Weekend Reading on Your Federal Benefits 49-17.jpg

(for the week of December 2nd – December 8th)

You’re too busy during the week to keep up on all the news around your employee benefits and pay. My weekly summary of some of the most interesting and relevant news stories could help you and includes some of my insights. You might just refer to it as “What’s George been reading this week?”

By the way, if you’ve read something about your employee benefits that you think is important or interesting, send it to me. 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, we know that Open Season will soon close, a shutdown may soon open up, we discover that the Federal hiring freeze has thawed, and cross our fingers for pay parity. Oh, and where’s the best place to work in the government? The rocket scientists know. Let’s get started.

Last Minute Decisions on Your 2018 FEHB Choice

From fedsmith.com

The deadline to make your choices for 2018 during this Open Season will end on Monday, December 11th. Are you finished? Good for you. Skip down to the next article -- after patting yourself on the back. If not, we know how you’ll be spending your weekend.

You can always make your work a bit easier by using some of the resources made available to you by OPM at this link. Also, the most popular man around, Walton Francis, who is responsible for the equally popular (each Fall) Guide to Health Plans for Federal Employees published by the Consumer’s Checkbook folks has some excellent last-minute tips for you in this article authored by Mr. Francis himself. Many agencies have purchased the Checkbook guide and provide access to it for employees. Check to see if your agency makes it available by using this link.

Walt recommends looking at some of the best plans available and provides some suggestions for you. Even if you’re in one of these plans already you could still save some money and Mr. Francis includes some tips to do just that. If not, download 3 or 4 plan brochures to compare features, but don’t print them – there are too many pages. Just look at Section 2 which describes how the benefits will change for next year. Then decide if those changes are right for your family.

I recommend that you take a few moments to estimate what medical expenses you anticipate for the coming year. Do you have any new medications? Will they be covered, or continue to be covered? Could you switch to Self-Only or Self-Plus-One coverage because a child is no longer dependent or is now covered under an employer’s plan? Is your doctor still in the network? At the very least look at what the premium amount will be for 2018 even if you don’t plan to make changes. That way you won’t be surprised by your first paycheck in the new year.

Shutdown Deadline Approaching on Capitol Hill

From govmatters.tv

Will it be lights out? Friday is the deadline for the end of the current Continuing Resolution (CR). In this six-minute video Francis Rose of Government Matters TV interviews David Hawkings, senior editor at CQ Roll Call and Sarah Ferris, budget and appropriations reporter for Politico, to discuss the upcoming deadline to avoid a Federal government shutdown.

As of this writing, we are awaiting whether a two-week reprieve (extending the deadline to December 22nd) will come in the form of another CR. We believe that everyone wants to avoid a shutdown, although David mentions that this administration has handled things in an unconventional manner, and in the end, the only one that will decide it is ‘the guy with the Twitter account”.

UPDATE: Congress Passes Two-Week Spending Bill, but Shutdown Fears Mount

From goveexec.com

On late Thursday, Congress did approve a measure to keep the Federal government open for two more weeks. Otherwise, not much has changed. Caps on defense and non-defense spending still need to be addressed and other issues like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, sharing reductions on the Affordable Care Act, and the border wall are being considered. Agencies will continue to keep their shutdown plans on the desk and ready -- for now.

How Did the Federal Hiring Freeze Impact Jobs? The Raw Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story.

From icf.com

What’s been the result of the hiring freeze that the President imposed during his first full week in office? Jeff Neal of chiefhro.com starts this post on his blog, but it was actually written for global consulting firm ICF. Now that we’re coming up on a year since the freeze, and many months (April 12th) since it was lifted, what results are we seeing? Jeff suggests that we’ve got to look deeper into the numbers to get the whole story.

“If we look at raw numbers, the federal workforce has dropped from 2,093,868 employees at the end of December 2016 to 2,087,747 by September 2017, which breaks down to loss of 6,121 (0.29%) employees — not a huge impact for a two-million-person workforce.” To get a better understanding, we need to pull out the seasonal and temporary workers that are skewing the results which gives us a drop of 15,917 from 1,962,965 down to 1,947,048 – still not a big decrease (0.81%). But the devil is in the details, or in the accompanying table -- which lists both numbers and percentage increases/decreases for major agencies. Some agencies (OPM, VA, Interior) gained employees during this period, although most lost workers. The biggest loser (in employees) was Treasury. The IRS lost 6,801 of its workers this year. Will that mean longer wait times when calling for help during tax season?

12 House Democrats and Republicans Call for Civilian, Military Pay Parity

From federalnewsradio.com

A group of House Democrats and Republicans are joining the National Treasury Employee Union (NTEU) in calling for pay parity in 2018 between members of the military and civilian Federal employees. In most past years we’ve had parity, but this year Congress authorized a 2.4% pay increase for members of the military. The President announced in August a 1.9% increase for the civilian workforce (1.4% average pay raise plus a 0.5% adjustment for locality pay). The December 1st letter to the President says “We believe this is crucial to recruiting and retaining the talent necessary for an innovative and effective federal workforce. We hope you will agree and use your authority to increase civilian pay [to] 2.4 percent in 2018.” In five of the last ten years (between 2007 and 2017) the military received a higher pay raise than civilians, so keep your fingers crossed.

Is Your Agency Among the ‘Best Places to Work’ in Government?

From fedsmith.com

Firstly, let’s get something clear. It generally doesn’t matter what a survey says about something. What matters most is how YOU feel about it. So, regardless of where your agency ranked in the 2017 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings (an annual compilation based primarily on data from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey conducted by OPM), you have the most valid opinion of what it’s like working for your agency, and the one that counts.

Having said all that, it’s always interesting to see where you stand in the rankings (or is it rank in the standings). Maybe you’d rather go to work at the place where all the cool kids are. In the large agency standings, that would be NASA. Apparently sending up the ingredients to make pizza in the International Space Station is lots of fun, and even rewarding. Ian Smith tells us who are the best top 10 large, mid, and small agencies, but you can find out much more at bestplacestowork.org

See you next week. Thanks.

Why is the Federal government a great place to work? There are many reasons, but one is certainly the benefits you receive. Get the help you need to understand and wisely use your benefits. Use my comprehensive e-learning course “Understanding Your Federal Benefits” to become the boss of your benefits. And if you enroll now, you’ll also receive updated modules for 2018. There’s a free trial that gives you the course introduction and first module at no charge. Give it a look. You’ll like what you see.