Employer Strategies

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.

Premiums for health plans purchased on the Affordable Care Act’s Small Business Health Options Program exchanges were slightly cheaper than plans only offered elsewhere, a recent study found, but advisers say the study misses the big picture.

The Employer Measures of Productivity, Absence and Quality program, originally launched in 2001, is getting a new life after a two-year pause thanks to the National Business Group on Health’s partnership with Truven Health Analytics.

The American Benefits Council has introduced its strategic plans for health and retirement policy, providing 46 specific regulatory recommendations for Congress to consider in easing the burdens on employees, employers and government agencies.

Commentary: Despite perceived cost savings, most narrow networks have actually missed the opportunity to improve value — and their lack of transparency threatens to unleash a ferocious consumer backlash, says Dartmouth's Scott Wallace.

Many employers are "taking necessary steps to rein in costs," the National Business Group on Health says, but a new Mercer survey shows plenty remain on auto-pilot.

Employers are making changes to reshape their health benefit plans between now and 2017 in order to reduce costs, according to Towers Watson’s 2014 Health Care Changes Ahead Survey. In particular, employers pointed to three specific factors that will help frame employer-sponsored benefits.

  Walgreen Co.’s director of health, benefits and wellbeing knew his company, like most in the U.S., was on an unsustainable path of increasing health care costs combined with employees who didn’t focus on their wellbeing. But when the company’s senior directors started thinking about moving employee health care offerings to a private exchange, he was adamantly against it. …

The IRS has released long-awaited final regulations that clarify market rate of return issues for cash balance and other hybrid plans. The new rules, effective for the first plan year that begins on or after Jan. 1 2016, sponsors of hybrid plans a clearer path forward.