Employee benefits

Early next year, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a case that labor law and health care benefit advisers say could affect the Affordable Care Act’s strict employer mandate penalties.

Borrowing from workplace wellness programs, plan sponsors may want to consider providing incentives to boost or start employees’ retirement savings.

The Obama administration says it will investigate benefit plan designs for discrimination and suspect practices that discourage people with costly medical conditions from enrolling in a plan.

Commentary: Why understanding the impact of health plan costs, employer contribution and employee demographics is vital to sponsoring benefits in 2015.

Commentary: Why understanding the impact of health plan costs, employer contribution and employee demographics is vital to sponsoring benefits in 2015.

In light of recent EEOC actions, what should employers with wellness programs that ask disability-related questions or require medical examinations do to minimize the risk of a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act?

The year in business: benefit firms shift their focus as employees bear more health care costs.

Employers need to take a fresh look at their retirement plans annually because there is still a “significant problem” with retirement readiness.

The prevalence of automatic enrollment features and qualified default investment alternatives in employer defined contribution plans have led to a huge increase in the use of target-date funds.

Reducing health care costs is still the No. 1 reason U.S. employers implement wellness programs.

Three legal organizations allege in a new Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charge against Walmart that the retail giant did not go far enough to offer reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers with temporary disabilities. The National Women’s Law Center, A Better Balance and Mehri & Skalet, PLLC highlight in a Dec. 17 statement that the charge is on behalf of Candis Riggins, a former Walmart employee, whose job tasks caused her to become ill when she was…

President Obama has signed multiemployer pension plan reform into law, which some professionals are touting as the most comprehensive legislation affecting multiemployer pension plans since 1980. What does reform mean for you and your clients?

Even though each situation is unique, there are a number of best practices for helping employees through reasonable accommodations.

The obituary for traditional wellness programs has been widely published, though perhaps not universally acknowledged. What, indeed, went wrong?

Signed by President Barack Obama this week, the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 welcomes substantial changes to the multiemployer pension system that is meant to fortify the retirement future of nearly 10 million workers.

How one brokerage’s dedication to community service strengthens its business and ties to its clients, changes lives, and honors the legacy of its people-focused founder

Lockheed Martin, the global security and aerospace company, is in settlement talks with former employees that alleged the company imposed excessive 401(k) plan fees.

It’s been a year of massive growth for private exchanges, with estimates of more than three million people receiving employer health benefits through them by mid-2014, according to business management consultancy Accenture. Yet, 2015 is expected to see even more growth and acquisitions.

With an increasingly stabilized economy and the recent succession of promising jobs reports, many employers are hiring at quantities not seen since pre-recession days.

Without a well-conceived distribution strategy and enough methods of distribution, your carriers will find themselves with a dwindling customer base and shrinking revenues. So where does that leave you and your business? This is something brokers seriously need to consider, says columnist Jack Kwicien.