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Benefits and Beyond
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Benefits and Beyond
A Comprehensive and Strategic Approach to Retirement, Health Care, and More

January 2009 | 536 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc
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Benefits and Beyond: A Comprehensive and Strategic Approach to Retirement, Health Care, and More provides readers with a variety of interdisciplinary principles and tools, including labor economics, human resources strategy, tax policy, metrics, and actuarial science. Rather than training students in the details of current benefits offerings, this text prepares students to deal with the future evolution of benefit designs and policy. Numerous cases, examples, and exercises engage readers and help them master the content.

Key Features

  • Includes a primer on actuarial concepts, which permeate benefit design and decision making
  • Provides global benefit comparisons between Europe, the United States, and the Pacific Rim and explores issues pertaining to ex-patriot assignments
  • Focuses on fundamental labor economic issues, legal issues pertaining to benefits, and life cycle events and their relationship to benefit needs
  • Covers both privately and publicly funded retirement plans as well as publicly funded retirement and health care programs
  • Helps readers understand how to align business, human resource management, and benefit strategies and how to include them in benefit principles and designs for the workplace
  • Offers a full range of benefit discussions, including retirement plans, health care, life insurance, equity benefits, disability plans, benefit administration, accommodation and convenience benefits, and the financing of private and public benefits

For additional support and updates for Benefits and Beyond, please visit the author's Blog at http://managementandbeyond.com/blog. Thomas E. Murphy makes weekly entries to his blog and includes Power Point Slides, end of chapter exercises, and topical discussions, which provide additional resources for teachers and students.

 
Preface
 
1. Introduction to Benefits
The Plan Sponsor's Dilemma

 
Employers and the Business Strategy

 
Learning Objectives

 
Topics Covered

 
Conclusion

 
Business Strategy Illustration

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
2. Human Resource Economics, Principles, and Actuarial Concepts Applicable to Benefits
Total Rewards

 
Monetary Value of Benefits

 
The Benefits Model

 
Actuarial Principles

 
Conclusion

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
3. Lifecycle Events
Benefits Respond to Lifecycle Events

 
Health

 
Disability

 
Employee Counseling

 
Childbirth and Adoption

 
Daycare

 
Educational Assistance

 
Caring for Sick Dependents

 
Retirement

 
Retiree Health Care

 
Marriage

 
Separation from Employment

 
Death of the Employee

 
Time Off From Work

 
Cultural and Global Perspective

 
Conclusion

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
4. Retirement Plans--Evolution and Design
Introduction

 
Factors Affecting Retirement Plan Design

 
Financing of Retirement Plans

 
Fund Protection

 
The Benefits Model

 
Basic Design Features of a Defined Benefit Plan

 
Defined Contribution Plans

 
The Evolution Continues

 
Evolution and the Small Employer

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
5. Pension Plans for Small Employers and Retirement Planning
Evolution Reaches the Small Employer and the Self-Employed

 
Individual Retirement Account (IRA)

 
The Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees of Small Employers (SIMPLE)

 
Simplified Employee Pension (SEP)

 
Money Purchase Plan

 
The Keogh

 
Contemporary Issues in Retirement

 
Retirement Planning--Will Your Employee Have Enough to Retire?

 
Conclusion

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
6. Health Care
Introduction

 
Parties and Interests Involved in Health Care

 
Employer-Sponsored Plans--Taxes, Financing, and Market Factors

 
Financing

 
Market Conditions

 
Inflation

 
Evolution of Health Care Plan Design--Some Principles

 
The Benefits Model--Health Care

 
Design Features of the Major Medical or Indemnity Plan

 
Coordination of Benefits

 
Bundling and Unbundling Plans

 
Conclusion

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
7. The Evolution of Health Care Plan Designs
Introduction

 
Preferred Provider Organization (PPO)--Discounts and Volume

 
Point-of-Service Plan (POS) Plan--Management of Referrals

 
Health Maintenance Organization (HMO)--More Managed Utilization and Care

 
Direct Contracting and Capitation

 
Consumer-Driven Health Care

 
Choices of Plans--What Should the Employer Sponsor Offer?

 
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Insured Plans

 
Third-Party Administrator (TPA) Selection

 
Conclusion

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
8. Improving Access to Quality Health Care--Do We Need Reform?
Underlying Problems of Cost and Affordability--Value and the Lack of Quality

 
Stating the Underlying Problem--High Costs of Health Care

 
Health Care Investment and Efficacy

 
Inappropriate Care and Clinical Quality Measurements

 
Errors Increase Costs

 
Our Culture, System, and Prices

 
Profile of the Uninsured

 
What Are Some Possible Solutions?

 
New Health Care Delivery and Financing Systems--Health Care Reform

 
Conclusion

 
Some Perspective on the Bureaucratic Barriers to Health Care Reform

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
9. Benefit Legal Compliance: Employee Retirement Income and Security Act (ERISA), Internal Revenue Code (IRC), and the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA)
History

 
The Basic Provisions of ERISA

 
Tax Treatment of Retirement Plans

 
Nonalienation of Benefits

 
Freezes and Terminations

 
Cash Balance Plans--Legal

 
Phased Retirement

 
Bankruptcy

 
ERISA and IRC Enforcement

 
Insuring Benefits When a Plan Is Terminated

 
Conclusion

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
10. Employee Benefits and Metrics
A New Perspective--Benefits Are Not Just Costs

 
The Metrics Template for Benefits

 
The Data and Metrics Toolbox--Surveys and Assessments

 
Toolbox--Efficiency, Costs, and Productivity

 
Toolbox--Data Sources for Measurement--Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS)

 
Sound Measurement--Validity, Reliability, and Practicality

 
Measuring the Financial Value of Benefit Plans--Using Capital Budgeting Analysis

 
Some Perspective

 
Design Principles

 
Data, Metrics, and Retirement Plans--Some Examples

 
Health Care and Measurement--Plan Design

 
Evaluating Providers and Their Clinical Outcomes--Sponsors' Efforts

 
Conclusion

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
11. Equity Benefits
Introduction

 
Retirement Plans and Stock

 
Stock Purchase Plans

 
Stock Option Plans

 
Restricted Stock

 
Stock Appreciation Rights

 
Some Issues Pertaining to Equity Awards

 
Performance-Based Equity Awards

 
Does Equity Compensation Work?

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
12. Government-Sponsored and Mandated Benefits
Social Security Retirement Benefit (USA)

 
Some Social Security Economic and Policy Issues

 
Perspectives on Social Security Reform

 
Health Care After Retirement--Medicare

 
Medicare--Some Important Economic and Policy Issues

 
Medicaid

 
Perspectives on Medicaid

 
Veterans' Health Care

 
Mandated Benefits (COBRA, HIPAA, FMLA, USERRA)

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
13. Global Benefits
Introduction

 
Health Care in Europe

 
Some General Principles and Features of European Health Systems

 
Financing of Health Care--European Countries

 
Current Problems and Issues in European Countries

 
Some Perspectives on Costs, Long-Term Health, and Reform

 
China's Health Care System

 
Some Conclusions--The United States and Other Countries

 
Social Security--Providing and Insuring Retirement Income

 
Some General Retirement Approaches in European and Other OECD Countries

 
China and Social Security Retirement Income

 
Chile and the Personal Account

 
Some Perspectives on Social Security Reform

 
Competitive Labor Costs and Benefits

 
Expatriates and Global Benefits--Taking Your Business Abroad

 
Conclusion and Perspective--The Global Workplace

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
14. Collective Bargaining and Benefits
General Obligation to Provide New Benefits Pursuant to Collective Bargaining

 
What Will Happen to the Current Plans?

 
Must the Company Bargain Over an Entry Into a Joint Trust?

 
Joint Trusts--Issues and Challenges

 
MPPAA--What Happens if the Employer Closes His Operation and Leaves the Joint Trust?

 
What if the Company and the Union Cannot Agree on Benefits?

 
What Happens if the Contract Expires and There Is No New Agreement?

 
What Happens if the Contract Expires and the Employees Go on Strike?

 
Bargaining and Retiree Health Care

 
Conclusion and Perspective

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
15. Life and Disability Insurance, Pay for Time Not Worked
Life Insurance

 
Disability Insurance

 
Pay for Time Not Worked--Sick Days, Vacation, and Holidays

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
16. Convenience and Accommodation Benefits, Benefits Administration
Convenience and Voluntary Benefits

 
Making the Benefits Fit the Workplace

 
Concierge Benefits

 
Flexibility

 
Employee Assistance Plan (EAP)

 
Company-Sponsored Educational Benefits

 
Administration of Employer-Sponsored Benefits

 
Outsourcing Administration

 
Information Systems for Benefits

 
Plan Optimization and Communication

 
Chapter Exercises

 
 
Index
 
About the Author
Key features

Key Features

  • Includes a primer on actuarial concepts, which permeate benefit design and decision making
  • Provides global benefit comparisons between Europe, the United States, and the Pacific Rim and explores issues pertaining to ex-patriot assignments
  • Focuses on fundamental labor economic issues, legal issues pertaining to benefits, and life cycle events and their relationship to benefit needs
  • Covers both privately and publicly funded retirement plans as well as publicly funded retirement and health care programs
  • Helps readers understand how to align business, human resource management, and benefit strategies and how to include them in benefit principles and designs for the workplace
  • Offers a full range of benefit discussions, including retirement plans, health care, life insurance, equity benefits, disability plans, benefit administration, accommodation and convenience benefits, and the financing of private and public benefits