Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

Skip the Christmas cookies; employees want cash, according to an annual survey from Randstad. According to the survey, 93% of workers would rather receive a bonus than have a holiday party this year.

As you carve your Thanksgiving turkey tomorrow and brave the mall in search of Black Friday deals the day after, be sure to give thanks to your employer for the four-day weekend. According to annual survey results from BNA, not all employees are so lucky.

On behalf of the teams at Employee Benefit News and Employee Benefit Adviser, I’m happy to announce that the health care reform timeline — designed, launched and housed right here on Benefitnews.com — is the winner of the Gold Award for Best Widget from the American Society of Business Publication Editors’ annual Digital Azbee Awards.

Knowing that you benefits pros aren’t ones to shy away from difficulty (fiduciary compliance, anyone?), I encourage you to join in today’s national effort to help smokers quit the habit. Nov. 18 marks the 35th annual Great American Smokeout, a nationwide event to encourage smokers to go smoke-free for 24 hours.

With only six weeks left in the year, now’s generally the time when employees peek at their flexible spending account balances and think, “Uh oh. How do I spend this money so I don’t lose it?” The experts at Save Smart, Spend Healthy offer six tips for you pin up in employees’ cubicles to help them zero out their accounts before the year-end deadline.

You may have celebrated at the news that Mark Haub, a Kansas State University nutrition professor, had lost 27 pounds and lowered his cholesterol levels by eating a 10-week diet of mostly Twinkies and Doritos. But before you go on a Twinkie binge, health and wellness expert Ron Ringlein says to look at Haub’s diet a bit more closely.

In a recent interview with The Atlantic, Andrew Webber, president and CEO of the National Business Coalition on Health, spoke up on your behalf about employer costs and concerns regarding health care reform.

In response to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform's proposals to reduce the national debt, the president and CEO of the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries claimed, "recommendations from the draft report … would eliminate tax incentives for retirement savings and negatively impact the ability of working Americans to effectively prepare for retirement.”

After pulling together the efforts of a high-powered team of journalists, benefits experts, videographers and stylists — okay, maybe not the stylists or videographers — Employee Benefit News is happy to announce the launch of BenefitsTV, its new video series that brings you face-to-face with benefits experts and newsmakers as they share their insights on the industry news of the day.

The technology to support these types of telemedicine is advancing speedily along. The speed of physicians and health plans adopting it, however, is a different — and much slower — story. I talked to Eric Demers, senior vice president of health and life sciences at MEDecision, about why telemedicine is so slowly advancing and the role employers can play to push progress along.