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There are few guarantees in life, and the ones there are - like death and taxes - aren't very appealing. What does appeal to most Americans, on the other hand, is the guarantee of a secure retirement. However, as retirement confidence surveys and savings rates continue to show, a financially sound retirement is not yet a reality for many U.S. workers. Christine Marcks, president of Prudential Retirement, believes that annuities can bring the retirement guarantee that Americans desperately want and deserve. In this exclusive interview with EBN, Marcks lays out her reasons for championing annuities and how to expand their reach within workplace retirement plans.

A 65-year-old couple retiring in 2012 is estimated to need $240,000 to cover medical expenses throughout retirement, according to the latest retiree health care costs estimate calculated by Fidelity Investments. This represents a 4% increase from last year, when the estimate was $230,000.

The preliminary results of a pilot project involving a large, self-funded employer and a new mobile application, myDrugCosts, show that 42% of employees who used the voluntary benefit reported saving money on their prescription drug costs.

Building a culture of health at any organization can be challenging, but doing so reaps valuable rewards in curbing health care costs and engaging employees in making healthy decisions. In a recent webinar series sponsored by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, the health director from Dow Chemical and the compensation and benefits manager at Pinellas County, Fla., shared the building blocks for creating a culture of health - and how employers in both the public and private sector can find the reasons and resources needed to make such an effort successful.

Zone had grown weedy. As the corporate intranet for Quintiles - a biopharmaceutical services company headquartered in North Carolina - QZone had remained virtually unchanged for eight years. It was a fairly traditional intranet containing corporate news, links to various applications and calendars, along with benefits information. But it had stopped growing and evolving with the rest of the company's digital strategy. It was time for a change.

Later this month, employers will know - based on the Supreme Court ruling whether to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - if their employees must have health insurance. Should the law and all of its provisions be ruled constitutional, the cost of offering health benefits may prove too much for some employers, allowing employees to seek coverage from state-run insurance exchanges.

This article is the third and final in EBN's annual Open Enrollment Boot Camp series, designed to strengthen benefits practitioners with different strategies to employ during this year's enrollment season. Earlier this month, the series examined the advantages of maintaining financial, legal and physical wellness programs as a single component. The article, "Under one umbrella," as well as the first installment from EBN May, "Breaking down the wall," which outlined strategies for employers to use in increasing employee engagement and participation in retirement plans and financial planning, is available at ebn.benefitnews.com.

As a (very) busy mom and wife, I sometimes find myself regarding circus performers with unadulterated scorn, thinking to myself, "Look at him, juggling his knives like it's hard or something. Pfft! Try juggling a full-time job, a husband, two (almost three) kids, one dog, four schedules, a house, and bills - and then ask me how tough juggling just plain knives is!"

Last fall, our benefits team received a request from the executive staff: "How can we encourage retirement in 2012? And if we can do it, should we?" We completed our analysis and recommendations, highlighting risks to avoid, best practices and permissible approaches. We never believed we'd actually implement something.

What do you get when you combine a three-year-old learning his ABCs, a six-year-old who wonders what daddy does for a living, and a nine-year-old who thinks its "cool" that daddy likes to write? You get the 2012 version of the employee benefits ABCs!