Employer Strategies

Looking for a way to promote his latest venture, a website where consumers can select an agent at the same time they buy their policy online, Alan Katz decided to start his own blog both as a hobby and in hopes that linking to it would increase the search engine optimization of the insurance website.

It goes without saying that recession taught everyone some valuable lessons about making every penny count and that the employment and financial landscape likely are forever changed.

For this year's Preparing for Open Enrollment series, EBN asked you, our readers, to give us your advice for improving this perennial event. Here is the first of three articles featuring your responses, which deals with enrollment communications.

The only things certain in life are death and taxes," Ben Franklin famously said. If you file a Form 5500 on behalf of your company's pension or health and welfare plans, the filing deadline for calendar-year plans is July 31. There are a number of changes in store for plan years 2010 (and any years prior that have not yet been filed) that might cause you to allow more than the usual preparation time.

You've likely seen magazine ads, radio commercials and TV promoting miracle treatments for hair loss. Unfortunately, that is what's needed for those treatments to work - a miracle.

Until recently, I directed a corporate benefits department and was responsible for complying with the legislation that affected my organization's benefits program. There were mountains of legislation, and while my staff and I were able to handle it effectively, we definitely struggled to keep abreast of everything we needed to do. Then came the law that broke the camel's back: health care reform.

The recession has been a double-edged sword to employers, forcing them to contend with the productivity and morale issues brought on by staff layoffs but also the financial squeeze of rising unemployment insurance taxes, COBRA costs and severance packages.

As employers start to conduct cost-benefit analysis on providing health insurance under the health law, they should also study some proposals by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

Over two days of hearings in March, the Department of Labor heard from almost 40 retirement industry players on its proposed rule to update the definition of the term "fiduciary" under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The agency also has received over 200 public comments on the proposal.

Growth in the long-term care market has been on the upswing the past several years. The turbulent economy and recent changes to health care have increased awareness of this valuable protection. Employers are taking this time to re-evaluate their employee benefits and many see LTC insurance as a product that can be easily added to a benefit plan without a lot of additional costs.