March 2015, Page 3 Archive

Nearly half (48%) of employers offer a consumer-driven health plan (CDHP) — which is one of only proven ways to keep rising health costs at bay — yet just 7% of firms offer this plan as their only option. Here’s how to change that. 

The key to making the eventual move to a CDHP-only workplace is in the transition. So says Deb Dominianni, the vice president of strategy for Pinnacle Care, a health service company.

Because the transition is a difficult one for employers and employees alike, here are some Dominianni’s suggestions to make the process as painless as possible:

1. Ease their confusion

Even the most traditional health options can be confusing. So a CDHP that requires employees to make regular, educated decisions can be overwhelming. Because CDHPs shift both costs and responsibility onto workers, the move can cause plenty of negative feelins — and even hurt worker productivity and engagement.

So HR pros must be able to guide workers through the ins and outs of the process and show workers how the plan can benefit both them (decreased premium costs) and the company as a whole.

2. Offer expert help

HR pros shouldn’t have to shoulder the transition to a CDHP on their own. Healthcare brokers are a great resource to help answer workers’ questions and alleviate any unfounded concerns.

Another option: Health advisory services. These services can provide workers with one point of contact for access to expert resources and second opinions. When it comes to high-cost medical claims, these contacts encourage better, more-educated decisions, which in turn leads to lower costs, absences, etc.

3. Make it personal

One of the most effective ways to speed up the CDHP-transition process is to tailor it to your specific worker groups. How? By offering education that’s tailored to specific worker groups. Example: One company held separate CDHP education meetings for families, domestic partners and single employees, so each group could focus more closely on their unique concerns.

Another option: Use real-life examples or hypothetical “personas.” Jennifer Benz, founder of Benz Communications, says creating personas – or “people-like-me” scenarios – that show how the plan will apply to various employee groups makes it easier for employees to understand how CDHPs will impact them.

For more HR News, please visit: 3 keys to creating a CDHP-only workplace

Source: News from HR Morning

Firing a disabled employee while he’s out on medical leave is usually a recipe for disaster. But it can be done in limited circumstances. However, the potentially discriminatory nature of this firing was a little too obvious for the EEOC to overlook. 

Meet Doug Johnson. He drove a van and took nursing home patients to medical appointments for his employer Paloma Blanca Health Care Associates, a health and rehabilitation center in Albuquerque, NM.

Almost three years into his tenure, Johnson suffered a heart attack and was diagnosed with a number of other cardiovascular conditions.

He then requested a reasonable accommodation under the ADA in the form of a request for FMLA leave.

Paloma Blanca approved him for 12 weeks of FMLA leave.

So far so good, right?

Fired as part of an ‘RIF’

Five weeks into his medical leave things took a sharp turn.

Johnson was terminated.

Firing a person while on medical leave is enough to perk up the EEOC’s antenna. But Paloma Blanca didn’t stop there.

It notified Johnson that it had eliminated his position and was laying him off due to a “reduction in force.”

Granted, a legitimate RIF is actually one of the ways employers can terminate individuals on medical leave — assuming it could be proven those workers would’ve been let go regardless of their medical condition or leave of absence.

But problem for Paloma Blanca was this looked like anything but a legitimate RIF, at least according to the info contained in the EEOC’s press release on the matter.

No other Paloma Blanca employees were subjected to an RIF at that time, the EEOC said, and there were no department- or facility-wide reductions in force around that time either.

So the EEOC sued Paloma Blanca under the ADA for disability discrimination and for failing to provide reasonable accommodations to a disabled individual.

Perhaps seeing how bad this looked, Paloma Blanca decided to settle the lawsuit by providing Johnson $145,000 in monetary relief.

As part of the settlement, Paloma also agreed to:

• expunge from Johnson’s personnel file any references to the allegations of discrimination, his participation in the lawsuit or his disabilities
• review and distribute to employees its policies regarding disability discrimination and retaliation
• provide its employees with training regarding disability discrimination and procedures for handling requests for reasonable accommodations, and
• post a notice emphasizing the company’s equal employment opportunity policy and reaffirming its commitment to providing reasonable accommodations for employees and applicants with disabilities.

For more HR News, please visit: Company’s shady-looking ‘RIF’ leads to 5K payout

Source: News from HR Morning

Download this guide and share it with your managers and help them use recognition more effectively. They’ll learn how to successfully use recognition to:

• Drive engagement and build relationships
• Connect a geographically dispersed team
• Improve productivity and performance
• Inspire employees to meet goals

Click here for your free guide!  

For more HR News, please visit: The Manager’s Field Guide to Recognition

Source: News from HR Morning

At-will employment agreement or not, try to babysit your employees this much and you’re likely to get burned. 

PAM Transport Inc. was recently ordered by a U.S. district court to deliver nearly $500,000 to 12 former truck drivers.

The court ruled the employer violated the ADA when it required its drivers to submit to what the ADA terms “overly broad medical inquiries.”

The EEOC sued PAM Transport on the drivers’ behalf after learning the employer had, according to the agency, ordered them to “notify the company whenever the driver had any contact with a medical professional, including a routine physical.”

The requirement was spelled out in the employer’s medical clearance policy, the EEOC said.

Under the ADA, employees can only be made to submit to medical inquiries if the inquiries are job-related and consistent with business necessity.

In other words, the inquiries have to:

• help an employer determine whether a medical condition will prevent an employee from performing the essential functions of his or her job, or
• determine if an employee will pose a direct safety threat because of his or her medical condition.

There are also certain allowances for medical inquiries when an employee requests a disability accommodation and it isn’t immediately clear to the employer what the need for the accommodation is.

But asking employees to report to their employer every time they see a doctor, that’s a big no-no.

As a result, the court ordered PAM Transport to cough up $225,998 in back pay and interest, $49,114 in compensatory damages, and $202,287 in punitive damages to the 12 former truck drivers.

It also ordered the employer to revise its medical clearance policy and even ordered a retired judge to serve as third-party decision maker to assist PAM Transport in making the necessary changes.

For more HR News, please visit: This is what asking for too much employee medical info looks like

Source: News from HR Morning

If you’re frustrated by the EEOC’s recent lawsuits against wellness programs, and are confused about what a legal wellness incentive is nowadays, you’ll probably like this: 

The Preserving Employee Wellness Programs Act was just introduced in both the House and Senate. It’s a short bill that aims to clear up the confusion sparked by the EEOC around what’s an acceptable wellness program incentive and what isn’t.

As you may recall, the EEOC sued Honeywell International Inc. late last year, claiming the company’s wellness program biometric screenings violated the ADA and GINA because:

• the incentives to participate in the screenings were so extreme — they could cost non-participating employees up to $4,000 — that they rendered the wellness program involuntary (the alleged ADA violation), and
• the screenings illegally tied incentives to the collection of family members’ medical history (the alleged GINA violation).

The lawsuit against Honeywell came on the heels of two other lawsuits in which the EEOC charged two other employers with similar violations of the ADA.

The ADA says medical examinations — like the biometric screenings Honeywell and others wanted employees to participate in under their wellness programs — are only legal if they are voluntary or job-related and consistent with business necessity.

The EEOC said the employers’ penalties for non-participation were so steep, they rendered the examinations involuntary.

What employers, Congress took issue with

Now here’s the rub: Employers and various members of Congress believe the EEOC has overstepped it’s bounds issuing these wellness lawsuits because:

• the agency never issued any regulations specifying when a wellness incentive or penalty would be so steep as to render a program involuntary, and
• the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has said that employers can offer wellness incentives/penalties as long as they don’t exceed 30% of the value of an individual’s insurance premiums (50% if the incentives are tied to smoking cessation).

What the new bill would do

The new bill, if passed, would set the record straight once and for all.

Quite simply, it says that wellness programs would be in compliance with the ADA if they’re in compliance with the ACA.

The bill also addresses GINA violations by saying:

“the collection of information about the manifested disease or disorder of a family member shall not be considered an unlawful acquisition of genetic information with respect to another family member participating in workplace wellness programs, or programs of health promotion or disease prevention offered by an employer or in conjunction with an employer sponsored health plan … and shall not violate titles I or title II of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008.”

In other words, collecting medical info on employees’ family members who’ll participate in a company wellness program — whether the incentives are tied to the collection of this info or not — won’t violate GINA.

For more HR News, please visit: Introducing Congress’ proposed fix for wellness incentives

Source: News from HR Morning

You know those complex fee-disclosure statements you have to make sure your employees get regarding their 401k plans? If the DOL has its way, workers may have to get the same type of info about their health insurance.  

This is one of the surprising details that was tucked away in the Obama Administration’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 budget proposal.

Benefits consultant ERISA Diagnostics Inc. recently pointed out this proposal, which seemed to fly under the radar after the budget was released.

There have been a string of health-plan fee lawsuits — Hi-Lex Controls Inc. v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Dykema Excavators v. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) â€” where plan administrators were accused of fiduciary responsibility violations.

So it looks like the DOL is looking to make providers in the healthcare industry as accountable for and transparent about plan fees as providers in the retirement field.

Dates back to 2011

Initially introduced back in 2011, the proposal was tabled until it was listed as a top priority by the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) this year.

Why the sudden urgency from the EBSA? One reason is because self-insured health plans are becoming more common, and the feds believe self-funded plan sponsors may not be fully aware of the fees they’re actually paying their administrators.

Fee info related to these plans, which are paid out of the general assets of the employer, can’t be found on the Form 5500.

Although there is a section of Form 5500 — Schedule A — that lists broker commissions, this section doesn’t require that these services be broken down on a line-by-line basis.

In the meantime …

While employers wait for the DOL to take action on this priority, there are several things that can be done to prevent paying excessive health plan fees.

For one, ERISA Diagnostics says employers should “review welfare plan [i.e., health plan] fees with the same scrutiny and diligence as you review 401(k) plan fees.”

And sponsors of self-insured plans can even go a step further. In the Hi-Lex lawsuit, the DOL filed a detailed amicus brief regarding â€œextensive discussion regarding plan assets.”

Employers can look at the DOL’s thoughts on this subject and then use that info to discuss fees with their administrators and brokers.

For more HR News, please visit: Feds are pushing for fee-disclosure rules for health plans

Source: News from HR Morning

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For more HR News, please visit: Three Trends that are Impacting the Hiring Market Right Now

Source: News from HR Morning

Are you a fan of this potential drain on your company’s 401(k) plan? 

In President Obama’s proposed 2016 budget, his administration included a provision that, if passed, would allow unemployed individuals to withdraw up to $50,000 from their individual 401(k) accounts penalty free.

Presently, early withdrawals (those made before age 59-1/2), are subject to a 10% penalty, plus income tax requirements.

The president’s proposal would eliminate the 10% penalty, but there are some rules attached to the plan.

The fine print:

• Withdrawals would still be subject to income taxes.
• Any person wishing to make a withdrawal must have received unemployment compensation for more than 26 weeks.
• Participants could withdrawal at least $10,000.
• If a participant has more than $10,000 in their account, the person could withdrawal half of their plan balance up to a total withdrawal of $50,000 per year. (For example: A person with $40,000 in their account could withdrawal $20,000. And if the person had $100,000 or more, they’d be allowed to withdrawal the maximum of $50,000).
• Participants would have to withdrawal the funds either in the year they received unemployment compensation or the following year.

It’s unclear how likely the provision is to pass (presidential budget proposals usually undergo significant changes), but NBC News is reporting the provision appears to have bipartisan support.

How the business community would react is another story altogether. Generally, employers do all they can to discourage early withdrawals, as they know what kind of damage they can do to employees’ and ex-employees’ long-term retirement savings.

For more HR News, please visit: Obama plan would increase early 401(k) withdrawals

Source: News from HR Morning