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Health and Benefits

An Employee Handbook Is the Cornerstone of Communications on Workplace Policies

By Health and Benefits

Effective employee communications are essential to ensuring smooth operations for any business. A key element of your employee communications package should be your employee handbook.

An employee handbook sets out a company’s policies and procedures. It establishes standards for all facets of on-the-job conduct and can prevent misunderstandings on the part of employees as to what is expected of them. Employers generally give an employee handbook to new workers upon hire, and to all employees whenever the handbook undergoes revision.

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Show Employees Their Hidden Paychecks

By Health and Benefits

A top-notch workforce is essential to your company’s success. It’s always important to have engaged, loyal employees, and in an economic downturn, it’s more critical than ever to keep employee morale high to maintain the competitive edge top-quality employees bring.

One way you keep your best employees on board is by offering a generous benefits package. But do your employees fully appreciate your investment? According to many surveys, they don’t. Employees tend to focus on their share of the costs, and many grossly underestimate the amount their employers pay. Employees also tend to underestimate what employers pay for other benefits such as paid time off (PTO), tuition reimbursement, pension or 401(k) plans and statutory benefits like employer-paid Social Security.

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Finding the Benefits Broker Who’s Best for Your Company

By Health and Benefits

A good employee benefits package that appropriately fits your employees’ needs is an important part of the formula for most companies’ success. The right benefits package helps to attract and retain employees, keeps them motivated, and inspires them to give you their best. But as we all know, benefits can be expensive, and finding the right benefits at the right price can be a time-consuming, sometimes frustrating experience. It’s here that the services of a benefits broker can make all the difference.

What should you look for in a benefits broker? How do you determine if a benefits broker is right for your business? What sets a terrific benefits broker apart from the rest of the field? If you’re in the market for a new benefits broker, here are a few things to keep in mind—

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7 Great Benefits that Employees Enjoy Tax Free

By Health and Benefits

When tax season arrives each year, employees everywhere are reminded of how much money is taken from their paychecks. Although some employees take advantage of group term life, tax-exempt HSAs or other benefits that are free of taxation, some do not. There are seven great tax-free benefits that help employers keep more money and also offer enticing deductibles.

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Evaluation is Key to Determining Whether Wellness Program Measures Up

By Health and Benefits

Common sense tells us that healthier employees are more productive, have lower absenteeism rates, and are likely to be less costly to a company's health care plan. In an effort to encourage employee health and fitness, and the management of chronic diseases, many companies implement wellness programs. In today's economic climate, however, where cost-cutting measures can be critical to a company's survival, business owners and top management want documentation of the return on the investment put into these programs. Thus, wellness program evaluation can be key to the survival of these programs in a company.

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Whole Life Insurance in the Workplace

By Health and Benefits

What is whole life insurance?

Unlike term insurance, which only pays a death benefit if the insured dies within a specified time frame, whole life insurance is designed to pay a death benefit no matter how long the insured lives. Although premiums are higher than for a comparable death benefit, many workers prefer to have a portion of their life insurance in a whole life plan, because eventual payout is a certainty, if the policy is kept in force. This is contrasted with term life insurance policies – only a very small percentage of which, thankfully, ever pay a death benefit.

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How to Engage Employees in Becoming Motivated to Get Healthier

By Health and Benefits

My grandmother once told me that she would save her allowance all month to walk three miles to the soda fountain for a single milkshake. From ready-made foods at the market, to the fast-food drive by, to diet pills purporting instant and effortless weight loss, our culture today is all about instant gratification and results. The basic fact that not everything is obtained without an effort and/or wait seems to be a lost concept.

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Understanding Disease Management & Diabetes

By Health and Benefits

Since the medical costs for diabetes reach into the billions each year, taking a chunk out of the cumulative cost of this disease would be beneficial in many ways. As most people know, the goal of disease management programs is to reduce the costs incurred by diabetes. To do this, these programs attempt to teach patients to control the disease. They learn the importance of monitoring cholesterol, blood pressure and blood glucose levels. Individuals with diabetes face similar challenges, treatment choices and the possibility of serious complications. This means that anyone who has diabetes can benefit from the offerings of a disease management program.

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Stand Above Other Employers with Unique Benefits

By Health and Benefits

Although high unemployment rates may be advantageous to employers, there is one important issue that may hamper their abilities to obtain the best employees. That issue is health benefits. Look at any company offering astounding benefits, and compare their turnover rates to those of companies with mediocre benefits. The results show a consistent advantage for employers with good benefits.

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