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It is becoming increasingly common to offer nontraditional benefits, or benefit "perks," to employees. As companies struggle with the cost of traditional benefits such as medical and dental plans, offering additional perk-type benefits are intended to boost employee morale.

Shhh .... don't tell anyone, but I've infiltrated the broker/consultant world of employee benefits. After 12 years of working in corporate benefits with seven different benefit broker/consultants, big and small, I recently crossed the line into their world - I'm the director of compliance of a midsize benefits broker/consulting firm in southern California. I'm here to report back to you, my fellow corporate benefit professionals, on three things you reasonably can expect in your broker/consultant relationships - in addition to competitive fees, top-quality service and proven employee benefits negotiation expertise.

Statistics show 96% of Americans use Facebook, and 46 million check their social media profiles daily. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, more than one-half (56%) of organizations currently use social networking websites when recruiting potential job candidates, a significant increase from 2008, when 34% did so. However, when it comes to in-house communications, most companies still use face-to-face or email to convey key HR/benefits messages and information.

At Children's Creative Learning Centers child care centers, we think quite a lot about company culture, our own and those of our clients. When discussing the ways our centers can reflect the values of the companies they reside within, we help clients uncover and distill the elements that define them as an organization and discover those they want to pass along to their children. In the larger world of work-life and family-friendly programs, we have found that company culture is one of the main factors that determines the success of these programs and that, in turn, work-life programs can be a tool for a real cultural revolution.

An Eastman Kodak employee filed a civil lawsuit against Kodak's board members and other fiduciaries of the photography companies' retirement plans, saying they breached their duties as the company was spiraling toward bankruptcy.

Today’s aging workforce isn’t fully taking advantage of its vision benefits, and is therefore missing out on a critical preventive care opportunity and leaving itself at higher risk for age-related vision problems, eye diseases and chronic conditions that affect eye health and compromise productivity. This is according to a new study by Transitions Optical, Inc.

Coffee and donuts are somewhat common workplace perks. But for small business owners, those simple daily indulgences can also add up to a significant tax deduction.

Custom target-date funds are beginning to proliferate at the expense of their off-the-shelf counterparts, in part because plan sponsors want to have greater control over what’s in a fund and have access to a wider array of investments to put in them.

Benefits decision-making continues to gain importance in corporate America, with 40% of plan sponsors saying that the employee benefits decision-making process in their company has changed to some extent over the past five years, according to a recent study from Prudential.

We’ve all seen the research data documenting the positive effects that benefits have on employee morale. However, in today’s age of shrinking benefits and rising premiums, employees are likely missing the forest for the trees. During last year’s open enrollment, most employers likely had to raise their employee cost-share, increase their medical deductible, offer a new CDHP or all of the above. Employees can perceive these types of changes as takeaways and/or benefit reductions, resulting in…