Benefits and Beyond - A Comprehensive and Strategic Approach to Retirement, Health Care and More, by Thomas E. Murphy (Sage Publishing, 2009)
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Buy the Book
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Professor Murphy's new book is a very unique and effective classroom text, a useful handbook for benefit professionals, and provides insights to many who have a general interest in benefits. The book includes chapters ranging from basic retirement income plans to Social Security reform, health care reform, to global benefits and equity benefits, and more.
The book's approach takes advantage of the author's unique academic and business background to provide a variety of inter-disciplinary principles and tools ranging from labor and business economics to human resources strategy, tax policy, metrics, and actuarial science. The objective is to give students and others a rich and fundamental understanding of the foundations and building blocks of benefits, rather than simply listing and explaining the most recent iterations.
With a perspective not found in texts currently available, his book is planned to prepare students and others to deal with the future evolution of benefit designs and policy, not to be experts in the minutiae of the current offerings. Numerous cases, examples, and exercises provide illustrations of these topics and opportunities for reader interaction and further research.
Key topics in the book include:
- Fundamental labor and business economic issues
- Actuarial concepts
- Life cycle events
- Aligning business, HRM, and benefit strategies
- Global benefit comparisons between the European, the U.S. and the Pacific Rim
- Expatriate assignments
- Privately and publicly funded retirement plans
- Publicly funded retirement and health care programs
- Legal issues pertaining to benefits
- Evidence-based approaches and financial metrics; the value proposition of benefits
- Retirement plans (employer sponsored as well as Social Security)
- Health care sponsored by employers and government
- Consumer driven health care approaches
- Wellness programs and promoting healthy life styles
- Health care reform and Social Security reform issues
- Life insurance
- Equity benefits (stock, stock options, restricted stock, and stock appreciation rights)
- Disability plans
- Benefit administration
- Accommodation and convenience benefits
- Financing private and public benefits
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