Benefits June 16, 2005

A Third of Small Oklahoma Firms Don't Offer Health Coverage

June 16, 2005 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - A third of small Oklahoma companies offer no workplace health coverage, according to a new survey.
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More than half of all small companies – those with less than 50 employees – provide no retirement plan for workers, the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission survey found, according to a Daily Oklahoman report.

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Meanwhile, nearly all state businesses with more than 250 employees provide health care benefits to employees and to their dependents, the survey showed. More than eight of 10 large businesses in the state offer some form of retirement plan.

The state survey also found that 26.5% of employers are combining leave time such as sick days and vacation to be used at the discretion of employees. More than a third of responding companies offer six or fewer paid holidays each year.

Roughly the same amount – 35.2% – offer seven or eight paid holidays annually, with the remainder offering more. More than 6% of companies provide 12 or more paid holiday days off to employees, according to the survey. The vast majority of companies provide paid time off for Christmas Day, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day, Labor Day, Independence Day and Memorial Day.

The next most popular paid holidays were the day after Thanksgiving, offered by 46.2% of companies responding; New Year’s Eve, 31.9%; Christmas Eve, 30.5%; Good Friday, 17.6%; and a floating holiday or personal leave day, 12.7%.

The commission conducted the survey in late 2003. The agency mailed an eight-page, 45-question form to 3,384 randomly selected employers of varying sizes in different industries across the state. More than 61% submitted survey responses.

Benefits June 15, 2005

Many Canadian Employers not on top of Absenteeism Problems

June 15, 2005 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Most Canadian employers are not ready to address problems with work-related injuries or personal illness, despite increasing employee absenteeism and the costs associated with it.
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That was a key conclusion of a new Hewitt Associates survey, according to a Hewitt news release. Responding firms estimated that the average direct cost per employee for all disability-related absences per year is $1,933 for union employees and $1,579 for non-union employees – costs that could ultimately prove substantial at a large employer, according to Hewitt.

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“Some organizations estimate these figures could double if indirect costs such as administrative and replacement costs were included,” said Rochelle Morandini, Hewitt’s senior organizational health consultant, in the news release. “These numbers also don’t account for absence days that are often missed or are simply not tracked, or for lost productivity time when people remain at work while coping with injury or illness. Absenteeism c learly impacts a company’s bottom line, but without the necessary data, an organization can’t truly know how big that impact can be.”

Hewitt’s survey revealed that many companies struggle with tracking absenteeism, with 81% of respondents saying they would have difficulty producing five years of data related to disability absences. Thirty-eight percent of organizations attributed this to a lack of available resources, including technology (85%), people (70%) and data (47%), Hewitt said.

“It is extremely difficult to manage what you are not currently measuring,” said Morandini. “Senior leadership should be concerned about the fact that this large cost drain is not being fully identified and measured.”

Copies of the survey report are available from Hewitt by calling (416) 225-5001 or by e-mail at infocan@hewitt.com .

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