Chris Ceplenski, BLR In an engaging session titled "The Case for Financial Wellness," Jennifer Benz, founder and CEO of Benz Communications, and Brant Suddath, director of compensation at The Home Depot, advocated for providing financial wellness services to your employees while making sure they are getting full use of everything you already offer.

Melissa Blazejak, HR Daily Advisor Want to attract and retain top talent? Who doesn’t these days? According to some, your benefits package is the key to getting great talent in the door; but how can you compete with the Googles and the Apples? Glassdoor compiled a list of the most unique and surprising benefits and perks that companies are offering to their employees. Here are a few of the most outlandish perks being offered.

Annette Boyle, Fierce Healthcare The Affordable Care Act provision that allows health plans to charge tobacco users higher premiums appears to have suppressed insurance enrollment rather than encouraged smoking cessation, according to a new study published by Health Affairs.

Paige Minemyer, Fierce Healthcare Team training for hospital staff can reduce patient death by 15 percent and cut medical errors by 19 percent, according to a new study. Team training focuses on cooperation, with each person trained in a specific role and taught to work together, according to an announcement of the study, which was authored by faculty at Rice University, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the University of Central Florida, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center.

Stephen Mihm, Bloomberg Few rituals of the modern workplace evoke more dread than the annual performance review. Like a colonoscopy or root canal, it has been viewed as a necessary evil: deeply unpleasant but indispensable for the health of an organization. These methods of reviewing workers themselves are evaluated and, like so many employees, sometimes found wanting.

Pete Jansons, The Hiring Site Employee engagement can be difficult at any time of year, but summer poses particular challenges in most workplaces. Clockwatching may become the activity of choice at your small business as workers count down the minutes until they can putter around in their gardens or fire up the grill. How can you compete with sunshine? Consider the following low-cost ways to engage your employees.

Switch and Shift Many companies provide perks, because they know happy employees are more productive, loyal employees. But some companies take their benefits to the next level. The best business owners know healthy minds and bodies will keep the company healthy by improving employee motivation. Take a look at what some companies offer their employees plus a few additional perks you should consider adding to your list of benefits.

Chad Brooks, Business News Daily If you're worried that a workplace fundraiser will make your employees feel obligated to donate money they can't afford, think again. New research from Gallup shows that the vast majority of employees who donate money to fundraisers at work do so because they want to, not because they feel they have to.

Lenny Sanicola, World at Work A new longitudinal study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found strong evidence that older workers who retire even one year later have lower mortality rates, holding true for both healthy and unhealthy people.

HR BLR More employers are investing in "total well-being" programs that address areas such as financial and emotional health, according to the 7th annual survey on corporate health and well-being from Fidelity Investments Benefits Consulting and the National Business Group on Health (NBGH). The survey revealed that employers are adding programs that help their workers manage stress, improve their resiliency and assist with their financial challenges.

Patti Neighmond, NPR Stress has long been shown to increase the risk of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and a number of mental health problems. And a recent poll finds that a substantial number of working adults say stress is a critical health issue they face at work. The poll was conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. So what are employers doing about it? Fifty-one percent of the people in our poll said their workplace has a formal wellness or health improvement program.

Rose Stanley, World at Work "Employees’ well-being (meaningful work, purposeful work and a sense of community/interconnectedness) is guaranteed with the introduction of workplace spirituality," according to the 2013 research study "The Impact of Workplace Spirituality and Employees’ Wellbeing at the Industrial Sector: The Nigerian Experience."

Marty Stempniak, Hospitals & Health Networks Feeling burned out is a common complaint from nurses in the field, but what’s less prevalent are tried-and-true solutions to solving this issue. One nurse, in a social media post last week, went so far as to call the problem a Rubik’s Cube. The Critical Care Societies Collaborative, however, is attempting to get to the bottom of this problem and just last week, released a new study in the American Journal of Critical Care detailing some ways to address it.

Caroline Spiezio, Employee Benefit News Employers know that stress in the workplace is a problem. But what they don’t know, according to a recent report from Willis Towers Watson, is where that stress is coming from. The report found that while 75 percent of employers ranked stress as their top health and productivity concern, their picks as top stressors didn’t match those of their employees. Both agreed that inadequate staffing was a top stressor, but other than that, their opinions seemed to diverge.

Donna Marbury, Behavioral Healthcare As the health care landscape moves to patient-centered models, it is imperative that whole-person care — which includes creating strategies for large populations of patients — be an integral part of behavioral health. However, creating population health strategies for the specialty has its challenges.

Sheryl Smolkin, Employee Benefit News An increasing number of organizations already offer, or are considering, mindfulness programs at work. But selecting the right vendor and mode of delivery for programs that aim to reduce stress, anxiety and even depression is critical in order to enhance employee participation and program success.

Take a lunch break with us and join fellow human resources and organizational development professionals in this lively monthly chat about the hottest topics in the field! Sponsored by the Learning & Education Committee of ASHHRA, we meet online the first Thursday of every month from 12:30-1:30 p.m. CT.