Introduction

We are pleased to bring you this latest issue of Compensation & Benefits Review (CBR).

This year, we are including research briefs on topics of interest and import to our practicing compensation and benefits professional readership. These research briefs will be titled “Research for Practitioners.” In this issue’s Research for Practitioners, Robert Greene provides an overview of some of the more interesting cognitive biases we all have and that affect compensation-related decisions. Greene includes works from as early as Ed Lawler’s 1971 ¹ recognition that most average workers rate themselves as above average, and as recent as Richard Thaler’s 2015 ² work in behavioral economics. Between the two, Greene recommends the work of Malcolm Gladwell, ³ Daniel Kahneman from 1982 ⁴ and 2011 ⁵ and Nassim Taleb from 2001 ⁶ and 2007. ⁷

Our second article herein is offered by researchers from Purdue University. Evan Perrault, Grace Hildenbrand and Rachel HeeJoon Rnoh ask two interesting research questions. They primarily asked why employees chose not to participate in their employer-sponsored wellness initiative. Secondarily, the researchers asked if employees who chose to participate versus those who chose not to participate differ in their perceptions of their own health, health self-efficacy and perceptions of organizational support. The top three reasons for nonparticipation were concerns over privacy, the amount of time and effort it would take to participate and the belief that they were already healthy. Regarding differences between participants and nonparticipants in their voluntary employer sponsored wellness program, the authors found no differences in perceived health. The authors did find that the participating employees had greater health self-efficacy and a greater sense of support in their organization in improving and maintaining their health. The authors conclude with recommendations to increase communication focusing on both the organizational and individual benefits of full employee participation in employer-sponsored wellness programs as well as communication that addresses employees’ privacy concerns surrounding such programs.

Also included in this issue is John Kilgour’s article on the role and importance of individual retirement accounts (IRAs) in employees’ retirement. In true Kilgour fashion, he walks us through an interesting history of the types of IRAs, as well as their interaction with each other and other types of retirement programs and tools.

To round out this issue of CBR, we include a book review by Robert Greene. Greene reviews Barends and Rousseau’s 2018 book titled Evidence-Based Management. ⁸ Just as we are including Research for Practitioners this year in CBR, we are also including book reviews, and we thank Robert Greene for his contribution of our first book review of 2020.

With the addition of Research for Practitioners and book reviews, we hope that our practicing compensation and benefits professionals will find even greater and more imminent value in the pages of CBR. We also promise to continue including important primary research as well.

Thank you for reading CBR. Enjoy, share with your colleagues and submit your manuscript today at: https://journals-sagepub-com-s.web.bisu.edu.cn/author-instructions/CBR.