Ask. Listen. ACT!

Welcoming a Worker Toolkit

Adding a new worker to your ministry family is exciting. Striking a balance between making sure new workers are well-informed but not overwhelmed is key in helping them feel welcome. Many employers have asked for help in this area, so we’ve created the “Welcoming a Worker Toolkit,” a collection of tools and new hire materials to help you with the onboarding process.

Digital Invoices on the Portal

We heard your request for a safe, convenient and easy way to access your invoices: you can now view and download invoices directly from your employer portal. And some of you wanted to link from the invoice to the payment system – done! There’s now a link to our Online BillPay system on your digital invoice – it’ll take you straight to the payment site!

Group-Term Life Reports available on the Employer Portal

You asked, we listened: GTL reports are now available on the employer portal! You can now access GTL reports online. Just look for the “Invoices & Reports” card on the main dashboard. Then select the billing month you’d like to view, the report type (GTL-Group Term Life), and click “Apply.” A PDF of the GTL report will open in a separate window. From here, you can view, print or save the PDF.

Concordia Retirement Plan Minimum Age Requirement

Made in response to ministry feedback, as of July 1, 2022, there’s now a minimum age of 21 for enrollment in the CRP (younger workers already enrolled in the plan are grandfathered). Newly hired workers under age 21 will not be enrolled in the CRP until they reach age 21. You will not need to make any changes to your process for enrolling new workers in the CRP. New workers under age 21 still need to be reported to CPS as they should be eligible for enrollment in the Concordia Disability and Survivor Plan, and, if applicable, the Concordia Health Plan and Concordia Retirement Savings Plan 403(b). Invoices will reflect the correct enrollments for these workers.

Compensation Decision Support Tool

Did you know we have a tool on our website that can help ensure your workers are fairly compensated? The Compensation Decision Support Tool provides salary benchmarks based on geographic location, type of ministry and other factors. We’ve recently updated the tool to include additional church roles (Director of Church Ministry, Business Manager I, Business Manager II) and school roles (Director of Finance, Athletic Director, Director of Development/Advancement, Director of Admissions). Since the launch of the tool, more than 40,000 estimates have been run!

Retirement Readiness

Our financial educators implemented a process to proactively reach out to new hires and transferring workers. They use this opportunity to introduce themselves and their services as well as to highlight features of the financial benefits, resources and availability to save for retirement through the Concordia Retirement Savings Plan 403(b).

Mental Health Toolkit

We increased communications about mental health and created a Mental Health Toolkit for employers. In addition to the toolkit, we ran a year-long mental well-being engagement campaign to support our ministries and members.

Business Support

We continued to promote HR Services, a resource we launched in April 2020, specifically to support human resources needs of ministries, especially for those without HR professionals on staff. As COVID-19 has remained in the spotlight , HR Services helped ministries navigate important topics like mask mandates, vaccine requirements, workplace safety and more.

Benefits Administrator Support

We created the Employer Benefits Administration Toolkit with resources to support those in the benefits administrator roles at their ministry and to improve their experience with our benefits administration system. Here are highlights:

• A CPS Overview Brochure outlines the benefits, solutions and services CPS offers.
• A Quick Start Guide for Employers provides benefits administrators a brief overview of their role in administering CPS benefits.
• The CPS Employer Calendar provides a snapshot of activities related to benefits in a sample year.
• An employer administrative basics webinar is hosted monthly to help acclimate those new to the benefits administrator role for their ministry so that they understand key responsibilities and available resources, see a demo of the benefits administration system and have an opportunity to ask questions.

Open Enrollment Improvements

• We refreshed Open Enrollment resources for employers – providing guides, webinars, information and timely reminders to help ministries understand what to expect during the Open Enrollment season.
• We kept ministries informed of what CPS would be sharing with their workers and showed them what the online member experience would entail for 2022 benefits enrollment. These actions helped ministries be better equipped to answer their workers’ questions during this important time of year.

OE Tutorials 
You expressed a desire to have a real-time demonstration of the open enrollment event. CPS will provide a recorded "real-time" tutorial coinciding with employer OE marketing efforts.

ACR Deadline 
We extended the ACR deadline to 1/31 based on your feedback indicating that 12/31 does not give you enough time to finalize your annual budget.

CDSP Beneficiaries

You expressed to us that you struggle getting your workers to enroll their dependent spouses in the CSDP, regardless of their intent to enroll in CHP. To address this, CPS added verbiage regarding the importance of listing spouses and children as dependents into PY 2022 and 2023 Open Enrollment communications and applicable member-facing Benefit Administration screens. We also implemented a quarterly audit/outreach to members with spouses listed as beneficiaries but not dependents in the CDSP.

Walking with you … bi-lingually!