Upcoming Webcasts

Good business decisions require good data, and that’s one of the areas that HR has historically struggled. Not that HR hasn’t provided reams of reports on performance distributions, compensation change percent and time to hire, but are those really the information needed to make better business decisions? With HR moving from tactical resource to strategic mover and shaker the time of status reporting is past. HR must be able to answer cause and effect questions that are more predictive than reactive. Industry experts will review the areas that must be improved to create HR metrics that can stand side-by-side with the numbers from Finance, Product Development and Sales.

It’s no secret that the wide range of employee benefits programs and plans offered to today’s employer can be both overwhelming to understand and challenging to manage. With rising healthcare costs, a myriad of compliance issues, and the passage of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, program strategy and administration can be time-consuming and complex.Evaluate the impact of health care reform on your organization and ensure your employee benefit plans remain in compliance. Health care reform and its major provisions take effect in 2014 and will have a major impact on employers’ benefits strategies. Employers must address compliance issues including recent San Francisco Health Care Ordinance revisions, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act audits, and the possible release of final Section 125 cafeteria plan regulations. Gain insight and practical information to successfully address the benefits and compliance issues resulting from health care reform over the next 12 months.

Launch your learning journey with a high energy start! This session will introduce the Institute for Human Resources (IHR) Benefits: Cost Containment, Audits and Legal Risks and the Institute for Human Resources (IHR) certification program. Find out about the workshops that will be available, and learn how the IHR certification process works. Throughout this conference you will gain practical ideas and concepts that you will be able to put into practice in your organization. You will be introduced to the Advisory Board, learn about the opportunity to become certified within the IHR and see who is speaking and their topics. You will be given guidance on how to chat online with colleagues and access the virtual exhibit hall. You will have the opportunity to ask questions as it relates to the overall program, prior to its commencement. You can access all of the archived sessions where we launched this Institute in May, 2011.

Group Long Term Disability Insurance represents 4-5% of the dollars spent on fringe benefits and as a result in many businesses it gets much less attention than other benefits which represent the larger dollar costs. This session will review, in detail, the 9 plan design feature choices and the 18 contractual language definition choices to precisely identify the impact of each on whether a claim gets paid and if it does, the amount (size) of the claim check. The end result of the session will probably be a review of the in-place group long term disability policy for the betterment of a future disabled employee.

This presentation will explain why employers must lead the way in preparing the nation for the caregiving tsunami that is poised to devastate productivity. Phyllis Shelton will relate the latest happenings in long-term care insurance and link it to the overall picture of health care reform. She will explain why LTC insurance hasn’t been a senior product in years and why almost half of the policies are being purchased at the workplace. She will explain the participation and underwriting requirements for offering worksite LTC insurance in today’s environment. She will explain the best practices for employee education in a successful LTC insurance offering.

New U.S. regulations in the health privacy field present a number of compliance challenges for employer plans during 2013 and 2014. This session will summarize the basic rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), describe the new final regulations and their changes, and provide practical compliance assistance in areas of particular concern to employers. Among other topics, the session will cover: the changing status of business associates under HIPAA business associate agreements; the new standards for evaluating breaches of security, including risk assessment, notification, and reporting obligations; restrictions on the use of genetic information for health plan underwriting and related notice obligations; new participant rights; and enhancements to the HIPAA enforcement regime and civil penalties. Attendees will have an opportunity to raise questions about the new regulations during the session and will leave with a road map for addressing their HIPAA compliance gaps.

Healthcare reform is here to stay and it is contributing to an explosion in America’s part-time workforce. Effective January 1, 2014, employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees are required to provide health insurance for their workers or face fines. Many employers are planning to manage their employees to fewer than 30 hours per week, exempting them from the penalty. What are the options for part-time employees? They are required to have health insurance, and they have full-time lives and full-time pressures to provide for themselves and/or their families. Competition to recruit and keep the best part-time employees will increase. This session will cover who is affected by the mandate, how to understand employee status (part-time vs. full-time), and benefit options for your part-time employees.

In the Workplace Wellness Program Best Practices session we focus on global benchmarked workplace wellness programs as they are evaluated against the ten most important best practices. It addresses international trends that incorporate program design, strategy development, organizational change, program management and the evaluation of employee health, wellness and productivity outcomes. Based on real workplace wellness program case studies we address mission critical aspects that contribute to the success of any employee health promotion program. We share what thriving organizations do to develop, implement and manage their workplace health and wellness programs so that sustainable stakeholder value and triple bottom line results are created.

In the webinar, you will learn the various triggers of an audit, whether from the Department of Labor or (and) the Internal Revenue Service and how best you can begin preparing for their inevitability….

And we will emphasize the necessity of a team approach…to encompass any external advisors…,accountants to attorneys and actuaries…,that must be part of your audit prep. We will cite specific examples of audits triggered by employees…,past and present…,not because of something you did (or did not) do…but a transgression by a third party provider that if not addressed, can prove costly.

And all of this data will be disseminated to you in easy to understand non technical terminology…we promise not to touch on either Alpha or Beta ratios.