Employee benefits

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

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.

"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.

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.

As each new generation of young people enters the workforce, they are almost always different from the generations before because of advents in technology and culture.

With tuition costs on the rise, employees looking for ways to pay for their children's college education can save with 529 plans.

What will the successful post-reform 21st century agency look like? EBA contributor Nelson Griswold predicts what will set you apart from the herd.

The focus of discussions in the defined contribution/401(k) world seems to have shifted overnight from process to outcomes.

Last year was one full of health care news, with most of it focused around the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In 2012, there will be some major decisions and rules announced and decided. Here's a look back and forward at health care news.

For once, it’s the whippersnappers who are behaving more wisely. At least when it comes to saving, Generation X and Generation Y workers are more diligent than their peers.

ts Inc. on Jan. 1, 2012, and its stance suggests that the odds of the drugstore making up with the pharmacy benefits manager before the end of the year are remote.

According to data from ACSI LLC, P&C insurers are improving customer satisfaction, while life insurers are steady and health insurers are slightly declining.

Professional insurance agents have what insurance customers are looking for, according to research results issued by the PIA Partnership. The PIA Partnership is a group of insurance companies that works collaboratively with PIA National to conduct research and develop tools and resources designed to benefit professional independent insurance agents. PIA is a national trade association that represents member insurance agents and employees who sell and service all kinds of insurance.

Social media tools now are present on most corporate intranets, with 61% of companies reporting at least one social media tool available to some or all employees. Read what the most popular Intranet 2.0 tools are according to a new social intranet study.

In 2012, the U.S. life and annuity insurance industry will be challenged to find ways to manage both capital and risk in an economically and politically uncertain year, while continuing to lay the groundwork for future growth, according to Ernst & Young's new Global Insurance Center U.S. Outlook report.

A new ADP survey shows a wide gap between the goals and reality of how employees understand their benefit plans. Eighty percent of human resources decision-makers believe it's important for employees to fully understand their benefit options, yet they estimate only about 60% of their own employees do – a finding with serious implications for how companies communicate one of the most important parts of their employees' total compensation.

Workers in the U.K. and Poland have the most generous statutory employee holiday entitlements while employees in the U.S., Canada, Philippines, China and Thailand have the least generous entitlements, according to an overview of employee regulation and employment practices released by Mercer.

Americans' trademark optimism is intact, at least in regard to retirement, despite the economic turbulence that is reportedly forcing many people to work longer and make do with less. In fact, many retirees found only one downside.

Not only are older American workers (age 50 and over) expecting to work longer, but many now say they expect to never retire, according to the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute. Data suggest the trend may be tied to the recent economic recession.