From recruiting and retention to company culture and the latest in HR tech, HR Brew delivers up-to-date industry news and tips to help HR pros stay nimble in today’s fast-changing business environment.

HR Brew

Sam Blum

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An illustration of a fingerprint on a blue background.

Workers have few legal protections when it comes to biometric data collection, but there are some notable exceptions.

Biometric monitoring is booming in the workplace, raising ethical and legal questions for HR

Susanna Vogel

Experts say financial planning, coaching, and tuition-reimbursement programs could help move the needle on employees’ mental well-being.

Supercharge mental health benefits with a side dish of financial well-being benefits

A VR headset with a sticky note reading "stress relief" pasted over the front

Strapping on a VR headset could be one way organizations can help workers deal with stress, but it isn’t a quick fix for issues like burnout and Zoom fatigue.

Battling Zoom fatigue and burnout with...VR headsets

sand with umbrella beach ball floaties surfboard and mobile phone

Wellness

An illustration of reporter Courtney Vinopal's headshot.

Courtney Vinopal

GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic gained traction in the press for helping many, 

, lose significant amounts of weight quickly.

But today, Ozempic and other semaglutide drugs, first approved for treating diabetes in 2017 and for obesity in 2021, are no longer just the favored (off label) weight loss method of Hollywood stars. Spending on GLP-1s rose to 

 in 2023, up 500% from five years earlier. Employers are also 

 GLP-1 drugs for weight loss, though the high price tag has prompted some to pull back on the benefit.

Aflac is one such employer. Last year the insurance company stopped covering GLP-1 drugs for weight loss over cost concerns, Tricia Griggs, Aflac’s manager of wellness and safety, told HR Brew. Around the same time, it expanded access to gym memberships through Wellhub for its 6,000-person US workforce.

Why Aflac says it no longer covers GLP-1s. 

In the summer of 2023, Griggs says she started having conversations with her team about ending coverage of GLP-1 drugs for employees seeking weight loss treatments. Aflac had covered the drugs for as long as they’d been on the market (the FDA first approved a GLP-1 precursor to semaglutides for obesity in 2014), and in 2022 they started seeing a major increase in workers seeking them out, Griggs said.

The decision was “strictly financial,” Griggs said, and had nothing to do with the efficacy of the drugs. Some studies have shown GLP-1 users 

 of 10% to 15% of their body weight in the course of a year, with more effective GLP-1 medications even leading to a 20% reduction. The drugs have a hefty price tag, though, as out-of-pocket costs 

 to be around $1,000 a month. More than one-quarter of employers reported GLP-1 drugs for weight loss represented more than 15% of their total annual claims in 2024, 

 from the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans.

“Unfortunately, the spend was outrageous,” Griggs said, estimating Aflac was spending “millions of dollars a year” on GLP-1s. She expressed concern about GLP-1 spending potentially affecting Aflac’s ability to pay for other medical coverage, such as a cancer claim. Aflac still covers GLP-1s for diabetes.

Around the time Aflac discussed dropping GLP-1 coverage in 2023, Griggs and her team realized they were already paying for about 300 people to be on a starter gym plan through Wellhub, the corporate wellness platform that was formerly Gympass.

“What would it look like if we just paid for all Aflac employees to have access to the starter plan for free?” she recalled asking. “It wasn’t bad. So that’s what we did.”

About 44% of Aflac employees use Wellhub, according to Griggs, which offers access not only to gyms and fitness studios, but also apps geared toward financial health, meditation and sleep, as well as therapy.

Since Aflac began covering starter plans for gym memberships through Wellhub in 2023, about 1,300 employees have signed up for it, Griggs estimated. She said not all employees see the fitness offerings as a substitute for GLP-1 coverage, and some even email her to inquire about when Aflac might start covering the medications for weight loss again.

“We have that small group who are just determined that [a GLP-1 is] the only answer, and they’re not going to attempt anything else,” she said. A larger share of employees, though, are open to pursuing other methods for weight loss, like a gym membership, she added. (Medical experts say the drugs are most effective 

 with dietary changes and exercise, and as such some employers are incorporating these offerings into their benefits plans alongside GLP-1s.)

, they’re also experiencing “pressure around pharmaceutical interventions,” said Carolee Gearhart, Wellhub’s chief revenue officer. Platforms like Wellhub may appeal to employers who want to promote exercise and healthy lifestyles.

Some research suggests employers may eventually see a return from investing in GLP-1s for their workers, despite the high costs. An 

 of US commercial health claims conducted by Aon found that while costs jumped during the first year GLP-1 medications were prescribed, cost growth rates for GLP-1 patients trended downward the second year, averaging half of the growth rate for patients who weren’t taking the drugs.

“We thought that was encouraging, because what it tells us is that there is a bending of the cost inflation,” said Anthony Scattone, deputy chief people officer with Aon. He noted that GLP-1 users saw their risk of hospitalization from “major adverse cardiovascular events,” such as strokes or heart attacks, drop by 44%.

Griggs said she’ll be keeping a close eye on research related to GLP-1s and how they might affect Aflac’s spending on other conditions, like high blood pressure or chronic diseases. “It is a topic that is not completely off the table,” she said.

A photo composite of two hands hold a semaglutide pen next to a woman exercising with a kettleball.

Inside Aflac’s decision to drop GLP-1 coverage 

The insurance company stopped covering GLP-1 medications for weight loss due to cost concerns, and now offers all US employees free gym memberships. 

Why Aflac dropped GLP-1 coverage and expanded its wellness offerings 

Mikaela Cohen

Employee engagement strategies have long been a talking point for companies, but might be more useless than you think.

That’s because many companies are implementing strategies to gauge employee engagement in the wrong way, according to Mark C. Crowley, author of 

The Power of Employee Well-Being: Move Beyond Engagement to Build Flourishing Teams

, which will be published in late September. In his book, Crowley suggests how HR teams can reframe their attention to improving employee well-being instead.

“It’s time to stop talking about engagement,” Crowley told HR Brew. “Like nobody’s calling it out, and we still go through the exercise of focusing on engagement, talking about engagement, and there’s just no reason to continue to do that.”

Crowley shared more insights from his book in an interview with HR Brew.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What will HR pros learn after reading your book?

Measuring engagement has always been really super complicated, because there’s 

 has always asked. So, if you get bad scores, you have to isolate one of 12 different things. So, you could say, “Well, we don’t know whether people feel that they have a friend at work, or we don’t know whether people feel that they have clarity on what the job expectations are. We don’t know that people feel valued.” So, it’s Whac-a-Mole…[Engagement] simply boils down to how people feel at work, and you don’t have to ask them 12 different questions.

You just have to ask them, “How do you feel at work this week?” And, you can ask them some specific questions, like how do you feel about your benefits, or do you feel that you work for a manager who cares about you and supports your growth? You could ask those narrow questions in pulse surveys, and you can get that feedback immediately.

Why are employee engagement strategies not working?

No one’s ever taken it sincerely. Wall Street never took it sincerely. CEOs never took it sincerely. It’s always been a check-the-box activity. You do surveys once or twice a year. By the time the feedback gets out, it’s stale. 

Employees feel that it’s insincere, so they think engagement is a joke. And on top of that, no one’s ever been held accountable for it ever. So, most managers just think, “Oh, this is just an HR activity.” So, if you’ve got a toxic manager, or somebody’s not caring about their people and supporting them and doing the things that we know are highly effective for…[representing] highly effective leaders, then what you end up with is…an act of disrespect.

You’re asking people, “Tell me how we can make things better,” and then you never do anything with the feedback, and people end up really resenting that. So with pulse surveys, you can ask people specifically, “How do you feel?” And, then management can get together and say, “Hey, is this just a rough period right now, or do we need to make some adjustments?” Because the evidence is clear that how people feel at work drives their, no pun intended, their engagement, their commitment, their loyalty, their productivity, and it’s just this enormous win-win for organizations.

When we’ve always focused on engagement, that’s only something that companies cared about. Like, I’m an employee of a company, and they’re like, “We’re trying to elevate engagement.” It’s like, “I don’t care. There’s no win for me in that.” Whereas, if you’re focusing on well-being, you’re going to have people who are thriving, and we know that when people are thriving, organizations thrive at the same time.

Should HR pros avoid using the term employee engagement and focus on terms like well-being, productivity, etc.?

To be fair to some organizations that have really taken this seriously, I’m not criticizing that. I think that’s fine. If you have high engagement in your organization and you’ve committed to it, people validate it. In other words, employees say, “This is a really great place for me to work,” nobody should be changing. I’m not advocating for that.

A lot of times what organizations do is that they blend the four and the five scores. So, for example…on a scale of one to five, how caring and supportive is your manager to you personally? 

Well, there’s a big difference between a four and a five. If you give it a five, it’s like you’ve got a fantastic manager who genuinely cares about you. If you give it a four, you have some hesitation. There’s something missing there. It’s not a perfect score, but what happens is: a lot of cases that managers or companies that are putting these surveys together, they’ll take the fours and the fives and they’ll go, “Wow. 90% of our people are engaged.” That’s not really the case.

We know that well-being is something that’s really important to employees, whereas engagement has never been important to them. There’s no reason for them to be concerned about engagement. So, if you have something that is proven to have a direct correlation to organizational success, i.e. employee well-being, why wouldn’t you just focus on that? It’s simpler, and it’s a win-win for people.

Two hands holding on opened book with text highlighted

An interview with Mark C. Crowley, author of ‘The Power of Employee Well-Being’

“If you’re focusing on well-being, you’re going to have people who are thriving, and we know that when people are thriving, organizations thrive at the same time.”

Why HR should ditch employee engagement strategies

The report card for employee financial well-being is in, and it’s bad. (Like you’re about-to-get-grounded bad.)

Some 66% of employees said financial stress impacts their professional and personal lives, and 83% of HR pros see this stress harming productivity, according to a recent 

. Also, 90% of employees think more employer-provided financial benefits would help achieve their goals.

“Overwhelmingly, employees said that due to the current economic instability, they feel employers should be more involved in helping employees to navigate these specific financial needs,” said Rodney Bolden, executive director and head of industry engagement and learning at Morgan Stanley. “But...it’s important for employers not to think there’s going to be a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to employee benefits.”

Different groups of employees want help with various financial aspects, Bolden told HR Brew, like how older workers may want more retirement investment while younger workers could use help with emergency savings. Older millennials and Gen Xers would likely benefit from caregiving assistance funds as they simultaneously care for parents and kids, Bolden added.

“It’s important that if you’re thinking about how we’re going to tackle that engagement challenge, that burnout challenge, and the fact that employees feel that they want us to demonstrate care about them and respect them, doing that through an intentional [financial] benefit strategy,” he said.

People teams can start with collecting both qualitative and quantitative data about the financial health of their workforce, Bolden suggested. Whether through polls or surveys, HR pros should know which financial pressures are plaguing workers.

“If you go to the doctor, you want to know what’s ailing you. Is he or she going to run a test or several tests? You say you want to know the financial well-being challenges of your employees…You have to start by asking the question, ‘What’s going on?’” he said. “Then, disaggregating that data across the different demographics in the workforce.”

Data collection shouldn’t stop there, Bolden added, because HR leaders need to “back up that data with qualitative information,” and ask employees and employee resource groups (ERGs) if the reported financial pressures match what they’re experiencing and hearing from other employees.

Financial well-being can also improve when companies designate “benefit ambassadors,” Bolden said, or someone who’s used a company benefit and encourages other employees to use it too. One example, he mentioned, involved a colleague of his who used a Morgan Stanley benefit that provides college coaching services. After his colleague used this benefit to help their child with college prep, they became a benefit ambassador that encourages others to use the program too.

“Employees, if they have success with a benefit, they want to talk about it,” he observed.

Another tactic for improving financial well-being, Bolden said, is providing employees with a “life savings account (LSA),” as a catch-all benefit that could touch different aspects of financial need. “It’s not specific to a particular need,” he said. “This is a vehicle for you to get payroll deductions into this LSA for you to use for…whatever financial needs.”

An office manager sitting at a desk in front of two computers with money floating around her

Offering more financial benefits is critical for employees

Economic uncertainty is scary, but helping employees through it doesn’t have to be.

Adam DeRose

 (spoiler alert), the innies participated in a two-day "Outdoor Retreat and Team-Building Occurrence” (ORTBO), an activity their employer, Lumon, designed in response to the disastrous “Overtime Contingency” at the end of the previous season.

“I almost had a hard time laughing at it, because it’s, like, so close to what I’ve seen so many companies do,” said Glassdoor’s 

, Adam Grant. “Like, ‘We’re gonna go [to] an off-site and do trust falls.’”

 finds employees are deprioritizing workplace relationships, potentially impacting their own well-being and productivity. Work has long been a place where adults seek and nurture relationships, but a survey of 800 US professionals in January suggests workplace connections are waning.

“People don’t have a lot of places to build meaningful relationships as adults,” said Grant, an organizational psychologist. “It used to happen in places of worship, and organized religion has rapidly declined…With the decline of bowling leagues, book clubs, and…other third places, people weren’t finding these avenues outside of work. That kind of left the workplace as the default option for people to find belonging and community and connection.”

Now that coworker relationship is fading as well.

“People seem to be both less interested in [building] that in a hybrid and remote world, and also struggling more at it,” Grant said. “Work is the last remaining place where you can meet people as an adult, and that’s not even happening now.”

We’re (not) all one big, dysfunctional family. 

Grant pointed to a number of contributing factors that have diminished the human connection at work.

He suggested American work culture is itself an issue. Many Americans come to work ready to tune out social and emotional cues and leave meaningful relationships for home life.

“There’s [also] been a significant erosion of trust in the employment relationship,” he said. “If you go back a generation or two, there was an assumption that if you were loyal, that would be reciprocated. And now you might get downsized anyway…Do you want to invest a lot in your coworkers who might be fired tomorrow?”

And while research shows being in the office at least half the week mitigates most negative effects on coworker relationships, many workplaces do not execute hybrid and virtual work policies to focus on relationship building, Grant said.

“The way we do virtual interaction is a real impediment, because people tend to bond much more in one-on-one interaction than they do in group interaction,” Grant said. “How many Zoom and Teams meetings have you ever been to at work where people do breakouts?”

 “One of the most robust predictors of job satisfaction, and engagement, and well-being at work is having strong ties with people,” Grant said.

For employers, retention “may be the most obvious” organizational causality related to coworker relationships, since relationships are a major contributor to job embeddedness.

“People share more information with their friends. They’re more candid with their friends. Both of those things mean they’re less likely to fall victim to groupthink when they have a real relationship, so you get more thoughtful dissent, more constructive debate, on average,” he said. “That leads to better decision-making. It can fuel creativity and those are all performance relevant. People also work harder for their friends. You don’t want to let the person that you have a real connection with down.”

 Don’t organize an ORTBO! Grant instead recommended programs that allow employees to choose their own relationship-building experiences, pointing to programs that have worked at other businesses, such as pairing up employees for company-paid lunches or employer-funded learning opportunities for groups of two or more.

“If you gather two people together in similar roles, and they end up learning from each other and exchanging tips. They make each other better. This is a no-brainer for HR,” Grant said. “We should be pairing people up for lunch and paying for it. Whether they talk about work or not, catalyzing those connections is probably a net positive.”

 that remote-first compliance software company Ethena repurposed its office budget to support an HR program offering employees up to $100 a month to hang out with their coworkers.

He added that these programs pay for themselves and can actually generate revenue.

 Grant told HR Brew that research reveals nearly all contributing factors to a toxic workplace can be impacted by employee interpersonal relationships: disrespect, exclusion, abusive behavior, cutthroat behavior, as well as unethical behavior (which Grant said can sometimes be related to relationships).

“Organizations, leaders and managers, [and] HR ought to be paying a lot more attention to building good relationships, or, at minimum, rooting out bad ones, than we currently do,” he said.

a three-section meter - one section red with a sad face; the next yellow with a neutral face and then green with a smiling face. a woman in a suit stands on top trying to pull the arrow (pointing to yellow) towards the green

Employees care less and less about workplace relationships, new research finds

Glassdoor’s Adam Grant is worried about the impacts to well-being and performance.

It’s no longer the most wonderful time of the year. In fact, it may be the saddest.

The third Monday in January, or “Blue Monday,” is considered to be the most depressing day of the year, 

 to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). "Daylight is at a premium, nights are long and cold, holiday bills are arriving, and most of us are the furthest away we can be from the next thing to look forward to,” CAMH writes.

And it can follow employees into the workplace, said Amy Cappellanti-Wolf, chief people officer at Dayforce, affecting engagement and productivity.

“It’s that let down of: The holidays are done. The celebrations are done. The family is gone, and now I’ve got to go back to work, and, ‘Gosh, how do I get back into the swing of things because I feel sluggish?’” she told HR Brew. “It is a real thing around just that feeling of morose, and lethargy, and a little bit of sadness that things are over.”

Cappellanti-Wolf said Blue Monday should serve as a reminder to people leaders to prioritize employees’ well-being, not just in January, but throughout the year. She recommended HR teams think about it holistically, in terms of physical, mental, and financial health.

“How do we offer more of those types of systemic programs, but also [have] the conversation about it?” she said. “[Is there an] environment where employees feel like they’re supported? Like, ‘Hey, I can talk about these things, I have access to, whether it’s EAP, whether it’s gym memberships…and if I sign up or enroll in those things, it’ll be supported by my manager.’”

Cappellanti-Wolf said she does this at Dayforce by creating a culture that encourages taking time off, through company-wide wellness days, and unlimited PTO. The company also offers “Focused Fridays,” so employees have quiet time to get work done. To help alleviate some financial stress, the company offers its Dayforce Wallet product internally, so employees can access earned wages ahead of payday.

“There’s going to be periods that we all have down times, or down feelings. Doesn’t have to just center around Blue Monday, which seems to be the one where more people seem to suffer at the same time,” she said, later adding “I can’t change the weather…[but] I can offer things around financial, and mental, and physical wellness.”

This CPO encourages investing in employee well-being amid the gloomiest time of the year

“It is a real thing around just that feeling of morose, and lethargy, and a little bit of sadness that things are over,” Amy Cappellanti-Wolf, Dayforce’s chief people officer, tells HR Brew.

While attending a wedding in 2017, Patricia Grabarek and Katina Sawyer found themselves catching up on all things work and life.

After meeting in Penn State University’s doctoral psychology program in the late 2000s, Grabarek pursued a career in people analytics and talent strategy, while Sawyer continued on in academic, teaching psychology, HR, and business management. And, in catching up, they realized they’d witnessed the same phenomenon in their work: Employees’ well-being was suffering, and employers didn’t know how to help.

“We both were seeing gaps. I was seeing it in practice, in my day-to-day [work] with clients, not really knowing how to solve these issues and not understanding the basic building blocks of a really healthy workplace,” Grabarek told HR Brew. “Katina was seeing it from [the] academic perspective, from what she’s hearing from students.”

So, they decided to step in. By late 2017, the duo founded research and consulting firm Workr Beeing, then started a podcast, 

, the following year to share insights directly with people pros.

Headshot of Patricia Grabarek and Katina Sawyer

Grabarek and Sawyer spoke with HR Brew about how they’re drawing on their expertise in psychology and HR to help companies create better workplace cultures and support employee well-being.

 Employers often reach out to consultants when they have retention, engagement, or productivity issues, Grabarek said, but what they’re often overlooking is an underlying culture problem.

She said companies with retention or engagement issues often didn’t know that the problem was “the culture was not positive.” “[Employees] were having a hard time. People were having a hard time staying committed, and engaged in the organization, because they were stressed. They were burning out. There was toxicity in the environment.”

In addition to recognizing that these issues can stem from a negative culture, Sawyer said leaders need to stop viewing employee health and happiness as a “trade off” for productivity and engagement.

“Often people think…either people are going to be super, super productive, or they’re going to be happy and healthy. We show a way to do both,” Sawyer said. Many leaders, she added, dump money into wellness initiatives, like mindfulness programs or nutritional seminars, falsely thinking that “employees can use those and that’s what’s going to make them well.”

“What executives and leaders on the ground are missing is that their actions and behaviors are what’s key to driving well workplaces, not add-on programs that [try] combating a culture of overwork and relative unhealthiness,” Sawyer said.

Leaders should stop trying to be “superheroes” and be vulnerable with their employees, Grabarek suggests.

“Employees want their leaders to be vulnerable, to be authentic, to share when they’re struggling too, so they can identify with that leader and feel like this person is a real human that also has challenges,” she said. “They trust me to share those challenges, so now I can trust them back.”

HR teams can help employees create custom well-being programs that are individualized based on the issues they’re facing, like burnout and stress, Grabarek said.

They can also become “boundary bouncers” for their employees, Grabarek said, helping them balance work and life by ensuring, for example, employees log off on time or having time to pick up their kids from school.

After seven years spent balancing their consultancy, podcast, and respective full-time jobs, Grabarek and Sawyer are committing their expertise to paper in their forthcoming book, 

Leading for Wellness: How to Create a Team Culture Where Everyone Thrives

, which will discuss how companies can tackle culture and employee well-being issues.

In wearing many hats, Graberek and Sawyer said they’ve had to put some of their research and advice into practice to support their own well-being and company culture.

“When you create an environment where people can support each other, that helps push through those difficult times, because sometimes someone has to take a step back,” Grabarek said. “But if the whole team can pull together and make it work, then you’re able to take that time, little extra time than you normally would for, and the team can support in the meantime.”

Large-scaled hand catching tiny business figure jumping off of large pile of paperwork. Credit: Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Getty Images.

Employees aren’t doing well—these psychologists can help HR fix that

“When you create an environment where people can support each other, that helps push through those difficult times," Patricia Grabarek, co-founder of Workr Beeing, told HR Brew.

Theresa Agovino

Four years ago, as the pandemic raged, Chipotle Mexican Grill leaders heard employees discuss their money woes and offered a financial counseling benefit to help them cope. This year, it expanded its financial wellness offerings to include student debt repayment, pay-on-demand, and a special debit card that helps users build a credit profile.

Daniel Banks, Chipotle’s director of global benefits, said that more than 73% of its roughly 125,000 global employees are members of Gen Z who are racking up credit card debt quickly and aren’t confident in their money-management skills.

“We knew folks in Gen Z are really experiencing significant financial challenges.… We were listening to our employees and hearing about all these concerns and on top of all the concerns that the pandemic was bringing about,” Banks said. “We knew we had to expand our offering again, to really focus on that holistic well-being and so offering up those financial well-being [benefits] was the right thing to do.”

Gen Z, single parents, and caregivers are in especially financially precarious positions, according to a report by The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America. Yet, overall workers are not happy with their financial situations. Only 32% of workers rate their financial wellness as excellent or very good, the report said. That’s down from 44% in 2022. Even in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, 37% of workers rated their financial wellness as excellent or very good.

It makes sense the second most requested benefit among workers is resources to help with their finances, with nearly a third of employees desiring it, according to a report by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and Greenwald Research. The first request was to have employers pay a greater share of benefits’ cost, with 51% of workers citing that as their preference.

There have been signs of employee financial stress going back for years. For example, about seven years ago, payroll software company Paylocity noticed that more workers were getting more salary advances from their employers. That’s when it started offering a service that allows employees access to part of their salaries before payday, though it has become more popular with workers in the last four or five years, said Steve Beauchamp, the company’s former CEO and current executive chairman.

Beauchamp said current economic conditions such as high inflation mean “folks are stretching their dollars as much as they can, and sometimes getting themselves in a situation where they need access to dollars at a faster speed than their regular paycheck.”

Carlyn Sanchez, corporate director of human resources at Noble Hotels & Resorts, said the company started offering pay-on-demand about two years ago after some employees said they were turning to high-interest rate lenders to cover sudden expenses. She said the benefit provides an upside for the company because employees facing financial issues may not be able to get to work or be too distracted to perform their responsibilities well. For example, an employee may not be able to go to work because they can’t afford to fix a flat tire.

“We’re looking at this as a benefit for when life happens,” said Sanchez.

Next year, the company plans to offer live, quarterly sessions with financial experts to help employees learn about issues such as budgeting. Sanchez says it has provided written and recorded financial information to employees, though thinks the ability to ask questions will enrich the offering.

“[We] continually strive to look for ways to help our team members,” Sanchez said. “We know that people go to work in order to earn their income, so [financial wellness is] an important space for us.”