UUA Office of Church Staff Finances
Guided by the values of our faith,
we equip congregations for excellence as employers
and their staff for financial competence and well-being. |
Compensation and Staffing News |
Editor's Note
Dear Readers,
This month we bring you reminders from our Insurance and Retirement Teams, along with two featured resources. Buttons below each article link to our ever-expanding Knowledge Base!
Please continue to let us know about changes to your staff and lay leadership. For staff, this includes salary and hours changes, new home addresses, terminations, and retirements. Keep these links handy!
Faithfully, |
Jan Gartner, Compensation and Staffing Practices Manager |
UU Retirement Plan: A Clarification
What Does "Eligible" Mean?
You've probably heard our little mantra – "Once eligible, always eligible." That's our quick way of saying that once someone qualifies for Employer Contributions to the UU Retirement Plan, they will continue to receive them whenever they are employed by a participating congregation...even if they change congregations or even if their hours go down. They never have to re-qualify.
But we're concerned that using "eligible" to refer to employer contributions obscures the fact that ALL of your employees (everyone at least 18 years old who receives a W-2) are eligible to enroll in the UU Retirement Plan, regardless of hours or length of service. We'll say it again – ALL of your employees (18+) are eligible for the UU Retirement Plan! You are responsible for informing your staff upon hire (and please remind them often) that they can authorize voluntary contributions through salary deferral at any time.
This is an important benefit that enables your staff to save for the future while reducing their current tax burden. Failing to communicate this benefit and getting the employee's opt-in or opt-out election on record is an IRS compliance error that can result in costly corrections. (See #6 of the IRS Fix-It Guide.)
How Does the Empower Empdata Form Fit In?
All new-to-you employees need to get added to the Empower system upon hire, either by uploading an empdata.csv file or by submitting via the Online Empdata Form. Even if they
already have an Empower account through service to another participating UU employer, your employees must get included on an empdata form submission, which provides critical information related to their employment with your particular organization.
As explained above, you are responsible for ensuring that all of your employees have been told about the UU Retirement Plan and their ability to contribute through salary deferral. Adding them to the empdata form is the first part of this process. Once the empdata form is submitted, your employee should log into their account to officially record their salary deferral opt-in/opt-out election (either a $, %, or $0); this verifies that an employee has been made aware of their ability to participate in the Plan. (After opting in or out of salary deferral, the employee can also update beneficiaries, contact information, and investment options.) |
UUA Insurance Plans: Important Items
Who Should Be Offered UUA Insurance?
Eligibility for all of our UUA Insurance Plans (Health, Dental, Life, and Long-Term Disability) is the same – employees must be scheduled to work at least 750 hours/year and be on the payroll year-round. (In other words, in general, an employee hired to work for a single period of less than 1 year is not eligible, regardless of hours.) 750 hours comes out to about 15 hours/week for a staff member who works all year long.
Remember, if you offer a UUA insurance plan to any employee, you must offer that plan to all eligible staff. For Health and Dental, you may have policies in place that stipulate different contribution rates. As an example, your policy may be to cover 80% of the health and dental premiums for employees who work at least 30 hours/week, 60% for 20-29 hours, and at the employee's expense for 15-19 hours. Regardless of your contribution policy, you need to make the plan(s) available the plan to all who are eligible. You'll find more about structuring contribution policies on our Benefit Recommendations page.
How Do We Stop Getting Billed for Terminated Employees?
When a staff member leaves your employment, be sure to submit an Employee Benefits Change Form promptly. If the employee is moving to another participating congregation and keeping their insurance, you will indicate that as a transition rather than as a termination.
Please understand that we can't go back more than two months to adjust invoices. Occasionally we don't learn of a termination until several months after the employee has left the congregation's payroll. In those cases, the congregation ends up paying for insurance beyond the employee's time on the staff.
Open Enrollment: November
Open enrollment for the UUA Health and Dental Plans will take place during November for 2024. (Remember: there is no open enrollment for Life Insurance or Long-Term Disability.) Look for more information in our October and November issues. |
Resources: One New, One Updated
Parsonage Considerations
We get a variety of questions about parsonages, including how to structure an offer to a minister who may or may not be interested in living in the parsonage. Check out our new LeaderLab page, Parsonages and the Housing Allowance.
Benefits Summary Chart
Sometimes you may just need a quick reminder about eligibility, enrollment timeframes, or UUA recommendations for one of our benefit plans. Our Benefits Summary Chart contains that and more in a simple, at-a-glance format. We've just revised it with a few language improvements, as well as to reflect Empower information. |
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