Employee benefits

I hear a lot of joking (and I confess, I’ve made a few cracks myself) about what’s been called a, shall we say, relaxed, work ethic among Gen Y/Millenials.

With all the chatter around health care reform, you may have missed (like I did) last week’s White House forum on workplace flexibility.

We have another podcast post today, this time with Heather Gatley, executive vice president of HR Services and general counsel for AlphaStaff.

So, we’ve had some time to start to digest the biggest components of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, when they go into effect and the implications for your health plans.

So, I promised that we’d get back to analyzing health care reform, and I am a woman of my word. We’re going to do things a little different today, though, and make today’s post a listen instead of a read.

Okay, I thought we all needed a brief respite from health care reform. So, we’re going waaaay in the opposite direction today with results from a new study by work-life provider SitterCity, which claims to have noted a “SitterCity effect” among employers using its child/elder/pet care resource services.

Forgive me, pros. I’m a little bleary-eyed today, since I stayed up until after midnight to get the official vote tally (219-210, by the way) and real-time analysis of Sunday’s House vote on health care reform.

As if runaway health care costs aren’t enough – now, statistics show U.S. companies annually lose an estimated $2 billion because of employees’ inadequate language skills and poor cultural competence.

So, with an unemployment rate still hovering close to 10% and a growing number of employees feeling detached from their jobs, I’d suspect Digital Insurance is getting a lot of interested applicants these days.

Here’s another tidbit about me: my reality TV-watching habits generally trend toward whatever life change I’m undertaking at the moment.

If you made it through the headline without bile rising in your throat, you’ve already done better than me.

Due to two monstrous snowstorms in the D.C. area, it has now been a full week since I’ve left my home. Did you hear that, pros? A WEEK.

Perhaps you’ve heard, but here in the D.C. area, it’s been a bit snowy lately. By a bit, I mean we've already gotten about 2 ½ feet of the white stuff, with some 10 to 20 inches more expected as I typed this.

Okay, so Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, which means it’s time to talk about such things like heart disease/hypertension, the health benefits of chocolate and of course, workplace romances.

Americans work longer hours than people in most other developed countries, including renowned workaholics in Japan. As a result, work-family conflict is much higher in the United States than in other nations.

What a difference one special election makes. In the wake of Scott Brown’s upset victory in Tuesday's special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by the late Ted Kennedy, all the stories about health care reform this morning involve needles — and not the hypodermic kind.

I’ve long maintained that President Obama’s statement on health care reform that “If you like your coverage and your doctor, you can keep it,” was naïve at best and an outright lie at worst.

A recent report in The Washington Post reveals that Sen. Edward Kennedy's health care reform proposal involves mandates both for employees and employers, similar to the health care system in Kennedy's home state of Massachusetts. It's no secret that employers are solidly against a mandate for businesses to chip in for the cost of health insurance, so I encourage you to make your voice heard on Sen. Kennedy's plan. According to the Post, he plans…

In a recent article written for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, authors Chuck Marr and Kris Cox suggest that "Congress should consider scaling back or eliminating health care flexible spending accounts as part of its effort to pay for health care reform." Among their reasons for deep-sixing FSAs, Marr and Cox say: * FSAs encourage excess utilization of health care. * FSAs' 'use or lose it' requirement promotes wasteful spending. * FSAs complicate…

The SPARK Institute has scheduled a webcast, "403(b) Information Sharing: Common Remitter Issues," for Friday, Dec. 19 at 12 p.m. EST. The event will include a presentation and Q&A session with experts who developed the common remitter aspects of the organization's 403(b) Plans Information Sharing...