PUBLICATIONS

Case Studies

Learn how Buck’s solutions have helped clients gain strength.

Absence Management

Learn how our experts helped a client enhance its outsourced absence management program.

Asset Liability Management

Find out how our ALM group helped a client reduce its asset risk.

Behavioral Change Management

Learn how Buck evaluated one client’s problematic Employee Assistance Program and recommended a new program that more effectively met employee needs and controlled costs.

Dependent Eligibility Audits

Learn what made Buck’s Dependent Eligibility Audits the right choice for a global energy company.

Health Management

Learn how Buck’s health care management audits helped one client evaluate and identify cost-saving opportunities and program improvements.

Health Savings Accounts

Find out what made the ACS|BNY Mellon HSA Solution the right choice for a global telecommunications manufacturer.

Offshoring

Find out how our offshoring team not only helped a company reduce costs, but also enabled staff members to focus on higher-value tasks.

Severance Solution®

Find out how our Severance Solution team helped a Fortune 500 manufacturing company streamline their severance package while still providing meaningful benefits.

Strategic Communications

Find out how Buck helped our airline client enter new markets, raise industry standards, improve performance, and maintain customer satisfaction.

Vendor Management and Oversight

Find out how Buck's vendor management and oversight team helped reduce costs and improve satisfaction by re-engineering an organization's death benefit process.

 

Articles

Read strategies that can help you manage strategically in any economy.

Defined Contribution Plans: What Does "Reform" Mean to Employers?

With some unemployment rates the highest they have been in generations and the economy in a fragile state, many Americans are facing serious challenges to their retirement security. Policymakers, as well as average Americans and employers, are starting to question the overall design of the U.S. private retirement plan system and whether the saving arrangements currently in place give a typical worker a real opportunity to reach his or her retirement income goals.

Diagnosis HSA — A Treatment Plan for Employers

As the economy continues to contract globally U.S. employers are seeking and finding benefit plan design and funding solutions to control and manage both short- and long-term costs. So what is the diagnosis for Health Savings Account (HSA) qualified plans and HSAs specifically?

Corporate Governance: A Risk-Sensitized Executive Pay Governance Process — Part One

The deterioration of the global economy has occurred with breathtaking speed and unprecedented breadth. As events unfold, one common view has emerged: the crisis is predominantly a failure in human decision-making, influenced by two fundamental pay and performance-related factors.

Corporate Governance: A Risk-Sensitized Executive Pay Governance Process — Part Two

As a result of TARP provisions and proactive shareholder advisory groups, executive compensation is coming under intense scrutiny. The focus is two-fold: (1) are pay-for-performance programs really paying for shareholder value created, and (2) are the incentive systems encouraging inappropriate or excessive risk-taking that may threaten rather than create shareholder value?

Well-Designed Career Sites Improve Recruiting Effectiveness Even in a Down Economy

For the past few months, recruiting may have been the last thing on many employers’ minds given the current state of the economy. But the recently passed stimulus plan could create a need for rapid hiring in selected industries. However, the resourcefulness, innovative thinking, and productivity that proven talent brings to an organization are needed now more than ever in any industry. The question is: How can your organization find such talent?

What Ails Behavioral Health Care? — Diagnosis and Treatment Ensure a Healthier Bottom Line for Employer-Sponsored Programs

The responses from more than 400 organizations to Buck Consultants’ 2005 National Health Care Strategy Survey confirmed that employers are more concerned about health care costs than about any other business cost, and are even more worried about future rather than current health care costs.

President Obama’s Plan for Retirement Savings Reform: Change?

The concept of saving for retirement is relatively new in the United States. U.S. Social Security is a mere 75 years old and, with some notable exceptions, most company-sponsored retirement plans are even younger. Yet, as the stock market plunges along with the value of individuals’ retirement savings and companies see their defined benefit pension plan contributions skyrocket, many Americans are asking if it’s time for the United States to take another look at how we pay for retirement.

Obama’s Plan For Health Care Reform: What Does It Mean For Employers?

Although the election is over, the issues discussed throughout the campaign remain. In fact, many of these issues are even more critical now with job loss at a 26-year high, businesses on the brink of bankruptcy, and two ongoing wars abroad.

Managing Workforce and Benefit Program Risks during an Economic Downturn

The United States, along with most countries around the world, is in the throes of a severe economic downturn. The world economy is being buffeted by rising unemployment, capital markets that are volatile and much reduced in value, restructuring in the housing and financial sectors and, in some cases, inflation or deflation. Though no one can be certain when the economy will reach bottom, many expect that the current downturn will continue through 2009 and into 2010.

Compensation Innovations for the Economic Downturn

Economists continue to debate whether the United States is entering a recession or already in it, but many companies and entire industry sectors are well into a recessionary business environment. Significant reductions in business volume, write-offs of previously recorded revenue, staggering losses of shareholder value, and layoffs are occurring regardless of academic opinion.

The Role of Severance in Today’s Employment Environment

Employers’ search for low-cost labor and the focus on core competencies have ushered in an era of off-shoring and outsourcing. Technological advances enable companies to do more with fewer people — and they are. These developments, coupled with continued consolidation in some industries, have led to many reductions in force.

Worksite Wellness Programs: Just What the Doctor — And Senior Management, Employees, and Shareholders — Ordered

As U.S. employers struggle to meet the rising costs of providing health benefits for their employees, many have introduced cost-containment strategies, including cost sharing, cost shifting, risk rating, and various forms of managed care. However, these methods do not confront the underlying causes of health cost escalation. Worksite wellness and health promotion are the most direct, prudent, and lasting solutions for keeping employees healthy and avoiding costs.

Population Health Management: Achieving Results in a Challenging Environment, Part I

Health care inflation continues to outpace overall inflation by a wide margin. What’s more, many health plan sponsors don’t expect relief any time soon and they find this situation unsustainable in the long run.

Is any help on the way? The answer is yes. That help is Population Health Management. This paper examines Population Health Management in two parts. The first examines in depth many of the health care costs that Population Health Management is designed to manage. The second part introduces the Population Health Management tools that Buck Consultants uses to help employers better manage their plan participants’ health and their own health care costs.

Population Health Management: Achieving Results in a Challenging Environment, Part II

In the June 26, 2003 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, an article by investigators of the Rand Corporation states that patients fail to receive recommended care almost half (46 percent) of the time. This finding is disturbing, but the reality is that through a combination of patient noncompliance, limited physician follow-through and a circuitous health delivery system, countless members “slip through the cracks.” The end results are poorer outcomes and higher costs.