Employer Strategies

Employees who feel valued at work are more likely to report better physical and mental health, as well as higher levels of engagement, satisfaction and motivation, according to a survey by the American Psychological Association.

Each January, the IRS updates several revenue procedures that prescribe the process for requesting determination letters for qualified retirement plans. For the most part, these have changed very little from one year to the next, except for increases in user fees charged. This year, the IRS made significant changes, which purportedly are intended to improve its efficiency. To understand why the new guidance involves both good news and bad news for plan sponsors necessitates a…

AMR Corp, the bankrupt parent of American Airlines, on Wednesday proposed a plan to freeze pensions covering many of its workers, retreating from an earlier proposal to terminate them and leave them to government insurers, which could result in lower payouts.

Health-related applications are among the top three apps employees are most interested in using on their smartphones or tablets. Weather-related apps came in at No. 1, cited by 53.6% of respondents, followed by music (52.9%) and health-related (51.2%).

Although the rate of health care cost increases is expected to remain stable in 2012, employers are taking more aggressive steps to manage their rising costs and improve employee health, according to findings from the 2012 Towers Watson/National Business Group on Health Employer Survey on Purchasing Value in Health Care. The survey was completed by 512 employers who work at companies with at least 1,000 employees and collectively employ 9.1 million full-time employees, and represent more than $87 billion in annual health care spending.

Fortune Magazine’s list of the 50 Most Admired Companies only includes one insurer, Berkshire Hathaway, at No. 7. However, the news outlet ranked insurers separately in their own categories: “Property and Casualty,” “Life and Health” and “Health Care: Insurance and Managed Care.”

On Tuesday, HR/benefits practitioners got some free legal advice regarding their specific obligations under new Department of Labor 401(k) fee disclosure rules, which go into effect next month.

The odds of being single at some point during retirement are high and present unique challenges for both “ever single” retirees who never married and for those who become “suddenly single” in retirement due to divorce or death of a spouse. In fact, 43% of Americans age 65 and older are single due to divorce, having never married, or the death of a partner.

Many small business owners are unprepared for retirement, with a third of the women and a quarter of the men in a new survey having no estimate of how much they will need when they retire.

Almost half of men and 46% of women who purchased individual critical illness insurance policies in 2011 were younger than age 45, according to a recent survey.