Universal Benefit Plans Blog

Employees are just as likely to blame you for their financial problems as they are to blame themselves

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:20:00 GMT

A recent poll conducted by Harris Interactive asked employees one very loaded question; who is to blame for your financial problems? For the most part, employees named the usual suspects, Congress, Wall Street, the President and one big surprise, their employer.

Statistics from the poll revealed that 3 in 10 employees felt their employer was to blame for their financial problems. This is roughly the same number of people who blamed themselves for poorly managing their finances.

On top of this, employees are more likely to blame their employers than their families for wasteful spending and failure to save. So when an employee’s spouse buys a high definition flat screen TV he knows they can’t afford you’re getting the blame for the financial setback that it causes, not him.

In this day and age with a financial meltdown and hardships beyond our control, it’s very easy for HR to point the finger right back at the employees. After all, many of them have made their own beds spending much more than they could afford back when times were good. However, doing this will just keep the blame game going on indefinitely between the employee and HR with no end in sight. So, what should an HR professional do?

Communication is Key:

The best thing for HR to do is engage employees in honest and open communication on matters related to their finances.

In doing this, HR professionals should keep in mind this one guiding principle—tell them something they don’t already know. The economy is bad (they already know this) and everyone’s going through some tough times (who cares), so instead of simply re-stating the problem, why not just re-frame it into a solution?

To give you some actionable ideas on how to do this, let’s take a quick look at a couple of the items employees might blame you for:

Pay: The cost of living is going up, it seems that everyone is in debt and employees aren’t getting the raise they expected this year so what do they do, blame you. The easiest thing for HR to do in this situation is to just pass the blame along to upper management, after all they’re the ones that have the final say in how much everyone gets paid. This solves the problem of you being blamed for employees’ pay (or lack thereof) but it doesn’t solve the employee’s problem, they’re still not satisfied. So, instead of just passing the problem along to someone else, why not communicate possible solutions? For example, if employees are angry about not getting a promotion why not let them know about the opportunities you provide for them to continue their education and obtain a higher level position within the company?
Health care costs: It’s no secret health care costs are skyrocketing. This past year, many of us have even seen 20-30% renewal increases on our health plans. Employers that couldn’t afford the cost of these higher premiums either changed up their cost-sharing structures so employees were paying a higher percent or switched to a deductible plan to bring premium costs down. When companies move to a deductible plan, they’re faced with higher out of pocket costs and many will complain about their inability to afford them. If your company switched to a deductible plan, what have you done to help employees better afford out of pocket costs? Have you put into place an HRA or an FSA and if so, have you communicated this to employees so that they can put these tax saving instruments to best use?

These are just a few helpful tips to get your started in putting a stop to the financial blame game. Remember, when times are tough, it’s very easy for employees to blame HR, and that’s why communication is key. When you’re candid in your communications to employees and engage them in dialogue you’ll look a lot less to them like “evil HR” and more of a person they can turn to with their problems or even solutions to make things better.

Department of Labor releases model CHIPRA notice

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:24:00 GMT

Effective for all plan years beginning on or after February 4, 2010, employers have a new notice requirement to adhere to. This requirement comes as a result of the “Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009” (CHIPRA), which President Obama signed into law February 4, 2009.

CHIPRA allows individuals who may be eligible for premium assistance under a state Medicaid program or Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to enroll in the group health plan during a special enrollment period (i.e. outside of their annual open enrollment).

Pursuant to the CHIPRA Act, employers must notify employees of their CHIPRA enrollment rights if their state of residence provides premium assistance. According to Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) notice recently released, 40 states (of which Massachusetts is included) currently offer one or more qualified premium assistance programs.

Employers must provide this notice to employees by the later of:

The first day of the first plan year after February 4, 2010

May 1, 2010

This means that for plan years with start dates ranging from February 4, 2010-April 30, 2010, employers must provide CHIPRA notices by May 1, 2010 at the absolute latest. For plan years beginning on or after May 1, 2010, employers must provide this notice by the first day of the next plan year at the absolute latest.

The Department of Labor EBSA has released a model notice for employer use. It can be found at the DOL website or we’d be more than happy to send it along to you. Just give us a call at 617-859-1777 or contact us via our website www.universalbenefitplans.com.

From phishing, to spyware to network snooping, how identity thieves get your information online and what you can do to stop them.

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:47:00 GMT

As the Internet evolves and identity theft criminals get more and more tech-savvy, it isn’t any wonder the number of identity theft crimes has skyrocketed over the past few years.

To keep your personal information safe online, you’ll need to first know the most common methods thieves use to collect your information. That way, you can figure out what actions you’ll need to take to stop them.

These are:

Phishing: Phishing happens when a thief sends out an email under the guise of a legitimate company. The email in question will generally contain links to a very legitimate-looking website. Once the victim arrives at the website, he or she will be asked to give a bank account number, credit card number or other piece of personal data.
Spyware: Spyware is software that collects personal data from individuals’ own computers without them even knowing it. It infects their computers when they visit certain websites or open email attachments from unknown senders. Also, anyone with manual access to computers can install spyware on them.
Fraudulent e-commerce sites: Identity thieves often set up fraudulent e-commerce sites for goods they advertise through spam email blasts or on price comparison websites. When individuals place orders on these sites, identity thieves are able to capture their names, addresses, credit card numbers and other information.
Wireless network snooping: Tech-savvy identity thieves use this technique to connect to unsecured wireless networks and steal information from computer files or information that’s en-route from sender to its final destination.

Massachusetts ID theft law compliance deadline is today:

Any entity that employs and/or does business with Massachusetts residents must be in full compliance today, March 1, with our nation’s toughest ID theft law to date—Standards for the Protection of Personal Information of Residents of the Commonwealth (201 CMR 17.00).

Fines for noncompliance are steep and auditors from the MA Attorney General’s office will be coming any day now, are you prepared to show your compliance or face the facts?

Now is not the time for second guessing, call us now and schedule your free 30 minute compliance overview in partnership with Foley and Foley law firm of Massachusetts.

To prevent identity theft at work you need to know where the thieves will go

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:42:00 GMT

Identity thieves can steal personal information from you at work, in public, online or even from your home (a place that so many of us think is a safe haven). The first step to protecting your information in all these places is knowing where the thieves will go to get their hands on it.

Let’s start off by looking at the workplace.

Personal information in any given workplace is vulnerable to the prying eyes and hands of permanent staff, temporary and contract workers or even the after-hours custodial staff that comes in and cleans the building every night.

If there’s an identity thief lurking in and around your workplace, chances are they’ll go for one of the following.

Unattended Personal Belongings: This includes both unattended purses and wallets as well as easily accessible personal documents employees may either keep at work of bring with them to work.
Employee personnel files: Any employee with access to the personnel files that are kept in HR has easy access to employees’ Social Security Numbers and DOB’s as well as a host of other data ID thieves may use to commit fraud.

Data in personnel files is especially vulnerable to threats from within an organization. A disgruntled employee or even a temp worker could steal employee personal information, sell it to an identity thief or use it themselves to commit fraud.

Effective monitoring is the key:

The information above goes to show that employers should carefully monitor access to all employee personal information. Certain vital details such as who has access to this information, how long they have access to it and what precise business or compliance need their access to this information will fulfill should be spelled out clearly in your Written Information Security Plan required by Massachusetts law 201 CMR 17.00 (which is enforceable the first of next month).

On top of this, employers should communicate to employees the importance of consistently monitoring all accounts they have in their name, checking for any unauthorized activity or the presence of any new accounts that they didn’t open themselves.

Individuals who steal your identity or credit card numbers depend on you not to look too closely at your bills and ensure that every charge on them was actually yours. “Small” charges of under $100 are often less scrutinized than larger amounts and thieves know this. That’s why you should never just “excuse away” unfamiliar and unauthorized charges, just because they appear small.

Deadline for Massachusetts Identity theft law 201 CMR 17.00 is just a week away:

One week from today, all businesses that “own, license, store or maintain” personal information on any Massachusetts residents must be fully compliant with the Commonwealth’s identity theft law 201 CMR 17.00. Is your company compliance-ready, and can you prove it to the auditor who may come knocking at your door?

To help Massachusetts businesses get compliance-ready, Universal Benefit Plans has partnered with local employment law firm Foley and Foley to offer a complimentary 30 minute compliance review for qualifying companies. Call us at 617-859-1777 to learn more and see if your company qualifies.

Avoid paying taxes on your LTD benefit. Claim the employer-paid premium as additional income on Line 21 of your tax form.

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:19:00 GMT

If you’re familiar with how group long term disability (LTD) insurance works you know premiums are paid so that when employees become disabled, they get 60% of their monthly income as a benefit. In cases where the employer pays their employees’ monthly LTD premiums, the benefits employees get when they become disabled are subject to tax.

There are a few ways employees can avoid paying taxes on their LTD benefits and one of these is paying taxes on employer contributions to their premiums. How do employees do this?

First they find out how much their employer contributes to their LTD insurance premiums for the year. This information is very easy to find on a Total Compensation Statement so if you provide this to employees then it’s an easy place for them to look.

Employees then take this contribution amount and claim it as additional income on Line 21 of their tax forms.

The benefits of Total Compensation Statements:

Easy access to information necessary for tax savings is just one of the many benefits of online Total Compensation Statements. They’re also a great productivity booster and retention tool because they show employees their full worth. As the economy starts to rebound, top employees will undoubtedly start circulating their resumes in search of better opportunities.

Wouldn’t you like to paint the bigger picture of both their salaries and benefits put together so they’ll think twice about jumping ship?

Our proprietary HRIS system includes complimentary online Total Compensation Statements accessible 24/7 and so much more. Call us now at 617-859-1777 and see if you qualify to get it for free.

The Security of your Identity is only as strong as the passwords you keep—Part 2

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:22:00 GMT

As discussed in the previous blog post, your passwords are often your only barrier protecting personal information from the prying eyes of identity thieves. So, it goes without saying that they should be kept both strong and secret.

We’ve gone over how to make your passwords strong, here are a 4 steps that you should take to make sure they’re kept secret:

1. Don’t write your passwords down: The safest place to store your passwords is clearly your own mind, which is why they should be relatively easy for you to remember. However, if you’re someone with a lot of different passwords to different accounts, you might need to write them down somewhere to remember which one is which.

If this is you, you’ll need to be extra careful about where you put them. Avoid keeping them in places that are easy for a thief to access, such as in your pocketbook, taped to the monitor of your keyboard or even on a sticky note on the back of your mousepad.

2. Don’t use the “remember my passwords” setting: Whenever automatic logins and “remember my passwords” settings are enabled on your computer, anyone can sign into your computer as you and log in to all of your personal databases.

3. Don’t log into accounts containing personal information on public computers: Public computers include those in libraries, schools, universities or at an Internet café. Your passwords and usernames could be saved by the computer and used to access your accounts by someone else at a later date.

4. Don’t share your password with others: Also, as soon as anyone finds out your password, you should immediately change it (even if the person promised not to use it or tell anyone else).

Starting March 1, 2010, all businesses that “own, license, store or maintain” personal information on any Massachusetts residents must be fully compliant with the Commonwealth’s identity theft law 201 CMR 17.00. This means encryption, creation and implementation of a Written Information Security Plan and a whole host of other responsibilities must be completed by the end of this month.

Is your company compliance-ready, and can you prove it to the auditor who may come knocking at your door?

Do you know what the five costliest health conditions are?

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:08:00 GMT

As an employer, when asked what the five costliest health conditions are what do you think would top your list, cancer and heart disease, correct? It depends on what factors you look at to determine cost.

The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM) recently published a study revealing that employers who focus solely on employees’ direct medical and pharmacy costs in creating cost-containment strategies are missing a major component of the picture. These findings were based on data from over 51,000 employees and 1.13 million medical and pharmacy claims.

Where employers could be missing the point:

Employers who just consider direct medical costs are missing out on “presenteeism” costs. These costs are incurred when workers have health conditions that aren’t severe enough to keep them home. They come into work, cannot perform their jobs at full tilt and cause a drain on company productivity.

In fact, for every dollar spent on employees’ direct medical and pharmacy costs, employers can expect roughly $2.30 in productivity related costs.

The JOEM study found that when considering direct medical and drug costs alone, the top 5 conditions driving health care costs up are:

Cancer (other than skin cancer)
Back/neck pain
Coronary heart disease
Chronic pain
High cholesterol

This means that those of you who guessed cancer and heart disease got numbers 1 and 3 on this list.

But, when they factor health-related productivity costs, the top 5 conditions driving health care costs are:

Depression
Obesity
Arthritis
Back/neck pain
Anxiety

In light of these findings, what’s one major step employers can take to improve productivity and bottom-line results?

When developing your overall employee health strategies and disease management programs, make certain to first recognize and prioritize these conditions. That way you can create targeted solutions that address them head on and save health care dollars in the long run.

These solutions are just a small component of Benefit Plan Optimization (BPO™). So many employers out there are paying too much for their benefits and getting far too little in return. They’re definitely not getting the most out of their benefits and our 13 point diagnostic test could be just what the doctor ordered.

Call us now at 617-859-1777 to schedule yours or visit our website www.universalbenefitplans.com and fill out one of our contact forms letting us know your biggest benefits problem. We'll certainly get in touch with you ASAP to discuss possible solutions.

The security of your identity is only as strong as the passwords you keep—Part 1

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:19:00 GMT

If you lived during the Middle Ages and had a castle, you’d want to prevent invaders from breaking in, destroying your property, kidnapping your loved ones, etc. So what would you do? Build a moat, correct?

Now most, if not all of you, would pull out all the stops to create the deepest, most crocodile-filled moat imaginable. After all, it would be your only barrier for keeping invaders out. When creating passwords for your personal information you should use this exact same logic.

That’s because just like a moat is the only barrier keeping invaders out of a castle, your passwords are often your only barrier standing between personal information and identity thieves.

All passwords you use to access personal information (both online and off) should be both strong and secret. This blog post will educate you on how to keep them strong.

What is a strong password?

A strong password is one that includes:

6 or more characters

Letters numbers and symbols

At least one case change

When creating your passwords, make sure that they are both easy for you to remember and difficult for others to guess. If your password contains two distinct words or proper names, make sure they are unrelated to one another.

One strategy you can use to create a strong, memorable password is to use the first letter of every word in a popular saying (making at least one of the letters uppercase) and add a number plus a symbol to the end. For example, a strong password using the popular saying “Speak softly and carry a big stick” might be Ss&cabs13.

Once you’ve set a strong password, you should also take the following precautions:

Never use the same password for more than one of your main accounts: If you do, it could take just one security breach to compromise everything in all of your accounts.
Change your passwords regularly: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulations (OCABR) recommends that individuals change their passwords for access to personal information at least every 6 months. A helpful tip for reminding yourself to do this is to use a recurring event such as a time to change your password (i.e. change your password every daylight savings time).

For any entity that employs and/or does business with Massachusetts residents, OCABR has passed our nation’s toughest ID theft law to date—Standards for the Protection of Personal Information of Residents of the Commonwealth (201 CMR 17.00).

Businesses must be fully compliant with the law by March 1, 2010. Is all your company’s personal information on Massachusetts residents encrypted and/or protected? Do you have a Written Information Security Plan in place?

These are just a few of the 201 CMR 17.00 requirements that must be met. Attend our free webinar February 11^th at 2 pm and in just 30 minutes you’ll know the answers to these questions plus so much more.

New report from Attorney General sheds light on main health care cost driver in Massachusetts

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:28:00 GMT

Just last Friday, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley released a report pinpointing the main driver of the Commonwealth’s rapidly spiraling health care costs—the market clout of highest paid providers. Simply stated, Massachusetts insurance companies are paying certain doctors and hospitals significantly more than others for the same patient care.

Coakley’s year-long investigation leading up to this report revealed that a small group of roughly 10 hospitals statewide commanded anywhere from 10 to 100 percent higher payments than their competitors for similar work.

The study also found no evidence that this higher pay was due to better quality of patient care or treatment of more complex cases. In fact, the study revealed that:

Eight in 10 of the best paid hospitals in one insurer’s network were community hospitals. These hospitals tend to have less complex cases than teaching hospitals and also do not have the added cost of training future doctors.
One major teaching hospital that treats some of the Commonwealth’s sickest patients is paid significantly less than dozens of other hospitals that treat healthier patients.

Coakley’s team did discover that the hospitals commanding higher payments were able to do so because of market leverage from factors such as brand-name recognition and geographic isolation.

What the investigation has done:

At the end of the day, Coakley’s investigation had one major accomplishment. It shed light on the true cause of Massachusetts’ health care cost increases. Over the past several years, it was revealed that provider rate increases, not higher patient utilization rates, were the main contributors to higher health care costs.

The Attorney General’s office will release the above as well as other related findings in a series of reports over the next several weeks. From March 16 through the 31^st, hearings will be held on the issue and state officials will ask hospitals, physicians, insurers, employers and consumer groups to testify on factors contributing to health care cost increases and what could be done to make health care affordable.

As the reports are released and hearings go under way, we’ll make certain to keep you up-to-date on all findings and developments you’ll need to know.

What Identity Thieves Want

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:40:00 GMT

Identity theft is a huge and costly problem. In fact, it has recently surpassed drug trafficking as the number one crime in the nation and claims one new victim every 3 seconds.

Identity theft can happen to anyone and its results are devastating: stolen funds, a tarnished credit rating and obligations to pay off debt that isn’t even your own.

To keep from becoming victims of identity theft, all individuals should:

Keep sensitive personal information under wraps
Learn to recognize and put a stop to common identity theft strategies
Act quickly to limit damage

This blog post will focus on keeping sensitive personal information under wraps, and knowing what identity thieves want is a logical first step to keeping personal information safe. That’s because when you know what identity theft criminals want from you (and what they’d do with it) you’ll know exactly what personal details to keep safe and secure.

The following table shows you what common pieces of personal information identity theft criminals want and why they want it.

Type of Information	Why ID theft criminals want it
Social Security Number (SSN)	Your social security number uniquely identifies you for employment and credit purposes and serves as the gateway to all your financial information
Date of Birth	Your date of birth (especially if used alongside your SSN) can be used by an ID theft criminal to verify your identity
Financial Account Numbers	This includes bank account numbers and credit card numbers. ID theft criminals can use them to take money out of your accounts or make payments both over the phone and online.
Mother’s maiden name	ID theft criminals want this information because it’s often used to verify an individual’s identity and authorize access to their financial information.
PIN numbers and passwords	These allow access to banking, credit card and online accounts
Driver’s license number	This number can be used by ID theft criminals to obtain a fraudulent ID

Starting March 1, 2010 The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Attorney General’s office will begin enforcing Regulation 201 CMR 17.00. The Regulation is designed to prevent identity theft and it’s the toughest identity theft law for businesses in our nation to date.

Is your company up to speed with compliance? Can you afford not to be?

Register to attend our free webinar February 11^th at 2 pm and in just 30 minutes we’ll walk you through the necessary steps to get compliant and stay compliant.