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Simply stated, offering employees retirement education is the right thing to do. Retirement plans are complex and not easily understood by the average employee. More employees would participate in corporate retirement plans if they understood them better. If you are offering a 401(k) plan to your employees, but not sharing the value of the plan or how to use it properly, you aren't really committing to a solid retirement program.

The majority of employers want to prepare employees for a financially secure retirement, but have found educational campaigns unlikely to result in substantial changes in behavior. Employers walk a fine line when they implement automatic features; some argue that they enable lax saving habits and investment ignorance by funneling participants into plans automatically.

When individuals are faced with too many options, they become paralyzed and don't make the best decisions - even when it comes to 401(k) options, according to a new study co-authored by Columbia Business School and University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

The decline in property values across most of the country, a prolonged recession, and plain old negligence and shortsightedness on the part of American workers have all combined to make retirement more a fantasy than a reality for tens of millions of baby boomers.

In a recent news briefing, a former Department of Labor official hinted that employers still struggling to comply with 415 rules outlined for 403(b) plans under the Pension Protection Act of 2006 may have played out the last of the agency's leniency regarding enforcement.

From January to April 15, Steve Lerner rarely saw his spouse while working at an accounting firm. When he started his new role at consultancy Accenture nearly 10 years ago, all that changed, and he got the work-life flexibility he badly wanted

Employers maintaining qualified retirement plans are generally required to file an annual Form 5500 regardless of the number of participants in the plan, except for one-participant plans with less than $250,000 in assets.

While most companies go through their annual renewal process in the fall, at Ambrose we are wrapping it up and heading into open enrollment for an Aug. 1 effective date. For us, as well as other employers with renewals that fall in the middle of the year, health care reform regulations haven't kicked in until now

Most wellness programs assume that the first step to changing habits is education. Whether in the form of a wellness website, nurse line, wellness fair, lunch and learn, newsletter or paycheck stuffer, the assumption is always the same: If people only knew what good health habits were and why they should practice them, they would surely make the right choices. If you, too, think that education is an effective behavior change tool, think again.

The one-year anniversary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has come and gone, and federal agencies continue to issue clarifying guidance on several of its provisions, including the grandfathered health plan rules and the requirement to report the cost of employer-provided health coverage on employees' Forms W-2.