There's a saying in my family "[Name] is getting cranky. Pass the nuts." (And, yes, we have packets of nuts in purses and cars!) In today’s busy lives at work and at home, it’s easy to put off eating. But, low fuel can translate to being unproductive, potentially unsafe and simply unpleasant to be around.

Picture this: John, one of your most talented junior managers, has had a number of life changes recently, both happy and challenging. He’s gotten married, moved into a new condo, and has started caring for an aging relative. He’s got a lot on his plate, personally, professionally, and financially.

We’ve all heard something like this over the years: Your environment has a major impact on your health and well-being…

Talking to the voice in your head again? Relax, you can quiet that pesky voice and stop stressing. Benefits season doesn’t have to take the stuffing out of you or your team. Here’s three suggestions (actually reminders) for making it successful and easier.

Let’s enter the world of lean and mean small and medium-sized businesses for a few minutes.

Whether you’re a staffing company, a corporation, or a privately-held business, reaching the top talent before the big firms and large corporations swipe them up can be extremely difficult. Not to mention, exhausting. You don’t have the resources they do, the budget, the talent, the headcount, or even the diversity. So, how do you stay in the ring without getting knocked out? 

The candidate experience is now more important and personalized than ever before, making it a prerequisite to landing the best talent. But, to be honest, you just don’t have the time on your calendar or the resources at your fingertips to do your research on each candidate and provide them the experience they desire. You’re sick of taking piles of resumes (or files) home with you to study and find that perfect match that the hiring manager won’t get off your back about.

Could your defined contribution retirement plan design be behind the times? We asked more than 300 plan sponsors about their 401(k) plans in order to figure out what’s trending in the world of retirement plans. The research results? We found that if any of these statements apply to your plan, it might be a bit retro.

This blog was originally published on the Willis Towers Watson Wire, February 15, 2018.

In today’s talent management environment, the most successful employers are the ones who listen. In Willis Towers Watson’s 2017/2018 Global Benefits Attitudes Survey, we see that benefits are more important to employees than ever before. While retirement and medical benefits tend to top employees’ list of priorities, paid time off ranks relatively high around the world. Additionally, the topics of workforce flexibility and work-life balance continue to receive significant attention from employers who want to attract, retain and engage talent. More and more, top employers give prominence to employee success, satisfaction and security outside of the workplace, as well as within, as part of their employee value proposition, in effort to help them stand apart from competitors vying for the same talent pool. 

In our first blog post about Change Leadership, we talked about the hallmark of a great change leader as being able to navigate complex organizations, understanding what makes people tick and using that knowledge to inspire and motivate change.

Well, no matter how good you are at doing that, if all your employees are hearing is “blah, blah, blah,” they won’t get the vision for the change, grasp what success looks like for the company, nor understand what’s in it for them, how it affects them and how they can help make it happen.  

The best trick is to figure out how to strike the right balance between the serious nature of the change and conveying the details of all noted above, while avoiding corporate speak, high-level platitudes and the 'blah, blah, blah' of many change initiatives.