Employee Benefits Blog

Let’s face it, healthcare has become a major expense for everyone in this country. To help offset a portion of this costly burden for employees, employers typically offer two very popular tax-advantaged savings accounts: HRAs and HSAs. But what’s the difference between these two healthcare savings plans, what are the legal distinctions, and which is better for your employees and your company?

Making an informed decision about these tax-advantaged reimbursement plans can help you maximize the benefits for both your employees and your company.

(For a side-by-side comparison of these plans, including comparisons to FSAs and QSEHRA tax-advantaged accounts, click here to download our four page guide.)

Defining HRAs and HSAs

Not to be confused with a flexible spending account (FSA), an HSA, or health savings account, is a savings account specifically linked to a qualified high deductible health plan (HDHP); it’s meant to help offset the higher out-of-pocket expenses that potentially come with plans of this design.

Every business owner is concerned about their company’s reputation. It not only affects their ability to attract customers, but also the talent they’re able to recruit. And these days, the internet is providing a much louder voice to a much wider audience, making business reputation management both more difficult and more complicated.

Ideally, you want current and former employees to leave shining endorsements of your company and all it has to offer, but the reality is that not everyone will do so. Whether your role in a company is one of ownership, leadership, marketing, or human resources, part of your job is to engage in business reputation management and luckily, the very same internet making the process more difficult has managed to provide some useful tools to help you out.  

The Role the Internet Plays in Company Reputation

One of the most positive things the internet has bestowed upon us is the ability to be more transparent. We don’t buy anything without researching it and reading every review we can find, so why would job-seeking be any different? People can read the company’s website, but let’s face it: what they really want is the inside scoop. They want the dirt. They want to know why employees leave, what they’re upset about, what they wish they could change, and how good the employee benefits really are.

If you’re like most HR departments around the country, you’re on the tail end of taking a bit of a breather in Q1, seemingly having just completed yet another fall open enrollment.

Our benefit hotline specialists fielded thousands of calls in Q4 of last year. We thought it might be helpful if we recapped some of the more popular questions and answers, some of which change from year-to-year while others are perennial favorites.

As you might expect, this year we fielded a considerable number of questions about High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). We also took a considerable number of calls on Medicare, Limited Purpose FSAs and other hot topics.

Distributing these FAQs to your workforce or repurposing them in next year’s open enrollment communications and employee benefits guides should go a long way to helping reduce call volume into your HR department.

FREE GUIDE: The Top 55 Open Enrollment FAQs

Listed below are the first 15 on our list. You can access 55 more by clicking here to receive our downloadable guide.

More and more companies are choosing to forego the traditional method of funding health insurance and are instead opting for a self-funded insurance program. 

For many companies, this is a great way to reduce expenses because the employer gets to drop any collected but unspent premiums to the bottom line. (In a fully-funded scenario that profit would go straight to the insurance company.) That said, self-funding is also a gamble, since an employer can also experience a plan year in which medical claims are higher than collected premiums.

This is where stop loss insurance comes into play.

What is Stop Loss Insurance?

Stop loss insurance is essentially insurance for an employer’s self-funded insurance plan (the technical term is Reinsurance or Excess Insurance). It caps the amount an employer would be responsible for paying in the event of a catastrophic claim, or series of catastrophic claims.

Stop loss caps come in many shapes and sizes and are typically driven by the risk tolerance of the company putting them in place. Stop loss insurance can prevent you from ending up in a number of financially dangerous situations because of employee illness or injury, including:

• Decimating your budget (or your emergency reserves) for the year out of a need to cover employee healthcare costs.
• Being unable to pay employee healthcare costs, then finding yourself being sued as a result.
• Losing great employees due to the fact that you're no longer providing the coverage they expected (and used to receive) from their employer.

Even though the majority of the working population in America are parents, employers seem to be largely in the dark about how to cater benefits packages to people who are raising kids, especially working moms. Thanks to the openness of the internet and highly successful working moms (like Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook) talking about their experiences, a whole new avenue of conversation has started about making the workplace more family-friendly. The law provides a starting point, but there are little things (even free things) you can do to help make pregnancy and the return to work easier for working moms. 

First, a disclosure before I go on - I had a lot of help from my wife, a working mom of two children, when writing this particular article. She had a lot of thoughts about what she wished she would have had access to when our children were young and what employers could do now to make the return to work easier. With that out of the way, let's continue...

What’s Required of Employers by Law

Employers with 50 or more full-time equivalents are required to allow men and women to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave each year under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Most employers will allow their employees to use vacation or sick time during their leave so that part of the weeks are paid. Some even offer partially paid leave.

One of the provisions in the Affordable Care Act includes employer requirements for working moms who are still nursing. This stems from the scientific belief that breast milk, for the first year, is what’s best for babies, as well as the reality of breastfeeding — which is that it’s time consuming. Women are more likely to give up on breastfeeding if they don’t feel their employer is supportive of providing work breaks for pumping.

Employee morale can ebb and flow in an office environment. Sometimes dips in morale have nothing to do with actual work — it could mean people are struggling with personal issues and it’s seeping into their professional life. The trouble is, emotions are contagious. We start mimicking each others faces when we’re just hours old and it doesn’t stop in adulthood. At work, positive feelings can spread throughout your staff, just like negative ones — and both can spread through your work and impact morale.

If you notice that multiple employees are displaying negative behaviors (eye-rolling, sarcastic comments, reluctance to get work done, or coming in late), it may be time to boost morale at work. Boosting employee morale doesn’t have to involve a series of complicated incentives. Most of the time, it’s about providing some outwardly noticeable benefits that your workforce enjoys — the kinds of things they’d tell their family and friends about when boasting about the place they work.

With baby boomers starting to retire, millennials have become the largest portion of today’s workforce. For years now, employers have been asking themselves how they can attract and retain this elusive generation — crafting tailored employee benefits packages — and just when they think they’ve got the hang of it, Generation Z pops up.

Gen Z is also known as the post-millennials, the digital generation, and the iGeneration, but regardless of what you call them, they’re beginning to enter the workforce. Though they may be dreading the prospect, it’s already time for HR Directors to start thinking about what kind of employee benefits package will recruit a whole new generation.

Who are Generation Z?

The boomer generation is the only one with agreed upon dates recognized by the census bureau (1946 through 1964), but the media has spent plenty of time defining (and debating) the others. For the most part, people agree that Gen Z begins sometime between 1997 and 2001.

Some make the case for defining this generation as starting on September 11, 2001, in recognition of the historical event on that day which changed every facet of American life, including the way we raise our children. Without a doubt, Gen Z is being raised with an entirely different perspective on life than those who came before them.

College tuition has been steadily increasing for the past couple decades. While many colleges are trying to increase endowments and offer more scholarships for high-achieving students, other options exist for students to avoid debt. A 529 plan is one of the best tools students have to do just that.

In fact, the new tax law passed by Congress, as well as the recently introduced bi-partisan Boost Saving for College Act, both bring about a few changes to 529s worth checking out (read below). 

Just consider that in 2017, the average cost of a four-year undergraduate degree at a public college for in-state residents was nearly $57,000 for tuition, fees, and room and board — of course, that’s assuming the student graduates in four years. Many degrees are stretched to four and a half or five years if internships or cooperative education programs (co-ops) are involved.

Families who can afford it have been saving for college for a long time, and thanks to 529 plans, many are able to do so with tax advantages. Some employers have even started to offer them to employees as a way to incentivize them to plan ahead for college savings. And thankfully, some state governments (like Arizona) have begun to offer extra state tax incentives, as well.

What is a 529 Plan?

Congress developed 529 plans in 1996 as a way to “make it easier to save for college and other post-secondary training for a designated beneficiary, such as a child or grandchild.” While not-so-cleverly nicknamed after the section of the Internal Revenue code that discusses them, 529 plans are legally called “qualified tuition plans.”

When household budgets are already tight, the last thing your employees need is to be overburdened by unplanned and expensive medical bills. Even if they have a persistent cough that won't go away, an injury that just won't heal on its own, or a medical concern they know will eventually land them in the hospital, they may be less likely to see a doctor because they can’t afford to pay another bill.

Unfortunately, health problems often pop up without warning, which may leave some of your employees scrambling to pay the bill — and most likely, at the worst possible time. While most people find this subject embarrassing and would rather keep these matters private, you may have a few employees who confide in you, and seek your advice when it comes to needing help paying medical bills. It goes a long way when you point out to them that they have several outlets to explore before all hope seems to be lost.

Here are some suggestions you can put in your employee benefits guide or send to inquiring employees:

1. Don't Ignore the Bill

This is a really important first step: When you get the bill, don't ignore it. Most companies will bill you again after 30 days, again after 60 days, and then probably once more after 90 days. If you’ve still neglected to pay the bill, you may be sent to collections (the laws can vary, depending on many factors, including the type of medical debt), which will result in agents calling you to demand repayment, negatively impacting your credit history (and therefore, your credit rating).

Most employers in America have some kind of workplace harassment training in place. The majority of the time, it’s hokey, outdated videos full of unrealistic scenarios that completely miss the nuances of personal interaction, followed by a series of questions with very obvious answers. Pretty much anyone could correctly answer those questions without actually paying attention to the videos. We all know the “right” answers because they’re so obvious.

The recent sexual harassment allegations in the news have left many business owners and HR departments wondering what they can do to improve sexual harassment training in their companies, while enduring push back from staff who are dreading yet another terrible seminar.

It’s important for every company to have effective workplace harassment training and subsequent guidelines for how to handle accusations, as not doing so can leave you vulnerable to lawsuits. But not having proper training and procedures can also create a breeding ground for workplace harassment, giving rise to employees feeling unsafe at work, which doesn’t create the type of environment people enjoy working in — and it’s definitely not the kind of place that recruits and retains the best talent.

Workplace Harassment in the News

Sexual harassment has been prevalent in the news lately, as more and more women (and men) are coming forward about their experiences with workplace harassment. Discussions of harassment and assault have been picking up momentum since the summer of 2016, when 24 women made assault or harassment allegations against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Since then, multiple men have been accused, including former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, celebrity chef Mario Batali, Metropolitan Opera conductor James Levine, former host and creator of the radio show "A Prairie Home Companion" Garrison Keillor, former Today Show anchor Matt Lauer, journalist Charlie Rose, hip hop producer Russell Simmons, former Minnesota Senator Al Franken, actor Kevin Spacey, comedian Louis C.K., defeated Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, and of course, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein. The list goes on, and on, and on.