Preparing a retirement calculation and application can be a time-consuming process involving several manual steps that can be inefficient for federal HR specialists. Technology can significantly improve on this, reducing the time it takes to complete an application, eliminating several sources of common errors, and improving communications between HR and employees.
Here is a closer look at four of the features that are needed to build an efficient federal retirement benefits package.
1. Employee Self-Serve Tools and Communications Hub
In many agencies, if an employee has a question or needs insight on a current application, they go through their HR department. This can be a slow process, especially if HR is overwhelmed with requests and administrative work. An efficient retirement benefits package allows HR to offload some of these communications to a self-serve employee hub.
These self-serve portals can provide benefits information, and resources and tools that address the common questions many employees ask about the retirement application process. Financial planning, educational tools, and retirement application wizards can help an employee jump in and take control of their end of the process without adding new work to the plate of already busy retirement specialists.
2. Service History Management
Legacy tools often lack sufficient service history management features. The result is a process that takes as much as four times longer than a modern, technology-supported tool. In some of these existing systems, when inaccurate entries are found, data has to be reentered in its entirety, not just taking excessive additional time, but increasing the likelihood of errors.
To address incorrectly filed personnel actions more efficiently, improve the speed with which service history records can be updated and processed for an application, and provide a better overall experience for specialists, a service history management tool is a must.
3. Contacts Record Management
Specialists need a central hub where they can manage and reference communications with employees. Such a system allows them to provide regular updates to employees and improve the flow of communication throughout the agency. It needs to be configurable as well, allowing federal HR teams to see their unique workflows and reporting needs.
With the right contacts record management system, federal HR teams can benefit from a much-improved flow of information between all the parties involved in a retirement calculation and application.
4. Speeding Things Up with Automation
This is a big one and can save large amounts of time, especially in agencies that are still processing paperwork manually in many cases. Retirement calculation and application software solutions should provide a paper-free alternative that can streamline and automate key tasks. With so many inefficiencies in the current process, it can take hours to complete even a simple application, and the risk of error is high.
Being able to enter information once that populates across multiple forms, manage data input from a single interface, and make changes and adjustments to previous entries can save as much as 75% from start to finish.
Choosing the Right Retirement Processing Software
Since 1990, EconSys has worked with federal HR teams to improve processes, starting with retirement. One of the core pieces of FedHR Navigator, our retirement tools will help to reduce time spent, improve communication, and reduce the risk of errors in the application process.
