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Although the tax implications of total compensation may sound as dry as the Sahara, Ernst & Young principal Sean Watts says that knowing the potential pitfalls before developing or changing your total comp strategy could help you avoid a compliance sandstorm and be the oasis your bottom line needs.

Aon Hewitt isn't letting health care reform dictate its business model. If anything, it's the other way around. In addition to publishing an influential report on the implications of health reform for large employers, CEO Kristi Savacool has been to the White House several times in recent months to discuss the company's retiree health care exchange and upcoming active employee exchange model. "We have been on the front line," says Savacool, "really influencing the development of health care reform, influencing our clients with respect to how they put their own health care strategies together."

This article is the first 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. This installment focuses on the critical topic of engaging employees in retirement plan participation.

Now that I'm a more seasoned editor, I truly appreciate the infusion of energy, enthusiasm and fearlessness that new professionals bring to EBN.

"Start at the divorce and work your way backwards." At our firm, that is what we always advise our employer-clients when they consider entering into a contract with a new vendor. In business, terminating a relationship can have serious ramifications, especially if close attention isn't paid to contractual obligations or a vendor decides to be less than professional.

A dear friend, who is a veteran nurse, recently told me about her husband's post-operative experience. The surgery itself went well; immediately after his return to the nursing unit, he was appropriately asked by his nurse, "How is your pain?" Using the almost-universal pain scale, she asked him to rate his pain from zero (being no pain at all) to 10 (being the worst pain you've ever experienced).

As Americans live more of their lives online, perhaps it only makes sense that online recognition has taken off in the corporate context.

5:00 a.m. My morning routine: about 30 minutes of yoga, then breakfast. While I eat, I use my iPhone to check any emails. I rely on Google Reader to keep up with many publications and look for something to post on our blog.

Creating a benefits strategic plan for your clients (50 lives and larger) is a great way to engage clients in a discussion about what are they trying to accomplish with their benefits program and expenditures over the next three to five years. Your clients are going to be coping with all the market dynamics and the rippling effects of regulatory compliance, so what they need is a process for managing change. And you can be their "change agent."

Throughout his 35-year career in the employee benefit business Larry Brodsky has come across few opportunities to introduce a product to an employer that is both new and almost universally appreciated. The president of Lawrence S. Brodsky Agency in Palatine, Ill., found such a product about two years ago after a Web search for pet insurance introduced him to Pet Assure. Not an insurance program - but a discount plan for pet owners.