- Content
- Process
- Timing
- Distribution
Welcome to the HighRoads Compliance Assessment
When it comes to ensuring that you're compliant with current regulations around benefits communications, there are four major areas of concern: Content, Process, Timing, and Distribution. This tool is designed to help you identify areas of strength, where your organization is performing better than its peers, and areas of improvement, where there is potential to boost efficiency by taking the recommended actions. We hope you find this information useful to your communications strategy.
Compliance Scorecard
Content
You’re missing an opportunity to educate your employees and to enhance their appreciation of their benefits package. Effective communication can have as much impact on employee’s satisfaction with their benefits as the actual benefits offered or the amount of money the company puts into a benefits plan.—Prudential, “Show Them the Value—A Companion Report to the Study of Employee Benefits: 2009 & Beyond”
Process
You should review your materials carefully to ensure they meet the content requirements—sometimes the documents vendors provide don’t qualify as SPDs, and using your SPDs as plan documents can run afoul of the regulations requiring that SPDs summarize in plain English the terms of the plan. Having a large number of people working on compliance communications may slow down your process unnecessarily without improving the quality of the end result.
Timing
You should take a look at your processes to determine what’s interfering with your ability to distribute materials on a timely basis. Plan participants often bring suits when requested (or required) information is not distributed within the required timeframes.
Distribution
You appear to be complying with distribution requirements. You should review your distribution process to identify other opportunities for cost savings. More participants than you realize may be open to receiving documents electronically. Be sure to monitor regulations in this area—the DOL is poised to update the electronic distribution rules for the first time in over a decade.
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