In this episode, Jamey discusses the importance of making workplace benefits truly inclusive. Addressing the evolving expectations of diverse workforces, Jamey emphasizes that benefits policies must go beyond basic health care and PTO to address the unique needs of all employees—such as those from LGBTQIA+ communities, parents, caregivers, and people with chronic health challenges. The episode provides leaders with concrete actions, caveats, and thoughtful recommendations for evaluating and evolving their benefits programs to foster equity and belonging.

Alongside actionable advice, Jamey sheds light on the potential stigmas employees might face when accessing benefits, highlighting the need for leaders to proactively combat these biases. The episode encourages organizations to approach benefits as a strategic tool to support, retain, and empower a truly diverse workforce. It concludes by urging organizations to open conversations about benefits, customize policies to meet specific team needs, and ensure all employees feel safe and supported in utilizing their benefits.

To learn more and connect, visit: www.Equity-At-Work.com

To grab Michelle's new book, visit: Do DEI Right

Key Topics Discussed:

1. The importance of inclusive benefits in today’s workplaces
2. Different categories and types of benefits (beyond just pay)
3. Making health care plans more inclusive (LGBTQIA+ needs, family planning, mental health, reproductive care)
4. Flexibility in work location and hours (remote and hybrid work, flexible schedules)
5. Inclusivity in paid time off, floating holidays, and volunteer hours
6. Equitable parental, bereavement, and family care leave policies
7. Childcare and eldercare support through workplace benefits
8. The stigma associated with using certain benefits—and how to address it
9. Practical steps for organizations to review and enhance their benefits packages

I'm Jamie Applegate, Senior Director of DEI at EquityAtWork, and this is your DEI minute, your go to podcast for leaders looking to navigate the ever evolving landscape of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. Whether you're just starting out with DEI or looking to sustain your long term successes, each episode will provide you with the actions you can take to move DEI forward at your organization, all in 15 minutes or less. Join us every other week as we break through the noise and help you do DEI right. Let's get to it.

Before we get started. This is Michelle Pfefferman and I'm really excited to let you know that my new book Do DEI Write is now available. This is your guide to the Equity at Work Maturity Model, which shows leaders how to make DEI part of every day and drive great results. You can get your copy through the link in the show notes or wherever.

Books are are sold for today's episode we're going to talk about benefits and more specifically, we're going to talk about how to make sure that the benefits your organization offers are inclusive and meet the needs and desires of your varied team members. So benefits is a huge topic and there are so many different benefits and types of benefits that your organization could potentially offer. It can definitely be daunting and overwhelming to figure out what potential benefits should or could look like, and it's equally challenging to then figure out what your organization is actually going to offer. So my hope is that from this podcast you can either kickstart the conversation around benefits of your organization or if you already have a robust benefits strategy, you can identify a few areas for revision or further exploration. So one huge caveat around this episode, what I'm going to talk about is categories of benefits and and then specific items within those categories and how to make them the as inclusive as possible. I'm not saying that every organization should just go out and implement every benefit exactly as I articulate. Might not be the case that a given organization can implement that specific benefit due to operational, financial or regulatory constraints. So please take what I'm saying here as a conversation starter and then apply it against your organization's specific circumstances and context.

Or do not take this as like the word. Also, I'm not going to be talking about pay or pay equity. That is a different topic for another episode down the line. We do suggest that you do pay equity audits. People should be compensated fairly for their work and people should be paid equally for equal work. We suggest you implement regular pay equity analyses and we also recommend that you review Any bonus structures that you might have to to ensure that it is truly objective and that it rewards both behaviors and outputs. But pay and pay equity, much larger topic for another day. So we're just going to talk strictly about sort of additional benefits that folks might get.

So we're going to get started with the topic of health care. So many organizations offer health insurance and it looks different at many different organizations. Some organizations cover the entire cost of health insurance for employees and their families. Some cover the entire cost just for the employee. And then the employee can sort of buy in to get coverage for their dependent or their families. Some offer a percentage of the cost for employees. Independents, some offer a monthly or annual reimbursement or stipend for cost. It really depends on each situation.

It also kind of depends on if employees are full or part time. But I will say this, in a country like the United States where health care is heavily tied to full time employment, organizations should work to offer health insurance to their employees and however possible, full stop. But if you do have health insurance, here are some ways that you could think about making it more inclusive. So one is to think about the needs of specific groups. So if you're thinking about LGBTQIA folks, trans people might need hormone treatments or they might need gender transition surgeries or just gender transition care. Do the coverage options that your organization offers cover those for parents to be and new parents? You could think about people who are considering growing their family. Does the organization offer family planning services such as funding for adoption or IVF treatments for pregnant women? Do the coverage options include all manner of reproductive care up to and including access to abortion services for trans health care and abortion services? In the current political climate change, many states are restricting access to these for either completely or for only emergencies or different things like that. It might not be legal in the state where a given employee lives, so just recognize that.

And one thing to consider is whether your organization can offer to cover or reimburse travel expenses related to accessing that care in a place that does offer it. Another part of healthcare to think about is mental health and substance abuse services. Does your organization offer coverage for counseling or therapy or rehabilitation services? Does it cover substance abuse treatments? Things to make sure you are asking whoever you use as a provider for health insurance, your organization could also implement some things like some wellness offerings. So things like access to meditation or mindfulness apps, stress management courses, access to a gym or a fitness center, or like a reimbursement or a monthly stipend for physical health that can always be A thing. Some folks also just give employees some funding toward the purchase of home fitness equipment. So there are some ways you can do that, really promote these things that are really inclusive and really meet people with however they want to approach their health. Another big category to talk about is work location and hours. And the big thing here is flexibility and potentially the ability to work from home or in a hybrid scenario.

So this might be the one that is most contentious. And absolutely, there are certain tasks and work that cannot be done remotely or in a flexible manner. Some things must be done in person or, and, or at specific times. And so I want to just acknowledge that and say this is where possible we would advocate for these things. But for flexibility, I would just ask, does every person need to work at the exact same time? Are there certain critical times or meetings where everyone should convene? Outside of those, can team members kind of set their own hours and make sure we're really focusing on are they getting the work done and are they being a productive team member? Or are we really just saying, saying, I need you here at this specific time because that's what we've always done. And then for hybrid or work from home, think about whether it's necessary for each person to be in the office for all of their work hours. Are there some times where having everyone together really is valuable or necessary? But then again, outside of those, can team members work from where they'd like? That definitely drives up employee satisfaction. If folks want to have an office, maybe you have an office space for them.

But if folks don't, maybe they can work from home. So our recommendation is that organizations assess what is necessary in terms of synchronized work times or, you know, in person work locations, but from there, allowing for as much flexibility as possible. It does increase employee engagement and it actually does increase productivity. A note here for folks that are really dead set on having people in the office for the concept that there's something magical and there's sort of this spontaneous collaboration. If you want collaboration, whether it's in person or virtual or hybrid, you really just need to be intentional about collaboration, as if it's a value of yours. You need to be intentional and make sure you're just creating spaces where folks are expected to collaborate and saying that it's an expectation, not kind of just saying, oh, we're all going to put everybody in a room together and just sort of hope that something good comes out of it. So I do just want to push back on, on the idea that in person work somehow magically makes collaboration better. Another big bucket to talk about is paid time off or pto.

So PTO is a critical part of an employee's total compensation. And there are a few ways to make it inclusive. Big one is building in floating holidays. It's a great way to allow employees to use PTO for, for holidays that don't align with, in the United States, at least our federal holiday calendar. So this mainly applies to folks who are members of minority religious groups. Big examples would be like Jews or Muslims. And it goes a long way to ensuring that they don't have to use vacation days for sincerely held religious beliefs. As a side note, some organizations go beyond the federal holiday list and include other religious holidays.

A common one I've seen in practice is Good Friday, which is, which is phenomenal. People should get Good Friday off if they celebrate Good Friday. But it can also create the perception that Christians are getting preferential treatment. So just be on the lookout for that and really recognize that you probably have a diverse group of people that need different things in terms of their religious observances and holidays. So really trying to build in spaces where they can get that time without using vacation, because that can almost feel like a penalty. Another great thing for PTO or just sort of another use of time is, is to enact a time code for paid volunteer or community engagement hours. People like to volunteer and get out in the community on behalf of the organization. And this is a great way to encourage employees to be organizational ambassadors and do good in the communities in which the organization operates.

These can be organized by the company or by individual employees. And they can help allow employees to supplement their work life with meaningful volunteer activities that allow them to support a cause that they are passionate about. I know, for example, if you are an engineering company, maybe you want to support stem, but maybe someone also is really passionate about homelessness or the unhoused, and so they want to go support an organization doing that. Giving them a couple hours a month to do that goes a huge way of saying that this organization supports each individual employee in following their passions. Another huge category is leaves. So parental leaves. Organizations should offer parental leave and it should not matter if you are a mother or a father or if the new child is arriving because there's a birth or an adoption or a placement. All parental leaves should be equal in length.

You should not have longer leaves for certain folks, regardless of circumstances. They should be equal in length and they should be robust enough to give employees time to heal if they need time to heal, and they should give them time to spend time with their new family member. That early connection is critically important. Employees will feel much more supported if they're given some time to just spend it with their new child or the new family member bereavement leave. Traditionally organizations kind of restrict this to immediate family and maybe some extended family. I would really strongly consider expanding this. We don't always know who the most important people are in a given employee's life and it can be incredibly supportive to give someone a few days off for the death of a close friend, even sometimes the death of a pet. Pets are really meaningful to people.

People's close friends might be their chosen family. Just really respecting people enough to make the decision about who's important enough for them that they need time to some miscellaneous ones. This is one that I think is really great that I've seen implemented in a couple places. Child care and even elder care. So childcare and elder care are challenging to find if you are looking for it and they are expensive. So organizations that offer like a reimbursement or for childcare or elder care services, phenomenal. Or if your organization is large enough, especially on the child care side, you could consider partnering with a child care provider to have an in house child care facility within your building or on your campus. Those are really, really phenomenal.

So those are the big categories that I want to touch on for this episode before we close out. I do just want to mention something really important about benefits. And it's too often those who use benefits face a stigma for having then used those benefits. So those who need health care services are sometimes penalized profess for needing access to those services. They might be viewed as not being dependable or maybe it's like we sort of second guess their future because oh, they have this condition. And it's especially true for people with chronic conditions who might need to take time off work and for people with mental health problems and substance abuse disorders. So just want to mention that folks who do choose to work from home in a remote or a hybrid where there's sort of options, they might be viewed as less serious about their work or contributing less so want to fight against that. People who take all of their PTO and are unavailable during their PTO might be seen as less invested in the company or as not as a team player and a huge one.

Pregnant women and new moms are often seen as less serious about their work or that they're going to decide to leave the workforce. New dads face this a little less, but there is actually a stigma around men. Even taking parental leave at all in some spaces. And then I just want to mention also, mourning is a complicated process that plays out uniquely for each person based on many things their who they are, their relation to the person, their religious beliefs, and a person's inability to kind of snap out of it and be their old self. The death of someone important to them can sometimes be held against them. So I just want to make clear that it is critical to explicitly articulate that employees are able to access their benefits and that there will be no negative consequences or negative impacts on their role or their future with the organization. For any employee who utilizes those benefits, those negative consequences are rarely explicit. It's very rare that someone is like, I am not promoting you because you are pregnant, but that stuff happens all the time.

So you need to make sure that it's necessary to recognize when subjective opinions about employee capacity, ability, or trajectory are being articulated and stamp those out. Benefits, obviously are incredibly important part of an employee's total compensation. They supplement an employee's ability to thrive by offering resources and supports tailored to their specific needs. Taking your organization's current benefits and making them more inclusive is an incredible way to ensure that the wonderful intention behind your organization's offerings meets the diverse and varied needs of your workforce. So if you're looking at implementing new benefits or you want to talk through what kind of how to make your benefits more inclusive, we're obviously here to help. Let us know. And thank you so much for listening. That's a wrap.

I'm Jamie Applegate, and that's your DEI minute for today. Thank you for listening. Please be sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts, and don't forget to leave us a review. If you ever have questions, please visit our website or send us an email. You can also sign up for our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. Links to everything can be found in the episode Notes. This episode was edited and produced by Podco with podcast art by me, Jamie Applegate.