Michael Giardina

As more and more employers analyze their ever-growing pension obligations, Boeing and Hartford Financial Services Group are the latest companies to use the lump-sum payment tactic to limit their liabilities.

After Ray Rice was suspended indefinitely by the National Football League for violating his employer’s personal conduct policy, the issue of domestic violence has garnered much more attention from employers. Along the way, new laws are ensuring that victims are able to take time off work to deal with these issues.

Employers’ inability to provide clear and effective career management tracks may be forcing their more goal-oriented workers – the very employees they need to retain – to jump ship.

Thanks to new cost-of-living adjustments, the Internal Revenue Service is allowing the American workforce to save a bit more in their retirement plans next year.

With more than one-third of U.S. adults being obese, employer-sponsored weight management programs can play an important role in the effort to get Americans to adopt healthier lifestyles.

With mental health and substance abuse disorder services deemed an essential health benefit under the Affordable Care Act, employee assistance program providers are taking on a new role – helping employers and health plans sniff out fraudulent health care activity among substance abuse and mental health treatment facilities.

For employers fighting to maintain grandfathered status, consultants and benefit managers predict the Affordable Care Act’s ongoing implementation will mean the end of these health plan structures in the near future.

With visions of the ACA's Cadillac tax on the 2018 horizon, major employers are already making arrangements to soften the blow and help deal with potential surcharges on employer-sponsored benefits - and working with their unions to control health plan costs.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 has helped to reduce costs and limit liabilities for multiemployer plans. But the landmark legislation will sunset at the end of the year, which has many stakeholders and consultants predicting future retirement uncertainty for the more than 10 million participants in multiemployer plans across the nation.

Given the past high-profile data security breaches at large retailers Target and Home Depot, legal officials maintain there may be more at stake for employers and benefit managers when lapses occur in health care provider systems.

The quality of Form 5500 reporting depends entirely on whether benefit managers and plan fiduciaries select qualified auditors and service providers, says Ian Dingwall, chief accountant for the DOL's Employee Benefits Security Administration, speaking this week during the International Foundation for Employee Benefit Plans' annual conference in Boston.

At Alliance Resource Partners, 4% of the workforce is responsible for roughly 45% of the company's annual health care spend. The coal mining company is implementing new initiatives to better reach workers at remote mine sites.

With the Affordable Care Act’s excise tax just around the corner, some employers may be struggling with how to maintain the quality of their health care benefit plans and still avoid triggering the tax. Some innovative employers are looking at voluntary core benefits to limit health care cost increases.

Randy Hargrove, a Walmart spokesperson, tells EBN that the company's decision to end health coverage for a small portion of its workforce will enable these employees to "decide for themselves what makes the most sense for them."

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s new focus on employer wellness programs has many health and benefit managers scratching their heads on what is acceptable when it comes to voluntary health screenings and incentive rules under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Global information and measurement company Nielsen reveals how implementing a measured communication approach – both on the ground and in the cloud – during open enrollment worked wonders for the company’s internal employee ratings.

With more confusion swirling in the employer 401(k) market – not to mention an American workforce with staggeringly low retirement confidence – advisers and consultants recommend employers play a bigger role as a fiduciary when considering administration fees and investment education.

As the obesity epidemic and overall sedentary lifestyle continue to cripple the American workforce – drastically increasing health care costs – consider the inspirational words of Diana Nyad. The record-holding swimmer, who accomplished a near-impossible swim from Cuba to Key West, Fla., centers on one key message to help jump start the population: "Never, ever give up."

A focus on retirement has been key recently, with a push for younger generations to begin investing into 401(k)s, along with recent calls to Congress to empower savings among employees. Employee Benefit News has remained on top of the coverage and has packaged it for you here.

Since the onset of the recession, there has been a surge in worker misclassification litigation and enforcement against employers that are trying to effectively manage their finances, but are incorrectly classifying their workforces.