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Twenty-seven years after women first complained in 1986 about bumping against an invisible barrier — dubbed the glass ceiling — when they aimed for top jobs, just 21 are chief executive officers of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Now, a rash of books, from Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg to former State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter, are soon to be published, seeking to empower women.

A glass-half-full crowd of benefits brokers and agents – that could be the theme of this year’s National Association of Health Underwriters Capitol Conference. The organization concluded its three day lobbying stint Wednesday with a morning of discussion panels on health reform, remarks from a Republican congresswoman, a talk with a representative from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and an address from NAHU’s president.

Buck Consultants announced this week that it would be starting a private health care exchange while Liazon unveiled a new web partnership to support its own.

Buck Consultants is the latest benefit and consulting firm to form a private exchange. The move aims to reduce employer uncertainty about 2014 by reducing costs and increasing employee health care options.

The study from the National Business Group on Health and Fidelity Investments finds that nearly nine out of ten employers surveyed indicated that they currently offer wellness-based incentives (86%), an increase from 73% from 2011 and 57% from 2009.

MetLife polled hundreds of human resource and benefits professionals about legal services in a voluntary package, and the top reason given among those who make the offering is improving employee satisfaction (69%).

A number of large employers and industry groups filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court this week, arguing that the conflicting dual regime of state and federal laws on gay marriage is administratively burdensome, as well as unfair to employees.

If you want to lead your wellness program to success, prepare to charm and disarm your health plan administrator. To get useful and useable data may take some perseverance. It’s easy for them to throw around technical terms and intimidate you into surrender. Here are four scenarios offering common responses from plans and how to counter them. (Compiled by Linda K. Riddell, frequent EBN guest blogger and principal at Health Economy, LLC.) [Images: Shutterstock]

Regardless of where in the country they live, Americans have one thing in common when it comes to stress – they consistently report experiencing more stress than they believe to be healthy. They also report work as one of the top stressors in their lives. Here’s how stress levels vary in major cities across the country, according to the American Psychological Association’s Stress in America report. [Photos: Thinkstock]

Many employer plan sponsors are expressing a high level of interest in adding Roth 401(k) in-plan conversions as an option to their 401(k) plans in 2013. The recently passed Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 made it possible for retirement plan participants to convert existing 401(k) plan balances to Roth 401(k) balances, whether or not the participant is distribution eligible.