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Worksite voluntary benefits as we know them are dead. Driven largely by the spiraling cost increases in group health insurance, over the past decade or so employers have been shifting benefit costs to employees.

The cover story of this month's issue of Employee Benefit Adviser provides insight into how brokers can make innovative use of social software in their practices. Understanding the use of social software technology in the workplace is complicated because it is a broad and evolving category and the vendors competing in this space are coming from different perspectives and areas of expertise.

January's cover story made a very important point - if you are a long-time adviser, give something back. Give back to your industry organizations. Give back to the new people entering the profession. The need for professionalism and expertise in our field has never been more important than right now.

In the next several columns I will be putting on my benefit sales trainer hat, with a series of columns called, "If you want to sell, do this." These will be detailed selling techniques that producers in my firm's FutureOffice Network use every day with great success.

It's now February - the perfect time to take stock of where you are and where you are going.

To say that the industry's segmentation and understanding of defined contribution plan advisers is crude would be quite an understatement. At the grossest level, the industry looks at whether advisers are commissioned or fee-based and whether they serve the small-plan market or the large-plan market.

Every year brings something new in this business, but the changes you'll see this year - and the ones you'll be anticipating - could be dramatic. That's thanks to a bevy of new regulations, some final and some still in the proposal stage, from the Department of Labor.

These are busy times at the Marsh & McLennan Agency. Last month, MMA announced that it had acquired Strategic Benefit Solutions, a $4 million benefits brokerage and consulting firm based in Alpharetta, Ga., and RJF Agencies, one of the largest independent agencies in the upper Midwest. Those steps followed closely on the heels of MMA's acquisition of Pennsylvania-based Trion Group in December 2010.

One of the hottest games on Facebook is Cafe World. More than 22 million participants play to run their own virtual restaurant. In the game, a "buzz rating" indicates customers' satisfaction with the virtual restaurant. The goal: to create and maintain a high buzz rating.

Today, more and more advisers and their clients are looking to an employee assistance program as a source of health and wellness benefits.