Benefits Think

Even if you’re a hot-head outside the office, I’d imagine you and most other benefits professionals would opt for a peaceful solution to workplace disputes — if only to avoid litigation, which as we all know can be as costly as it is contentious. In the spirit of peace, two new items from EBN tout the value of arbitration and mediation in resolving workplace disputes.

If you truly want to make employee wellness a strategic priority, you can leverage your talent management programs to support it. Guess blogger Sean Conrad of Halogen Software offers some of the practical ways your talent management programs can help.

Going into the Memorial Day weekend, before hundreds of you head out into the sun for beaches and backyard barbeques, the National Council on Skin Cancer Prevention wants you to know that today is Don’t Fry Day. Get it? Friday … Don’t Fry Day. Forgiving the kinda cheesy name, NCSCP’s motives are sound in trying to encourage sun safety awareness by reminding everyone to protect their skin while enjoying the outdoors this holiday weekend and every day. …

Restricting an employee’s activity while on leave is okay, a federal court ruled recently, stating that an employer may enforce work rules that require employees to "remain in the immediate vicinity" of their home while on sick leave.

New research from Aon Hewitt reveals that slightly more than three-quarters (75.8%) of eligible employees participated in their company’s defined contribution retirement plan last year, up from 73.7% in 2009 and 67.2% in 2005, driven largely by auto-enrollment. Great news? Maybe, maybe not.

It’s not too surprising to learn that a larger group of workers plan to not retire at all, as Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies recently revealed in a new poll. However, what made me do a double take is that Transamerica officials view employees’ non-retiring retirement strategy as a bad thing.

In our winner-take-all culture, we rank, rate and score everything. So, in that vein, along comes the Institutional Retirement Income Council with a scorecard on how plan sponsors can evaluate the suitability of annuities as an investment option within an employer-sponsored defined contribution retirement plan.

Humans being humans, even when working within the Voluntary Correction Program to correct plan mistakes, plan sponsors naturally … make mistakes. So, the IRS recently released a tip sheet to help plan sponsors avoid common errors in VCP submissions.

I'm happy to introduce to you EBN's newest staff member: Associate Editor Brian Kalish. He brings you today's post about a new DOL iPhone app that allows employees to track their own hours. Sound like a nightmare waiting to happen? Some attorneys agree. Keep reading, share your thoughts in the comments and send Brian an email to welcome him (or pitch him a story!). You can reach him at brian.kalish@sourcemedia.com.

As if the health care reform law in the United States wasn’t enough for HR/benefits pros to worry about, now new analysis from Mercer concludes that multinational employers will need to keep close watch over international benefits due to health care reform in foreign countries.