Category: News

Commentary: The 401(k) space is in the infancy of a complete overhaul. With employees fighting back and winning against high fees and a new fiduciary standard on the way, we’re on the cusp of some radical changes to the corporate retirement landscape. This movement started about five years ago. A July 2010 study by Transamerica found […]

Commentary: Temporary agency workers, leased workers, and independent contractors provide organizations with flexibility, but they can also create unknown risks for employers. Companies using contract and other types of temporary workers may not consider these personnel to be employees, but the law might disagree. Organizations hiring agency workers, leased workers, or independent contractors could be […]

The number of employers offering health savings accounts is on the rise, but employees remain confused by them, highlighting a need for more consumer education from benefit professionals and advisers. Tax advantages and cost savings are two reasons employers are increasingly adding HSAs to their health benefit offerings, according to Steve Neeleman, founder and vice […]

Last December, I confidently announced to my consulting team that after four long years, preparation for the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility was officially over! All that was left was the small matter of ensuring that our clients subject to ACA shared responsibility were prepared to file the new IRS Forms 1094-C and 1095-C […]

With the cost of pharmaceuticals consuming an ever-increasing proportion of health benefit expenditures, many employers are responding by adding pricing tiers to their drug plan designs. The move is being driven partly by the exorbitant cost and increasing utilization of specialty drugs. “A few years ago pharma claims were around 10% of the claim total, […]

Two independent studies of the financial burdens Americans bear for parents, adult children, and the hope to help their kids finance higher education rveal wide-ranging realities that challenge the imperative to adequately save for retirement. One TD Ameritrade report shows that more than one in five Americans provides ongoing financial support for a parent or an […]

Good news for workers can sometimes mean bad news for businesses. With the unemployment rate down to 5.3 percent, many U.S. companies say they’re having hard time attracting qualified employees. A survey of human resource professionals conducted by PI Worldwide, a consulting firm, showed widespread concerns among businesses of all sizes over finding quality applicants to […]

Smiling in business is as important as getting paid, maybe even more so. If you have bad oral health, you may end up not only broke, but even sick or dead. Many Americans don’t see the dentist unless something is wrong, and 56 percent of those without dental insurance skip preventive treatment altogether. Their reasons […]

Recognizing employee accomplishments is one of the best ways to motivate and maintain a loyal employee base. A recent 10-year global study shows just barely half (51%) of the more than 2.5 million employees surveyed feel appreciated. Further, a Forbes Magazine report indicates 87% of employee recognition programs are based solely on tenure instead of […]

Managers of California’s state-based public health insurance exchange, Covered California, will be letting a unit of UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE:UNH) compete in five of the lower-population pricing regions in the state in 2016. Covered California managers have also given an affiliate of Oscar, a high-profile New York insurer that tries to “make health insurance suck […]