Weekend Reading on Your Federal Benefits 18-18.jpg

(for the week of April 28th – May 4th)

You’re too busy during the week to keep up on all the news around your employee benefits and pay. My weekly summary of the most interesting and relevant news stories could help you and includes my comments and insights.

By the way, if you’ve read something about your employee benefits that you think is important or interesting, share it. And, let me know about news sources that you follow. Have a great weekend.

George Ray
Federal Benefits Online

In this week’s Federal benefits news, it’s time to fix an unfair Federal retirement rule, OPM sets up a full-court press on civil service changes, new rules could reduce your healthcare costs, and the TSP folks will answer your call in just 14 seconds. Let’s get started.

It’s Time to Fix an Unfair Federal Retirement Rule

From Govexec.com

Lately, many Federal employees who are about to retire are seeing the negative effect of a rule enacted around 30 years ago. The rule deals with something called ‘non-deduction service’. You have this type of service if you’ve worked for the Federal government, but deductions for your Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) pension were not being taken from your pay and deposited to the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, which holds them for your retirement. This service can occur when someone is initially hired as a temporary employee and is often referred to as ‘non-career appointment time’.

The rule says that non-deduction service after January 1, 1989, is not creditable for eligibility or for the pension calculation, and a deposit is not allowed to be made by the employee to gain credit for this service. To try to correct this, Representative Derek Kilmer (D-WA), who also serves on the House Appropriations Committee, introduced a bill to allow Feds to make contributions to get credit for this service which could allow them to retire earlier with a larger pension. Let’s hope this gets some traction and makes its way through Congress. To learn more about this issue, you can read my article from last August titled Get Credit for Non-Deduction Service ASAP and also my follow-up piece titled The 3 Questions You Must Answer Before Making a Deposit.

OPM Director: Expect 'Full Court Press' for Civil Service Changes

From Govexec.com

The translation of ‘full court press’ from dictionary.com (for those who are not basketball fans) is ‘an all-out effort to exert pressure’. And that’s exactly what OPM’s recently-appointed Director Dr. Jeff Pon says that he’s going to do when it comes to civil service reform over the next six months.

I’ve been talking about change for some time now to help prepare you for what appears to be coming. Change isn’t necessarily bad. As we know, there are many areas in civil service that could use improvement. But, change is almost never easy. Pon wants to see IT changes, as well as big changes to compensation, hiring, and performance management. He indicates that he will be using his OPM-specific authorities and agency-specific authorities to make changes at the occupational level if necessary to avoid fighting legislative battles in Congress. Make sure that your agency knows about changes that would improve your ability to do your job and the solutions that you deliver. And be sure to help push your comments through your agency to OPM to get the changes that you want and need.

OPM Standardizes FEHB Plan Options

From Fedsmith.com

You may see changes during the next Open Season because of a new rule that is designed to correct an imbalance in the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program. Currently, there are varying options when it comes to minimum standards in the program. HMO healthcare vendors offer two plan options plus a high deductible plan, while fee-for-service plans may not. The updated rules will allow all health benefits plans to offer three options or two options and a high deductible health plan. OPM said in a Federal Register notice that “Since all health plans must compete annually for enrollees, the availability of additional options could create an incentive for plans to keep premiums as low as possible to attract enrollees.” If the new regulations increase competition among healthcare vendors and help to reduce healthcare premiums and keep costs lower, we’re all for it.

TSP Revamps Call Centers to Accommodate High Demands

From Govmatters.tv

Kim Weaver, Director of External Affairs at the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, discusses the overhaul of the TSP’s call centers to improve response times in this 6½ minute video interview with Francis Rose of Government Matters TV.

Typically, in February and March, call volume to the TSP’s call centers increases dramatically. Both employees and retirees are receiving their annual statements and have tax and withdrawal questions. On top of that, new call center software (that’s more cyber-ready) was recently installed and call centers experienced some employee turnover causing a ‘perfect storm’ as Kim describes it. As a result, wait times increased, as did the abandonment rate (those who hang up after waiting too long). The TSP folks are now back to answering calls in about 14 seconds (which exceeds their target of 20 seconds) and the abandonment rate is down to about 1%.

Ms. Weaver also offers help during her interview to military personnel who make a common mistake when signing up for the TSP as a result of the blended retirement program. Apparently, military members are signing up but not ‘making the second click’. They are signing up for the TSP, which will get them the 1% of pay automatic contribution but forgetting to sign up to contribute some of their own pay which means that they’re losing the matching contributions that they could be receiving. If you know a member of the military, you may want to demonstrate your knowledge of the Thrift Savings Plan by explaining the value of the ‘second click’.

See you next week. Thanks!

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