March 1999
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Articles Military Intelligence - Not An Oxymoron Starting A Revolution Where Everyone Wins Columns Let's Give Them Something To Talk About by Peter Block Features Sorry We're Closed: Diary of A Shutdown Brief Cases Pageturners |
Business Briefs Businesses Learn the Value of
Employees Benefits for Domestic Partners The 5.6 million households headed by unmarried couples may be pleasantly surprised to know their employers are beginning to include domestic partner benefits as part of workers’ benefits. Currently only 6 percent of employers offer workers’ benefits for their domestic partners, according to a recent survey conducted by Buck Consultants, Inc., a New York based human resources firm. The survey found that employers are planning to offer these benefits “in attempt to be fair to all employees,” to “create employee goodwill” and to “enhance the employer’s overall corporate image for innovation.” The main problem employers will face with these benefit changes is specifying the exact qualifications needed to be considered a “domestic partner.” Currently, domestic partners are broadly defined as “unmarried people who live together in a financial relationship and have some type of financial interdependence,” according to Buck Consultants. Employers need to be prepared to narrow this broad definition if they want to avoid definitional disputes. All the Latest Rage You’ve heard about road rage, but do you suffer phone rage? Phone rage is the transformation of normally peaceful, polite people into angry, sometimes rude callers. “The anonymity of the phone, coupled with the stress of harried lifestyles and the complex ways we tend to the daily business of living, is giving rise to phone rage,” according to Wendy Caruso, call center manager at CIGNA’s Benefits Access Inc. in Hartford, Conn. Caruso feels that training for handling and avoiding these situations is the key to handling this problem. Sometimes despite our best efforts, strategies will fail, calmly tell you are hanging up, and then do it. |
