Open enrollment opportunity

The open-enrollment period gives employees the opportunity to re-evaluate the health care benefit plans that are available through their employers. For most companies, open enrollment occurs annually, usually at the end of the year.

Employers should look at open enrollment as an opportunity for both the company and its employees to make sure available health care plan options meet health and financial needs.

The first step that employers should make in preparation for open enrollment is to review the past record of health insurance claims. A claims review will identify treatments that employees rarely use and clusters of benefits that employees use frequently. This information can help the employer make adjustments to the health care plans they offer so that the plans truly address the needs of its work force.

Claims review information also may suggest when it makes sense to bring in speakers for wellness seminars. For example, if there are a growing number of diabetes claims, the employer may want to hold classes in diabetes prevention and management.

Employers also can help employees in open enrollment by having their benefits consultants make group presentations about the differences among the various plans. The consultant can answer detailed questions and shed some light on what will likely be the big issue over the next few years: Should an employee stay with a traditional health plan or opt for a health savings account?

-- Stephanie Bernaciak-Massaro
UnitedHealthcare, svbernaciak@uhc.com

Businesses often wonder if they can protect lists of customers when an employee leaves to work for someone else. In a series of decisions through the years, the Pennsylvania courts have answered the question with a firm "maybe."

Courts have sometimes ruled that a customer list is a trade secret that an employer can't take to a new job, and sometimes ruled that the customer list is not a trade secret and that the former employee can use the information in a new job. For example, in one case, a Pennsylvania court ruled that a milk route was not a trade secret because the customers were easy to identify. But the courts will routinely rule that customer lists are trade secrets for companies selling industrial products to distributors.

In general, all of the following must happen for a customer list to be considered a protectable trade secret under Pennsylvania law:

• Producing the list takes substantial effort and money.

• The company owning the list considers it confidential and takes significant effort to keep it so.

• The list and the information on it are not accessible in the public domain.

• Getting the list will provide a competitive advantage to other businesses.

The company must make sure that keeping the list confidential is part of employee policies and any employee handbook. The company should also specifically mention the customer list in any confidentiality agreement that it has employees sign.

-- Ronald Hicks, Meyer
Unkovic & Scott, rlh@muslaw.com

Hotel developers are listening to their customers and going green in building new hotels or renovating older ones.

A recent survey of more than 5,000 hospitality industry executives conducted jointly by Hotels and Building Design and Construction magazines, found that slightly more than half of all hotel executives surveyed have incorporated green building concepts into recent buildings or renovations, while another 33 percent say they are going to add green elements to a hotel project in the near future. And 77 percent of those surveyed said that the hospitality industry in general is more willing to invest in sustainable technologies than they were even a few years ago.

The demand of hotel guests has been the main factor pushing the hospitality industry towards making hotels rooms and conference centers more environmentally friendly.

According to the survey, energy management and automated lighting controls were the only two green technologies that more than 50 percent of developers report incorporating into hotel projects, but acoustic sound proofing, daylight technologies, recycled or recyclable materials and environmentally sensitive landscaping all were used on 40 percent of all projects.

-- Thomas O. Gray, DRS Architects
thomas_gray@drsarchitects.com