Michael Giardina

Motorola Solutions is incorporating a new group annuity and lump sum payment plan into the makeup of its traditional defined benefit plan that will help the communications company shave $4.2 billion in growing liabilities and benefit payments off its balance sheet.

As more and more companies are flooded with administrative duties due to the Affordable Care Act, cloud-based HR and benefits systems such as Zenefits are starting to gain a substantial hold in the employer market.

Despite this past summer’s Supreme Court decision in Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer, which found that fiduciaries of employee stock ownership plans are subject to the same duty of prudence that applies to ERISA fiduciaries in general, companies with ESOPs and stock purchase plans are seeing an increase in plan assets and are using the plans as a retention tool.

This year, New Hampshire became the 18th state to enact laws that promote employee and student privacy when it comes to employer access to personal online account information.

As the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, a consortium of companies that includes consumer staples such as Mars, Inc., Nestle USA, Bumble Bee Foods, General Mills, PepsiCo and the Coca-Cola Company, surpassed its goal of cutting calories from its food and beverage products, employers can also play a vital role in helping to solve nation’s obesity epidemic.

The movement towards eradicating the longstanding discrepancies of pay between male and female workers slowed this week when the the Paycheck Fairness Act failed to foster enough votes to advance.

Despite great strides in retirement security, some lawmakers and benefit leaders see an opportunity to revisit tax policies that could help incentivize all Americans to save more as they plan their exits from the workforce.

While freedom of religious expression has been at the heart of the ACA fight, it can be a more tricky matter when it comes to the EEOC, as highlighted in two recent cases.

A new Senate bill calling for an amendment to a controversial section of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act is expected to save employers and plan sponsors $15 million over the next decade, according to new estimates.

As the dust clears on the recession, and the job market picks up, employers are re-examining their compensation and bonus pay structures.

For U.S.-based multinational companies, administering and communicating benefit plans in multiple countries – each with its own regulatory regime and unique workplace culture – is no simple task.

Wellness vendors are excited about Apple’s potential foray into smartwatches. Today, the Cupertino, Calif.-based technology company is expected to announce its next generation of the iPhone. But for those in the employer health care market, their sights are set on the reported “iWatch” because of its potential use as a wearable fitness and health tracking device.

Diana Andersen’s efforts to educate employees made the Affordable Care Act a ‘nonevent’ for Zions Bancorporation. Andersen is EBN’s 2014 Benny Award winner for Benefits Leadership in Health Care.

Ever since final rules under the Affordable Care Act dictated that outcomes-based wellness programs must offer reasonable alternatives to employees unable to achieve the program’s health benchmarks, employers have continued to worry over the effectiveness of their health improvement efforts.

HR professionals in the nonprofit sector are becoming increasingly more important to their organization’s operations, even if their relative growth in numbers has remained flat since the recession.

Earlier this week, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed a new law that is intended to prevent workplace discrimination against pregnant women by offering guidance on reasonable accommodation measures that all employers in the state are expected to follow.

With increased CFO involvement in health care and benefit decision-making, benefit managers are under more scrutiny than ever before to ensure they efficiently manage their health and benefits vendor relationships.

In anticipation of the Affordable Care Act’s excise tax, U.S. employers are planning to take more aggressive approaches to projected single-digit increases in health care costs by revisiting the viability of consumer-driven health plans and spousal and dependent coverage.

In this series, EBN profiles three companies with winning wellness programs. The University of Michigan shares how its network of 400 wellness champions is key to the program’s success.

While American employees appreciate having a 401(k) plan, the majority will likely spend more time planning for a new car purchase or vacation than researching their plan’s investment options.