Guardian Launches Educational Campaign, Website and Enhanced Enrollment Services for the Fall Open Enrollment Season

The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America (Guardian), one of the largest mutual life insurance companies and a leading provider of employee benefits to midsize and small companies, offers employees and employers tips for leveraging their employee benefits in one of the worst economic environments since the Great Depression.

Guardian’s employee benefits experts compiled these money saving tips and educational resources just in time for the fall open enrollment season when millions of employees make important decisions about their benefits for the coming year. Additionally, Guardian recently launched an educational campaign including a dedicated Website and enhanced enrollment services to make it easier for employers to manage and employees, to understand and select their benefits.

Open Enrollment Tips

Sign-up for voluntary benefits
1) Consider taking advantage of voluntary benefits (sponsored by the employer, paid by the employee). They give you greater choices and discounted access to benefits to help ensure protection needs meet your specific lifestyle. They are usually more affordable than individual coverage and require limited or no medical underwriting.
2) Sign up for voluntary benefits earlier rather than later. Some voluntary benefits like life insurance plans may automatically increase coverage amounts each year, building up greater coverage than what you initially signed up for. These increases have no impact to premiums so it pays to enroll early.

Look for the freebies or perks
3) Use your health insurance plan to get a discount on your gym membership. Health insurance plans with a wellness focus often offer these discounts to encourage employees to stay fit, keeping your long-term costs of care lower. Need estate planning or will preparation advice? Check your life insurance coverage to see if free or low cost legal services are available. For example, Guardian has WillPrep Services* that give plan members access to online planning documents and professional assistance with advanced health care directives, estate taxes, financial and healthcare power of attorney, guardianship and conservatorship, trusts and wills.

Keep more money in your pockets
4) If a high deductible health plan is one of your medical plan options, consider opening a health savings account if available. Money in HSA funds build tax-free and you keep it even if you change jobs. You can use the money to pay for qualified health expenses if necessary and if no health care needs arise, you are building your money up on a tax-advantaged basis.
5) All high-deductible plans are not created equally. Look for a plan that doesn’t require you to pay out-of-pocket for common preventative screenings. Critical illness insurance can be bundled with your health plan to provide greater coverage when serious illnesses strike. A new industry feature on critical illness insurance is a hospital rider where if you face an extended hospital stay, you can receive a check of up to $500 for each day you’re in the hospital — up to ten days. You can use the money any way you want, but many employees choose to use this extra cash to cover high deductibles, co-payments, or even child care.

Use it, don’t lose it
6) Look for a dental plan that has an annual maximum rollover — these newer plans became popular in the past three years and allow you to roll over a portion of your unused benefits to the next year. These plans are doing for the dental industry what rollover minutes did for the mobile phone industry.
7) Consider signing up for a flexible spending account which allows you to pay for qualified healthcare, dependent care and even transportation expenses with before-tax dollars. It’s a use it, or lose it account so don’t forget to use the money before the year-end
deadline. Qualifying purchases may include: medical and dental deductibles and copayments, over the counter medications, eye glasses, child care, and transportation related to your employment.

Don’t give up on your 401(k)
Open Enrollment is a really good time to take a look at your company retirement plan contributions. With only a few short months left in the year, you have time to make adjustments, if necessary, to ensure you reach your contribution goal.
9) Now is the time to start up contributions again, if you stopped contributing during the market turmoil earlier this year. Saving through your employer-sponsored retirement plan helps you automatically follow one of the wisest investment strategies–dollar- cost averaging, putting the same amount of money in the same investment consistently, regardless of market movement. Over time, this can reduce the overall cost of your investments.

If you lose your job, keep your benefits
10) If you lose your job, some of your benefits may be portable. Make sure you ask your HR executive about the ability to maintain key benefits at affordable group rates in the event of job loss.

Guardian Educational Campaign and More Tips

Guardian’s Web page www.guardianenrollmenttips.com, offers free online tips, an interactive benefits quiz and resources for employers and their employees. The company is also sponsoring a radio awareness campaign this fall to encourage employees to spend more time learning about their benefits.

“In the midst of economic downturn employers are looking to effectively deliver competitive benefits programs that fit their budgets and meet the diverse needs of their employees,” said Elena Wu, Group Marketing Officer, Guardian. “Voluntary benefits and plan designs that offer value for the benefits buck are increasingly becoming important vehicles for helping employers to strike that delicate balance between controlling expenses and keeping their employees motivated and happy with quality employee benefits. Guardian is committed to giving midsize and small employers and their workforce greater access to not only benefits, but also education that will help them to make better decisions and be more competitive with larger companies.”

Guardian’s services designed to relieve the administrative burden for employers and improve employee understanding and management of their benefits include:

– Customized enrollment success plans designed to increase employee participation to help employers communicate benefit offerings through on-site enrollment meetings and turn-key employee communications.
– Bilingual enrollment services including Spanish language enrollment materials as well as in-language phone support.
– Personalized enrollment kits available to plan sponsors that offer voluntary life or disability insurance, where the employees’ names and addresses are already filled in on their enrollment forms and cost information is conveniently displayed and personalized based on employee’s age and salary making the enrollment decision easier.
– Employee online enrollment available to eligible existing Guardian customers after initial enrollment, gives plan sponsors the option of allowing their employees to update and select their benefits directly using the Internet if they are a new hire or re-enrolling.
– Face-to-face enrollment meetings with our nationwide team of benefit advisors at no extra cost.
– Toll-free employee benefits hotline where support is available in over 50 languages.
– 24/7 access to Guardian’s online benefits website, Guardian Anytime, which includes provider locators, health resources, glossaries and plan information.
– Guardian’s WorkLifeMatters Employee Assistance Program that offers support on a range of matters such as elder and child care, retirement planning and stress management.

*WillPrep Services are provided by Integrated Behavioral Health, Inc., and its contractors.

Source: The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America

Two of the highest costs for any organization are people and real estate. In the current economy it makes sense to maximize the return on your facilities by making sure that your space supports your staff and your long-range goals without incurring substantial costs.

Lois Goodell, IIDA, who heads the largest interior design practice in Boston at CBT, shares seven easy to implement changes that will improve morale, productivity, and position your organization for the post-recession future at little or no cost:

Reconfigure: If cutbacks have emptied workstations and created dead zones in the office plan, reconfigure the space to increase the density. Fill empty seats and arrange workstations to improve workflow and visibility, which improves communication and morale.

Redeploy: Increase the density of workstations to open up other areas on the floor. Use “found” space to create room for collaboration. Keep the furnishings, redeployed from across the office, simple to encourage informal meetings.

Readjust: As individuals take on additional work when staff is reduced, they may require more filing space or different surfaces to support their new responsibilities. See what’s needed to be effective and adjust the workstation components accordingly.

Rethink: Senior staff responsibilities are increasing, too. Configure private office furniture to facilitate communication, mentoring, and accessibility. With travel budgets slashed, it’s time to have IT install a webcam.

Restack: More costly than re-planning a single work area or even an entire floor, the investment in restacking several floors to achieve more effective adjacencies delivers surprising paybacks. Improved communication across business units addresses shifting demands — speed-to-market, new products and services, or streamlined operations.

Reinvigorate: Take advantage of the public spaces to raise visibility. Multi-function rooms, cafes, and conference rooms can be used to bring people together for training, to host events for clients, colleagues, or community.

Refresh: For a small investment paint provides a big return. Used strategically, color can bring a professional polish to the office or just refresh spaces that are showing “wear and tear.”

Whatever changes you make now should anticipate further change. Evaluate your resources holistically — your facilities, your inventories, your requirements, and your budget. As Goodell notes, “Smart moves today provide positive, short-term impact, and the opportunity to position for the long-term.” Focusing on improved efficiencies, flexibility, and cost-effective solutions for your facilities fosters a workplace culture that is agile, collaborative, and sustainable.

Source: Lois Goodell

Excerpted and updated from The Pink Slip and How to Avoid It

1. Serve your company faithfully, aggressively and tirelessly, just as you once served your country. But, the first day you sense even a hint of your being expendable, finalize your battle plan. Your next day, start looking for a new job – inside or outside your company. Discreetly, of course.

2. Develop one or more powerful internal company mentors as allies both to protect your flanks and enhance your intra-company image.

3. Develop and foster professional relationships with an external mentor who is a guru in your professional field or function. If promoted to a new department – for example, from sales to marketing – find an external mentor versed in your new field.

4. “Join” your company’s Board of Directors. Learn to track earnings just as your board members do. Learn to spot signs that a staff cut may be imminent.

5. Watch for unfamiliar “buzz words” in emails and company communications. Like calls for the team to be “more entrepreneurial” (meaning “produce or leave”). Or a “business check-up,” (meaning cost reductions, e.g. layoffs are on the way).

6. Know the danger signs and develop defensive postures accordingly. If excluded from meetings you’ve always attended … or you can’t see your boss as often as before … or you’re sent on “special assignment” during reorganization – you are vulnerable.

7. Beware of consultants or unfamiliar professionals who show up. Management often turns to outsiders to look “objectively” at how best to boost productivity – and reduce head count.

8. Make yourself more personally attractive. Pay attention to the preferences of those who evaluate you, on dress, behavior, work habits. Wherever you differ – adjust accordingly.

9. Develop a personal and professional “wow factor.” Every company has one. Learn it and exercise it.

10. Adjust your personal “time clock.” If the boss is “AM,” so should you be. If he (or she) is “PM,” stay until dark – especially when things get shaky.

11. Cross-train to improve your value. Like learning Russian, or what competitor companies are doing. Learn to play the piano or golf, as a counter-balance to work stress. Golf is great because maybe you’ll play with your boss.

12. Become a “corporate Baptist” and “self tithe” no less than 10 percent of your time to self-promotion and name recognition. Use outside sources to influence your value to internal management. Follow the lead of the “Big Boys” in building community, political, organizational, and volunteer relationships.

13. Paranoia isn’t all bad. Maintain a private diary, including memos you receive, to record events which later may be challenged. Act like there is an imaginary gun to your head. If you’re in a staff role, transition to a revenue-producing role.

14. Develop the perception of financial independence. Those who wield the career knife seem less likely to sever the individual who is not going to miss the paycheck.

15. Don’t be complacent. Put these survival tactics into play, now. Before it’s too late to get started.

Wes Poriotis is founder and Chairman of the New York-based Center for Military and Private Sector Initiatives (aka Veterans Across America), a nonprofit that helps veterans, especially wounded and disabled veterans, compete for quality employment. He is also author of The Pink Slip and How to Avoid It. Dr. Ray Healey is the co-founder and Executive director of Veterans Across America, and a former head of editorial communications for Forbes magazine.

Source: Veterans Across America