Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
This topic provides guidance on how to handle compensation issues in a way that attracts and retains the best talent and advances the strategic goals of your business. You get news and tips on what’s going on nationally and in the states, and updates on changes in regulations, possible governmental action, and emerging compensation trends.
Concerns about the implementation of participant fee disclosure rules did not just rest within the retirement plan community – the Department of Labor (DOL) itself raised red flags about how the rules would interact with a formatting requirement under Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules. But we recently got word from DOL that the SEC […]
Have you asked your doctor or dentist to see his fee schedule? When I did so once, a dentist refused, saying in effect: “my prices are higher, but that’s what you need to get my quality advantage.” What’s a consumer to do? A similar relation exists between large employers and institutional providers (hospitals.) The lack […]
As the government fulfills its promise to create an essential benefit package, employers can be forgiven for thinking the government’s putting a competitor plan out there to lure plan members away from employer-sponsored plans. And it is tempting for them to just say: “Fine! You asked for it; no more funding health benefits!” But paradoxically […]
Retirement plan investors will save between $5 billion and $13 billion annually, thanks to new exceptions to DOL’s prohibited transaction rules, DOL estimates. The DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) opened the door to allowing fiduciaries to offer investment advice in a final rule published to become effective Dec. 27, 2011. DOL estimates this new rule […]
Health reform’s expansion of dependent health coverage may not have a profound effect on expenses in the Dept. of Defense (DoD)’s TRICARE program, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) study. Background Employees’ dependents can be covered by their parents’ employer-provided insurance up to age 26 under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). […]
Employers have different ways of administering COBRA continuation coverage, as evident in a recent news article about a local candidate’s problem when he was found to owe a city government money after it paid some of his COBRA premiums. The Post-Standard reported Oct. 27 how Timothy Lattimore (R), former mayor of Auburn, N.Y. , elected […]
However, 53% of organizations do not offer domestic partner benefits at all, and have no plans to do so. Of the 93% percent of respondents that offer spousal benefits to benefit-eligible U.S. employees, a little over half (55%) offer these benefits to different-sex spouses only. The Spousal and Domestic Partner Benefits survey, conducted in September […]
Self-insuring health benefits is a riskier undertaking than just writing a check to a United or Aetna. But despite the risk, employers do it because it gives them more control over plan design and the growth of health costs. For self-insured plans to succeed in controlling costs – and they can – they must analyze […]
Employers would be required to approve leave for domestic violence victims and their families under a bill proposed earlier this month by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif. H.R. 3151, the Domestic Violence Leave Act, would amend the Family and Medical Leave Act to guarantee unpaid leave to workers needing medical attention or legal assistance following domestic […]
Administering qualified transportation fringe benefits (QTFBs) will be more complicated in 2012. Congress has allowed the parity between mass transit and parking thresholds — which gave transit and vanpool users the same tax advantage as drivers — to expire. Starting Jan. 1, 2012, the excludible amount for those who purchase bus, rail and other mass […]