Online voluntary enrollment. Employees have used online systems to enroll in core benefits for years. But more recently, there's a trend to enroll voluntary plans online, with growing success as online techniques of educating employees on the need for voluntary products have evolved. The secret to success is the degree of communication and employee assistance tools that accompany the enrollment.

Broker consolidation. Three factors are driving this trend: A desire by large organizations to become larger, especially in growing areas such as voluntary; the desire for business continuity on the part of regional brokers, whose ownership is largely in the baby boomer generation; and the effect of PPACA and the tough economy on smaller brokers.

Wellness initiatives. There are many drivers behind the interest in wellness, including employee productivity and wellbeing. Ultimately, effective wellness programs will reduce employer costs. 

Delayed retirement for boomers. This trend is sure to drive changes in benefit plans for the Medicare generation. An AARP survey finds 25 percent of the 78 million U.S. baby boomers expect to never retire. In February, Merrill Lynch released their newest Affluent Insights Survey, finding that boomers reaching 65 will face continued difficult choices regarding medical services, investments, and work-life balance compared to previous generations.

Social networks and benefits marketing. LinkedIn is the most expansive business-to-business network (one with virtually no non-business content) with more than 150 million users. The customer connection aspect of LinkedIn and similar sites is largely untapped—and the opportunity grows every day. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter also have the potential to reach millions of people. The old economy problem of “how do I find prospects?” has been replaced by “how do I gain attention from all the prospects I can connect with?”

ID theft protection. In preparing this article I searched “ID theft” in Google news. While I found several stories, what said it all to me was that in their list of trending stories, ID theft ranked a bit behind Whitney Houston but ahead of Tim Tebow.