certain sectors.)
Thoughts?
#3 by Nicholas Tolson on July 27, 2011 - 10:32 am
Hi Carol and Bob. I’m going to stick with a text-based reply, but loved your video responses.
Since, employees value these benefits, and these and other benefits are crucial to employee satisfaction and loyalty, I think it’s a must that employers look for – as Bob said – creative ways to satisfy them while also giving them the benefits they “need.”
I also think the data in the recent Metlife study give us the framework to give employees “alternative” benefits they want (excluding things that are outright harmful, obviously) while also offering other more “core” benefits by offering these alt benefits as voluntary benefits that are paid for by employees. Employees have shown both that they value these benefits and that they are willing to pay for them.
I also think there is value in swinging the door open to these “alternative” benefits from a couple other perspectives.
1) Use them as a discovery tool for innovative and effective benefits that you may offer as employer-sponsored benefits in the future. You see a particular benefit that is getting extremely popular? That’s a good signal that maybe you should offer it up in your standard benefits package.
2) Use them as a discovery tool for new yet effective benefits. Just because it’s a free benefit doesn’t mean you can’t track it! You see a benefit – say a hydration program (as Bob brought up) or dare I say a fitness competition
– that is highly effective? Well, add that to your careers page too. 
Let you employees do your benefits R&D for you. Set up a sort of FSA for them that allows them to spend money on any benefit they want – presumably from a list of approved categories or the like. Track the uptake of these and their effectiveness and offer the most popular and best ones, and I think you’ll find yourself with lots of happy employees on your hands. Now, I’m not a benefits expert, so maybe people do this already – I’m just thinking out loud and offering an outsider’s perspective.
In short, there is value in not just giving employees what they want from the employee perspective, but from the corporate perspective as well. Moreover, I believe there is value for both sides in innovation and experimentation.
#4 by Bob Merberg on July 27, 2011 - 10:02 pm
Great points, Nicholas. I agree with everything you say. But I am disappointed that you elected to do a text-based reply rather than a video. Reading and writing are so over!
#5 by Nicholas Tolson on July 27, 2011 - 10:54 pm
Ha! I would’ve had to shave to look presentable, and that just wasn’t happening today.