Employer Strategies

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has released a new Accounting Standards Update aimed at improving employer disclosures for multiple-employer pension plans.

Predicting an employee’s future success at a company has traditionally stumped experts, and relying on metrics such as IQ level, only tells 25% of the story. What makes up the other 75%, according to Shawn Achor, Harvard researcher and positive psychology expert, is the optimism that your behavior matters, a positive social support system, and whether you view a challenge as a stress or an impetus to improve.

Prepaid card programs are becoming one of the more desired incentive rewards among corporate HR execs, according to a survey from incentive marketing firm Young America. Nearly half (46%) of HR executives use prepaid cards for their incentive/reward programs, compared to 33% who reward with cash and 47% who use checks, according to the survey of 355 executives in HR, sales or marketing departments at U.S.-based companies with motivational or incentive programs in place. …

Amidst all the talk of health benefit costs skyrocketing, there may be good news on the horizon. Early responses to a Mercer survey still in the field suggest that the average growth in health benefit cost will slow to 5.4% in 2012, the smallest increase since 1997. Still, cost growth remains well above both general inflation and growth in workers’ earnings.

Don’t be fooled by Hedda Bolgar Bekker’s peppered hair and grandmotherly stature — she is most definitely not your average 102-year-old. Quite the contrary, Bekker still works 20 hours a week as a psychologist and travels to speak about aging and the workforce.

The Kansas City Collaborative (KC2), a three-year long value based benefit project, succeeded in helping the 15 participating employers share best practices for overcoming health care challenges. Nine of these companies reported that they have saved almost $11 million in direct health care costs by implementing a value-based benefits initiative.

Investment advisor advocates are breathing easier after the Department of Labor announced Monday that it has pulled its current proposal on the definition of a fiduciary off the table. The agency will take up the issue in early 2012 and repropose a fiduciary definition after more industry input. For now, the move provides a reprieve for advisors who were worried that the current proposals would encumber firms with costly restrictions on how they deliver advice to…

Financial planners can prove their worth if they find ways to lessen the chance that their clients will not outlive their retirement funds. David Blanchett, director of consulting and investment research for the Retirement Plan consulting Group of Unified Trust in Lexington, Ky., last week detailed how planners can implement sustainable withdrawal strategies so that retirement income works for their clients.

The Internal Revenue Service has released guidance aimed at clarifying the tax treatment of mobile phones provided by employers to their employees.

All too often, the messages employers intend to convey aren’t the ones employees hear. For companies with a warped communications strategy, a panel of experts offered first-hand advice for becoming an “organizational chiropractor” to straighten out misaligned messaging.