
Joanne.Sammer
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Articles by Joanne Sammer

Aging Workforce Means Rethinking Benefit Strategies
Noncash Rewards Most Effective When Tied to Values
From HR Magazine: No Salary Negotiations Allowed
Give Your Dental Plan a Checkup
Urge to Merge: What to Expect from Fewer but Bigger Vendors
The Viability of Banning Salary Negotiations
Keeping Sales Compensation on the Rails
Is a Living Wage All the Rage?
Despite higher productivity, the share of income flowing back to workers has diminished
For the past several years, wage and salary surveys in the U.S. have consistently shown annual increases of about 3 percent across employee groups. And despite ongoing evidence of economic recovery and growth, employers have made few, if any, strides toward increasing salaries and are not expected to do so anytime soon.
Performance is undermined when employees don’t understand the incentive plan or its metrics
Finding the right mix of incentives necessary to maximize employee performance can be a challenge. However, as employers continue to rely more heavily on variable pay to supplement flat salary-increase budgets, relevant, actionable and easily understandable performance metrics become an even more important element of effective incentive programs.
As corporate health exchanges evolve, there are more factors to weigh
Design educational partnerships to achieve the employer’s goals and objectives
As some large U.S. companies announce partnerships with educational institutions to give their employees access to free or discounted degree programs, other employers are watching closely.
When employers want to customize their voluntary benefits program, they have plenty of options. The list can include anything from employer-negotiated banking fees and travel insurance to a dry cleaning pick-up and drop-off service and discounted days at amusement parks.
If an organization’s short-term incentive programs are not driving better employee performance, they are just wasting money.
Be prepared to explain your rationale for changing the incentive mix
Whether or not Congress votes to boost the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, plenty of employers are responding to minimum-wage increasesbeing imposed at the state and local levels, some of which are subject to automatic raises tied to inflation.
With all of the attention being paid to the public health insurance exchanges established under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), it's easy to overlook the growth in private health insurance exchanges that has taken place in recent years.

New penalties for fully insured plans that favor highly compensated employees
Although employers can be forgiven for focusing on the more pressing elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that take effect in January 2014, there is another provision of the law that is not yet getting much attention—and it should.