Practice management

Advisers can help employers boost employee benefit enrollment with better employee education and communication.

Commentary: Blogger Cyndy Nayer discusses a new and important opportunity for advisers to bring value to consumers — the potential for subsidy issues around reported income to the public exchanges.

Starbucks is helping its full- and part-time employees earn college degrees through a partnership with Arizona State University's online program beginning this fall.

Several benefit brokers share their experiences with using TV ads during open enrollment 2014.

Insurance carriers are proposing a series of solutions to make the ACA exchanges more consumer-friendly, but not all brokers and agents agree with the ideas.

Commentary: Columnist Craig Davidson explores the future of employee benefits in the kick-off to a new series about what’s to come and how to prepare for change.

Estimated enrollment is three times the number consultancy predicted last year.

Commentary: A technique that blogger Andy Torelli uses to establish new hires’ natural skills in the workplace could be put to use in optimizing the best service teams for new clients. Hear his theory out.

Benefit brokers should be prepared to communicate ACA updates and answer questions both in-person and via new technology to reach employees.

People managers should not underestimate the impact of coaching their people to success around individual and shared goals. It’s one of the rare benefits that accrues to the organization as much as its employees.

Commentary: Columnist Jack Kwicien tells you to take a step back and evaluate each client from a sales management consultant approach.

Potentially a result of complaints from consumers and increased competition on the ACA exchanges, benefit brokers may be pleased to find more options on the 2015 plans.

Employers in Southeast Michigan have projected an increase in health care costs this year. Still, to retain talent, businesses say they intend to continue offering health benefits to full-time employees, despite price increases resulting from the ACA.

Employees living paycheck to paycheck need solutions from their employers to meet financial emergencies, yet most employers aren’t aware financial wellness programs and lending solutions exist or that they’re credible.

Commentary: As part of columnist Mel Schlesinger’s sales system that cannot fail series, he discusses how to have a sales value proposition that is different from competitors and opens doors at all times of the year.

Commentary: Blogger John Graham helps benefit brokers and advisers unlearn some of the worst sayings business people tend to tell themselves.

Benefit brokers should be turning their sights to the capabilities of health care data to improve employer clients’ employees’ health. There are doctors asking for even more potential from computer algorithms to interpret such data and could provide a glimpse into the future.

Despite all the technical glitches with Healthcare.gov and state-run exchanges during open enrollment, a large majority of Americans researching health plan options relied on websites for information, but supplemented their research with other outlets for answers, including brokers and advisers.

While one of the most talked about rising employee benefits, brokers vary in their approach to offering this trend because of the realities of use, cost and profit.

Instead of looking outside to increase workforce diversity, companies should first look inside and develop an internal labor map of their own workforce. But, experts caution, analytics alone won’t create greater diversity and should be used in conjunction with other tools.