Health Care Reform: Legislative Constraint or Real Opportunity. Why you should be more concerned about business performance.

I have been at a number of meetings recently with HR colleagues and also been reading all the stuff out there!!

HCR is nothing if not another legislative “constraint” OR perhaps a real opportunity for Business to take advantages of it as part of their business strategies.

In his book”Good to Great” Jim Collins tells us that many business face the same external constraints, whether technological, legislative, economic etc, and it is the ones that face those challenges in a transformational way that succeed. The ones that overcome the same challenges as many of their competitors are the ones that move on to greatness through financial performance and leave the others in their wake.

I am not suggesting we don’t need to understand what HCR is but what I do say is that Business – HR need to ask the right questions.

Those questions relate to how current employee “benefits” (and there are more that are non health care then health care let’s get that clear!) actually benefit the individual or the organizations. By the way this is not where the first question begins either! But you do need to know the answer to this one!!

I challenge CEO’s and Business owners everywhere to ask their HR folk some real questions, like the ones you wake up in the middle of the night over and have to deliver to your shareholders.

1. What is the return on investment on any given benefit?
2. What have they done to turn a cost into an investment?
3. Where is the real added value and business imperative behind any given HR strategy?

A recent study by “Economist Intelligence” outlined that many CEO’s say that HR fails to tackle the real business issues and lack business acumen!

HCR is but one more piece of employment legislation just like FMLA; FLSA; ADA:etc

HR needs to focus on the internal consequences of not understanding what really triggers high performance and what behaviors are need to deliver outstanding business success.

Get that right and understand that each and every Human Resource element has to have a business case that turns a cost into an added value resource.

It never was about Health care reform it’s always been about effectiveness, it has never been about health care insurance or affordability it has always been about enhancing people and business performance. Why? Because there is always a value worth paying when you can show that. Now we are talking!!

Link to Jim Collin’s book

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap-Others/dp/0066620996/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361548264&sr=8-1&keywords=jim+collins+-+good+to+great

What Morticians can teach Human Resources

Reading a few blogs recently and experiencing myself the insensitivities of HR folks I have began to wonder why many are indeed in the “people business.”

Death brings much emotion to those who survive their loved ones. Yet the recently deceased are often treated better then the living!

The skills of a mortician:

1. They respect the deceased and take care of them with great gentleness.
2. The mortician speaks to the deceased’s loved ones about what they would like by way of arrangements.
3. They dress the deceased to look the very best they can be.
4. They carry the deceased with respect and treat them so.
5. They are preparing the deceased for their last journey.
6. They respect the difference of culture without judgment.
7. They strive to foster a cooperative spirit and friendly attitude and a compassionate demeanor toward the families.
8. They become involved in recreating the lives of those that are left behind to cope.
9. They take great pride in their ability to provide efficient and appropriate services.

10. They simply care with a gentle professionalism.

It seems that they listen, they care, they take care, they prepare and above all they want to give you the very best of their attention. In so doing they make all around feel special.

Certain Extracts taken from:

http://www.collegegrad.com/careers/manag13.shtml#nat

LATEST NEWS IRS Releases Final Rules on Health Care Reform Costs

The Internal Revenue Service published Jan. 30 final health care reform law affordability rules for employer sponsored health plans.

Under the Affordable Care Act, if employer coverage is not affordable, employers are liable for a $3,000 penalty for each full-time employee whose required premium contribution does not meet the affordability test, which deems coverage unaffordable if an employee’s premium contribution for that coverage exceeds 9.5 percent of his or her household income.

Such employees will be eligible to receive a premium subsidy to buy coverage through a government-run health insurance exchange, according to an IRS release.

The IRS states the requirement only applies to self-only coverage.

Max Mihelich is Workforce’s editorial intern.