The Real-Life Impact of HR

Looking for a life-impacting role for HR? Explore the opportunity you can use to save lives and life styles. I am talking about the life skills and balancing of life decisions of both your employees and their spouses.

My mom’s cousin lost her husband in the last year.  In her grief and lack of education, she ignored the opportunity to keep her insurance and other benefits going.  She has now had a stroke and may need brain surgery.  I don’t want to go into the healthcare debate; I want you to think about the people and the impact a little education and/or policy changes could make.

What if her insurance and benefits could have continued automatically, paid out of her survivor benefits?  This could at least have happened for a reasonable “grief” period, when there are so many decisions to make.

Let’s go beyond insurance and jump to life skills discussion.  Want to increase family engagement? What about addressing the often ignored factors of estate planning and organizational skills?  85% of households have one spouse solely responsible for bills and paperwork. How can you help employees and their spouses, regardless of which one is the household operator, understand the critical necessity of cross training or at least strong organization of these processes.  It can be touchy, but in many cases, it would be very welcome to have tools and discussion facilitated.

This issue is gender and socio-economically diverse.  Think about it.  Think about your mom, dad, sister, brother, grandparent, spouse.  Who is going to be impacted by a tragedy compounded by complexity of new skill requirements, or financial messes that have never been shared?

You can make a difference.

Photo Credit

Lois Melbourne, GPHR, is co-founder and former CEO of Aquire Solutions, mom to one terrific young son and wife of co-founder Ross Melbourne. After entering a bit of a sabbatical life phase, she is authoring a series of children’s books about career ambitions.  She maintains a strong personal commitment to career education and small business development and is a speaker, author of industry articles, and an occasional blogger and networker. Connect with her on Twitter as @loismelbourne.