Human Capital Management Blog

Who doesn’t want to reduce stress on their employees? Apparently, open enrollments aren't helping. A recent study conducted by Harris Pole of over 2100 employees revealed that roughly 50% of employees find the open enrollment process to be “Always Stressful” and over 40% described selecting health benefits as “Very Confusing.” Makes sense—you’ve got HMOs, PPOs, EPOs, HSAs, FSA, HRAs, HDHPs…and suddenly I’m thinking about Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam. When employees are looking at selecting a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) for the first time, here are a few things worth sharing.

Choosing between a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) and a Health Savings Account (HSA) can be confusing and lead to frustration. Here is a quick list of differences to help you in your mission to pick which plan is best.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its Employer Shared Responsibility Mandate have placed a costly burden on employers who traditionally did not extend employer sponsored health coverage to variable hour employees. The ACA now requires employers to offer health coverage to those employees that work more than 30 hours per week (130 hours per month over a 12 month measurement period), or risk paying a penalty. In an effort to avoid the cost of penalties and additional health insurance expenses, a number of employers looked to ways of reducing their full-time employee population, or minimize the number of employees to whom they would be required to offer coverage or risk paying a penalty. Makes sense. Then came the lawsuit Marin v. Dave & Buster’s Inc.

As Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are growing in popularity, employers having increasing questions on the difference between Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRAs), FLEX Spending Accounts (FSAs) and HSAs. While there are overlapping regulations in each of these benefits, there are also important distinguishing factors. This blog will focus on the question: “For an HRA vs. HSA vs. FSA, must a qualified expense be incurred during the same plan year that the contribution is made?” Let’s focus on how each of these benefits responds.

We have some time between now and the effective date of NY Paid Family Leave Act (PFLA) in January of 2018. Indeed a lot can happen in 18 months that may impact our plans for administering NY Paid Family Leave, but probably not enough to justify postponing our preparation strategy for administering this new benefit. In this blog I'll be covering some key considerations when building your process for administering Paid Family Leave. Of note, PFLA shares some similarities with FMLA, but is by no means a carbon copy.

In May of 2016, the EEOC published final versions of rules pertaining to employer wellness plan compliance. The updates addressed: Incentive caps for wellness plans that require employees to disclose biometric information (BMI) Incentive caps for wellness plans that require BMI from employee’s spouses who participate in voluntary plans So, why the change? The intent of the regulation was to provide employers with a common standard for which to measure the compliance of their wellness plans. Prior to the regulatory update, it was possible for employer wellness programs to be in compliance with the ACA, yet violating the ADA. The regulation goes into effect in 2017 of the renewal month of employer-sponsored coverage (plans renewing in July do not need to be in compliance until July of 2017). So what do you need to know?