Benefits Think

Just like I don’t understand people who place sensitivity over salary when it comes to choosing an employer, it’s a mystery to me why anyone would work during a vacation. When I go away on vacation from work, I do just that. I go away. No answering calls, no checking voicemails and if you get an email from me other than my out-of-office reply, it’s either a dire emergency or my inbox has been hacked. …

News today from the Congressional Management Foundation and Society for Human Resource Management reveals that the two organizations next week will launch a new joint research project to better understand the working environment on Capitol Hill — specifically to examine how randomly selected members of Congress juggle their work and home lives and assess congressional staffers’ satisfaction with their workplace.

McKinsey & Co. caused quite a stir not only around the insurance world, when it recently revealed that 30% of employers will “definitely or probably” drop their coverage when PPACA takes effect in 2014. While the exact percentage of employers keeping or dropping their coverage in three years remains to be seen, voluntary programs will be valuable to employers and employees alike in either situation.

Waitress Edna and blogger Mike Loncono’s father, a car salesman, had one thing in common — they were plugged in at any task level or job description. Are you?

Recently, I came across a news item from U.S. News & World Report that, based on research from the Society for Human Resource Management, detailed 21 workplace benefits that are rapidly disappearing from view—for a variety of reasons.

Although generally a highly rated and highly valued benefit, one of the most irksome realities of flexible spending accounts is that account holders must drain the funds at the end of every plan year or lose them altogether. However, a bipartisan Senate proposal aims to end the FSA “use it or lose it” rule.

President Ronald Reagan was famously known as the “Great Communicator.” In a commentary for the New York Daily News to mark what would have been Reagan’s 100th birthday, Fred Thompson said Reagan’s reputation as The Great Communicator “boils down to three basic traits: he was simple; he was clear; he was sincere.” …

While lawmakers on both sides of the aisle mostly are teeing off on the "Gang of Six" debt reduction plan’s entitlement cuts and tax hikes, Brian H. Graff, executive director and CEO of The American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries, takes issue with the proposal’s cuts to tax deductions for retirement savers.

All this time, I thought it was just retirement plan participants who didn’t understand the fees they were paying. Turns out, according to a recent Spectrem Group study, plan sponsors don’t understand plan fees all that well either.

I hate keeping secrets, especially if they involve good news. I always feel like I’m full to bursting from not only the joy but the added pressure of secrecy. So, I’m extra happy to finally burst with the news of announcing the 2011 Benny Award winners.