Break from the Grind July 16, 2015

A Little Friday File Fun

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In Banton, Scotland, a farmer was fed-up with wild deer coming into his farm and destroying the crops. Traditional scare crows did not help, so the man wanted something that looked like a real person. He ordered a blow-up doll from Amazon and put it in the back of his field. “She has made a much better job of it than my last scarecrow, which was made from a carrier bag on the end of a stick,” he said, according to the UK’s Mirror.

In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, after spending four hours at a seafood buffet, a woman refused to pay her bill. Police were called. They asked her if she had any money on her. She said no. According to The Sun News, they then asked who she thought would pay her tab. She said Jesus would pay it.

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In Fort Morgan, Colorado, a man called police to say he was in a Walmart parking lot and a woman he didn’t know wouldn’t get out of his car. When police arrived on the scene, they found the man confused, and the woman said she was his cousin, and the main was on drugs. The two admitted they had drugs in the car. According to the local ABC News station, the police found 16 pounds of meth.amph.etamine in the car.

In Bethesda, Maryland, a woman dropped off her children at her ex-husband’s house and later realized his fiancé was in the house. She started ringing the doorbell and banging on the door. He asked her to leave and used a cell phone camera to record the incident. The cell phone video footage showed her exposing her brea.sts and shaking them towards the camera. A police officer responded to the scene, told the woman she could be arrested for indec.ent expos.ure and asked her to leave. She held out her hands and said, “Arrest me then.” According to the Washington Post, the woman is a member of the Maryland House of Delegates.

In Omaha, Nebraska, a would-be carjacker was thwarted by his height. A man pulled a gu.n and told a woman to get out of her car. According to the local NBC News station, the woman was very short, so when the suspect tried to get in the car he could fit. And, he couldn’t figure out how to adjust the seat. So, he ran away.

In Riverside, California, a man dropped off his Nissan 350Z to have it serviced. He returned to the Taco Bell, where he is a manager. Four hours later, one of his employees spotted what looked like the manager’s car in the drive thru. It was discovered that two mechanics were joy-riding in his car when they were supposed to be driving a specified route used for diagnostics. Both mechanics have been fired. And the dealership offered the manager 20% off services and an additional amount of free parts and upgrades.

You know how static electricity makes things stick to each other? Cats don’t like that.

If you can't view the below video, try https://youtu.be/W_8VNG10rjs

Dance like no one’s watching.

If you can't view the below video, try https://youtu.be/ow6IaHmDNLI

Administration July 16, 2015

Communicating About Multiple Retirement Plans

Managing multiple retirement plans can get tricky—especially when different groups of employees are in different plans.
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A plan sponsor may have multiple defined contribution (DC) plans due to mergers or acquisitions, it may have a qualified plan for all employees and a nonqualified plan for executive, or it may have a DC plan as well as a defined benefit (DB) plan. In the current retirement landscape, a plan sponsor who has both a DB and DC plan has likely closed or frozen the DB.

How can plan sponsors communicate about their retirement benefit programs so that participants understand why they are eligible for some benefits but not others?

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“It definitely has its challenges,” says Brian Blach, vice president of CBIZ Retirement Plan Services, in San Jose, California, of maintaining multiple plans in a retirement benefit program. A key thing for plan sponsors is to make sure that the plan documents and summary plan descriptions (SPD) clearly define the different classes of employees eligible for each plan, he tells PLANSPONSOR. “The last thing we want is for the employee to think they’re going to get a benefit in a plan and not be eligible for that plan. So that outline is very critical.”

Plans Blach works with are typically set up to reward key employees. For example, he says, consider a law firm that wants to add another benefit for its partners. The main partner receives the maximum benefit, while associates in the firm receive a lower contribution. Some of those associates may wonder why other employees are getting more. “Once again that’s a communication thing that the employer has to make sure the employees understand,” particularly when it comes to individual classifications. “You have to be very clear up front.”

Matt Adamson, senior business leader of total rewards for Mastercard in Purchase, New York, says his company is now in the final stages of terminating its pension plan, but the plan was closed to new entrants in 2007, and the company placed all employees hired after July 1, 2007, into its 401(k). “We started having populations that had different retirement benefits—some people had the pension plan, some people didn’t,” Adamson explains. “We had two different matching structures on the 401(k) to accommodate the difference between who had pensions and who didn’t.”

Anyone in the pension plan receives a match of 100% on the first 6% in their salary in the 401(k), but anyone hired after July 1, 2007, gets a match of 125% on 6%. “If they asked about the difference, we said, ‘You don’t get a pension, but you do get a higher match on your 401(k) plan.’”

NEXT: Tips for communications.

Adamson tells PLANSPONSOR having multiple retirement plans is manageable, but participants might get confused by the presence of multiple plans.

“You have to have literally two types of education pieces and material,” Blach says. Using the law firm example, he says typically his firm holds two education meetings. “We will separate those two groups [that get different benefits]. In an education meeting with rank-and-file employees, the presenter needs to convey the value of the contribution,” he says.

Blach notes that a plan’s vendor or recordkeeper may send out enrollment kits to participants. However, when a client sponsors multiple plans, he says “We actually have the HR [human resources] people receive the kits and they hand them out.” His firm ensures that HR adds an introductory memo regarding the plan and addressing frequently asked questions.

For smaller plans, having the recordkeeper deliver the enrollment package to one location—instead of to each participant’s address—can be easier for them, and making those materials available in the work place affords employees time to review the information with an expert nearby, Blach adds.

When MasterCard began the DB plan termination process, Adamson found “a lot of [messaging] is dictated by the legal process—there are so many notices you have to go through and different filings.” The company tried to supplement the required notices as much as possible with really simple language about the different options. “We tried to make it as simple and as short as possible, and stay away from a lot of ‘legalese.’”

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