Kathleen Koster

Executive leadership must relate to employees and communicate clearly how each person contributes to company success

Employers have experienced dramatic increases in engagement by tapping into employees' innate competitive and social drives. By using social challenges to entice employee interest in wellness initiatives, employers not only build participation, they are more likely to inspire long-term behavior changes.

After spending years studying what separates good companies from great ones, author and researcher Jim Collins — knowing that great companies have great leaders — believes he’s isolated the formula that yields superior corporate leadership, and shared it Tuesday with the keynote audience at SHRM’s annual conference in Atlanta.

“The current generation has stumbled on an incredibly powerful and important model for changing the world and the workplace: the network.”

Building a culture of health at any organization can be challenging, but doing so reaps valuable rewards in curbing health care costs and engaging employees in making healthy decisions. In a recent webinar series sponsored by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, the health director from Dow Chemical and the compensation and benefits manager at Pinellas County, Fla., shared the building blocks for creating a culture of health - and how employers in both the public and private sector can find the reasons and resources needed to make such an effort successful.

This article is the third and final in EBN's annual Open Enrollment Boot Camp series, designed to strengthen benefits practitioners with different strategies to employ during this year's enrollment season. Earlier this month, the series examined the advantages of maintaining financial, legal and physical wellness programs as a single component. The article, "Under one umbrella," as well as the first installment from EBN May, "Breaking down the wall," which outlined strategies for employers to use in increasing employee engagement and participation in retirement plans and financial planning, is available at ebn.benefitnews.com.

Jack in the Box, a fast-food chain restaurant, rewards employees for taking biometric screenings, which they can conduct from their home or a lab. When the company implemented BioIQ’s program, flexibility was key for an employee population that is spread across the United States, so that they could easily understand their health data and be motivated to improve.

Employers need to be aware of the significant paradigm shift in how generations of workers prefer to digest their benefits information. Young employees entering the workplace "are people who grew up playing Sims," says Sybll Romley, a Colorado-based independent consultant and HRIS professional. "They want that interactive real-life example, and they want it to be more like a game."

Even as the Middle East has become a major business and tourist hub, U.S. companies that send executives to the area or hire local workers still express dissatisfaction with the insurance markets.

Apple transitioning to ETF-only retirement plan; given the company's influence and scope, and ETFs' low fees and favorable track record regarding returns, other retirement plan sponsors may be tempted follow the tech giant's lead - if they can overcome obstacles from lagging administrative and technological supports.

Over time, Chrysler LLC delivered a 2.6 to 1 return on investment for its wellness programs by engaging employees, offering company resources to those with high risk factors and rewarding healthy behaviors with premium incentives. Notably, the programs are completely voluntary.

Delivering quality health care benefits to an employee population has only become more complicated due to legislative policy and escalating claims costs - making consumer education and empowerment all the more important in containing cost increases.

As Americans live more of their lives online, perhaps it only makes sense that online recognition has taken off in the corporate context.

Over time, Chrysler LLC delivered a 2.6 to 1 return on investment for its wellness programs by engaging employees, revealing company resources to those with high risk factors and rewarding healthy behaviors with premium incentives. Notably, the programs are completely voluntary.

Face it: Your employees are distracted. According to IDC Research, 30% to 40% of employee Internet activity is non-work-related, and SexTracker reports that 70% of all Internet porn traffic occurs during the 9-to-5 workday. Such workplace Internet misuse costs U.S. companies $63 billion in lost productivity annually, according to Websense Inc.

The American Medical Association estimates that every year, $73 billion is lost in unnecessary health care expenditures due to poor "health literacy," the inability of consumers and employees to obtain and understand health care education.

As more U.S. employers hire international workers or extend their organization into foreign locations, benefits and tax issues have grown increasingly complicated when managing international assignees. Further complexity arises depending on the type of employee or independent contractor. U.S. multinationals have begun to fill more key positions with talent in other nations or third-country nationals, who work a position in a foreign country from the U.S., but are not from the U.S. or that foreign country, rather than implanting American expats to international positions.

Building a culture of health at any organization can be challenging, but developing a supportive workplace not only stunts escalating health care costs, positive tactics engage employees and guide them to make healthy decisions. A health director from Dow Chemical shared how leadership buy-in and individual accountability thrust her company toward a healthy culture.

Two years after President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, the U.S. Supreme Court this month will hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of the individual mandate that requires all individuals who can afford it to buy health insurance. The Court will also determine whether the Medicaid expansion is constitutional, which may affect employers with retiree health care plans. The majority of employers, however, are attuned to the Court's decision on the individual mandate and how much of the law will survive if that provision is found unconstitutional. Whatever the Supreme Court ultimately decides in U.S. Department of Health and Human Services v. Florida, here EBA outlines each potential ruling concerning the constitutionality of the individual mandate and how it affects plan sponsors and advisers alike.

Employers likely would have better luck predicting winning lottery numbers than how the Supreme Court will rule this summer on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's individual mandate. So many benefits practitioners, like Karrie Andes, SPHR, senior benefits manager for Kansas City-based virtual meeting provider PGi, have decided simply not to try to read the legal tea leaves. Rather, Andes and her team - while keeping a close eye on the legal challenges that mounted since the law's passage two years ago, and this month's oral arguments before the Supreme Court - opted for a business-as-usual approach to make sure PGi's health plans first and foremost continued "protecting associates and dependents on our health plan and also helping competitively with attracting talent," Andes says.