Employee benefits

Graduate students at the country’s leading business schools prefer opportunity for advancement within an organization over financial incentives when evaluating career destinations, according to a Deloitte survey conducted at the fifth annual National MBA Human Capital Case Competition.

As employee benefit budgets remain tight, employers are adopting plan design changes that reduce drug benefit coverage and improve pricing, according to the Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute.

Open enrollment for benefits ends today at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Jason Rothstein, 40, has just finished all the needed paperwork. Once again, his health insurance premiums will go up - about 5 to 6% in 2012. And, as an employee with earnings in the $61,000 to $76,000 range, he'll pay more for his insurance than colleagues at a lower salary level.

Gen Y wants to get personal — at least when it comes to their benefits. Although employees rely on the workplace as their number one source of benefits information, new research shows Gen Y is much more likely than other workers to rely on family members and friends for this information.

Just as HR/benefits professionals have evolved over the last 20 years from personnel to HR to strategic partner, diversity and inclusion also has experienced an evolution over the last two decades.

While many employees obtain benefits information from their employers, another source of information, at least for Gen Y (ages 18 to 34), is family members and friends, according to survey results from Colonial Life.

The long term care market continues to be in turmoil for group benefits and voluntary producers. You probably noticed the federal government couldn’t figure it out and has punted as of a recent announcement by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “Health officials said that after 19 months of analysis, they could not come up with a model for the so-called CLASS Act that keeps it voluntary and budget-neutral.” …

Everyday services that help strike a better work-life balance have become an increasingly valuable part of the benefits package - even if employees are the ones who pick up the tab. But what is the best way to deliver this assistance to the workplace to ensure satisfaction and boost program utilization?

We know that HR directors, benefits managers and C-suite executives are horribly frustrated with employee benefits - not simply with the high cost of the medical, but perhaps most with their lack of control over the process.

You now have a strong advocate, retirement advisers. Read in the November issue of EBA as contributor Fred Barstein talks about the recent launch of the National Association of Plan Advisors, a sister organization of the ASPPA.

It's not surprising that the youngest generation of workers has saved the least toward retirement. But what is startling-and worrisome-is the fact that the savings rate for this group has fallen significantly in the past decade.

Nationwide Better Health, part of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, closed its doors Sept. 1 after five years in the wellness and productivity business. The company announced on May 25 that Nationwide would sell its productivity services to Sedgwick Claims Management Services Inc. and wind down disease management and wellness programs.

For executives and other high net worth individuals, an emerging voluntary benefit addition is survivorship life insurance - an area benefits professionals may want to explore when crafting executive benefits packages.

Predicting an employee's future success at a company has traditionally stumped experts, and relying on metrics, such as IQ level, only tells 25% of the story. What makes up the other 75%, according to Shawn Achor, Harvard researcher and positive psychology expert, is the belief that your behavior matters, a positive social support system, and whether you view a challenge as a stress or an impetus to improve.

At its peak in the early 1990s, there were over 2,000 recordkeepers serving retirement plans - today there are fewer than 60. In light of service-provider profit pressures from declining margins, sponsor fee sensitivity caused by litigation and Department of Labor's fee-disclosure regulations, finding the right plan vendor for the right price can be a challenge.

By 2014, the under-30 population will become the majority of the workforce, a title once held by baby boomers. During this transition, employers must revisit their strategies for engaging younger populations in health care decision-making and lifestyle improvement.

Like a lot of companies, Veridian Credit Union wants its employees to be healthier. In January, the Waterloo, Iowa-company rolled out a wellness program and voluntary screenings.

New research released Thursday from Guardian Life shows that 62% of workers now enroll online for their employee benefits, compared to only 29% in 2005. In the past year alone, the use of online benefits enrollment increased by 8 percentage points, which represents a significant shift in how employees learn about, evaluate and interact with their benefits programs.

The younger the customer, the more they will want a guaranteed income after retirement is the first takeaway for insurers from a Prudential survey about retirement planning.

With responsibility comes opportunity . . . when we take on more responsibility for the way we live our lives and the health care choices we make, we earn opportunities for a better life. How? Choose to live a healthy lifestyle. Eat righ, check out Dr. Gundry on Google for some good advice. Get enough sleep, always easier said than done, but so worth the effort. Workout, find a cardio routine that you enjoy and do…