Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

You may have binders stuffed with reports from your health plan, and still be starving for useful information. Guest blogger Linda K. Riddell offers two ways to cut the clutter and beef up your insights: Slow down the frequency of reports, and make sure reports have the right level of detail.

Guest blogger Adam Miloro maintains the issue concerning 401(k) loans continues to be the lack of education surrounding them. It’s true there are certain situations where taking a loan from one’s retirement plan could make sense, he writes, but for many employees loans signify a much larger problem: living beyond one's means.

You say "tomato," I say "tomahhto." There's a big difference between questions and data requests. Guest blogger Linda K. Riddell says benefits professionals must learn to use the right language so they can ask relevant questions to get the most from their health plan data.

Guest blogger Heath Shackelford suggests employers’ focus on measuring the return on investment for wellness programs is distracting from the real effects these programs can have.

Whether you agree with The Retirement Gamble's narrative or not, the program should be required viewing for employees if for the simple reason that it’s a well-told (albeit one-sided) story that will get them (hopefully) asking questions about their 401(k) plans. And isn’t that a good thing in the long run?

Now in their 22nd year, the Benny Awards recognize excellence in the employee benefits/human resources field. Awards are granted to employee benefit or human resource practitioners directly involved in the management of employee benefit programs.

As most employers worry about whether to “pay or play” as of 2014 and whether or not certain employees will need to be counted as full-time for health care reform purposes, there is an elephant in the room: the approaching nondiscrimination rules that apply to all health plans that are not grandfathered.

In advance of her keynote address at EBN’s 26th annual Benefits Forum & Expo, author Jody Thompson sat down with former EBN Editor-in-Chief Kelley Butler to discuss her new book with co-author Cali Ressler (“Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It”), the latest developments in the movement to create results-only working environments (ROWEs) at employers nationwide and how workplace shifts at Best Buy and Yahoo have affected ROWE’s advancement.

Guest blogger Chris McSwain of Walmart writes that in the constantly evolving field of health and productivity, we are overwhelmed with new tools to judge the performance of our health-related programs. But sometimes the right tool is the one that’s easier to use.

“Why can’t we get useful data from our health plan?” benefit managers often bemoan. EBN guest blogger Linda K. Riddell writes that finding real answers to the most pressing health data questions lies in the words you use.