View the entire newsletter for more articles: 2021 – NJAC County Biz – August
by Timothy Diassi, Senior Vice President for Unicorn HRO
Let’s face it, no one goes into local government work for the money, and working for a municipal entity is not always the sexiest or most thrilling work. While there are advantages and disadvantages to every job, there are certain benefits that make a career in municipal work desirable. Retirement benefits are a leading reason that employees work for local governments, and that puts a great deal of pressure on the payroll and pension staff to make sure the pension contributions are accurate and on-time. Your city’s pension department must be able to calculate all employee pension benefits easily.
In addition to health insurance and paid time off, a comprehensive benefits package should include a pension and retirement plan. These benefits are extremely attractive to today’s workforce as they provide a layer of security for employees and their families. As more and more Americans reach retirement age, an increasing number of people are using their pension as their main source of income.
Municipal employees want to be kept up to date and informed on the pension plan. It is critical to their financial well and planning. Sharing information with employees is key, as an engaged employee is 87% more likely to stay.
In June, the New Jersey State Legislature passed a historic $6.9 billion contribution to the public pension fund, up about 44% over the previous year. This marks the first time in more than 25 years that New Jersey is making the full Actuarially Determined Contribution to the Pension Fund. The increased pension payment will save taxpayers a total of $2.2 billion over 30 years.
As the pension funding gap begins to narrow, it’s the perfect time for employers to adopt a more integrated benefits administration strategy. Pension calculations and reporting are becoming increasingly complex to manage, especially for county and municipal governments. However, human capital management (HCM) solutions can streamline pension payment reporting and create a more designated path to retirement for employees.
As an all-encompassing applications suite that manages the entire employee lifecycle, a cloud-based HCM solution offers the unique capability to automate and centralize a wide variety of benefits administration including healthcare, retirement allocations, payroll, and pensions all in one platform. With an online benefit enrollment feature, a HCM solution can facilitate benefit plan changes that occur throughout the year and during annual open enrollment periods. To ensure a complete audit trail, system administrators can receive notifications of all adds/terms/changes and can even receive real-time census reports.
To give employees a sense of control over their benefits and help them reach their retirement goals, the ideal HCM solution will offer self-service options. This will allow employees to view their pension calculations at any time and have direct access to paychecks in order to make more informed retirement planning and saving decisions. Since cloud-based HCM solutions collect a wide variety of data about employees within a central platform, employers will also have greater insight into what employees really need from a benefits package and form a more cohesive benefits administration strategy.
Overall, employers must look for fresh approaches to managing benefits. Now more than ever, employees want to plan for the future and have supplemental income for unforeseen expenses. Taking a strategic approach to pension and retirement plans with a HCM solution can help companies track employee benefits, automate contributions, and simplify pensions payments to restore a sense of security and satisfaction for both employers and employees.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Timothy Diassi is the Senior Vice President of sales, marketing, and partnerships at Unicorn HRO. He is responsible for initiating and maintaining the most strategic company marketing alliances to create interest, demand, and recognition for Unicorn HRO and its products through the use of strategic relationships, channels, and online marketing. He joined Unicorn HRO in 1995 as a financial and human resources consultant and has since served as the company’s director of product management, EVP and GM. Throughout the past, he has been responsible for reshaping Unicorn HRO from a software vendor to a SaaS based HCM platform supporting the human resources industry with a suite of solutions.