Retirement Plans

Course Overview: Retirement Plans

So you might think managing your company’s retirement plan is essentially just a background administrative task. Right. Like keeping the lights on.

What You’ll Learn

• Defined Benefit vs. Defined Contribution Plans
• 401(k) Plan Design — Traditional, Roth, Safe Harbor
• Employer Matching and Profit Sharing
• Vesting Schedules — Cliff and Graded
• ERISA Compliance Requirements
• Fiduciary Duties and Responsibilities
• Plan Administration and Recordkeeping
• Non-Discrimination Testing — ADP, ACP, Top-Heavy
• Form 5500 Annual Reporting
• Plan Terminations and Distributions

Key Takeaways

• It is a incredibly demanding high stakes, fiduciary and analytical mandate mandate being the key word there.
• You have to manage these plans with the exact same strategic rigor, the identical level of dashboard analytics and the precise risk management protocols that your C suite applies to its most critical revenue generating projects.
• Under FMLA and ERISA provisions, the hours that an employee would have worked during their protected leave must be manually credited toward that 1000 hour vesting requirement.
• And the fiduciary has an absolute duty to manage that risk.
• An apparel manager who doesn’t understand FMLA regulations, and an HR generalist who doesn’t grasp their resellown compliance.
• To prevent these compliance dominoes from falling, and actually manage the plan proactively, HR must integrate its retirement stewardship into a much broader technological framework.
• You must educate those red-circled executives on the IRS deferral limits early in the year, or implement a safe harbor plan design, which requires mandatory, guaranteed employer contributions to bypass the testing entirely.
• We have established the pristine fiduciary governance required by ERISA.

Who This Course Is For

HR professionals preparing for PHR, SPHR, SHRM-CP, and SHRM-SCP certifications who need comprehensive knowledge of retirement plan design, administration, and fiduciary responsibilities for recertification and professional development.

This course includes an audio overview, slide deck, and assessment quiz.