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As employees take on more responsibility for paying for health care, voluntary benefits can provide much-needed additional coverage. EBN spoke to a number of voluntary benefits providers to get their thoughts on the major trends they see coming in 2012. Not surprisingly, all the trends and influences in the HR world at large - health care reform, employer cost-shifting, technology and communications - affect the voluntary benefits industry as well. Here, we provide a summary of key trends, along with charts and data to help employers plan their voluntary benefits strategy going forward.

Semantics are supremely important in making or breaking certain lines of insurance.

An employer's first experience defending a harassment case can be a harsh introduction to the challenges and biases of the American legal system. Empowered with some basic knowledge about the process, HR/benefits professionals can survive the ordeal and shine in the eyes of senior management.

After months of crunching numbers, your company concludes the only way to control its rising health care costs is to replace its current plan with a high-deductible, consumer-driven health plan. You assume employees are going to hate it, and you're already envisioning the nasty calls you're going to get from irate workers who see an increase in their out-of-pocket expenses. So should you even bother asking employees what they think, since the plan design's already a done deal?

Michael D. Klansek knew something was up with his company when he read Towers Watson statistics earlier this year that showed total health care costs per employee per year are at $11,176. His PEPY costs in 2011? $7,707. And they've been that way since 2006.

In the harsh realities of today's economy, employees are expected to do more with less. While controlling workloads may be beyond an HR/benefit manager's control, there are tools for helping employees cope with the increased stress that may result. However, experts disagree about which tactics to alleviate stress are most successful. Stress management programs, stress resilience programs and even performance programs all aim to turn negative employee stress into positive motivation, but each model features conflicting philosophies and tools.

"House" - the TV series following a brilliant, but curmudgeonly and troubled doctor - is of course a Hollywood production, but this fiction may be based in fact. At least one-third of all physicians will experience a time during which they have a physical, mental or behavioral condition that impairs their ability to practice medicine safely, according to The Annals of Internal Medicine.

I know of an employer - which shall remain nameless - that began communicating its benefits enrollment period the day enrollment began.

As you consider offering more value-added benefits to your employee population, I encourage you to think about seriously offering long-term care insurance. As many of us are seeing our parents and other family members live well into their 80s and 90s, it's more and more likely that the elderly people in our lives will at some point need long-term care services. It's the rare and fortunate elderly person who continues to live independently in his or her own home without home care services.

Living in Florida means not worrying about getting a good parking place when I'm shopping. In fact, the weather is so beautiful in Florida this time of year that I purposefully park far away. It allows the ol' pedometer a chance to click a few extra times as I work off the eggnog consumed over the holidays and also allows me to enjoy a little sun on my face and the sight of palm trees swaying in the breeze. But we all know the weather in Florida isn't always so pleasant. Hurricanes agree with all those Disney tourists that Florida is a favorite place to visit. The most recent one in our area, Wilma, came from the southwest with a vengeance. It slammed us - uprooting trees, knocking down power lines, sending roof tiles as projectile missiles through the air. Then it cleared. And the weather was sunny and calm. And for a short amount of time, all was well. But it was only the eye of the storm - with even more damaging hurricane winds churning behind it.