We've beaten the recession issue to death. Economists have exhaustively analyzed every way it has impacted every industry, we've read about it on the front page of nearly every national news publication for years, and we continue to hear about its impact on middle-class America from both presidential hopefuls who offer promises of moving forward.

Still, as much as I'm ready to leave it in the past, I can't deny its impact lingers on employees and the way we communicate benefits to them today. The  recession brought on new challenges that changed what employees needed to hear about their benefits and what we could say about them—no longer were employers able to offer generous benefits, so what do we communicate now?

Employers of all sizes had to shift from simply telling employees about all of the benefits they had available, to communicating a message that they could still manage what they had left to achieve their goals.