Benefits Think

In real estate, it’s all about location, location, location. In benefits, it’s all about communication, communication, communication.

I woke up this morning, shaking with excitement—and not just because of the random earthquake that rumbled through the Md.-D.C. area. It’s because today I get to announce the winners of the 2010 Benny Awards.

The latest Issue Brief from the Employee Benefit Research Institute offers good news and bad news. The good news: We’re all living longer! The bad news: We’ll all run out of retirement savings long before we die.

Like Santa, I imagine you’ll be making a list and checking it twice (20 times?) to make sure you have all your talking points in order so you can communicate effectively to employees how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will affect their benefits enrollment options.

According to the Treasury Department, employers have added some 4.5 million workers since the HIRE Act — which lets employers off the hook from 6.2% Social Security taxes if they hire people who have been unemployed for at least 60 days — was implemented in March.

First, Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt walked off into the sunset, becoming Towers Watson. Now, there’s the news that Aon and Hewitt are becoming a mash-up as well, to be named Aon Hewitt.

I don’t know about you, but all of these studies that show how disengaged people are in their jobs is making me a little depressed.

Clearly, employees love Twitter and Facebook — stats from both social media sites show the number of registered users is growing by the thousands every month. And, employees say they want more benefits communication.

For any employers leaning toward letting workers shop for health coverage in state-run exchanges come 2014, there’s encouraging news from a recent survey from Extend Health.

It’s gotta be tough to lead a major health insurance carrier (except for the high salary, of course). Insurance companies generally are vilified by the mainstream press, disliked by consumers and now there’s news that employers don’t like them much either.