Practice management

Even with a four-year high in the hiring, manufacturing and service sectors, benefits managers are utilizing higher pay and improved benefits to deal with their ongoing recruitment challenges.

The IRS’ new draft forms for employer reporting on health care coverage unveils a glimpse of the administrative onus in store for benefit advisers and their employer clients working to comply with the Affordable Care Act.

While the logistics of health care growing increasingly complex, benefit advisers could and should play a crucial role in helping employers and employees understand the new health care delivery system.

In a landmark challenge to traditional labor law, the National Labor Relations Board is attempting to lump together McDonald’s and its independent franchises as joint employer, which leaves many questions on what this could mean for other collective benefit plan structures.

Technical glitches and data-management challenges have dominated HIX headlines at both the state and federal level, with the latest news showing how even the most widely regarded and most vilified state-run operations now share this common thread.

Benefit advisers hoping to stay ahead of the trend of employers transferring some of the burden of increased health care costs to their employees, should be prepared to discuss a variety of new and old cost-sharing strategies, as well as additional cost-saving tools.

Private exchanges are a complex tool in a complex market, but they continue to evolve as employers switch to them, and brokers learn to work with them. Panelists discussed where they will go next during at opening keynote Tuesday at EBA’s Workplace Benefits Mania.

Minimum-wage activists seized on a decision against McDonald’s by the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel Tuesday, saying the move may make it easier to unionize workers and ultimately raise wages.

Accountable care organizations promise better alignment of health care provider incentives and patient outcomes. Can ACOs revolutionize employer-sponsored health care?

Hiring and fast turnover are on the rise in offices around the world, including in the U.S., and experts say employers need to look at what it is their employees value most if they want to retain their current talent.