Living with stress and anxiety is much more prevalent than you might imagine. Millions of people are burdened by life’s challenges every single day–from difficult life events and balancing professional and personal responsibilities to acute pain, illness, and chronic health conditions. These challenges show up at work, and the health consequences show up in the bottom line, with pressures on health care claims from health conditions that could be mitigated through prevention activities, including mindfulness based stress management.

Stress at work is caused by many factors. It can be difficult, if not impossible for us to talk about our stress and anxiety or face its causes. Most employees won't seek help for their suffering outside of the workplace. In our culture of minimization, avoidance, and denial of our fears and feelings, we dig ourselves deeper into day to day pain and suffering. Creating a corporate wellness focus that encourages stress management practices and sharing them in a science based way allows a forward-thinking employer a wellness culture that encourages self care. This creates the opportunity for optimal performance at work, by offering simple, straight forward, multi culturally appropriate approaches to encourage mental ease.

In this workshop, you’ll learn how the Science of Mindfulness helps us stress less, by increasing our awareness to promote relaxation. Learning objectives include:

• Understanding the Biology of the Body and the Stress Response
• How to enhance our responses to stress
• Developing an attitude of gratitude to cultivate positive states of mind
• How to identify the signs of compassion fatigue to solve burnout
• Three practices to promote less stress and improve mental focus and performance
• Two practices to promote better sleep and improve health outcomes

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A Special Edition Webcast brought you LIVE from Washington D.C.—Please join us for EBRI's 83rd Policy Forum. This Policy Forum will examine the latest EBRI research on Retirement, Health and Financial Wellbeing.?

Sessions Include:

• The Intersection of Wellness and Financial Wellness
• Exploring the ‘Gig Economy’ and the Future of Benefits
• Student Loans: Is it Time for Employers to Step In?
• Fireside Chat: Word from the Legislative Front

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Webcast held in partnership with the New England Employee Benefits Council (NEEBC)
No one wants to talk about it, let alone in the workplace...depression. But depression isn't a topic only for our personal lives. The impact of depression goes beyond the personal realm to significantly impact the bottom line of organizations from every sector, ultimately costing employers billions of dollars each year.

Not only should employers learn to recognize depression, but in order to thrive, should help employees get proper treatment.

During this webinar you will:

• Gain an understanding of the burden of depression in the workplace and how depression manifests itself and affects employee performance and productivity.
• Attain insights into the barriers to addressing depression, including stigma and lack of resources available to employers.
• Learn how to spot depression in the workplace.
• Hear about tools and resources employers can utilize to better support mental health and productivity of their workforce.

As an example, a case study of a successful mental health initiative by Kent State University will be discussed, including initial steps to implementation; overcoming challenges and barriers; and results, outcomes and next steps. Don't miss this opportunity to learn how to identify and address this pervasive condition and hear what others have implemented.

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This session will look at how behavioral decision-making theories can tackle participant challenges like:

• How can I help workers estimate how much they should save for retirement?
• For workers without significant DB pensions, how can I help them deploy effective strategies for generating income in retirement?
• How can I convince my younger plan participants to save early in their careers?

Gain a quick overview of what behavioral-decision-making is, and then dive into different tools to help your plan participants make the most of their benefit options. Approaches like framing, loss aversion, choice overload, inertia and confirmation bias will be defined and applied using real-world examples.

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Webcast held in partnership with the New England Employee Benefits Council (NEEBC)
With retirement plan fees serving as the centerpiece of fiduciary breach lawsuits, understanding the dynamics of retirement plan fees is critical for plan sponsors. This webinar will explore what fees should be reviewed and how frequently; what benchmarks should be used when comparing fees; and the options for allocating recordkeeping fees to participants.

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Join this webcast to review workplace efforts for preventing prescription drug (Rx) misuse from both the supply and demand sides.

There is a strong tendency to overemphasize (and spend money on) the supply side through analytics of utilization, PBMs, policies, drug testing, PDMPs, etc. In contrast, raising employee awareness is often treated as a given or incidental part of a strategy. In fact, there are systematic and evidence-based tools that can not only increase employee awareness but also influence wellness, and the culture of health at the same time. Instead of thinking of a drug-free workplace or employee assistance program as a “check the box” strategy, it’s time to think more mindfully of ways to re-imagine these tools and change the culture of addiction that impacts employee well-being. This highly interactive webinar will provide participants with experiential tools and tips to help spark a broader and more mindful approach to prevention.

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With an ever-changing medical marijuana legislative landscape across the United States, and a growing evidence-base on the effectiveness of marijuana in certain disease-state areas, plan sponsors across the country need to consider how they will address coverage issues.

This webinar will outline the following key considerations for the audience of professionals responsible for managing health benefit plans:

• Fact vs. Fiction: where evidence currently exists for the effective use of medical marijuana and where it does not
• Legislative consideration and key differences that exist across the United States and why in the near-term coverage will need to be considered regionally
• How plans sponsors are balancing access to marijuana with workplace safety concerns
• Workplace accommodation considerations
• Impact of recreational markets on medical marijuana demand.

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Live Stream held in partnership with the Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI)

A Special Edition Webcast brought you LIVE from Washington D.C. This Policy Forum will examine the latest EBRI research on Retirement and Financial Wellbeing.

 Sessions Include:

• Do Older Americans Have More Income Than We Think?
• Worker Reactions to State-Sponsored Auto-IRA Plans
• Financial Shocks Put Retirement Security at Risk
• Can/Should We Build Emergency Savings Through Employer-Sponsored Accounts?
• Introducing the Inside Employees’ Minds™ Survey - Financial Wellness Edition
• Financial Wellbeing and Employer Benefits: Findings from CFPB’s Financial Wellbeing Survey
• Defining and Measuring Financial Wellness

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Join us to hear exclusive findings from the International Foundation's first-ever new surveys on paid leave and flexible work arrangements. Learn how organizations in the U.S. are designing policies to meet the work/life needs of their workers. Topics covered include:

• Paid leave for:
  • Vacation
  • Holidays
  • Sabbaticals
  • Bereavement
  • Sick time
  • Parental/family care
• Paid-time-off (PTO) banks
• Paid leave arrangements for midcareer hires
• Flexible work arrangements:
  • Compressed workweeks
  • Flexible work hours
  • Job sharing
  • Part-time hours
  • Seasonal work
  • Summer hours
  • Telecommuting/working remotely

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Planning the distribution stream during our retirement years requires comprehensive analysis. First, we need to get to a balanced position that we know how much we should limit our distributions so we will not run out of money. Second, we need to get a solid grasp on our expenses, both initial and anticipated spikes. We then need to determine all sources of income and see where our withdrawal rate needs to be from our investments in order to balance the budget.

This all assumes that we are adequately funded. In order to measure our individual funded status, we should determine today’s value of future expenses vs. the sum of today’s value of future income streams (such as Social Security and pensions) and our current assets. This equation gives us the ability to adjust our expenses to make sure we are in balance.

We then need to position our assets so they are liquid enough to meet our immediate and short term needs.

Lastly, we need to consider which asset class from which we will take the distributions and determine if rebalancing of the portfolio is required.

This presentation will provide a guidepath to determining each of these stages.

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Webcast held in partnership with the New England Employee Benefits Council (NEEBC)
Millions of employees are at or near retirement age. By age 65 most have qualified for both Medicare and Social Security. How much do you know about these bedrock programs? This webcast explores their intricacies including:

• Medicare's 4 main parts
• Limits on incentivizing employees to take Medicare
• Why it rarely makes sense for aged active employees to elect Medicare...but how they can safely enroll later (Pssst: Why your Medicare Part D filings matter)
• Special traps for the unwary involving health savings accounts
• Issues to consider before starting Social Security retirement benefits

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It’s been nearly a year since the City of Dayton opened an offsite employee health care clinic. The road from conceptualization to fruition was long and arduous. The City of Dayton is located in the rustbelt and operates in a heavily unionized environment where they had a lot to overcome before opening the clinic doors. Come hear a case study of the lessons learned and valuable considerations for other employers researching their options.

Takeaways:

• Human Resources cannot make a clinic by themselves, how do you encourage the necessary employee cooperation?
• The essentials of planning and preparation to avoid inevitable hurdles and avoiding negative impact
• How to integrate with other wellness initiatives.

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Currently, specialty medications represent 35 to 40 percent or more of pharmacy-related costs for employers, despite treating just one to two percent of eligible participants. Within the next couple of years, specialty drugs will comprise 50 percent of total drug spend, with only two-to-three percent of the population driving this trend.

The industry has traditionally focused on a volume strategy- the larger the PBM or the more members a plan has - the greater their leverage is to negotiate lower drug prices. But now, with specialty drugs poised to upend drug spending, more plan sponsors are looking toward value-based solutions - clinical programs and high-touch care models, for example - to help control spending and improve quality of care. Additionally, most pharmacy trend numbers are missing prescription drugs dispensed through the medical benefit.

As specialty drug spend continues to rise, one-size-fits-all pharmacy benefits management won't help plan sponsors control trend or better understand how to provide enhanced care at lower costs. Experts in the area of Specialty Pharmacy and Clinical Programs will discuss three key things plan sponsors can do to effectively manage this growing area of pharmacy spend.

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Webcast held in partnership with the New England Employee Benefits Council (NEEBC)

The battle for employee engagement in health has been long fought and yet not won. Employees are engaging through digital and other means on nearly all other aspects of their lifestyle in unprecedented ways, but health remains a largely untouched bastion. And yet we know engagement in health makes a material difference as upwards of 50-70% of the health care cost dollar can be attributed to lifestyle factors. This talk will highlight lessons learned from out of industry and from select health innovators on how to create a magnetic offering that engages employees in a way that improves their experience and enhances affordability.

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Catastrophic medical claimants, in the wake of several years without any annual or lifetime dollar limits under the ACA, are becoming larger and increasingly more common. Claimants in excess of $5 million are no longer uncommon. Over one in five respondents to the annual Survey report a million dollar or more claimant in the last two years. Medical stop loss remains the primary vehicle to protect plan sponsors against this unpredictable financial risk, which can impact not just the plan, but the entire financing and financial position of the plan sponsor. The presentation will highlight these claim dynamics, share the Survey findings on stop loss expense and provisions, and discuss key renewal and coverage strategies. Its timing is well situated as many are reviewing or obtaining their January 1 renewals.

Three Takeaways:

1. Awareness of the severity and key drivers behind catastrophic medical claimants in the current health care environment.
2. Understanding of current stop loss premium expense, per Survey, and prevalence of coverage components, claims frequency, and other risk management strategies. 
3. Discussion of recommended strategies on your own stop loss renewal or initial review of coverage, in light of the current claims environment and stop loss market.

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Join us at this webcast to learn more about:

• Combining participant behavior into financial education
• How does behavior dictate communication plans?
• How are decision making and behavior affected in a digital environment?

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Join Ed Cha, VP, Global Benefits Practice Leader from ABD Insurance and Financial Services, Inc. for a 1-hour open office hours style webcast. Participants will have the opportunity to submit their questions for discussion ahead of time, or live on the call. If you don’t have a specific question to submit – you can still listen in! Note: the number of questions discussed may be limited based on time constraints. Please submit questions to elearning@ifebp.org. 

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Is your employer expanding organically by opening offices in new countries? Have you been tasked with learning employment and benefits practices in new countries based on this growth? Join this webcast to discuss HR’s role in opening new offices in foreign countries, including: how different types of businesses approach their expansion strategies, how HR fits into the business start-up process, common features of foreign employment laws you need to be of, using written offer letters and employment contracts, and best practice approaches to setting up meaningful benefit programs that will help you attract talent. You will also hear case study anecdotes of actual employer scenarios.

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Do you know how you would handle hearing of an earthquake in Nepal, knowing you have employees who just traveled there for business purposes? How about receiving a phone call from the husband of an employee tell you that his wife was seriously injured in an auto accident while traveling in Paris? Join this webcast to learn about business travel trends and risks, including: common places business travelers are going, preventing the common illnesses and injuries they may experience, and what protections and resources are available in the market if something should occur. Hear a case study of how one multinational employer established a travel management policy to prevent and respond to business travel risks. The case study will explore: why the new program was established, the implementation steps involved, as well as the lessons learned and best practices.

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Medical plan audits offer peace of mind and solidify the business relationship between an employer and a claims administrator by verifying accurate claims processing for both parties. A medical plan audit is an essential cost savings recommendation to a self-funded plan. It’s important as a way to recover potential overpayments but also demonstrates compliance and fiduciary responsibility. Additionally, it corrects systemic issues which are the real recurring causes of lost health plan dollars. This session will review the steps of a medical plan audit and highlight the valuable impact it can have for a self-funded health plan.

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Webcast held in partnership with the New England Employee Benefits Council (NEEBC)

Often, the access to company-sponsored medical coverage is the top factor influencing the choice of whether an employee will retire. Organizations face unintended consequences when retirement-eligible employees remain in place either because they have not saved enough through their workplace savings plan or they are afraid of the costs of healthcare in retirement. When there is a low velocity of talent movement in an organization, it can have negative effects – especially for businesses whose strategy calls for attracting and promoting new talent. So, how do you effectively educate and minimize this cost for employees so they can transition into retirement with confidence.

Topics to be discussed include:

• How to protect you and your company from potential fiduciary liabilities and unknown risks concerning the one mandatory expense in retirement…healthcare.
• The four rules of the new retirement your employees need to know.
• How can your employees plan accordingly about healthcare costs and retire with confidence.
• How to transition your employees into retirement and allow your organization to bring in fresh talent at a cost-effective manner.

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Join us on July 13 to hear exclusive findings from the International Foundation's new survey on workplace wellness trends. Learn how organizations in the U.S. and Canada are evolving their programs to ensure their workers’ overall well-being.

Topics covered include:

• Fitness and nutrition initiatives
• Screening and treatment initiatives
• Social and community initiatives
• Mental and behavioral initiatives
• Worker-growth and purpose-related initiatives
• Incentives
• Communications
• Return-on-investment (ROI)
• Budgets
• Health conditions present in the workforce
• Challenges and successes.

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The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) allows individuals enrolled in high-deductible health plans meeting certain requirements to open and fund health savings accounts (HSAs). In 2016, enrollment in these HSA-eligible health plans was estimated to be between 20.2 and 23.6 million policyholders and their dependents.

One-quarter of smaller employers and 61 percent of larger employers offered an HSA-eligible health plan in 2016. Growth in HSA-eligible health plans is expected to continue as employers adopt these plans as both a choice and on a stand-alone basis. In the absence of policy changes, employers’ adoption of HSA-eligible health plans may be plateauing.

Furthermore, public policy changes may also drive future growth. Both The American Health Care Act, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in April 2017, and the Better Care Reconciliation Act unveiled in the U.S. Senate in June 2017 would raise the limit on HSA contributions, lower the excise tax on distributions for non-qualified expenses, create a grace period for opening an HSA, and make it easier for spouses to make catch-up contributions.

This Policy Forum will examine the latest EBRI research on enrollment in HSA-eligible health plans and HSAs. It will examine the impact of financial incentives to increase enrollment and trends in HSA balance, contributions and distributions (using data from the EBRI HSA Database).

In addition, there will be three panels. The first will discuss ways to grow HSA enrollment by enhancing the account. The second will discuss ways to grow HSA enrollment by enhancing the HSA-eligible health plan. Employers with various perspectives on HSA plans will make up the third panel.?

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Webcast held in partnership with the New England Employee Benefits Council (NEEBC)

A successful wellness plan can lower health care costs and increase employee productivity. This lively, engaging presentation will discuss why it is so important to develop a comprehensive wellness program that is customized to meet the needs of your employees while keeping the requirements of your program within the letter of the law. Debra Wein, CEO of Wellness Workdays, will outline key factors to implement a wellness program gets results—from developing a custom strategy to critical success factors, while an attorney well versed in worksite wellness compliance will discuss the federal and state regulations that wellness programs can trigger—from HIPAA compliance and issues arising under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) to potential data breaches of highly sensitive information.

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