Employer Strategies

As the economy picks back up and companies begin to shift focus from maintaining financial stability to cultivating employee growth, performance management will prove to be a key way to enhance employee engagement and job satisfaction.

Half of America’s households (about 58 million) claim to be underinsured when it comes to life insurance, according to a new study from LIMRA. The study, “Trillion Dollar Baby Growing Up,” revealed as much as $17.5 trillion in untapped sales potential for the life insurance market.

A Borders Group Inc unit failed to give its workers proper notice of mass layoffs when it announced plans to liquidate in July, a new lawsuit alleges.

The Internal Revenue Service issued advice on Friday to employers who outsource their payroll duties to third-party service providers.

The U.S. Department of Labor has slightly delayed the deadlines on significant new affirmative obligations for fiduciaries of retirement plans subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. Although the deadlines have been pushed back to April 1, 2012, employers should be preparing now to ensure that they are ready to comply with the new requirements. …

HR/benefits managers looking for new and more effective ways to interact with baby boomer employees should be inspired by a new Pew Research Center report that found social networking participation among this highly coveted group surged more than 60% in the past year.

McKinsey & Co. caused quite a stir not only around the insurance world, but all the way to Washington, when it recently revealed that 30% of employers will "definitely or probably" drop their coverage when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act takes effect in 2014.

If you're looking to build your revenue sources and help your clients introduce or expand their health benefits, voluntary benefit discount programs might be the perfect fit.

In 2012 the rate of medical inflation will continue to rise, PricewaterhouseCoopers reports. Employers are frustrated - not so much by the high cost of the medical as by the apparently intractable upward cost trend that is making benefits plans unsustainable.

The clock is ticking. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges are targeted to come online in 2014, which means open enrollment must begin in the fall of 2013. Every state is determining its approach, and everyone in the industry is strategizing on how to tap into a projected market of 25 million enrollees by 2016. The states will take different approaches, but the common denominator is technology. This month we'll look at how technology will be utilized in exchanges and identify other corresponding services that will be necessary to make the exchanges a success.