Notes from our expert team.

This blog breaks down the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and state paid family and medical leave (PFML) programs so HR leaders can understand who’s covered, how long employees can take leave, and which rules apply in each state. You’ll find a complete A–Z guide to state laws, including leave durations, wage replacement details, and special provisions that go beyond the federal baseline. It also includes practical compliance tips to help employers manage leave consistently, avoid costly mistakes, and support employees during life’s most important moments.

Employee benefits brokers are typically paid through carrier commissions or flat fees, and federal law now requires them to disclose that compensation to you. This guide breaks down how broker pay works, what a complete CAA disclosure should include, and how to use that information to evaluate your broker at renewal.

Most companies benchmark their benefits once a year, buried inside a renewal conversation. This post argues that's too late. A renewal tells you what your benefits will cost; benchmarking tells you whether that cost is buying competitive value — and those are two very different questions. Using free public data sources like KFF, BLS, SHRM, and IFEBP, HR teams can compare their health plans, contributions, leave policies, and emerging benefits against peer companies by industry, region, and size. The post walks through a five-step process for doing that analysis, introduces Nava HQ as a tool that makes live benchmarking data accessible without waiting for a broker, and closes with a framework for translating findings into three types of action: plan redesign, carrier negotiation, or budget reallocation.

Most companies start with a PEO for good reasons. At a certain point, usually around 75-150 employees, the math changes. This post gives HR leaders a practical, phase-by-phase checklist for exiting a PEO without disrupting employee benefits, including what to do 6-9 months out, 30-60 days out, and after the transition is complete. It also covers the biggest risk most teams underestimate: benefits coverage gaps.

Student loan debt is a financial pressure point for a large share of the workforce, and most employers still aren't doing anything about it. That changed meaningfully in 2025: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made employer student loan repayment assistance a permanent tax-free benefit under Section 127, removing the expiration date that had kept many employers from building real programs around it. Combined with the SECURE 2.0 401(k) match provision, which lets employers make retirement contributions on behalf of employees who are paying down loans instead of saving, there are now two distinct and complementary tools available. With only 14% of employers currently offering student loan assistance, this is still a genuine differentiator for recruiting and retention.

CFOs don't see benefits as a business investment by default. That's HR's job to change. This post gives HR leaders a practical framework for quantifying benefits ROI in financial terms, covering turnover costs, absenteeism, health plan spend, and what finance teams actually want to see when you walk into that conversation.

Most self-funded employers have access to more data about their health plan than they realize, and most of them aren't using it. Claims data shows exactly where your money is going, which cost drivers are structural vs. one-time, and where there's room to intervene. This guide breaks down what's actually in a claims report, how to spot what matters, and how to work with your broker to turn findings into concrete action before your next renewal.

Most employers accept annual rate increases from their carrier without ever seeing the data behind them. Self-funding changes that, giving HR leaders control over plan design, cost management, and the claims data that makes smarter decisions possible. The transition takes planning, the right partners, and a clear strategy. This guide walks through all of it.

Parental leave has become one of the clearest signals employees use to evaluate whether a company's values hold up in practice. This post gives HR leaders the benchmark data they need to evaluate where their policy stands, understand what employees actually expect in 2026, and make the case internally for going above average.

Employee wellness programs deliver measurable ROI, but only when they're designed to address all three pillars of wellbeing: physical, mental, and financial. This guide breaks down the most common design failures that keep programs from delivering, what leadership participation actually looks like in practice, and a three-step framework for building a wellness strategy that drives real business results.

Lifestyle spending accounts (LSAs) are employer-funded benefits that give employees flexible dollars to spend across a defined set of categories, from fitness and mental health to childcare, professional development, and beyond. Unlike traditional benefits that assume a one-size-fits-all workforce, LSAs put choice in the employee's hands, increasing perceived value without necessarily increasing employer spend. This guide covers what LSAs are, how they work, what they typically cover, and what HR leaders should weigh before adding one to their benefits strategy.

Most people with an FSA or HSA are leaving money on the table. This guide covers 30+ eligible items you can buy with pre-tax dollars in 2026, from massage guns and fertility tests to light therapy masks and dental aligners, plus a year-end checklist so you never forfeit your balance again.