Principal Guide Offers Best Practices Insights

Drawing from the experiences of The Principal 10 Best Companies for Employee Financial Security (see  Principal Announces 10 Best Employee Financial Security Firms ), the newly released “Innovations at Work: A Guide to Best Practices in Employee Benefits” outlines the experiences of a group of small and medium-sized businesses (5 to 1000 employees) from across the nation recognized in 2004 for excellence in employee benefits programs.

The new guide outlines simple, inexpensive, and effective tactics used by The Principal 10 Best Companies to:

• Provide affordable, competitive health-care options,
• Increase employee participation in the company sponsored retirement plan,
• Communicate the importance of participating in the employee benefit package, and help employees make informed decisions.

The guide also includes a chart to help employers benchmark their benefits against The Principal 10 Best and their peers across the nation; interactive checklists to help employers quickly review solutions to their own company’s benefits challenges; examples of the retirement, health-care, and employee communication best practices employed by The Principal 10 Best Companies; and a look ahead at the next generation of health-care and retirement benefit solutions.

The 2005 edition of “Innovation at Work: A Guide to Best Practices in Employee Benefits” is available at no charge at www.principal.com/10best .

Entry forms for the 2005 recognition program will be available February 1, 2005.