Employer Strategies

Employment attorney Jonathan Segal told attendees at yesterday’s SHRM legislative event that benefits pros need to show employees their softer, more human side. “Don’t treat employees as plaintiffs waiting to happen,” he said.

Advisers are familiar with the general challenge of getting people to take advantage of sound financial advice and do more to achieve retirement goals. A recent survey by PNC Financial Services Group quantifies that challenge, and points to some ways to overcome it.

Illinois became the second state to settle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over charges it misled investors about a growing shortfall in its employee pension funds as it sold $2.2 billion in bonds.

The Principal Financials’ Aaron Friedman says we are seeing 403(b) plan sponsors interested in reviewing their plan designs as they look to further clean up initial steps that were taken just a few years ago. This additional work is based on their own experience with compliance under the final regulations, as well as the administrative lessons they’ve learned.

Defined contribution plan sponsors who have yet to get on board with auto-enrollment -- a trend that began more than a decade ago -- are now in the minority. One study published last week in Science magazine found that 56% auto-enroll participants -- up sharply from 19% back in 2005. The study by behavioral economists Shlomo Benartzi and Richard Thayler also found that a slim majority (51%) of sponsors has embraced auto-escalation of deferral amounts.

Nearly half of all health plan members in the group and individual markets nationwide say they are interested in using a state exchange to purchase health insurance, according to a new survey by J.D. Power and Associates.

While experts once predicted savings of as much as $81 billion a year from electronic records, U.S. health care spending has continued to increase, partly because of systems that don’t share information, they say.

We’re starting your week with three important facts, developments or conversations from recent and upcoming events. This week, we’ll look at why uninsured Americans’ hospital bills are so high, more official steps forward by HHS on public exchanges and HHS goals for tech improvements in 2013.

By the time Astra Augustus left Virtua Memorial Hospital in New Jersey after the last of four surgeries, she’d run up about $255,000 in bills.

Although Millennials have been called everything from "innovative" to "entitled," the recent "Stress in America" study from the American Psychological Association has different label for them: Stressed.