Category: Benefits and Compensation

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.

Planned Merit/General Increases by Size and Industry: Survey Results

BLR’s 2012 Pay Budget Survey was conducted in June 2011. A total of 1637 organizations participated.  (For a complete copy of the Pay Budget Survey, including regional data, go here.) Here are more findings: Planned Increases by Company Size Small employers (those with fewer than 100 employees) and medium (between 100–500 employees) are planning the […]

Sales Comp Never Easy in Ever-Changing Environment

Sales comp is tricky any time, but it is especially difficult now, when so many things are changing: the economy, the customers, the products, the technology. But you still need a plan. Expert Laura Roach has one. In yesterday’s Advisor, we began expert Laura Roach’s 10 practical steps for aligning sales comp and corporate strategy. […]

Pay Budget Survey Says—Modest Increases for 2012

In last year’s 2011 Pay Budget Survey, employers reported that their average planned merit pay increase for 2011 would be 1.98%, meaning the actual merit increases for 2011 were lower than anticipated for a second year in a row. Although the average planned merit increase for 2012 is an improvement over last year’s survey, expectations […]

10 Steps to Align Comp with Strategy

Align your compensation program with your corporate strategies—how many times have we heard that? Now Laura Roach CCP offers 10 practical steps for accomplishing this key mission. Roach, who is General Manager at Varicent Software Incorporated, a provider of incentive compensation and sales performance management (SPM) solutions, offered her suggestions in a recent Varicent white […]

COBRA Coverage—Qualifying Event Determines Length

Length of COBRA coverage varies according to the type of qualifying event. The following events qualify an individual for COBRA continuation coverage if the event causes loss of coverage for a qualified beneficiary: Termination or reduction of hours of a covered employee other than because of the employee’s gross misconduct Death of a covered employee […]

Coping with ‘I-Deals’—Managers’ Special Arrangements with Individual Employees

In yesterday’s Advisor, consultant Robert J. Greene offered his take on the state of compensation in the new normal. Today, the particular problem of i-deals—plus an introduction to a new 24/7 leadership training system. I-deals are idiosyncratic “deals” that managers make with individual employees. They’re hard to stop, but it’s worth trying, says Greene, who […]

Not Again: SIIA Refutes ‘Misinformation’ About Self-funding

It’s like the Hollywood movie Groundhog Day all over again. The Self Insurance Institute of America (SIIA) wakes up and has to face the same “anti-self-funding” arguments about adverse selection, insolvency and inferior benefits that it refuted last year … the year before … and the year before that. Again in damage-control mode, this time the […]

Small Employer Self-funding Must ‘Stop’: NAIC Adviser Touts Stop-loss Limits

Employers that want to self-fund their health benefits (and the vendors and attorneys who want to serve them) have yet another (as they see it) unreasonable opponent to self-insuring health benefits. An adviser to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners has told NAIC that it should amend its model stop-loss coverage law to prohibit the […]

TRICARE Suffers Texas-sized Data Breach

Stop me if you’ve heard this one — a car is burglarized, and hardware goes missing that turns out to have sensitive personal data on thousands of beneficiaries, employees, patients and customers. Same old story — but in the millions this time. Medical information on nearly 5 million military clinic and hospital patients was on backup […]

Gross Misconduct—Can You Deny COBRA?

Gross Misconduct Means No COBRA, But … Termination for gross misconduct is not a qualifying event under COBRA, so COBRA continuation coverage does not have to be offered to an employee and his or her spouse and dependent children if the employee was terminated for gross misconduct. Unfortunately, the term “gross misconduct” is not defined […]