Dear Health Care Executives:

This edition of the BWB will provide new ways to inspire and invigorate wellness programs and spark some ideas around your organization’s benefit offerings. Be a source of wellbeing for your organization—be a benefits and wellness leader. Also, find inspirational stories here in the ASHHRA Benefits and Wellness Bulletin (BWB) to keep you on your wellness journey. 

ASHHRA appreciates your dedication to health care, and we will continue to improve in assisting you in the way you do your work. Please feel free to email me at sdrake@aha.org for any reason—we are here to serve you, our valued members. Just a reminder, you can read this edition of the BWB on your smart phone—to learn more, click here.

Sincerely,

ASHHRA Executive Director

Plan sponsors today carry a heightened responsibility. They continue to be stewards of the institution’s retirement plans and the assets that are critical to their employees’ future. Yet they must now do so with fewer resources of their own, in a tough new regulatory environment, under harsh economic conditions.

Maureen Sellers remembers the dot-com era of the late 1990s in Seattle all too well. Doggie daycare. Weekly workplace massages. Employer-sponsored happy hours. Daily foosball tournaments. A fully-stocked kitchen. And stock options, which on paper, fueled her post-IPO fantasies of exotic vacations and full-time volunteer work.

More than half of private companies surveyed about their readiness for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act said they were already in compliance with the law. Moreover, three-quarters of them considered themselves prepared to meet the law’s requirements when they become the law of the land. 

The delay in the employer mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act gives companies an additional year before they must offer medical coverage to their workers or pay a fine. What does the delay mean for benefits managers? If you're at the head of an HR department, what should you be doing and thinking about? 

A new report suggests young and low-wage workers will face the greatest challenges in terms of health care eligibility and cost. Among employees under age 30, only half participated in their employer’s health benefits program in 2013, compared to 70 percent of employees age 40 and older, according to the 2013 ADP Annual Health Benefits Report, which examined data from about 600,000 employees from 175 U.S.-based companies.

Nine in 10 U.S. workers believe companies that offer a full range of benefits help them simplify and secure their lives, according to a survey from WellPoint. The survey compares employed Americans' knowledge and attitudes toward voluntary benefits from 2010 with those of employed Americans today. 

Melissa Yoakam jokingly calls her dog Shadow her "car payment" because she pays $250 a month for the 12-year-old’s cancer treatments. She’d pay far less if she had pet insurance, but she didn’t take advantage of it when Shadow was younger and when he got cancer it was too late. She uses her experience to convince colleagues not to make the same mistake.

On June 26, 2013, the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark decision regarding same-sex marriage. While welcomed by proponents of marriage equality for same-sex couples, the decision left many unanswered questions regarding when same-sex marriages will be considered valid for purposes of employee benefit plans. Employers must now navigate through a field of potential landmines with little guidance issued to date.

Typical employee benefits no longer differentiate a company as much as they used to. Companies are realizing they must offer unique advantages that other businesses don’t to keep top talent. Investing in your employees is not a new strategy, but there are different ways of creating loyalty among your top performers.

Employees believe they are less likely to get a raise in the next 12 months but have a more positive view of the outlook for their company, according to Glassdoor’s quarterly Employment Confidence Survey. Employees are more pessimistic about the possibility of being laid off, according to the survey, but are more optimistic that the colleagues won’t be let go. 

Gary Taffet specializes in facilitating in the creation of quality employee benefits programs for companies of many different shapes and sizes. Working with managers and administrators, he helps companies and their employees find adequate insurance benefits and coverage that best suits the whole team. The goal of his work is to improve both the wellbeing of the employees and the quality of their performance for their employers.

Many employers have greatly improved their retirement plans in recent years, despite the deep recession and financial pressures. After scaling back their percentage matches in 401(k) and similar programs, employers are now restoring matches. They're also stepping up their financial advice, providing employees with more easily understood investment choices and steadily lowering the fees that employees pay to their fund managers.

Volunteering is linked to better physical, mental, and emotional health that benefits employees, and also employers. In a study by UnitedHealth Group, 76 percent of U.S. adults who volunteer report that volunteering has made them feel physically healthier, and 78 percent report that volunteering lowers their levels of stress, leading to feeling better than adults who do not volunteer. The study also illustrates that employers benefit from employees who volunteer in terms of better employee health and in professional-skills development that employees use in the workplace.

By Ilene MacDonald
Like other employers across the nation, hospitals try to keep insurance premium costs low by offering incentives to staff to lead healthy lifestyles. But new research suggests that these incentives could backfire if they appear to penalize staff for being overweight. 

With a number of studies indicating that one in three patients enters U.S. hospitals malnourished and many more becoming malnourished once admitted, five organizations decided to band together to launch the Alliance to Advance Patient Nutrition.

New research boosts the "use it or lose it" theory about brainpower and staying mentally sharp. People who delay retirement have less risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or other types of dementia, a study of nearly half a million people in France found. 

By now, everyone has formed an opinion on Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer's decision to end teleworking and bring employees back to its offices. "We were doing what was right for Yahoo! right now," Mayer defended her company's strategy at a recent conference.

Do wellness centers improve one's overall quality of life? Well, according to the findings of one recent study, that depends greatly on whether employees use the resources available to them—and even then, may not always lead to the desired results in certain QOL areas. 

By Mary Mosquera

With hard evidence available and the added benefit of increased awards for wellness programs through the Affordable Care Act, employers think wellness programs will work, said Ron Trammel, manager, health promotion and education, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee (BCBST), which has a wellness certification program that targets mid-sized employers, but he warned, "Employers need to want to invest in a worksite program."

Since smokers’ health-care costs tend to be higher than those of nonsmokers, is it reasonable for smokers to pay higher premiums when they buy insurance through the new state marketplaces that are scheduled to open in October? A handful of states and the District of Columbia say the answer is no. 

The idiom "speak softly and carry a big stick," as President Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy doctrine is famously known, very much applies to wellness at the workplace. And these days, the stick seems to be getting bigger.

The Internal Revenue Service needs to greatly expand the number of wellness plan incentives that will count towards the "affordability" standard to which corporations will be held by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Nearly half (47 percent) of all employees reported that the stress from a personal problem negatively impacts their work performance, according to "Stressed at Work: What We Can Learn From EAP Utilization," a study from Bensinger, DuPont and Associates (BDA). The study found that stress most often leads to difficulty concentrating, absenteeism, and poor work quality. The overall data revealed gender differences in the influence of stress on work performance, yet variances by age were minimal.

Which type of retirement plan is likely to produce more money for retirement: A voluntary-enrollment 401(k), a traditional final-average defined benefit plan, or one of the newer cash balance plans?

By Dan Cook
Artwork, judiciously placed, can motivate employees to get a bit more exercise just by using the staircase in your building. That’s what researchers Theadora Swenson and Dr. Michael Siegel, with the Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health in Boston, found when they investigated ways to encourage office workers in three-story buildings to use the stairs rather than the elevators. 

You can lead an employee to a fitness center, but you can't make them fit—either mentally or physically. That's the takeaway from recently published research in the American Journal of Health Promotion. Authors writing for the journal, in two separate studies, looked at whether fitness center use supported by an employer makes people happier and healthier, and what motivates them to continue with a certain fitness activity. 

Nearly 15.5 million Americans are covered by health savings account (HSA)-eligible insurance plans, an increase of nearly 15 percent since last year, according to a census released by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). The greatest enrollment increases were in the large group market, which represents nearly 70 percent of all enrollment in HSA/high-deductible health plans (HSA/HDHPs) in 2013. 

Katie Ehlman loves to run. But when she moved to Portland, Ore., from Little Rock, Ark., three years ago, she was unsure of the best routes. Did she tap her network for newfound friends and neighbors? Sure. But the best tips came from her employer, a small financial services firm with fewer than 25 employees that had mapped out routes around its office to help employees walk or run to earn points toward prizes or paid time off. 

Why, oh why are we so stingy with time off? Not only are managers reluctant to give time off, employees are often reluctant to take it. It’s no secret that we’re a workaholic culture here in the United States. We’re a bunch of taskmasters and slaves to our work, by our own volition. It’s time we started getting smart about time off. 

Generation X employees—those born in the early 1960s to the early 1980s—struggle the most when it comes to juggling competing financial priorities related to their homes, children, and parents, reveals PwC US’s 2013 Employee Financial Wellness Survey. As a result, more than one-third (36 percent) of Gen X employees think it’s likely they will need to dip into their retirement savings to pay for nonretirement expenses, a percentage significantly higher than for both Baby Boomers and Gen Y, the "Millennials." Thirty percent of Gen X employees admit having already withdrawn money held in their retirement plans for expenses other than retirement.

By Rose Stanley
I was recently on a panel presentation to a local group of HR Executives in Arizona. The topic was the future of employer-sponsored health care, health care reform, and wellness plans. My portion included talking about common traits that organizations possessed that helped make their wellness programs successful. As we wrap up June, which also happens to be National Employee Wellness Month, I thought I'd share those traits with you so you could determine whether your organizations share these traits as well. 

For many employees, achieving financial wellness is increasingly tied to preparing for income needs during retirement, addressing the rising cost of health care, and balancing competing financial demands throughout their lifetime. A study from Bank of America Merrill Lynch reveals a need for greater focus on the retirement readiness of the nation’s workforce and access to personalized advice that goes beyond retirement goals.

As part of the statewide Indiana University Health system with extensive health care expertise and facilities, IU Health Bloomington (IUHB) is well positioned to look out for its own when it comes to wellness.