Employer Strategies

Even under the best employment conditions, hiring the wrong employee can drag down a company's bottom line and dampen workforce productivity and morale. However, the national skills gap and ongoing economic concerns make finding the right candidate crucial the first time around.

"The current generation has stumbled on an incredibly powerful and important model for changing the world and the workplace: the network."

Half of all workers who receive paid vacation time in the nation’s top 10 largest cities would be willing to sacrifice a workplace benefit in exchange for more paid time off. However, despite their desire for more free time, most employees don’t even use the vacation time they already receive.

Sedentary office workers, including busy HR practitioners, may want to stand up to absorb some provocative news published in the online medical journal BMJ Open: Most Americans could live two years longer on average if they’d spend less than three hours a day sitting.

Target-date funds pulled in $13.9 billion in the second quarter despite the nearly 3% loss on average, according to Morningstar.

The Obama administration on Friday said it is on track to set up federal health insurance exchanges by 2014 in U.S. states that fail to establish their own regulated insurance markets as required by the U.S. health care reform law.

United Continental Holdings Inc’s quarterly profit slid 37%, hit by higher fuel bills and labor costs from its messy and long merger of United and Continental airlines.

Most employees don’t think they should be required to participate in wellness programs to qualify for employer-provided health insurance, according to a new survey released by the National Business Group on Health. Moreover, they don’t think employers should charge employees more for health coverage if they don’t meet specific health goals.

Should employers be worried about workplace productivity during the Olympics?

As employers brace for significant changes in pension law, they will need to review their impact on minimum-funding contributions, PBGC premiums and current funding-based benefit restrictions, as well as employee communications and funding and investment strategies.