If you’re in the wellness world (promoting it within your company, offering products or services to others, or simply interested for personal reasons), read on. If you’re not, maybe you should be so read on anyway.

There is a wellness trifecta going on at the Indiana Chamber — and we want you to be able to take advantage of the opportunities.

• As announced earlier, the Wellness Council of Indiana became part of the Chamber at the beginning of this year. Chuck Gillespie (cgillespie@indianachamber.com) is the executive director and he’s working with many of the longtime volunteer board members to expand wellness programming, benefits and certifications throughout the state. Chuck can fill you in on the details.
• The Chamber’s BizVoice magazine has been publishing wellness columns and roundtable discussions for more than five years. The upcoming July-August issue will be largely dedicated to wellness stories, programs and initiatives from throughout the state. You won’t want to miss it; and if you’re one of those in the wellness business, it’s a great way to advertise your wares. Jim Wagner (jwagner@indianachamber.com) will help you take care of that.
• Finally, the Chamber is partnering once again to produce the 2011 Employee Health and Wellness Summit. It’s September 27 at the new JW Marriott in downtown Indianapolis. Agenda details are still to come; sponsorhip opportunities are another great way to get the word out. Jim Wagner will help you in that area also.

As Gillespie often writes, says, who knows maybe sings at times: "It’s good to be well!"

That was the result of a recent survey, conducted by Indianapolis-based HR Dimensions. The company asked human resource professionals from across the state to identify their top three concerns in human resources for 2011.

Leadership development was the overwhelming highest priority with 77% of respondents signifying it was their No. 1 concern. Second on the list was compensation/reward management at 49%, followed by recruiting at 46% and team building at 42%.

“We were not surprised by the top concern. Enlightened organizations have been investing in leadership development and coaching quite heavily during this economic downturn. They tell us that they feel the need to invest in the development of their ‘high potentials’ in order to retain them and to carry their organizations through and out of the difficult climate,” says Mark McNulty, president of HR Dimensions.

However, McNulty notes the additional results show that “it apparently reflects that companies feel they can no longer afford to freeze pay and that as the economy grows, they will need to react quickly to changing conditions.”

One way for companies and human resources personnel to invest is to take part in various seminars and webinars offered by the Chamber. Upcoming webinars for HR pros include Linking Learning and Development with Organizational Strategy on October 20 and, a week later, Social Media and HR Implications. View a complete list of conferences and seminars.

The Chamber also offers a number of HR-related publications. 

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) – also known as “health care reform” – sets forth a number of coverage reforms that apply to group health plans, beginning January 1, 2011, for calendar year plans. "Grandfathered" group health plans are exempt from many – but not all – of these coverage mandates. The regulatory agencies have now issued several significant pieces of guidance relating to these early coverage mandates, including what changes to a group health plan will result in loss of grandfathered status. Employers, therefore, have available to them most of the information they need to make plan design decisions for the upcoming plan year and to ensure timely compliance with the PPACA mandates.

Topics to be addressed include:

• What plans are subject to PPACA coverage mandates
• The significance of being "grandfathered"
• What should employers be doing now to comply
• Tips on handling open enrollment and employee communications
• Penalties individuals and employers face in the future
• Impact on health care providers

See conference details and register here.

You see, Swisher was the Chamber’s 2009 Business Leader of the Year. I had the pleasure of helping to tell his story — from the small shed that served as an office and borrowed money from family in 1956 to the company being one of the national leaders in animal nutrition today with partnerships that span the globe.

But to truly understand the Swisher story, read the BizVoice magazine story and watch his video. In addition, the then 80-year-old Swisher wowed the Annual Dinner crowd with a stirring acceptance speech.

The 2010 Annual Awards Dinner, with Tom Brokaw (featured in this current BizVoice article) the keynote speaker. You’ll have to show up on November 9 to find out about this year’s winners.

Why are the initiatives not effective in some cases?

• Not customizing the program to your workplace culture
• A lack of commitment from senior leadership
• Ineffective communication about elements of the wellness effort

The research is here; part of the solution can come from attending the Indiana Employee Health and Wellness Summit on September 1 at the Indianapolis Marriott East.

Gov. Mitch Daniels will be there to provide a dynamic opening; state and national experts will deliver keynote and luncheon addresses; and different education tracks will help show you how to successfully implement and improve your wellness programs. The bottom line: enhance your employees’ health and your organization’s bottom line.

Check out the details. A small investment could pay big dividends.

Here are highlights from the Indiana Chamber’s 2010 Best Places to Work Awards Dinner in May. Be sure to get your company involved in the process for the 2011 festivities.

Doesn’t it make sense that we should all feel pretty good about ourselves? After all, we’ve acquired so much of what we’ve always desired:  spouses, kids, careers, friends, homes, cars, education, electronics, shoes galore, and microwave ovens with innards that twirl around and around.     

It’s scary almost, how well we’re doing, even when you factor in economic frazzles and the volatility in so many sectors of our lives. So of course, things aren’t exactly perfect, but we never counted on perfect. We did somehow expect, though, that we’d feel a little better about things. Instead, around midlife (your mileage may vary), almost without fail, burnout sets in. Maybe severely, maybe mildly. The blahs. Stagnation. Just at the point in life when we should feel proud and accomplished and something approaching happy, we begin to feel … flat.

There’s no mystery why the haunting song “Is That All There Is?” was a hit. It oozed ennui, that corrosive disillusionment so many adults experience. We feel it, most of us, but we try to deny it. And our culture offers up lots of ways to tamp it down, things that are quite contrary to Julia Child’s proper binge noted above.  “Improper binges” could include drink, drug, demon chocolate, antidepressants, shopping for more shoes, or buying microwaves that are even fancier in their ability to spin the food around yet still leave cold spots in it.

No, the problem isn’t that things aren’t perfect.The problem is that we’ve lost our ability to be seduced by the world. Children are enthralled by everything, because it’s all new. As adults, though, we believe we’ve been there, been everywhere; done that, done everything; bought the T-shirt, bought the iPod. We’ve become blasé. We’ve started to flatline. And we don’t know how to fix it.

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Ingrid Cummings, founder of Rubicon Communications LLC in Zionsville and author of The Vigorous Mind, is the keynote speaker at the Indiana Chamber’s 46th Annual HR Conference & Expo, May 5-6, 2010. Click here to register or for more info.

We’ll recap just a few of my takeaways from that, with several of the subjects from that discussion undoubtedly returning during this Energy Week on the blog. We will feature a daily guest blog or other insight focused on Indiana energy developments. Consider the following:

• Indiana is home to two of the biggest energy investments you will find anywhere: $4-billion plus being spent by BP in updating its Whiting Refinery to be able to better process heavy crude oil from Canada; and construction of Duke Energy’s $2.3 billion coal gasification plant in Edwardsport. For those who want coal to disappear, it’s not going to happen. This is the next generation of technology being implemented for the first time on a broad scale that will guide the use of abundant coal reserves.
• There are 616 wind turbines (the number could seemingly change any day) towering in the Indiana skyline. More projects are being proposed and studied — and that’s a good thing. But supporters need to remain realistic as wind will not replace (but supplement) more traditional power sources. After all, if the wind is not blowing, it’s lights out — so to speak.
• Indiana’s success in wind and ethanol production is due to incentives (both state and federal), not mandates. Other states have opted for the renewable standards that require a certain percentage of power to be generated by various alternative sources. For Hoosiers, the preferred method is innovation — discovering new sources for ethanol, rewarding entrepreneurs, emphasizing efficiency and utlizing technology to make better use of existing resources.

Again, there is so much more that was discussed last week and continues to be part of the energy mix. Bottom line: Indiana makes things, it always will make things and reliable, low-cost energy is needed to make that happen.

And, if you want to supplement information with education, check out the Chamber’s popular Indiana Conference on Energy and Environmental Management. It’s June 15 at the Hyatt Regency Indianapolis. 

And broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw, also rejected as a teenager by Harvard, says it was one of a series of setbacks that eventually led him to settle down, stop partying and commit to finishing college and working in broadcast journalism. “The initial stumble was critical in getting me launched,” he says.

Indiana Chamber members and customers also can “get something (always of high quality) for nothing,” so to speak, when it comes to employee training. The Chamber is partnering with Ready Indiana to provide scholarships (while funding lasts) to Hoosier businesses with 250 employees or less for several top-quality professional training seminars. Awardees receive a full seminar registration (which includes instruction, course materials, continental breakfast and lunch).

Scholarships are available for the following:

• Supervising and Managing People
• 46th Annual Human Resources Conference
• 2010 Indiana Safety and Health Conference & Expo
• Time Management and Personal Effectiveness
• Forklift Safety: Train the Trainer
• Take advantage of this opportunity to boost your employees’ workplace skills – all without spending a dime.

Contact Lisa Green at (800) 824-6885 with questions. View the application for complete course listings and dates.