Employer Strategies

Enlist your broker as a partner toe help you stay on top of health care reform rules and regulations, writes Contributing Editor Laurie Miller.

Employee engagement has risen in the past year, according to Temkin Group research, and those companies with highly engaged employees are reaping personnel and profit rewards.

Behavioral psychology plays a key role in crafting meaningful and effective employee recognition programs.

A recent study finds wide variety between the lowest and highest charges for 10 common conditions, highlighting the unpredictability of health care costs.

Only 6% of those surveyed by Aon Hewitt plan to exit employer-sponsored health care entirely, but around 28% are eyeing the next three to five years for a move to a private health care exchange.

A glass-half-full crowd of benefits brokers and agents – that could be the theme of this year’s National Association of Health Underwriters Capitol Conference. The organization concluded its three day lobbying stint Wednesday with a morning of discussion panels on health reform, remarks from a Republican congresswoman, a talk with a representative from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and an address from NAHU’s president.

Buck Consultants announced this week that it would be starting a private health care exchange while Liazon unveiled a new web partnership to support its own.

MetLife polled hundreds of human resource and benefits professionals about legal services in a voluntary package, and the top reason given among those who make the offering is improving employee satisfaction (69%).

Many employer plan sponsors are expressing a high level of interest in adding Roth 401(k) in-plan conversions as an option to their 401(k) plans in 2013. The recently passed Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 made it possible for retirement plan participants to convert existing 401(k) plan balances to Roth 401(k) balances, whether or not the participant is distribution eligible.

Lawmakers, nonprofit groups address gathering of benefit advisers to discuss brokers’ role in health care reform.