Employment Resources

September serves as Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month. Raise awareness in the office when you celebrate happy hour, build rapport and unwind without alcohol. All the recovering alcoholics will appreciate the gesture, and you stay healthier, too.

1. Skip the Bar

Naturally, most happy hour celebrations occur in a bar. That location encourages drinking, though. Instead, arrange to meet in a non-alcoholic location like the break room, a local restaurant or under a park’s pavilion. Provide snacks and non-alcoholic beverages as you help coworkers release stress and get to know each other better while staying sober.

2. Serve Non-Alcoholic Drinks

You don’t need cocktails or beer to have fun. Serve juice, lemonade and coffee or tea instead. Three faux beverages also create an atmosphere of fun without ruining the party.

*For a tropical taste, serve Acapulco Gold. It combines coconut cream, pineapple juice, grapefruit juice and whipping cream. Serve it over ice as a refreshing and healthy drink.

*Babylove mixes coconut milk, pineapple juice, plain cream and banana syrup. Pour it over ice and top with banana slices for a cool beverage.

*Stir grenadine and orange juice together to make the Batman Cocktail. When served over ice, it tastes delicious and sweet.

3. Plan a Fun and Social Alternative

Rather than meeting for drinks, plan a socially fun alternative like bowling, zip lining or karaoke. You could also visit a museum, take a painting class or volunteer at an animal shelter together. The shared activity assists your coworkers in building bonds, and the focus is on fun and teamwork rather than alcohol.

All the non-alcoholic happy hour celebrations in the world won’t keep an alcoholic from drinking. They can, however, encourage people in recovery to stay committed to health. Likewise, if you or a coworker have a drinking problem, contact your insurance company about available resources to help you quit and get sober and healthy today.

A recent expansion of nondiscrimination rules for workplace wellness programs could curb the ability of businesses to use incentives for improving employee health care outcomes.

Last May, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) set final regulations under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act that broaden protections for employees who are medically or otherwise incapable of completing activity-based or outcome-based objectives to earn rewards or avoid penalties under worker wellness programs.

Under the new rules, beginning in 2014, employers must provide a “reasonable alternative standard” through which workers can still earn an activity-based wellness incentive if a medical condition prevents them from completing the activity. Employers will also be required to provide reasonable alternative standards for employees who can’t meet a health outcome plan target— such as a percentage reduction or benchmark in their body mass index, cholesterol, or weight.

There’s no way to tell how many employees will use these broader alternative standards, and/or if the reasonable alternative programs can work as well as the initial programs in terms of health outcomes. The additional discrimination protections tied to outcome-based incentives could make it harder for employers to use rewards as a way to drive engagement in health management, or gauge how well the programs are working if significant percentages of employees use alternative methods to obtain these rewards.

Says one employment law expert, “It’s very difficult to design a reward for the outcome that you want your employees to achieve if anyone who doesn’t meet that standard, regardless of whether they’re capable of doing so, is given an alternative means of getting that reward.”

To learn more about implementing the new HHS regulations in your workplace, just give us a call.

Businesses need to inform their workers about health plan changes under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That’s the word from Paul S. Amos, II, president of Aflac, Inc., a major health insurance provider.

Says Amos, “If you believe in your employees and want to retain them so can grow your company and corporate culture, it makes sense to educate them about how the act will affect their health benefits and premiums.” He noted that the Aflac 2013 WorkForces Report, a nationwide survey of 1,900 employers and 5,300 employees, found that nearly four in five employees (79%) believe that effective communication about health plans would make them less likely to leave their current positions.

Unfortunately, most businesses have not yet educated their workers about PPACA. According to the survey, nearly three quarters of employees (72%) were unaware of consumer-driven health care plans, while 76% were not knowledgeable about health care exchanges. What’s more, only one in four employers (26%) said they fully understand the health care reform law.

Amos offers businesses this advice: “The reality is your workers need you and, if you don’t educate them [about changes in health benefits plans], they’re going to begin to think about going elsewhere. Rather than picking themselves up by their bootstraps and saying, ‘I’m going to learn it myself,’ they’ll just go to another employer who will keep them informed.”

As Employee Benefits specialists, we’d be happy to explain the PPACA health care plan reforms to your workers and help them make decisions about their benefits.

More and more employers are using Administrative Services Only (ASO) plans for such health benefit as Dental Insurance.

Under an ASO, the employer self-insures the benefits it pays, but uses an outside firm (such as an insurance company or third-party administrator) to process claims and pay providers, based on a fee per person. This approach reduces costs significantly by eliminating the risk charge and premium taxes associated with fully insured benefits.

What’s more, an ASO offers more flexibility than conventional dental plans; you can customize your plan, because it’s a self-insured contract outside the jurisdiction of state insurance regulators.

The downside: unlike Health insurance, which has lifetime maximums, dental plans are limited to an annual maximum payment, usually $1,000. In the first few years that a small business or group offers Dental insurance, claim payments are usually high before they settle down to the point that few group members will hit the maximum. This is the time to look into an ASO.

Many insurance companies will write ASOs only for businesses with 100 or more workers However, our agency’s Employee Benefits specialist shave developed relationships with carriers that will offer coverage for ASOs for groups as small as 25 members. If you have at least 25 employees in your Dental insurance plan and have been insured for three to five years, you should be a perfect candidate for an ASO.

For more information, please feel free to get in touch with us at any time.

The recent Supreme Court decision (Windsor v. U.S.) legalizing more than 1,000 federal spousal benefits for same-sex couples will have a major impact on the administration of pensions and health plans for employers throughout the nation.

For example, the high court’s ruling overturning the benefits provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) means that surviving same-sex spouses under a defined-benefits retirement plan will now be entitled to receive survivor annuity payments. The decision’s expanded definition of “marriage” will require companies that offer self-funded health benefits for married spouses to extend this coverage to same-sex couples.

The sheer number of benefits under DOMA, together with variations among laws and regulations on the state level – especially in the 38 states that don’t recognize same-sex marriage – will make implementing the Windsor decision a challenge for businesses that offer spousal benefits to their workers.

To deal with this changing situation, we’d recommend that you:

1. Have your attorney(s) review the benefits that you’re providing to employees’ spouses for compliance with the new requirements; ask for guidance from federal and state regulators.
2. Implement the administration of new same-sex benefits (for example, amending your payroll procedures to update the federal income tax treatment of qualified benefits programs for spouses) as soon as possible – certainly by the end of this calendar year or the plan year.
3. Provide complete documentation of the revisions to your plans.
4. Before you communicate these changes to your employees, do your homework and be prepared to answer their questions.

As Employee Benefits specialists, we can help guide you through this process – just give us a call.

A recent nationwide study by the Washington National Institute for Wellness Solutions (IWS) found that only 10% of middle-class workers believe that they have enough savings to cover medical emergencies and the long-term cost of a critical illness.

Diseases such as cancer, heart disease, or Alzheimer’s can be life-changing financially, as well as personally. Although most respondents said that, even with Medical and Disability Income insurance, they would need out-of-pocket funds to cover their expenses from a serious medical condition, they lack the savings to fall back on. Nearly half (45%) felt they would never recover financially from a battle with Alzheimer’s or dementia; for cancer, the percentage is 38%.

Out of 1,001 survey participants between the ages of 30 and 66 and annual household incomes of $35,000 to $99,999, 75% have saved less than $20,000. Among these, half have less than $2,000 in savings – and one in four have no current savings.

One-fourth of respondents “did not know” what resources they would use to help offset their expenses, says IWS. Others would use credit cards (28%), loans from friends and family (23%) or financial institutions (19%) to help cover what insurance doesn’t.

Washington National Insurance Co president Barbara Stewart advises employees to give themselves a reality check about the financial burden of critical illness. “Find out what your current insurance will – and will not – cover” says Stewart, “and then assess your overall financial health. Identify the gaps between the resources you would need and the options you have.”

We’d recommend that you offer your employees Critical Illness coverage as a voluntary benefit that will provide an extra layer of financial protection when they face the challenge of a serious disease.

Long-Term Disability insurance (LTD) has been making headlines lately. According to The Wall Street Journal, although only 0.5% of federal disability recipients return to work, nearly 20% of workers with employer-paid LTD do. So with a success rate 40 times higher than that that of the government program, why is it that nearly 100 million workers don’t carry this benefit?

“There’s a coverage gap when it comes to disability, and educating [employees] is going to be important,” says Andrew Sullivan, SVP of Disability and Small Market Business at Prudential Group Insurance. He adds that worker awareness of their vulnerability to illness and accidents, and the availability of LTD will become increasingly widespread as more employers shift to 100% voluntary coverage.

The trend toward sharing the cost of coverage between employers and employees or having it paid entirely by employees depends on the quality of the enrollment support provided. One way of getting the younger generation of workers enrolled is to shorten the length of coverage, by letting employees choose how long they want to be eligible, say for two years, instead of until age 65. This approach can be especially effective because younger people often don’t believe that they’re going to get sick or have any accidents happen to them.

More and more employers are looking for reports and analysis of productivity and wellness programs to provide guidelines on how they can minimize or to prevent workplace-related disabilities.

According to insurance experts, widespread implementation of the Affordable Care Act over the next 18 months will have a significant impact on LTD and other voluntary benefits products.

For more information, please call or e-mail our agency.

Death will come to all of us – including your workers. At this emotional and stressful time, voluntary end-of-life products can help provide invaluable financial and medical comfort to those who your employees have left behind. In offering them these benefits, it’s essential to show sensitivity and concern for their needs.

Benefits such as Hospice Care, Travel Assistance, and Funeral Prepayment deal with highly sensitive issues and problems that have a significant impact on workers and their families, young and old alike. Hospice Care, for example, will help employees pay for health-related end-of life costs that their Health insurance doesn’t cover; Travel Assistance picks up the tab for their emergency medical treatment while traveling.

To help your employees make wise choices, you need to listen to their end-of-life issues with care and empathy based on an understanding of their needs. Make sure they understand that these benefits can offer financial assistance for them and their families if a terminal medical condition leaves them unable to work. Give workers a choice of programs based on their individual situation – for example, stressing the value of hospice care to a worker with a family history of cancer.

Do not try to “hard sell” end-of-life benefits! Bear in mind that it takes time for employees to find their emotional and financial comfort level in absorbing this information and making the best decision for themselves and their families.

The Employee Benefits specialists at our agency can offer you access to a wide variety of these programs and recommend those that are best suited to the needs – and pocketbooks – of your workers. Please feel free to get in touch with us at any time.

Are you getting the best return on your investment in employee benefits? Unfortunately, it’s not always not easy to answer this question. You might well have too much information on some programs – and too little on others.

To help employers evaluate the cost-effectiveness of health-related benefits program, experts recommend these guidelines:

1. Focus on the overall picture. It can be easy to miss the forest for the trees. For example, when measuring the impact of a return-to-work program, it’s easy to determine whether disabled employees are getting back on the job sooner. However, you also need to consider the overall impact of the program on your other health-related benefits.
2. Share information among programs. Most employers manage their health benefits in separate silos – Medical insurance in one place, Disability in another, and Workers Compensation in a third. Be sure to distribute every incident of medically related absence throughout the company. The more effectively you integrate your data among all your benefits programs, the better.
3. Benchmark your results against those of your peers. The easiest and most straightforward standard is how comparable companies in your industry are doing. Although this might not be a precise comparison, it should give you a fair idea of what your competitors are doing right (and wrong) with their benefits programs – offering guidance you can use to improve yours. For example, to compare your Short-Term Disability program with these of other companies, consider how the incidence and duration of disability incidents are related to underlying diseases in the workforce and the design of the plan (the elimination period, rate of wage replacement rate, maximum benefit period, and so forth).

We’d be happy to help you evaluate the cost-effectiveness of your benefits program. Just give us a call.

An increasing number of employees in the “Sandwich Generation” are looking for benefits to help them manage the demands of caring for parents and children alike. A recent nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center found that nearly half of respondents in their 40s and 50s have a living parent and are either raising a young child or supporting a grown one.

“There’s an emerging recognition of the impact of caregiver stress on working parents’ ability to be productive at home and at work,” says David Lissy, CEO of Bright Horizons, a provider of dependent back-up care services. “Particularly as families wait longer to have children, there’s more at stake in their careers and they’re pulled in many directions, dealing with the realities of their aging parents.”

On average, access to Bright Horizons allowed employees to work six days during the past six months – productive time that otherwise would have been lost – and nearly 70% of these workers used the service for adult care.

Care.com, another provider of backup care services for employees, saw a three-fold increase last year in the number of clients that added senior care planning. IRobot, Inc. chose Care.com as an employee benefit because “we value our employees and want to support them in managing the demands on their personal lives,” says benefits analyst Cathy Blanchard. Since adding the service, iRobot has seen a 15% month-to -month increase in using the program, which has boosted productivity by reducing costs from care-related absences and distractions.

If you’d like to learn more about offering day care for adults and children as an employee benefit, just give us a call.