Recruitment & Retention
Principal Financial Group® | January 16, 2024
The picture of retirement is evolving with more Americans turning 65 in 2024 than any year1 before. According to new research from Principal Financial Group®, expectations around how and when to retire by generation vary greatly – placing increased focus on employee engagement and personalized investment strategies to help improve financial security and retirement readiness.
Phased retirement appeals to younger workers who want to retire earlier
According to the Principal Financial Well-Being IndexSM, among Americans in the workforce, gradually decreasing hours is the most desired way to retire (52%) and is most preferred by Generation X (67%) and millennials (56%). Baby boomers and Generation Z report similarities in how they want to retire, with nearly half preferring to move immediately from working full-time to not working at all. This echoes the most common approach taken by current retirees surveyed2, a group in which just over one quarter (28%) either transitioned careers or gradually phased down from their primary career.
“Attitudes and expectations for retirement continue to evolve, and we expect the desire to approach retirement in phases will continue to grow with future generations,” said Chris Littlefield, president of Retirement and Income Solutions at Principal®.
While there are some similarities in how generations want to retire, they have different expectations on timelines and the age at which they plan to retire. The youngest generation, Gen Z, expects to retire at 55 – approximately 10 years earlier than baby boomers (68) and Gen X (64), and four years sooner than millennials (59).
Employees prioritize saving for retirement
The survey revealed employees are focused on balancing basic needs with long-term savings outcomes against a backdrop of ongoing economic pressures that continue to top their list of concerns. Employees of all generations ranked saving for retirement as their top financial priority, followed by affording basic needs and paying off consumer debt3.
"Saving for retirement is the No. 1 financial priority for employees surveyed, which validates that access to workplace benefits and financial wellness programs is helping Americans save for retirement and achieve better financial outcomes,” Littlefield said. “Going forward, increased personalization as well as tailored savings and investment strategies that take into account an individual’s financial goals, lifestyle, health care needs, dependent care obligations, retirement income expectations, and other unique factors will help achieve improved financial security in retirement.”
Retention and recruitment of older employees critical for business success
Employee interest in phased retirement has added value for employers. Most employers (77%) agree that the knowledge older employees have about their company is crucial to their business’s success. Employers concerned with “having valuable employees retire” are more likely to take actions to either retain them or hire employees who previously retired from other companies.
Despite this, not all employers have experience with offering phased retirement. Only 11% of small and midsized businesses4 reported they offer phased retirement job opportunities on a regular basis compared to nearly one quarter of large businesses5. However, interest is there, as 61% of businesses that don’t offer a phased retirement still receive questions from employees about the options.
See all results and insights from the latest Principal Financial Well-Being IndexSM (PDF).
According to the Alliance for Lifetime Income
This wave included a survey of 137 individuals between the ages of 50 and 75 who consider themselves retired or have previously fully retired and gone back to work.
In order to be included in the survey sample, employees must work full-time, and their employer has to offer either health insurance or retirement as an employee benefit.
Businesses with 2-499 employees
Businesses with 500-10,000 employees
About the Principal Financial Well-Being IndexSM
The Principal Financial Well-Being IndexSM surveys business owners, decision makers and business leaders aged 21 and over who work at companies with 2-10,000 employees and offer either health insurance or retirement as an employee benefit. The nation-wide survey, commissioned since 2012, examines the financial well-being of American workers and business employers. In 2020, the Well-Being Index was transformed from an annual survey to a regular pulse, offering three waves, revisiting questions and measuring sentiment regarding timely issues in the small and midsized business marketplace. In the first pulse of the Well-Being Index in 2022, the employee audience was added to the survey to compare and contrast key sentiment from employers. The survey was commissioned by Principal® and conducted online by Dynata from November 6-13, 2023, with a total of 500 business owners, decision makers and business leader participants and a total of 200 employee participants. This wave included a survey of 127 individuals who consider themselves retired or have previously fully retired and gone back to work. The research report focuses on providing a holistic perspective on key trends and timely issues in the small and medium business market.
About Principal Financial Group®
Principal Financial Group® is a global financial company with 19,500 employees1 passionate about improving the wealth and well-being of people and businesses. In business for more than 140 years, we’re helping more than 61 million customers1 plan, protect, invest, and retire, while working to support the communities where we do business, and build a diverse, inclusive workforce. Principal® is proud to be recognized as one of the 2023 World’s Most Ethical Companies® by Ethisphere2, a member of the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index, and a “Best Places to Work in Money Management3.”
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Workforce Management
Alight Solutions | January 09, 2024
Alight, Inc. a leading cloud-based human capital and technology services provider, and CirrusMD, a physician-first provider of on-demand virtual care, today announced a strategic agreement to offer a chat-enabled, physician-led, virtual care solution. The partnership is aimed at breaking down barriers to virtual care by providing employees with access to expert physicians across a wide range of health care needs on the Alight Worklife platform.
“The Alight Worklife platform serves as employees’ comprehensive connection point to their health, wealth, payroll and leaves benefits, which helps employers cut complexities, costs and engage individuals in the moments that matter most,” said Bipin Mistry, chief medical officer at Alight. “The partnership with CirrusMD helps take employee engagement one step further by making physician-led virtual care easily accessible to employees and bridges the gap between virtual clinical care delivery and employer-sponsored benefits navigation.”
Helping employees arrive at the most appropriate care
Employees on the Alight Worklife platform can engage directly with CirrusMD or be prompted to engage after completing Alight’s AI-powered Symptom Checker online experience to better understand their healthcare needs and guide them to care options, including virtual care provided by CirrusMD. With Single Sign-On (SSO) for fast connections to care within 60 seconds, Alight Worklife enhances the participant experience.
CirrusMD’s Physician-first Care & Guidance approach to virtual primary care provides members with always-on, instant access to a doctor via chat-first modality. CirrusMD’s multidisciplinary clinical team conducts encounters on a proprietary clinical intelligence engine that provides real-time insights to physicians based on data from millions of patient-physician interactions. Once employees connect with physicians, CirrusMD offers a seamless, efficient and patient-centric virtual care experience by
Connecting patients to physicians in less than a minute, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year,
Delivering advanced primary care that includes behavioral health, women’s health, acute care, chronic condition management and more,
Physician-led seven-day experiences, interactions that allow time for in-depth diagnosis and treatment, reducing the high costs associated with multiple follow-ups,
Text-based chat with options for video, voice and images when needed,
Immediate referrals to employer benefits and in-network resources,
And real-time Spanish language translation to help overcome potential language barriers. Optimizing the integration of healthcare benefits and clinical workflows
The strategic partnership enables employers to select CirrusMD as part of their Alight Healthcare Navigation offering within the Alight Worklife platform. As well, CirrusMD providers benefit from access to Alight’s Symptom Checker results and can reference benefit programs available to the participant which can serve to facilitate patient follow-ups with both CirrusMD care teams and Alight Health Pros for a comprehensive healthcare journey support.
This combined solution provides ongoing navigation to appropriate referrals and resources. For example, Alight's support for individuals with Behavioral Health conditions aligns seamlessly with CirrusMD, offering quick access to virtual Behavioral Health support when needed. Employees can be directed to other types of care options such as virtual physical therapy, through referrals made directly from CirrusMD or Alight.
“At CirrusMD we are reimagining the point of care to provide the time and information needed to support a productive dialog between patient and physician, giving both the time and information they need for exceptional care experiences,” said Jamie Hall, president and CEO of CirrusMD. “This strategic agreement represents an important milestone in advancing virtual primary care, combining the strengths of Alight Solutions and CirrusMD to transform the healthcare experience for individuals and employers alike.”
CirrusMD boasts an 83% issue resolution rate and an 93% overall patient satisfaction rate, and serves notable customers including health plans, large employers and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
About Alight Solutions
Alight is a leading cloud-based human capital technology and services provider that powers confident health, wealth and wellbeing decisions for 36 million people and dependents. Our Alight Worklife® platform combines data and analytics with a simple, seamless user experience. Supported by our global delivery capabilities, Alight Worklife is transforming the employee experience for people around the world. With personalized, data-driven health, wealth, pay and wellbeing insights, Alight brings people the security of better outcomes and peace of mind throughout life’s big moments and most important decisions.
About CirrusMD
CirrusMD delivers Physician-first Care & Guidance, a smart care model founded in the tenets of Advanced Primary Care. It brings together activated members with trusted physicians, relevant resources, and smart technology to change healthcare as we know it. CirrusMD improves speed to care, removes barriers to physicians, brings patient data into the care encounter, and promotes transparency at the point of referral. We believe that when you provide immediate, affordable care at scale you can drive the change needed to improve health and lower cost across an entire population.
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Workforce Management
UKG | January 04, 2024
UKG, a leading provider of HR, payroll, workforce management, and culture solutions for all people, announced that Heartland Motor Company, the family-owned parent company for a group of auto dealerships and car washes, is transforming its workplace culture to create a great place to work by building a foundation of trust and belonging with the help of the AI-powered UKG Pro suite.
With a mission to create remarkable experiences for its people and the communities it serves, Heartland Motor Company partnered with UKG to empower frontline staff through innovative technology that gives employees a voice to communicate and collaborate with each other and leadership.
“I’ve never experienced an HCM solution with as much engagement power as UKG,” said Tina Barte, vice president of HR for Heartland Motor Company. “UKG has generated amazing outcomes for our people with technology that allows us to meet them where they are by soliciting feedback — and then taking action on that feedback — to elevate our culture and build trust as well as a deepened sense of belonging.”
Since going live on Pro, Heartland has received positive feedback from employees through regular surveys powered by modern AI and natural language processing (NLP) technology that help the auto dealer understand what is working and where there are opportunities to create an even better experience, no matter where employees are located.
“We consistently receive glowing feedback on our onboarding process, driven by our UKG suite, and how the automation of previously manual tasks shows respect for our employees’ time,” said Barte. “We can also automatically schedule performance reviews in UKG and deliver meaningful manager feedback, which has been a big driver of employee engagement. Additionally, we’ve used the responses from exit surveys to raise our wage scales and change our vacation policy and benefits so we’re better supporting our people.”
To further engage employees, in line with its great place to work mission, Heartland recently upgraded to UKG AI-powered workforce management, which gives employees access to mobile-first technology that provides greater flexibility and work-life balance.
“Our employees love the ability to clock in and out of shifts with their phones, which is something we didn’t have with our prior solution,” said Barte. “For our HR team, UKG makes leave tracking easy for FMLA and other types of leave.”
Barte noted that Pro makes work easier for all by empowering employees in every role to focus on meaningful work for themselves and the business, which has led to an overall increase in retention and engagement.
“With UKG HR service delivery, we know we are processing every employee inquiry, and with document management, we have created a centralized electronic system that administrators and employees both find easy to use,” said Barte. “UKG has done a phenomenal job launching products that make life easier for everyone and allow us to communicate clearly with employees in support of our great workplace culture.”
“Great workplaces like Heartland Motor Company prove that innovative HR technology increases productivity, lowers turnover, and grows the bottom line,” said Hugo Sarrazin, chief product and technology officer at UKG. “Most importantly, the power of AI, coupled with a deep focus on creating a workplace where all people feel heard, valued, and a sense of belonging, leads to incredible people and business outcomes.”
About UKG
At UKG, our purpose is people. We are on a mission to inspire every organization to become a great place to work through HCM technology built for all. More than 80,000 customers across all sizes, industries, and geographies trust UKG HR, payroll, workforce management, and culture cloud solutions to drive great workplace experiences and make better, more confident people and business decisions. With the world’s largest collection of people data, work data, and culture data combined with rich experience using artificial intelligence in the service of people, we connect culture insights with business outcomes to show what’s possible when organizations invest in their people.
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Workforce Management
Mercans | January 24, 2024
Mercans continues to disrupt the global payroll industry and solidify its leadership position by rolling out exciting new features to its flagship, G2N Nova payroll engine. The recently launched features include game-changing technology and address some of the biggest challenges of global payroll, including international data privacy compliance and processing latency limitations.
Mercans’ G2N Nova leverages groundbreaking stateless application architecture to enable completely anonymous payroll processing. This unprecedented technological approach enables processing gross-to-net payrolls without any sensitive Personal Identifiable Information (PII) ever being passed from clients to Mercans’ G2N Nova global payroll application.
The stateless application architecture has never before been successfully deployed in the global payroll industry, and G2N Nova, is the only payroll engine that is able to generate 100% accurate gross-to-net calculations for 100+ countries. And that’s not all, it does so through a single, native platform in real-time without accessing or storing any identifiable information related to employees. This evidently innovative, payroll technology solution completely overcomes the complex data privacy compliance requirements, as confidential employee data never leaves the clients’ systems and is not needed by G2N Nova for gross-to-net payroll calculations. Thus, proving its technological prowess and independence.
Additionally, this approach is a game-changer for the industry because data breaches and ransomware attacks have created concerns about data security and privacy in the payroll sector. These concerns have been significant hurdles for companies trusting external service or software providers for international payroll processing. G2N Nova’s stateless app architecture eliminates these concerns entirely. Clients’ PII never leaves their data centers and payroll-related information used by G2N Nova is completely anonymized.
G2N Nova upgrade also includes a ground-breaking Continuous Calc feature that fundamentally changes how payrolls are processed. Until now, all payrolls had to go through a multi-step payroll processing cycle. G2N Nova breaks this legacy paradigm and introduces real-time net pay. The Continuous Calc feature maintains full gross-to-net values for each employee in real-time and automatically updates the net pay amounts of employees whenever there is an update to an employee’s record. This feature, thus, eliminates the need to wait for a payroll processing cycle to be completed to determine an employee’s net pay for a period. The gross-to-net values for all employees will be always available in real-time.
In addition, the new version of G2N Nova lays a foundation for incorporating blockchain technology into payroll processes, allowing instantaneous and 100% tamper-proof verification of payroll calculations and payments using blockchain technology. Blockchain will create a permanent, unchangeable record of real-time record of all payroll transactions and amounts — so no one can alter or remove it. This revolutionary approach, thus, solidifies the foundation for third parties, including financial institutions, tax authorities, etc.
The new ground-breaking version of G2N Nova offers global, gross-to-net payroll processing capabilities across 100+ countries, making it the world’s most advanced and powerful native payroll engine. G2N Nova is available as a SaaS or service delivery platform that can be used as a stand-alone global payroll platform or deeply integrated with all major HCM or Workforce Management software solutions.
About Mercans
Mercans is a global leader in payroll technology. Mercans’ revolutionary global payroll engine G2N Nova enables Enterprise businesses & HCM providers to perform gross to-net calculations across 100+ legislation.
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