Most baby boomers who retired in the past five years felt in control of their retirement decision. Physical health and emotional preparedness contributed to this sense of control.

Those who continue to doubt that the country is facing a retirement crisis are going to have to overcome the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s latest daunting estimate, which puts the aggregate retirement shortfall at $4.13 trillion. 

As companies focus on maintaining employee productivity and controlling costs when designing benefits programs, these plans also can greatly improve loyalty.

When it comes to their finances, putting aside funds for retirement is way down the list for Americans in 2015. According to a poll from American Consumer Credit Counseling, the top financial priority this year for most of the country is to pay off debt. 

About one-third of organizations have a workspace hoteling program in place and another third are considering it, according to a survey from Asure Software, a workplace and workforce management software solutions provider.

That was a typical reaction to my recent column about Stewart Friedman’s book, Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life. In the book, Friedman argues that trying to balance the personal and professional is an exercise in frustration. The goal should be to understand the "four domains" of your life – work, home, community and the "private realm" of mind, body and spirit – and accept that you can never perfectly balance all four in terms of time and energy. Instead, look for how each can inform and enrich the other.

Whether employers contribute to employees' individual health accounts is a critical factor affecting average HSA and HRA account balances.

The conversation benefit advisers are having with employers and their employees about retirement planning no longer centers on some future destination date; it increasingly addresses finances as a bigger picture, a whole life scenario. Educating employers and employees using this more holistic approach, advisers say, has increased employee understanding and engagement in retirement benefit plans.

Employers should consider maintaining drug-free workplaces, particularly for workplace safety. However, an employer may want to consider revisiting their drug testing policies if they test for nonsafety-sensitive positions, especially if the employer operates in a state that has legalized marijuana for medical or recreational purposes.

People often don't realize that they're missing out on valuable employee benefits. Here's how one planner helps them get what's theirs.

As companies focus largely on maintaining employee productivity and controlling costs when designing its benefit programs, according to the Employee Benefits Trends Survey released from Wells Fargo Insurance, benefit plans can also greatly improve employee loyalty. According to the survey, C-suite executives and benefit managers cite managing costs and maintaining employee productivity as the most important goals in both the short (12–18 months) and long term (five years). 

The Western United States is dealing with a significant measles outbreak, with cases in more than a dozen states. The Chicago Department of Public Health is dedicated to providing information to residents and their families to ensure the health of individuals and the community. This fact sheet provides basic information about measles and how residents can best protect themselves and their children.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics are well known – one in every 20 hospital patients acquires an infection while receiving medical care in hospitals. The CDC’s most recent estimates blame these health care associated infections (HAIs) for nearly 100,000 deaths annually. 

Nearly 40 percent of employees say work stress causes them to eat poorly and exercise less, and nearly a third say their companies' social environment influences the same negative behaviors.

Once a rarity, workplace wellness programs have become commonplace over the last decade. They are especially popular within the health care industry, with 99 percent of health care employers offering some kind of program.

Deaths due to smoking increased by 17 percent with the inclusion of multiple diseases that do not have established relationships with cigarette smoking, data from five large cohort studies showed.

Wellness programs can have a variety of positive effects in the workplace – encouraging healthier behaviors, improving employee morale, reducing absenteeism and lower health care costs – and branding that program can make it more successful.

Most parents of young children today never, in their own childhoods, witnessed siblings and friends fall ill with measles. Many doctors in the U.S. have never seen a case. Five decades of vaccination efforts virtually eliminated the virus from this country.

For employers battling absenteeism or looking to reinvent current policies, creating a solid philosophy that includes robust return-to-work and employee wellness programs will be vital in increasing attendance.

Apple Inc.'s health care technology is spreading quickly among major U.S. hospitals, showing early promise as a way for doctors to monitor patients remotely and lower costs.

Three insurers – Anthem, Humana and UnitedHealth – hope to compel their members to eat better by partnering with local grocery stores to create special member programs that provide discounts of up to 10 percent on certain healthy foods, reported Kenosha News.

Wellness program design continues to evolve, often striking out in new directions as corporations gain more experience with what works and what doesn’t, from a variety of standpoints.

Buddy systems and "flex nurses" are two ways that some hospitals attempt to ease nurses' burden and reduce the likelihood of fatigue, in keeping with recommendations from the American Nurses Association (ANA), according to the Courier-Journal.