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Potential Solutions:
Open enrollment is one way
that employers are already trying to overcome
employee procrastination; the problem is that
open enrollment season doesn’t mean that
employees actually spend the time and thought
they need
before
the deadline; they just have
to enter something on the forms before the
deadline. Other, more creative, ways to overcome
procrastination that researchers have examined
include setting specific reference dates (e.g., the
first Thursday of the month is group exercise day)
and “temptation bundling” (tying something that
people delay to something they really love).
Lack of willpower
Willpower is a funny thing. We assume that in
order to resist temptation (like eating a chocolate
cookie, or watching YouTube all day), we just
need to face it and fight it. Researchers have
found that that’s actually a terrible strategy –
because our willpower is a finite resource that
gets exhausted during the day, the more we fight.
When we blame employees for falling off of a diet
or overspending their budgets, we’re not helping
anything. Thankfully, there are better options.
Potential Solutions:
Helping employees stay on
track in the face of temptations is best done by
making temptations harder to reach.
If employees
are struggling with weight problems and the
cafeteria is full of unhealthy foods, then redesign
the cafeteria to place healthy items up front (not
restricting access to unhealthy food, just making
it marginally harder to get to). Or, ask employees
what they would like to eat
before
they are tired,
hungry, and depleted of willpower.
These are three common examples; there
are actually dozens of techniques that HR
professionals can use to increase the usage and
impact of benefits programs. If you can identify
why
employees aren’t using a benefit program,
or why they aren’t spending the time and thought
needed for to make a wise decision, then you
can help. The process starts by accepting that
employees struggle to use benefits programs
even when they want to, and then helping them
take action.
HR
Steve Wendel is a behavioral
social scientist who serves as the
Principal Scientist at HelloWallet,
where he conducts original
research on savings behavior and
coordinates the research efforts
of HelloWallet’s advisory board.
His latest book, “Improving Employee Benefits” (excerpted
above), shows HR practitioners how they can use behavioral
economics to help employees to take action on their benefits.
In 2013, he published “Designing for Behavior Change,”
which describes HelloWallet’s step-by-step approach to
applying behavioral economics and psychology to product
design. Before joining HelloWallet, Steve co-founded a political
consulting and research firm that employed machine learning
and simulation techniques to predict political behavior.
Benefits
