Employee Benefits Design and Planning: A Guide to Understanding Accounting, Finance, and Tax Implications - Hardcover

Biswas, Bashker D.

9780133481334: Employee Benefits Design and Planning: A Guide to Understanding Accounting, Finance, and Tax Implications

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0133481336 ISBN 13: 9780133481334

Publisher: Pearson FT Press, 2014

This book offers guidance for understanding benefits options and plan structures, and making better decisions for your organization. Writing for both HR and finance professionals, internationally respected compensation and benefits professor and consultant Bashker Biswas drills comprehensively into today's most important benefits-related topics and challenges. Employee Benefits Design and Planning covers all this, and much more: * Finance and accounting implications of Healthcare benefits * Other risk benefits * Severance benefits * Disability and group life insurance programs * Flexible benefits * Non-qualified deferred arrangements * 409A plans, ESOPs, Money Purchase Pension Plans, Cash Balance Plans, 401(k), 403(b) plans and 457 Plans * Employee benefit plan financial reporting, legal compliance, and auditing * Employee benefits in mergers and acquisitions * Self-funding vs. insurance funding decisions * Global employee benefits including umbrella pension plans and multi-national pooling * Equity participation in employee benefit plans Biswas introduces and explains key employee benefit metrics and ratios, and demonstrates best practices for forecasting costs and budgeting appropriately. For all compensation professionals, benefits professionals, human resource professionals, accounting professionals, labor attorneys, financial analysts, and finance professionals. Readers will have roles in benefits-related consulting, finance, accounting, and human resource management, both domestic and international.

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From the Back Cover:

An In-Depth, Up-to-Date Guide to the Financial and Accounting Implications of Employee Benefit Plans

Specific, detailed guidance for making better decisionsabout benefits options and plan structures
Covers key and emerging issues including the Affordable Care Act, global benefits, reporting, compliance, and auditing

Designing, developing, and planning an effective employee benefits program is one of the most complex tasks organizations face. Benefit plans have many dimensions, but their central challenges are inevitably financial. In Employee Benefits Design and Planning, world-renowned compensation and benefits specialist Dr. Bashker “Bob” Biswas fully illuminates all the accounting and finance implications you need to consider in structuring or changing your program.

Building on his widely praised Compensation and Benefit Design, this all-new guide drills far more deeply and comprehensively into benefit design, covering everything from healthcare insurance and the ACA and global benefit plans. Biswas helps you answer critical questions about executive compensation and benefits packages, self-funding vs. insurance, taxation, and forecasting and offers indispensable guidance for benchmarking costs and plan performance.

Whatever your role in benefits planning,Employee Benefits Design and Planning will help you answer the questions that must be answered and craft a plan that serves your organization’s strategic needs without compromising its future.

In many organizations, benefits represent about 30% of total people costs—yet these expenses are far less understood than base pay. Now, leading total rewards specialist and mentor Bashker Biswas brings together all the knowledge you need to make effective benefits decisions, whether you work with external consultants or not.

Biswas introduces core principles for ensuring proper financing, funding, compliance, and recordkeeping; accurate actuarial calculations; and effective employee communication. Building on these principles, he guides you through benefits ranging from healthcare and disability insurance to retirement and cafeteria plans. You’ll find up-to-date discussions of complex challenges, such as the Affordable Care Act and global benefits planning.

Throughout, Biswas offers essential insights for managing rising costs and risks, while ensuring that benefits programs improve productivity, align with strategy, reflect best practices, and add value within your unique organization.

Coverage includes

Understanding healthcare benefit structures, plan design, and cost containment, including consumer-driven plans
Comparing today’s leading healthcare financing approaches and tradeoffs
Utilizing cost-sharing innovations such as Value Based Benefits Design (VBBD)
Planning for disability, life insurance, and long-term care benefits
Understanding modern retirement plans, from defined contribution and defined benefit to money purchase, SEP, 403(b), 409(a), 457(b) and 457(f)
Making better “self-funding vs. insurance” funding decisions
Designing global benefits plans: umbrella pensions, expatriate benefits, integration, and more
Implementing flexible benefits: Premium Conversion, FSA, and Full-Flex

About the Author:

Bashker “Bob” Biswas, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at DeVry University and the Keller Graduate School of Management in Sacramento, California.

Dr. Biswas has more than 40 years of experience in total rewards management; finance; accounting; executive compensation; base, incentive, sales, and equity compensation; human resources strategy; human resources information systems; and international human resources and international compensation.

The companies he has worked for include Control Data, Bechtel, Memorex, Maxtor, Hitachi Data Systems, and BioGenex and Zain. Dr. Biswas has held positions at the director level and above since 1982. At Maxtor and BioGenex, he was a Vice President. While at Memorex and Zain, he worked out of London and the Middle East/ Africa, respectively. He has traveled to 40 countries on various projects related to compensation and benefits.

During his tenure in the Middle East, Dr. Biswas conducted total rewards and global human resources management seminars throughout the Middle East and Africa. He was a leading instructor in the Zain Human Resource Management Academy.

In addition, he has held consulting positions at Skopos Corporation (Skopos was a venture investment backed HRIS start-up co-founded by Dr. Biswas in 1983) and Coopers & Lybrand and PricewaterhouseCoopers. At C&L, he was a Director of Human Resource Consulting in the San Francisco office. He was also C&L’s National High-Tech Leader for Human Resource Consulting. At C&L, Dr. Biswas was responsible for the firm’s National Software Industry Compensation Survey. In total, he has provided compensation consulting to more than 50 companies.

Dr. Biswas has taught at various universities as an adjunct faculty since 1984. Dr. Biswas has authored and co-authored articles on human resources management. Dr. Biswas has presented at WorldatWork’s national conference and briefly taught in their certification program.

Dr. Biswas holds B.A., M.A., M.B.A., and Ph.D.

He has been a member of WorldatWork (American Compensation Association) since 1972.

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