Straight From The Source Blog by Higginbotham Insurance

You can’t run a healthy business without a healthy workforce. However, maintaining a roster of healthy employees is a constant challenge, especially when you consider that about half of all adults have one or more chronic conditions such as diabetes or heart disease.

Many of your workers have student loan debt. It may be causing significant stress. It may even be distracting them from work. To help with this growing problem, more employers are offering student loan assistance benefits. Here’s what you need to know before you launch your own program.

When you work in human resources, you’ve got to be good at juggling. There’s new talent to recruit, benefits to manage and conflicts to resolve. You’re onboarding and offboarding and even crossboarding. And then there are all the rules and regulations. If anything goes wrong, you could be facing a lawsuit. An extra hand or two sure could help. Good HR technology would be even better.

Few things have had as much impact on the health care landscape in recent decades as technology. Telemedicine is the perfect example. While telehealth isn’t a new concept, technology has taken us from the “dark ages” of doctors making house calls to futuristic wearable devices such as the Apple Watch that can sense abnormalities and call a doctor for you.

Like any business owner, you want to take care of your employees and offer the most generous benefits you possibly can. But if you operate a business with multiple locations in multiple states, you know what a compliance nightmare it can be dealing with inconsistent paid leave laws.

What do these three situations have in common?

Reference-based pricing (RBP) is the newest health plan model to make waves in employee benefits. It’s a fairly simple idea that’s creating a lot of buzz, and companies are eyeing it as a way to control costs.

Want to take control of employee benefit plan costs? One way is to target the health problems that drive up costs. IFEPB’s Workplace Wellness Trends 2017 Survey identified the health conditions that cost employers the most. Here’s a look at what they are and how to target them.

The cost of health insurance keeps rising. As employers look for ways to cut costs, many businesses are turning to alternative methods of risk transfer. Self-insurance, as well as partial self-insurance and captive insurance, can give companies increased control over their health care costs. It can also help businesses take control of other major insurance expenditures such as your workers’ compensation or business liability insurance.

Not so long ago, the term “financial wellness” didn’t even exist. But years of volatile markets, a rollercoaster economy and an increasingly informed public have all helped to make financial wellness offerings a staple in employee benefits packages. Financial wellness programs and advice have traditionally been built on four pillars: budgeting, saving for emergencies, eliminating debt and planning for retirement.

But in our world of e-commerce, online banking, digital wallets and multiple social media platforms, our automated lifestyle has made us all increasingly vulnerable to fraud and cybercrimes.

Identify theft is one of the fastest growing of them all, and the statistics are shocking. According to a study by Javelin Strategy & Research, more than 16 million people became victims of identity fraud in 2017. According to renowned money expert Clark Howard, there’s a new victim of identity theft every two seconds!

That’s why identify theft protection has become the fifth pillar of financial wellness.

In this day and age, employees have a host of financial stresses like budgeting, paying the rent, investing, paying for college and figuring out how best to use benefits such as 401(k)s and health savings accounts (HSAs). And for most, the threat of identity theft is getting higher and higher on the list of financial stresses.

Employers see it too. They see how distracted and unproductive employees can be when their minds are on personal money problems instead of work. And they know identity theft is on everyone’s mind.

With today’s threats, identity theft protection should play a crucial role in any financial wellness package.

New data breaches pop up constantly, and identity thieves are getting more sophisticated. If you want to help your employees protect their finances, reputation and identity, your financial wellness benefits should include identity theft protection. In fact, here are five reasons it should be an integral part of your voluntary benefits offerings: