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.

Sorry, You Didn’t Get the Promotion

If Mike (less successful as a salesperson but more qualified for sales manager) gets the promotion, how do you minimize the risk that Sara (the superstar salesperson who was less qualified to be manager) will be upset? (Go here for the first part of the story.) Janove, author of the  The Star Profile, suggests that […]

Avoid Peter Principle Promotions with Star Profile

Janove created the "Star Profile" to provide a basis for mutual understanding between direct reports and their supervisors. One of its benefits, outlined in Janove’s book, The Star Profile, is that it helps management avoid dreaded "Peter Principle" promotions. Peter Principle Promotions Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull‘s 1968 book, The Peter Principle, theorized […]

Health Insurance—What Are Best Employers Doing to Control Costs

For years, BLR has surveyed HR and benefits professionals to find trends in benefits. We appreciate your participation in our monthly series of brief, targeted benefits surveys. Today’s survey topic: Health Insurance. (We’ll publish the results in a future issue.) Please participate in this brief survey and we’ll determine what employers are doing with this […]

SEC Acts to Clarify Conflict with DOL’s Fee Disclosure Rules over … Chart Format!

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 […]

All Quiet on the Transparency Front: Fees Still a Mystery and Hospital Quality Data Spotty

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 […]

‘Competition’ from ‘Exchange’ Plans Won’t Incite Employers to ‘Desert’ Health Benefits, Optimists Say

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 […]

More Investment Advice from Fiduciaries Deemed Trustworthy by DOL

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 […]

Dependent Coverage Won’t Explode Military Health Expenses

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). […]

Candidate’s COBRA Premium Kerfuffle Points Out Differing Employer Practices

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 […]

Domestic Partner Benefits? 45% Offer or Plan to Offer (Survey Results)

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 […]