HR and compliance is the new thing in employer-sponsored health plans. By combining Mineral’s HR and compliance expertise with health insurance, Select Health is improving the health of both its employer clients and their employees.

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Safety training is an essential part of every employer’s safety and health program to protect workers from injury and illness, and ensure workers have the required skills and knowledge to safely do their work. The resulting benefits from effective safety training include fewer injuries and illnesses, better morale, lower insurance premiums and more. 

Your employees have the right to a safe work environment, safe work processes and procedures, and safe tools and equipment. Although safety training is not one-size-fits-all—what your specific training program looks like will heavily depend on company operations, hazards, and risks—there are six training topics that apply to most businesses.  

6 workplace safety training topics that pertain to most businesses 

1. Slip, trip, and fall hazards. These include wet floors, snow or ice, electrical cords or pipes at floor level, and fall hazards such as roof work. You should conduct slip, trip and fall hazard awareness training, including procedures to prevent slips, trips and falls in the workplace. 

2. Chemical safety. For employees using cleaners, solvents, glue, adhesives, spray paint, and lubricants, it’s important to train them to accurately read chemical labels and safety warning for how to safely use and/or mix chemicals.  

3. First aid. Ensure employees know where first-aid supplies and equipment are located and how to render first-aid to themselves of others as needed. 

4. Personal protective equipment (PPE). Adequately and regularly train employees on when and how to wear safety glasses, gloves, safety shoes, protective clothing, earplugs, hard hats, respirators, face shields, and other protective equipment to prevent on-the-job injuries. 

5. Emergency action plan. This training covers emergency procedures when a fire, hazardous spill, severe weather situation, or medical emergency occur. If your business employs fewer than 10 employees, your plan may be informal, but you must still communicate what to do in an emergency.  

6. Portable fire extinguishers. Train employees to use them in case of a small fire, including the types of fire extinguishers, what each type is used for, and how to properly extinguish a fire.  

6 tips for conducting workplace safety training 

Once you have determined what topics you should include in your employee safety training program, based on regulatory requirements and best practices, here six strategies for planning and conducting health and safety training:  

1. Simplify. Safety topics can be technical in nature and audiences can vary in native language and educational background. Whether it’s on-the-job training or more formal training, use simple language, visuals and repeat key concepts more than once. 

2. Document. Document what was covered, the date, the trainer, and the names of participants. This will boost your recordkeeping efforts and provide historical information that can be handy when employees turn over or are promoted.  

3. Schedule. Establish a regular cadence for safety training. Training is an opportunity to reinforce the message to your employees that safety is a core value of your business. If you want safe work practices to become embedded in your workplace culture, make safety a regular topic of conversation—whether it is included in a daily pre-shift meeting, scheduled into an online training schedule, or included as part of a monthly team meeting.   

4. Demonstrate. Include safety training in on-the-job training when demonstrating a new task, skill, or process to employees. Too often, when showing employees how to perform a task, trainers overlook safety—either because they assume safety is commonsense or they haven’t considered what could go wrong. Take the opportunity to discuss potential hazards and reinforce safety skills needed to perform tasks injury-free.  

5. Integrate. Incorporate safety training into new employee onboarding, including basics like emergency procedures and PPE requirements as well as task specific safety precautions and instructions. Make onboarding training job-specific so new hires can apply what they learn to their daily work.  

6. Audit. Training falls short with no follow up. When visiting work areas or working with employees on-the-job, observe whether the concepts presented in the training are being carried out and have become company norms. If not, retrain until the information is consistently practiced.  

Mineral can support your workplace safety efforts  

If you’re not sure where to start, plan to train your employees on the above six topics, starting with the one that is most relevant to your current needs and/or the topic that either has never been discussed with employees or needs a refresher.  

From there, Mineral provides various types of training resources on all six of these health and safety topics, including turnkey slide presentations, videos, quizzes, and handouts. Mineral also has an entire health and safety library that may be relevant to your business. If you unsure if a topic is relevant, Mineral Safety Advisors can help.  

Finally, there are additional workplace health and safety topics that you may want to include in employee training but are not specifically required by OSHA, including: back safety, ergonomics, incident reporting procedures, office safety, and workplace violence prevention.  

When designing and executing your safety training program, remember to start with identifying the hazards and risks that your employees may encounter on the job. Involve your team in creating your training program, and put together a plan that targets the most relevant topics and ensures your employees understand the why behind the training. Know that effective training takes time and repetition, and keep the ultimate goal in mind: Workers who have the required skills and knowledge to safely do their work so your business can thrive.  

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As you work to improve your organization’s safety culture, it’s important to have a clear action plan rooted firmly in your safety mission and specific safety goals. Without it, you’ll end up responding reactively to issues as they arise rather than proceeding proactively with a cohesive roadmap for achieving your goals. A risk assessment is an effective tool for helping design your safety roadmap, resulting in actions that will help build momentum and drive continuous improvement.

9 reasons to conduct a workplace safety risk assessment

1. Find hidden hazards. First and foremost, the basic purpose of a risk assessment is to identify hazards in your workplace, determine what risks they pose to employees and outline a plan for eliminating or mitigating the hazards so that they don’t result in safety incidents. In the process of conducting risk assessments, you’ll get a closer look at systemic problems that lead to safety concerns and discover the norms and beliefs that influence your organization’s safety culture.

2. Build rapport with employees. By rolling up your sleeves and getting out into the operations to conduct a risk assessment, you’ll have an opportunity to engage with employees about their work. Some questions to ask:

“What is the next injury waiting to happen?”
“What safety issue at work keeps you up at night?”
“What change(s) would you suggest to make your job safer?”

You’ll get to know what really goes on behind the scenes while creating an opportunity for employees to express their opinions about what works well and what frustrates them. This dialogue will help you build rapport with the employees and open lines of communication to get the critical feedback that you need to drive culture change around workplace safety.

3. Boost employee engagement in safety. By providing key input during risk assessments, employees will be able to voice their concerns and be heard. As they notice improvements being made based on their feedback, they will start to feel part of the solution, taking ownership of changes and ultimately be more encouraged to speak up in the future.

4. Prioritize improvements with the greatest potential impact. It’s a tale as old as time: When you ask questions, you’ll get answers. Throughout the risk assessment process, you’ll receive feedback and input from employees and other business stakeholders. While likely all important toward fulfilling your safety mission, those priorities and suggestions may compete for organizational resources. The assessment process allows you to prioritize matters by what constitutes the highest risk, so that you’re putting your energy where it can make a meaningful impact rather than simply a big impression. A risk assessment will provide a framework for your plans and help you communicate why you are prioritizing certain actions over others.

5. Prevent incidents before they occur. Risk assessments are proactive by design and help you get ahead of any issues before an incident occurs. You don’t wait to wait for an injury to decide to make workplace conditions safer. A safe workplace invites process improvements, greater efficiencies and helps recruit and retain top talent, ultimately making your business more successful.

6. Uncover compliance gaps and training needs. Through the process of conducting risk assessments, you’ll discover working conditions and practices that don’t meet safety standards such as OSHA requirements that are designed to keep workers safe on the job. These compliance gaps will help provide some context for corrective actions you implement going forward. In addition, by comparing what is actually happening in the work area to company standards and expectations, you’ll also realize where training and communication may be lacking.

7. Uncover root causes of incidents. Risk assessments give you a chance to take a deeper dive into the causes of injuries that often get overlooked during accident investigations. It’s common to hear shallow accusations like an employee “wasn’t paying attention” or “made a poor decision,” which are often subjective and biased. By looking at the source of risks in the work areas, you’ll expose the root causes, underlying conditions and beliefs that led up to an incident. This information is invaluable when trying to make lasting change.

8. Develop safe work procedures and standards. Risk assessments provide some background for establishing company safety policies and developing standard operating procedures. You will have objective evidence and background for establishing how work should be done, what equipment will be used, the precautions employees need to take and how the company will handle problems as they arise.  

9. Reaffirm safety as a core value. The results of a risk assessment provide an opportunity for leaders to talk to employees about their commitment to safety and what is being done to make improvements. By acknowledging hazards that exist and the plan for mitigating safety risks, companies can be transparent about their activities and their plans for improving the work environment.

Up next: Key Components of an Effective Workplace Safety Risk Assessment.

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Every business, from a coffee shop to a construction firm, believes in the mantra “Safety first.” That’s the easy part! However, what workplace safety looks like—with clear expectations, policies, measurement, and accountability—is just a little more complicated. To maintain a safe and productive workplace, small businesses must set formal workplace safety goals and measure performance, as you would any other business objectives.

Establishing safety goals gives a company direction and sparks employee motivation toward the same objectives. They prioritize employees’ time and energy on key activities that, along the way, drive them to develop habits that organically build a culture of safety. A key first step to goal setting is defining what you want. Once you know what good safety performance looks like, you can set parameters for achieving safety success that don’t just rely on luck or hope alone. Here are 10 tips for setting and effectively measuring workplace safety goals:

1. Involve key stakeholders. Getting input from your team is critical to increase engagement in the safety program. Ask those who are in the trenches about what barriers exist to achieving safe work performance. Not only will this help identify where the gaps are, it will also help create buy-in once the expectations and accountabilities are established.

2. Identify specific safety hazards, risks, and other areas for improvement. If something were to go wrong, what types of injuries are likely to occur? Slips and falls, cuts, back injuries and strains and sprains are common injury types across many industries. So of course consider reducing/eliminating these as part of goal-setting, but also think about the hazards that are most prevalent in your specific work environment and how you can prevent incidents from occurring. What are the behaviors that you want employees to practice? What controls and systems do you want employees to use so that incidents are prevented? Establish goals related to the prevention and control of the most common hazards and risks that employees face in their work environment.

3. Align your safety improvement goals with your company mission and more specifically, your safety mission. Your safety improvement goals should bring your whole team together toward a common goal: Preventing injuries and creating a safe and healthy work environment for employees, customers, and the community.

4. Choose leading indicators. A lot of companies measure safety by the number of OSHA recordable incidents that have occurred over a period of time. However, this is a lagging indicator—one that is helpful in identifying where improvements are needed after incidents have already occurred. But lagging indicators don’t reveal the whole picture about organizational safety. Too often, companies are able to achieve zero recordable injuries even though employees have had numerous first aid incidents, close calls, unsafe conditions or possibly even incidents that should have been recorded but weren’t.

Instead, when setting workplace safety goals, it’s more useful to use leading indicators—forward-looking measures that track activities and conditions that lead to positive safety outcomes.

5. Set SMART goals. The best way to articulate and manage your safety outcomes is to make sure your goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound. Some examples:

• Conduct one safety training per month.
• Post safe-work instructions for all tasks by the end of Q1.
• Communicate safety activities and improvement plans quarterly.
• Close 80% of all reported hazardous conditions within 30 days of submission.
• Achieve 50% employee participation on safety teams within one year.

6. Develop an action plan. Outline the specific steps needed to achieve each milestone, who is accountable for each action, and deadlines for completion. Then make action plans transparent to all relevant stakeholders so that progress is visible and tracked to completion.

7. Tie safety SMART goals to employee performance metrics. Organizational goals require a team effort to achieve, and each team member should understand how they contribute toward successful safety performance. By tying safety metrics to individual performance goals, companies can effectively align employees’ efforts with organizational objectives. Be sure employee goals also follow the SMART model.

8. Solicit and provide feedback. Review progress toward goals in a timely manner. Ensure two-way communication so that any barriers to achieving goals can be brought forward by the responsible person and feedback about progress can be provided back to affected stakeholders. Effective communication is a key element to building a strong culture and ultimately achieving the desired outcomes.

9. Celebrate your wins. Celebrate when safety goals are achieved and recognize the efforts of employees who contributed to the success. Reinforcing the behaviors and actions that led to the company’s success is a powerful way to increase momentum and motivation within an organization. Celebrating milestones can also create a sense of camaraderie and team spirit amongst employees.

10. Evaluate and adjust. Review progress at regular intervals so your team can offer feedback and adjust action plans as needed for your workplace safety goals to remain relevant and achievable. However, resist the temptation to move goal lines too frequently, keeping in mind the A in the SMART model doesn’t mean ambitious, but rather achievable.

Up next: Using Risk Assessment to Design a Workplace Safety Program.

The post 10 Tips for Setting and Measuring Workplace Safety Goals appeared first on Mineral.

Insurance brokers have it doubly hard. They live in a world bathed in distractions. Would your prospect rather listen to you talk yourself up or watch something on Netflix?

Show, Don’t Tell

This is where every LinkedIn prophet and business magnate hauls out their favorite business buzzword: differentiation. You’re special, they say. Talk about how unique you are, they add. But that’s no different from resting on your laurels, and that just doesn’t work. Everyone is unique. Everyone is smart. Everyone can say those things.

But to be different– you can’t just talk about yourself. That’s the key here. You don’t matter to your clients and prospects. They are what matters, as well as their businesses and employees, and customers. You’re here to ensure their success by providing their underlying exposures. So don’t waste time discussing what a great risk manager you are. Show them.

Demonstrating Your Value

Risk management 101. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t know it exists. To grow your book of business, you must connect with your prospects where they sit. That means understanding who they are, their problems, and forming insights around those to help solve them. Let’s take this one step at a time.

Step One: Finding Pain Points

Uncovering a prospect’s pain points isn’t always straightforward. They may not even be aware of some of them. You can help them uncover them and demonstrate a lot of value in the process. Start by thinking about this demographically. What pain points do prospects experience based on:

• Industry: If a prospect is a final mile transportation company—how do gas prices, insurance, traffic, or staffing challenges hinder their business? How can you help?

• Location: Where is the prospect located? Things like local regulations and customs requirements can be a significant hindrance here. This is especially true of companies with people in multiple states.

• Employer Size: How does the prospect’s size impact their business? Being bigger means complying with more regulations. It could also mean more types of exposures that they may not have faced in their earlier days.

• Behavior: What attitudes or behaviors does this client focus on? What topics might be on their mind?

Next, think about each of the pain points and details you laid out. How many of these are the prospect aware of and actively working on? Conversely, how many are they unaware of or otherwise not proactively working to solve?

Gathering all that info requires the most critical skill in a broker’s toolkit: listening. By the time you’ve gathered all that data, you will have a far stronger understanding of the prospect. This will make it all the easier for you to connect, convey your value, and close a sale.

Step Two: Determine the Risk of Loss

It’s a well-documented fact that people are motivated much more by the risk of loss than by gain. This is a gift to brokers. Most of a broker’s value will come from mitigating risk. So now that you have the prospect’s pain points in hand, you can move to the next step. Try to assess and communicate the potential for loss with the prospect’s situation, especially as it aligns with their pain points and exposures. For example, let’s think back to that final-mile delivery company. How might their business be impacted in a disaster that compromises roads and cuts off delivery routes? The client would likely need special coverage for those business interruption losses. But do they have it? Do they even know?

Let’s take another example. Let’s say a small flower shop employs many high school students to make deliveries in the summer and after school. How would a change to local statute impact their business if it made it difficult or impossible to hire high school students? While you may not initially have a fix for this scenario, it gives the prospect a chance to think ahead and course correct. It also allows you to identify a place in your agency’s portfolio of services where you can add more value. This is an amazing opportunity for you to demonstrate your worth.

Step Three: Connect Pain to Solutions

Think some more about that portfolio of services. There are a lot of services out there that brokers use to help clients reduce risk, and therefore it helps the broker retain and earn new business. But you can’t just list a bunch of empty value-less programs that add no value. Think about the risks you see in all your clients in the aggregate. What common exposures or gaps in coverage can you address with these services? Do your clients have trouble handling HR and compliance? Perhaps it’s cyber security? Or occupational safety?

The bottom line is to have the right constellation of services that will set you apart from your competitors. Your examination of each prospect’s situation will inform you of direct negotiations with them and help lift your agency as a whole.

Step Four: Creating Insights

Connecting your prospect’s pain point to one of your solutions seems easy. But in reality, it can be tricky to get it just right. Let’s assume your prospect has difficulty with OSHA compliance. Simply saying you have a “safety tool” that does “OSHA things” and is an easy, quick fix might move the conversation in the right direction during a call. But in the longer term, you need to be certain that your solution’s “OSHA things” answer the problem posed by their pain point.

You need to let go of the jargon in these situations and find out what was really hindering the client. In this OSHA example, let’s say the prospect doesn’t understand what OSHA rules apply to them or even how to interpret those rules. Providing them with a tool that simply enables OSHA reporting wouldn’t necessarily help. In fact, it might just create extra work. You need to look deeper into your solutions to ensure you’re closing the right gap. In that example, if you had nothing, you now know you can keep an eye out for a tool that does help interpret OSHA guidance and applicability. You don’t have to be an OSHA expert here. Just be someone who can listen attentively and help the prospect connect the dots.

Step Five: Understanding Your Contact

When talking to prospects, or anyone, you have to think about whom you’re talking to. It’s all about the audience. Many brokers have tiny-but-mighty teams that serve marketing, sales, and even creative roles. Such outfits like that aren’t going to have the resources to do advanced persona research. But you can take a step back and think hard about whom you’re trying to communicate with.

On the one hand, think about the business the client is in. We already did that with respect to their pain points, but what about their priorities? If you go back to the example of the final mile company, their areas of interest are going to differ greatly from the flower shop. A transportation company will care about gas price volatility, fleet management, telematics, insurance pricing, and more. You can be sure to couch your messaging to that audience with those things in mind.

But don’t stop there. Think about the people you are speaking with at these prospects at every step. If you’re talking to an owner/operator or a risk manager, that’ll tell you where their head is with respect to their business. But looking even deeper, what kind of person are you engaging with? What are their hobbies? Do they volunteer information about their family? These are not details you should look to exploit. Rather, they are details you should look to use to connect with your prospect. That connection is critical in establishing a strong partnership that can withstand whatever the future throws at it. It will also let you tweak your messaging in the future to make sure it really appeals to that audience.

Step 6: Communicating Effectively

This is where the first five steps come together to a winning combination. You now know your prospect’s business. You know them. You have a better understanding of what keeps them up at night, what moves them, and what they need. You can now connect all of those dots for them using metaphors or examples that will appeal to them. You don’t have to be a poet to do this, either. Think about how all of these dynamics might apply to a sport (especially one the client likes), or even to a hobby like gardening.

Let’s go back to the transportation company example one last time. You might tell them that, like an auto racer, they need to think about what they’d do if every tire on their car blew. It’d be the same as if a flood wiped out critical roads on their routes. Those are show-stopping obstacles– but they don’t have to be. There are steps they can proactively take now that will avoid a catastrophe later.

Now, let’s go back to the flower shop. Using teenagers to make deliveries has worked for a long time. But what happens if a law suddenly changes that makes this unrealistic? The flower shop owner might not realize it until it’s already causing massive business disruptions. Flowers don’t get delivered, clients become unhappy and go elsewhere, and they don’t come back. It’s a lot like gardening, actually. If you tend a garden a certain way for years without an issue, you might not be prepared when a tree grows enough to shade your tomatoes. Suddenly you’ve lost a year’s worth of yield before you can act.

The point of this exercise isn’t to scare your prospects. Nor is it the point to pander to them. The point here is to communicate what your goals are for their business. You want to convey how you:

1. Listened to their story
2. Spotted some potential hazards along the way
3. Identified how you can help address them
4. Offered expert advice and tools that other brokers wouldn’t have thought of
5. Formed a vested interest in this individual’s ongoing success
6. Are able to carefully articulate all of this to them in ways that are useful and compelling.

How Mineral^® Can Help

Mineral is uniquely suited to be a big part of your agency’s portfolio. With it, you can turn the challenges your clients face into your competitive edge. Mineral allows clients to address common HR and compliance problems with tools, resources, and information. This will set apart your agency as a strong partner in HR and compliance support. Clients will know who to go to when they have these issues, and it will make them much less likely to leave. This resource can also reduce their claims experience, which will help keep their rates low and keep renewals pain-free. Clients get peace of mind. You get a competitive edge. It’s a win-win scenario.

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Today we are seeing some of the highest, fastest inflation rates we’ve seen in decades. This can make the sales environment scary for brokers. Many of us place focus on price, and not focus on value. It’s not uncommon to see insureds and prospects hit with sticker shock. But you don’t have to let inflation slow you down. If you treat your product like a commodity, you’re extra vulnerable to pricing woes. But if you treat your product like a service, a partnership, and source of value, you’ll succeed even during times like these. Here are three things you can do today to help you close business using tools like Mineral.  

One: Reduce Their Exposures 

The first order of business is clear. You must reduce the exposures of your clients and prospects. This makes solutions like Mineral powerful tools for both prospecting and client retention. You might ask, ‘What do you mean by that, David?’ Well, it’s simple. Mineral is designed to help your clients avoid losses. It will reduce their exposure.  

When we have inflation at the rates we do now, money doesn’t go as far as it used to. That means that everything costs more– including litigation. The cost of claims around employment practices and fraudulent workers’ comp claims will also rise proportionately. That’s where Mineral comes in. We can help you focus on value.

A tool like Mineral helps problem solvers and beats the price sellers. It lets you help your clients and prospects stop EPLI claims before they happen. Let’s take the example of Mineral’s online employee handbooks. This tool lets employers update the handbook in real time. There are also options to provide Spanish language versions and track signatures. You can also provide a handbook compliant in multiple states. Mineral also includes HR and safety training, legal updates, and the ability to ask experts questions. All of these things are invaluable at the point of sale. 

These tools are the exact pieces of ammunition you need to add to your arsenal. They enable you to combat those exposures by giving your clients a process. This remedy isn’t exclusive to insurance or contractual liability. It also helps your clients on the compliance side. These tools provide an enormous advantage to your clients. This would differentiate you from other agents. Rather than being a price seller, you’re now a problem solver.  

Don’t focus on products that pay you. Highlight the issues you solve and the value you deliver. With that strategy, you’ll be much more successful in forging lasting partnerships with clients and prospects alike. 

Two: Reduce and Control Expenses  

The second thing you can do is you can help your clients and prospects control their costs. Many prospects are looking for ways to improve the high experience mods. They may have ignored them in the past, but now they’re worried about it. Maybe they’re concerned with the frequency and severity of claims, but they’ve never looked at those things before. Perhaps they’re afraid that OSHA will come in and ding them. Maybe they need to hire an attorney to defend an EPLI claim or a wage and hour violation. Or perhaps they’ve had a worker get hurt, possibly off the job, and now he’s suing them. Now they may have a fraudulent worker’s comp claim that is sapping their productivity.  

These are classic examples of issues that can raise premiums. Mineral addresses these problems upfront. This really the only way to achieve realistic cost savings with insurance. You can only go so low with a premium. You have to fix the root causes of what drives the price upward. Mineral does just that. 

Three: Maintain and Improve Company Culture  

The third thing you can do is improve the culture of your clients and prospects. Everybody’s facing tough times. There are challenges for folks on both sides of the employer/employee relationship. For employers, it’s hard to find skilled labor right now, and costs are through the roof. For employees, the threat of layoffs looms big and once again, prices are causing a whole lot of pain. 

Now suppose that you have an employer that truly cares about its employees. Let’s say their employer invests in their safety, training, and career development. That sows the kind of commitment, loyalty, and productivity wins that you can’t ignore. Fixing cultures isn’t something a broker can do without either a magic wand, or a tool like Mineral. Mineral gives employers the tools they need to have solve for all those problems. 

Wrapping Up: Focus on Value

It blows my mind how much we cling to price in our industry. And yet, it’s something I’ve never done. I’ve never had a problem closing a deal, even when I’m more expensive. I believe so much in the total cost of risk model. I break it down so that my clients and prospects understand that their cost of insurance isn’t just premium. It has so much to do with what exposures and loss histories they have.  

So don’t make excuses. Look in the mirror, and commit to saying, “You know what, I’m going to try and do these three things.” A focus on value and partnership over a race-to-the-bottom on price. With that, you’ll win in the worst of economies, and thrive in the best of economies. 

The post Brokers’ Toolkit: Focus on Value to Sell During Inflation appeared first on Mineral.

Temperatures are getting higher every year. Long-lasting heat waves are becoming more and more common. For anyone who doesn’t work somewhere climate controlled, these widespread temperature increases can be dangerous. All of this underscores a need to focus on heat safety.

In 2019, 43 work-related fatalities occurred due to heat exposure, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics. In fact, between 2011 and 2019, BLS reports that 144 workers died from heat exposure in construction, repair, or cleaning. Another 54 workers died while conducting materials handling operations in extreme heat. In 2016, according to Safety+Health magazine, nearly half of all jobs required working outdoors. That’s a lot of people working in hazardous conditions.

Protecting employees from extreme heat is just as important as protecting them from sharp objects or car accidents. It really could save lives. In fact, OSHA states that employers must provide a workplace free of known hazards, and this includes extreme heat.

But the world can’t grind to a halt simply because it’s hot outside. This is especially true in places where it’s always hot outside. So how can you help make sure your employees stay healthy and safe?

COVID-19 put employee safety at the forefront of many businesses’ priorities. Heat safety should be no different. A safe work environment has become more important than ever. A safe workplace gives employees a lot less to worry about. They can instead focus on contributing their best and being productive each day. A focus on heat safety isn’t just about comfort. It’s about giving your employees clearance to feel safe and valued.

Defining Heat-Related Illness

So, what exactly causes a heat-related illness? According to OSHA, in a warm environment the body relies on heat dissipation to cool itself. Normally this happens from sweat evaporating off the surface of the skin. This is especially important for people who have active, strenuous jobs. And as everyone knows, you can accelerate heat dissipation by moving somewhere cool, like to a shady spot.

However, without adequate heat dissipation, internal body temperatures can rise to dangerous levels. Over time this causes thirst, irritability, cramping, rash, or heat exhaustion and heat stroke. Signs of heat stroke include confusion, slurred speech, and unconsciousness. Anyone noticing these symptoms in a fellow employee should call 911.

According to the CDC, heat can also increase the general risk of injury in workers. It can lead to foggy safety glasses or goggles, sweaty palms, and dizziness. Burns can also occur as a result of contact with hot working surfaces.

It’s paramount that employees and managers watch out for each other while on the job. Being able to recognize the signs and symptoms of heat stress is so important. Safety+Health magazine has some tips on how to recognize and treat heat stress in a fellow employee.

Symptoms of Heat Stress:

• Feeling faint or dizzy
• Excessive sweating
• Cool, pale, clammy skin
• Nausea or vomiting
• Rapid, weak pulse
• Muscle cramps

Treatment:

• Get to a cool, air-conditioned space
• Drink water if fully conscious
• Take a cool shower
• Use a cold compress

Heat stroke symptoms:

• Throbbing headache
• No sweating
• Body temperature above 103° F
• Red, hot, dry skin
• Nausea or vomiting
• Rapid, strong pulse
• Loss of consciousness

Treatment:

• Call 911
• Take immediate action to help cool the worker until help arrives

For more information on other heat-related illnesses, review OSHA’s heat stress guide.

The Official Guidance on Heat Safety

OSHA states that dangerous heat exposure can happen indoors or outdoors and during any season. Millions of U.S. workers are at risk of dangerous heat exposure in their workplace. This affects both outdoor and indoor occupations as well. Outdoor workers are at special risk, including agriculture, construction, mail delivery, oil, and landscaping workers. For indoor workers, there is heightened risk in bakeries, kitchens, mills, fire service, manufacturing, and more.

For example, according to NBC News, U.S. farmworkers are 20 times more likely to die from a heat-related illness than workers overall. Currently, farmworkers labor through an average of 21 unsafe working days when the heat index reaches above 84° F. As temperatures continue to rise, this figure is expected to grow. Therefore, lawmakers are calling on OSHA to enact an enforceable standard to protect workers from the heat. Currently, OSHA only has regulations and recommendations.

But you don’t have to wait for OSHA to act to make your workers safe. Employers can act on their knowledge about the dangers of heat exposure. They have the power to enforce higher standards to protect workers and be aware of the dangers they face.

This isn’t as simple as saying you can’t let people work outside if it’s hot. It means maintaining awareness of the factors that contribute to heat stress. For example, if workers are wearing clothing that holds in body heat and reduce heat dissipation, that’s a risk. Environmental factors like sunlight and humidity can also contribute to it. Artificial heat sources like machinery, ovens, etc. are also a factor. Lastly, location plays a big part too. Are your workers in a confined space with an oven? Are they working outdoors without shade on a paved surface?

Preventative Measures

Whether the heat is natural or artificial, it can be tricky to know when things have arisen to a point of concern. Fortunately, OSHA recommends this device to measure heat stress in any environment.

Prevention and planning are your best friends when thinking about safety. That’s as true for heat stress as it is for any other kind of injury. Workers new to a job or not yet acclimated to hot weather are at heightened risk. They don’t expect the toll the heat can take on their bodies. Nor have they built up a tolerance to it.

In 2012 and 2013, 17 out of 23 workers who died from a heat-related illness were in their first 3 days of work. Eight workers died during their first day on a job.

Acclimating employees to a hot environment matters. Safety+Health recommends caps on workloads for new employees, or those returning from time away. It’s recommended they do 20 percent of an average day’s work when they return and increase a little each day. Each increment should be no more than 20 percent.

When a heat wave sets in, employers and managers should follow a similar rule. At the start of the wave, have workers perform just 50 percent of their work that first day. Bump it up to 60 the next day, and 80 the next. This allows a workers’ body to build a tolerance to the heat. It will let them get used to performing routine tasks, such as lifting objets, that might be hotter than normal. Managers should not expect their employees to always output at 100 percent in extreme conditions.

Maintaining a Focus on Heat Safety

Although acclimatization is crucial, there are some other ways to prevent heat-related illnesses in your workplace. In 2005, California set a heat standard for outdoor workers. Their standards included the following recommendations for helping to mitigate heat-related illnesses:

• Having clean, cool water available for workers
• Offering shaded areas for when temperatures exceed 80° F
• Ensuring at least a 10-minute rest break every two hours when temperatures reach 95° F
• Promoting consumption of 4 cups of water per hour
• Rescheduling hot jobs for cooler hours of the day, such as before sunrise
• Monitoring workers wearing clothing that does not allow for much heat dissipation

Guidance for Managers

This guidance is simple for managers and team leads to incorporate each day. There are also ways to decrease the chance of heat-related illnesses on the job with engineering controls. According to OSHA, there are a few ways employers can mitigate heat-related illnesses:

• General ventilation dilutes hot air with cold air and is usually a more cost-effective option. An installed ventilation system can handle entire buildings. A portable exhaust system can be effective in smaller areas.
• Air cooling systems reduce the temperature of the air by removing heat (and humidity) from the air. These include air conditioning and local air cooling. Local air coolers are more cost effective and can reduce air temperature in specific areas. Some workplaces have a designated “cool room” in a nearby area for recovery from hot jobs. Another way to reduce heat stress is by placing fans in a workspace to cool workers. However, fans are only effective if the air is already cooler than the workers’ skin (less than 95° F).
• Heat conduction blocking includes insulating hot surfaces that generate heat and changing the surface itself. Simple devices like shields can be used to reduce radiant heat.

Recommendations from OSHA

In addition to improving a worksite, employers should provide PPE to workers to help prevent heat stress. OSHA recommends the following PPE:

• Reflective clothing can reduce the amount of radiant heat reaching the worker. However reflective clothing only works if it still allows for heat dissipation and sweating. Reflective clothing should be worn as loosely as possible to allow for sweating and evaporation.
• Auxiliary body cooling ice vests can be heavy, but they can hold up to 72 ice packs. The cooling can last 2 to 4 hours depending on the heat load. They require frequent replacement as the ice melts, but they’re simple to replace and relatively inexpensive. OSHA also states that ice vests allow for maximum mobility and do not encumber the worker.
• Wetted clothing is another simple and inexpensive personal cooling technique. It’s especially effective when used with reflective clothing and with good air flow and low humidity.
• Water-cooled garments range from hoods, vests, or “long johns” which allow for partial or complete cooling. This equipment requires a battery-powered pump, a liquid-ice coolant, and a container. It limits the mobility for the wearer so this may make this option better for low-activity jobs.
• Circulating air is the most highly effective, yet most complicated, personal cooling system. It directs compressed air around the body from a supplied air system. This improves both evaporative and convective cooling. Circulating air, however, is noisy and requires attachment to an air hose for a constant supply of compressed air. This can limit the worker’s mobility. In addition, because the air circulation feels cool, workers may not drink enough water while using this method.

Communicating a Focus on Heat Safety

You should talk about heat-related illness regularly with your teams. This is true of every workplace, but especially so if you have people working outside. OSHA has some tips on discussing heat safety with your employees:

• Know the hazards of heat stress
• Recognize predisposing factors, signs, and symptoms
• Be aware of first aid procedures, and the potential health effects, for heat stroke
• Understand employee responsibilities in avoiding heat stress
• Know the dangers of using drugs, including therapeutic drugs, and alcohol in hot working environments
• Require the use of the correct PPE

Personal Risks to Focus on for Heat Safety

Workers should be conscious of the risk of heat-related illnesses on the job. There are a number of factors that can increase the risk for heat-related illness. OSHA cites these personal risk factors:

• Obesity
• Diabetes
• High blood pressure
• Heart disease
• Lower level of physical fitness
• Use of certain medications such as diuretics and some psychiatric or blood pressure medications. Some medications limit an individual’s ability to sweat, minimizing a key sign of heat stress
• Alcohol use
• Use of illicit drugs such as opioids, amphetamines, or cocaine

Employers should recognize that not all workers can tolerate the heat in the same way. Workplaces should focus on making jobs safe for all employees. OSHA recommends workplace medical monitoring programs. These can identify workers who are at an increased risk of heat stress while maintaining their privacy.

Wrapping Up

There are many ways to help increase a focus on heat safety. You can make simple changes during a workday, like more effective PPE. You could also pay closer attention to air cooling in your work environments. Making heat safety top-of-mind for your employees helps them see risks at work and among their coworkers. Keeping your workers safe should be your top priority. Keeping an eye on heat safety will ensure that your employees stay healthy, happy, and productive in the future.

The post Focus on Heat Safety to Manage Rising Temps appeared first on Mineral.

In 2021, compliance—staying informed and on top of it—ranked second only to mitigating healthcare costs in a Zywave Broker Services Survey asking employers to identify their top challenges related to HR and employee benefits.

There is no doubt we’re in an unprecedented time of compliance, where it is overwhelming for the average employer to understand all the things that they need to do to keep in compliance—whether it’s parental leave, COVID-management policies, or just training individuals who are working remote,” says Michael Turpin, USI executive vice president.

For small and midsize businesses with few resources, the pressure is formidable. And keeping up with compliance can take away from larger business goals, such as overall organizational health.

The term organizational health was coined by McKinsey and defined as an organization’s ability to align around a common vision, execute that vision, and renew itself through innovation and creative thinking. McKinsey has found that companies that score well on measures of organizational health also deliver stronger financial returns.

For many small businesses in which the person handling HR wears many other hats, it’s enough of a struggle to meet the bare-minimum requirements of state and federal laws and regulations, says Vince Murdica, chief revenue officer for Mineral, the HR compliance platform formerly known as the combined entity of Mammoth and ThinkHR. Only once employers reach that compliance threshold can they focus on human resources initiatives that make for a healthier and more productive work environment, such as building a culture that fosters a good work/life balance, creating a compensation strategy that attracts and rewards talent, and developing a strong succession plan for the future.

“Smaller companies are spending more and more time and more and more money to keep up, and the reality is they are falling further and further behind,” Murdica says. “It’s reached that level of ubiquity where you can’t separate the conversation about the health of the organization from the health of the employee. And that brings us smack dab to where we are today, of insurance companies now including HR or compliance offerings in their health plans.”

Murdica is referring to the fact that employers with two to 300 employees that buy certain UnitedHealthcare plans in 10 states now get compliance tools and access to expert advisors from Mineral. Bright HealthCare, an integrated healthcare and financing startup, is also embedding Mineral into its employer plans, which are offered in five states. Murdica says other insurers include the service with their small-business health plans, but those carriers declined to be identified for competitive reasons.

With Mineral, employers have access to an HR compliance library and professional advice on HR questions. Alerts and guidance identify changing laws and actions required to comply. A library of information covers topics ranging from health protocols and leave policies to wage laws and employee termination practices. Employers can use Mineral to create and update an employee handbook, develop employee notices and educational flyers, build job descriptions, and provide training courses on sexual harassment, worker safety and many other topics.

Carrier Value-Add

Mineral was first embedded in a health plan in 2019, as UnitedHealthcare tested it in plans offered to customers with 51 to 99 employees in south-central Texas.

“Over time, we’ve certainly expanded it as we saw success,” says David Milich, chief executive officer of UnitedHealthcare for Texas and Oklahoma. In 2020, he introduced it to the Lubbock area and then the north Texas region, which includes Dallas and Fort Worth. Last fall, UnitedHealthcare started offering Mineral in fully insured and level-funded health plans throughout Texas for employers with 51 to 99 employees and for level-funded plans for employers with five to 50 employees in both Oklahoma and Texas.

“We opened it up again because of the success that we have seen with it in terms of employers and even our distribution partner brokers who are really seeing the value in it and liking it,” Milich says.

Overseeing UnitedHealthcare’s commercial accounts for Nebraska and western Iowa, Matthew Milam knew the small businesses buying his health plans were struggling to keep up with fast-changing laws and regulations, even before the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the challenge beyond anyone’s imagination.

When he heard the pitch for a way to bake third-party compliance services into his small-business health insurance offerings, Milam was primed to give it a try. Using the Texas experience as a template, Milam incorporated Mineral into fully insured health plans for organizations with 51 to 99 employees in Nebraska and western Iowa in the fall of 2020. On April 1 of this year, he expanded it to level-funded plans for employers with five to 300 employees.

“UnitedHealthcare offers many, many services that I would deem differentiators,” Milam says. “I just thought this was a value-add that customers badly needed.”

Perhaps it’s not all that surprising that health insurers might follow the lead of brokers, payroll companies, professional employer organizations (PEOs), and HR-related technology companies in trying to differentiate themselves by offering to meet the HR compliance needs of small businesses. USI senior vice president James Olney, an employment law attorney whose team provides HR services for the brokerage’s clients, finds precedent for the idea in the property/casualty industry, where insurers have long bundled risk management and safety compliance programs into commercial policies.

“I think there really is a big need for this, and one of the reasons for that is that employment law compliance is getting increasingly complex, in no small part because of multistate employment,” Olney says. “It takes a big player to be the first to do it, and I think a lot of the other carriers are already sitting in the wings, watching and seeing how this rolls out.”

Jeremy Hertz, senior deputy general counsel and director of HR consulting for Acrisure, agrees that the demand for HR services from small employers might encourage other health insurers to get in the game, making HR compliance software a baseline offering, like employee assistance programs (EAP). But even if they do, he adds, the offerings will run parallel to, and not replace, the hands-on HR consulting services that brokers offer. “As good as that product is,” Hertz says of Mineral, “90% of the people who have access to it end up calling my team anyway. They want to deal with one person. They want to build that relationship.”

Turpin also questions how much value clients will place on the service, even if they do use it. He says including HR compliance with a health insurance plan could improve retention, but he doubts it would become a significant factor in a client’s buying decision or that other carriers will rush to make a similar offering. “Essentially, what they’re doing is giving them tools and capabilities that make the business stickier,” Turpin says.

“So to the degree that you could get them a kind of a virtual HR assistant or something that has virtually everything they need in a single repository, it’s going to be of keen interest. But I don’t think it’s a game-changing thing that is going to boost retentions by 20% or stop the client from leaving if the price isn’t right. And I don’t think it’s going to be the first of a series of changes where carriers are trying to provide more and more HR services.”

Leg Up For Small Brokerages

Small agencies and brokerages that lack resources to invest in HR support for their clients might benefit the most from a health insurance offering that includes a self-service HR compliance platform like Mineral, brokers say.

“Agencies over time will continue to migrate toward being able to provide HR and compliance solutions, but it’s an expensive solution to come out of the agent’s pocket,” says Kerstin Williamson, president of Benefit Concepts, a Houston-based brokerage acquired last year by Alliant. Even though her firm offers clients access to Zywave’s HR360 platform, producers still really like being able to show clients the UnitedHealthcare plans with Mineral embedded.

“One of the great things about Mineral is that it really does help check that box and provide amazing support with HR and compliance,” she says. “I do think UHC has taken a step in a different direction that differentiates them, but I’m not sure I agree that all carriers will follow suit.”

Robert Slayton, owner of Robert Slayton & Associates in Naperville, Illinois, licenses Mineral and offers its service to all of his clients, who take advantage of it for training, creating employee handbooks, and answering specific HR questions.

“I use it a lot because it saves us time,” Slayton says. “We don’t have to go research something for a client. They can either ask themselves, or if they come and ask us, we put in the query. You need sexual harassment training? You can find it there. You need OSHA training? You can find it there. So it’s a really nice extra added value that an average broker doesn’t give.”

And because most brokerages don’t offer that level of service, Slayton says, the inclusion of Mineral will increase the appeal of a UnitedHealthcare plan.

“From a positioning point of view, I think they’re incredibly smart to do it,” says Slayton, author of The Healthcare Manifesto. “All things being equal, which would you prefer—plan X with a different carrier or plan A that includes unlimited HR support? That’s easy, isn’t it? I think it’s going to allow them to sell more business over this next year than they would have, because it’s an important differentiator.”

Under the Radar

Filice Insurance Services, a Bay Area brokerage that became part of Acrisure in 2017, saw a need for these services years ago, and in 2006 Filice established a service to help employee benefits clients that had a single person—if that—handling all of the organization’s HR responsibilities.

“Oftentimes it was the office manager turned into the HR manager, and they had a really tough time navigating,” says Dawn Alvarez, Acrisure executive vice president of client services and compliance. The compliance team conducts audits to ensure employers have the right policies in place, reviews handbooks, and helps deal with issues like managing leaves of absence. While the HR experts answer compliance questions, they stop short of providing legal advice.

Even as Alvarez promoted the personal service her team offered, producers clamored for her to add Mineral (then ThinkHR) to her department’s toolbox because clients were asking about it, and she did. Clients love the training Mineral offers, Alvarez says, but still usually call her office for compliance questions they could, in theory, ask Mineral on their own. “While our clients have access, I would say 90% of them don’t access it,” she says. “They still come to us, and we access it internally.”

Shawn Simme, a producer with Benefit Concepts, found that small employers didn’t recognize the value of Mineral in their health plan until they needed it. He has heard from employers that used it to get information about COBRA, to get help with applications for the Paycheck Protection Program early in the pandemic, and to communicate with employees about COVID testing and vaccination requirements. One client told Milam that getting access to these services was “like Christmas in August,” but it takes a while for many employers to start taking advantage of it, Milam says. Since the rollout in Nebraska, just over half of employers asked for a demonstration. Employers used Mineral to complete about 90 HR courses and to resolve nearly 40 HR compliances cases. The system tracked almost 600 views of information in the compliance library. “We’ve had a host of them complete employee handbooks that they never had,” Milam says.

Who Wins the Client?

Among UnitedHealthcare leaders in other states, the idea has been catching on. This spring, Mineral was embedded in the insurer’s small-business health plans in Minnesota, Illinois, North Dakota and South Dakota. Mineral expects its product to be embedded in health plans in all 50 states by the end of 2023.

“HR compliance goes hand in glove with employee benefits,” Murdica says. “What’s different now is that health insurers are finding material impact on their business through persistence, broker differentiation, member growth and client stickiness.”

That small businesses need help with compliance is clear, and filling that need is a value-added service from whoever provides it. As benefits brokers and carriers face greater demand for services from their clients, the ability to solve for more than just medical coverage may attract, and retain, employer clients. And while cost still seems to be the major driver in health plan choice, helping to improve employers’ organizational health—and thus their bottom line—may be a competitive advantage.

The post The Sticky Subject of HR Compliance appeared first on Mineral.

But it doesn’t matter what kind of industry you’re in. Ensuring the health and safety of your staff is a core part of every employer’s duty. Every industry, from retail to construction, and every class of worker from office personnel to landscapers, bear risk. Those risks can act like fires. Left unattended, they can spread and cause catastrophic losses. Also, unless you have the right tools, even small fires can weigh down your business over the long term.

Safety Doesn’t Happen by Accident

As with HR, managing workplace safety hazards and complying with safety regulations can be confusing and time consuming. Many managers and owners just don’t have the time to navigate those complex rules all on their own. Nor do they have the budget to spend on stand-alone safety resources and consulting. 

So that leaves small businesses with a few options. They can bite the bullet and pay for expensive resources awkwardly scaled outside their niche. Or, they can cross their fingers and hope nothing bad happens and face the financial, productivity, and human costs of inaction. Fortunately, there is a third option.

With Employee Health & Safety from Mineral, you can offer safety training and resources right-sized for your small business. These resources are integrated with HR compliance tools, alongside personalized advice and guidance from HR, legal, and safety experts. 

Employee Health & Safety from Mineral includes: 

• Personalized advice from a certified safety experts on workplace safety standards
• Access to a library of safety plans and policies to ensure a safe workplace 
• Training to educate employees about safe work procedures and more, including microlearning training courses, 5-minute toolbox talks and classroom training presentations 
• Customizable and downloadable safety manual template to help reduce premiums and workplace accidents 

20 Core Safety Topics Include:

If you operate in a high-risk industry like construction, manufacturing, or utility work, we have you covered. You can choose from one of two add-on packages with expanded coverage for up to 70 specialty topics: 

Basic Client Package (30 Topics)

Premium Client Package (70 Topics)

Get Started with Employee Health and Safety Today   

Like we said, safety doesn’t happen by accident. If you are ready to start making a difference in your workplace safety culture, talk to your broker or partner, or contact us today to learn more about Employee Health & Safety from Mineral.   

The post A Safer Workplace is Within Your Reach appeared first on Mineral.

Portland, Oregon, is known for its mild climate. In June, the average daily high is 72 degrees. But in June 2021, Portland recorded a high of 116 degrees, 8 degrees higher than the previous record. But 2020 also had a record in store for Portland. That summer, wildfires spread across the Western United States, and in September 2020, Portland recorded an AQI (Air Quality Index) of 516, or beyond “hazardous.”

Our company employs 70 people in the Portland area and 50 more in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has experienced similar environmental extremes. These crises created hazards and disruptions for our employees—from home evacuations to power outages to travel restrictions to health conditions—that put their physiological, mental and professional well-being at risk.

As we all know, this phenomenon extends beyond the West Coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tracks weather and climate disasters, including those that cause more than $1 billion worth of damage (CPI-adjusted). According to this data, in the 1980s, the U.S. averaged 2.9 disasters per year, resulting in billions of dollars in costs. In the 2010s, that average rose to 12.3 per year. In 2021 alone, the U.S. has averaged 20 different billion-dollar disasters per year, a stark contrast from the averages from the decade before. Our company is familiar with these events, too, as we employ people in 32 states across the U.S. Like many businesses, it can feel like we’re navigating the impact of extreme weather or natural disasters on our employees on a weekly basis.

It’s tempting to dismiss this trend as a scientific or policy issue, but I argue climate change is also a critical business issue—one we should be talking about as a part of the “future of work.” Businesses need to adapt their people and talent strategies to account for the effects climate change could have on their organizations and workforce.

Here are three steps employers can take now.

1. Rethink your employee benefits.

We’ve seen first-hand that the effects of climate change can be dangerous and highly disruptive, especially when natural disasters hit. At our company, Mineral, we incorporated an “environmental crisis” policy into our benefits package. Any employee whose household is affected by a natural disaster that triggers an emergency declaration by local or state officials is eligible to receive a credit for up to seven nights of lodging. The policy also includes paid time off for volunteering in the wake of a crisis, as well as access to mental health services. Consider if it’s feasible to find ways to offer support for your employees if impacted by natural disasters.

2. Adapt to shifting talent markets.

Climate-related migration is already underway on a global level. There are signs that we may see an increasing number of “climate migrants” in the U.S. as well. In a recent Redfin survey, “nearly half of the respondents who plan to move in the next year said extreme temperatures or increasing frequency and/or severity of natural disasters played a role in their decision to relocate.” U.S. regions and cities that are expected to be more resilient to the effects of climate change, for instance, those in the Great Lakes area, are being branded as “climate havens.”

For this reason, climate change could influence the distribution of talent within the U.S. Employers should assess whether the geographies from which they currently hire are likely to be affected and, if so, consider how to broaden their talent pool. At a high level, we could see more people move inland to escape rising sea levels, north, to escape rising temperatures, and east, to escape increasing wildfires. In one stark example, scientists predict that rapid sea-level rise could make parts of Miami unlivable, displacing up to 800,000 people. If a business’ talent pool currently resides in a region expected to be severely affected by climate change, and its business model allows for it, the business should consider transitioning to a more remote or distributed workforce to recruit from other geographies.

3. Plan for disaster.

Whether it’s people, data, systems, products or processes that are most vulnerable, every employer should have a plan in place for how it will operate in the context of a natural disaster. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recommends every business have an Emergency Action Plan (EAP) in place. Importantly, OSHA also recommends including employees in the development of an EAP and training employees for specific emergency situations before they strike. The shift to more remote work has added new complexity to disaster preparedness and may require employers to update their plans. Employers now need to monitor events in more geographies, as well as develop systems for assessing employee welfare and communicating information if a disaster occurs either at the office or at home.

Of course, preparation is only part of the equation.

Given the costs at stake, every employer also needs to do its part to prevent or mitigate further climate change. This is not just a matter of science; it’s also a matter of sentiment. According to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer report, people want to see businesses doing more to address climate change.

Businesses can begin by reviewing their own contributions to emissions, including electricity usage, heating and cooling, business travel and employee transportation, and then setting an emission reduction target and developing a plan for how to reach that target. Ultimately, the biggest impact will come if employers make addressing climate change not just programmatic but cultural, woven into the organization’s mission, vision, values or corporate social responsibility strategy.

Climate change is already creating challenges for both businesses and their employees. As the situation accelerates, it will play an increasing role in the distribution, expectations and well-being of our workforce. Business leaders will serve their companies and their employees well by adapting their strategies to both prepare for and help reverse the climate-based realities we face.

The post What Leaders Can Do About Climate Change-Related Business Challenges appeared first on Mineral.