UKG Pro Open Enrollment Packages – Now Available

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With year end fast approaching, it’s time to begin proactively planning for your annual open enrollment process to ensure you are prepared for a smooth session.

Open enrollment can be difficult to navigate for seasoned HR professionals and employees alike. During this stressful time, frustrations are bound to arise related to new benefit options and rates, vendor communications, internal presentation and communication preparation, and enrollment setup and configuration within UKG Pro. Managing every detail required for a successful open enrollment period can quickly become overwhelming and takes critical time away from HR staff to answer employee questions or work on big picture projects.

The good news: it doesn’t have to be this way! Mosaic’s new Open Enrollment Support Package is designed to drastically reduce common open enrollment pain points and improve the employee experience during busy year end. Our team of talented experts are available and ready to help you tackle one of the most challenging projects of the year. We combine industry standards with UKG guides to offer best practice solutions during a demanding season in your organization.

When you partner with Mosaic to streamline your open enrollment process, your team will be provided with a dedicated resource to assist with benefit configuration and will have access to the entire Mosaic team of UKG Pro experts as needed.

From the start of our open enrollment partnership, we will ensure you are set up for success. Your consultant will start by evaluating your current procedures and gathering input on your specialized requirements. From there, we will take charge of the UKG Pro open enrollment session from initialization to close, taking time to go through comprehensive checklists to ensure setup and configuration are to your specifications.

We will then update benefit group codes and rates in UKG Pro based on the plan documents you have confirmed with your benefits vendors. Once setup checklists have been completed and vendor rates have been updated, we will work with you to test the session prior to go live for the annual enrollment process.

Human Resource professionals spend months preparing for Benefit Open Enrollment. Employee benefits are more important than ever as a competitive advantage in recruitment and a crucial piece of organizations’ retention strategy. OE is a season that makes a difference to your people!

Planning early and enlisting expert support are critical to ensuring a smooth and streamlined open enrollment process. We are here to make you successful!

Our Open Enrollment Support packages are limited, so act fast by contacting us today to learn more about how we can work together to tackle open enrollment with minimal stress and increased team productivity.

When is a Corrected W-2 Necessary?

What is a W-2C?

The short answer: A W-2C is a corrected version of the W-2 form. As simple as that! (not really…)

Most employees will never see a W-2C, but they are needed occasionally. With so much change in 2020 and 2021, let’s explore when they are needed, the information you enter in UKG Pro that will trigger a W-2C, what you need to successfully complete any prior year adjustments, and how to report those changes.

What does a W-2C look like?

Since the purpose of a W-2C form is to correct the information on the W-2 form, other than the employee’s identifying information, the only data on the form will be that which is corrected. For example, if you correct an employee’s State Taxable earnings, the form will show the “old” data and the corrected information for State Taxable earnings, but no other data will be there.

What DOES trigger a W-2C?

  1. Name changes – Even something as simple as adding a middle initial
  2. Address changes – Whether or not the change impacts the employee’s taxable wages
  3. SSN corrections
  4. Changes to YTD taxable wages OR taxes withheld

While these will all trigger creation of a W-2C, only the last two will require you to do anything about it.

What DOESN’T trigger a W-2C?

Year End 2020 and 2021 were definitely… unprecedented. It’s worth taking a minute to consider what changes or events do NOT trigger the need for a W-2C:

  1. Catch-up pay cycles – If, for any reason, employees missed pay and your organization needs to run a catch-up pay cycle for wages owed in 2021 (if the catchup pay was completed in 2022) those wages are 2022 wages, and this does not require a W-2C.
  2. Employer address change – If a company’s (or component company) address changes this will not trigger a W-2C for following year.
  3. Payroll adjustments – Payroll adjustments that do not change taxable wages or taxes withheld will not trigger a W-2C
  • For Example: Moving wages from one earning code to another without changing taxes

As a Payroll Manager, what kind of issues should I be preparing for?

Between when your employees access their W-2 forms and April 15, you will receive phone calls from team members who want changes made to their W-2s. Not every request should be made, nor will it trigger a W-2C, but the most common ones that will require some action on your part are:

  1. The employee moved mid-year, but taxes were not adjusted.
  2. State or local wages were not reported in error, either because the location is set up incorrectly, or the employee was marked “exempt” or “block” in error.
  3. You’ve already made Prior Year adjustments, but they were made after the W-2s were printed.

What do I need to get started with this process?

  1. With all the changes you need to make for your entire organization, you don’t want to make these changes in small batches. We recommend holding all requested changes until late March to be sure that most, if not all, changes can be made at once.
  2. Do not try to squeeze these fixes into spare moments throughout a busy week. Block time in your day to dedicate solely to making these changes.
  3. For each problem you have, you’ll need to know the date the problem started (for example, the first pay date in the new location), and if it was fixed, the date it was fixed.
  4. Summary Payroll Register for the period(s) needing the corrections.
  5. A communication plan. Employees should know that a W-2C is coming their way. They should know when the form is expected and what it covers so they can plan accordingly.
  6. Run reports before you make any changes and again after you have finished.
  • Examples include:
    • Tax Liability Grand Total – You want this for the entire prior year, and for the 4th quarter of the prior year (this is where all changes will post).
    • Wage Detail and W-2 Detail for each employee for the full year.

So, what’s the actual process I need to follow?

  1. For those cases where an employee’s location was changed late, you can use a Managed Adjustment to “shift” the wages to the correct state. Any over or under-withheld taxes will be moved to a 0NET ADJ code automatically, and then can be refunded to or collected from the employee using that same code.
  2. If the employee’s location wasn’t changed, you will need to do Standard Adjustments. First, reverse all the impacted checks in the Payroll Gateway. To keep it simple, if there is one check in the middle of the pile that isn’t impacted, reverse that one too. Reversals and adjustments made to the Prior Year will always post to a system created Supplemental Per Control.
  3. Enter your adjustments. You don’t need one adjustment for each check. Best practice is one adjustment for each quarter. You need to make sure that your net pay remains unchanged, so any over-withheld taxes should either be applied to the employee’s Federal Taxes or placed in the 0NET ADJ deduction for repayment later.
  4. After posting your adjustments, notify UKG of the changes via the Notify button.
  5. Once your adjustments are posted, run Tax Recon for the 4th quarter of the prior year. You can run this just for the employees who have had corrections made. Also re-run all the reports that you ran before starting this process and compare them to the “before” reports to verify that the appropriate changes occurred.
  6. Generate your W-2C forms in UKG Pro.
  7. If UKG is your Tax Processor, they will file the needed adjustments with the various taxing authorities. If you use another company for tax filing (or if they are done internally), follow those processes for reporting adjustments.

Now More Than Ever, We Need to Focus on Our Team

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Employee retention has become the newest topic of serious discussion and scrutiny in boardrooms (or zoom calls) across the country. Companies are asking HR teams to focus on ways to combat the current labor shortage and prepare for what is being called the “Great Resignation”. HR Professionals are left with the difficult tasks of not only finding new employees quickly, but also finding new ways to keep them on staff. I believe that the secret to this, is a true focus on your team.

Throughout the years, Mosaic has published multiple articles on how important the employee experience is for businesses. From building a culture by design, to amplifying the employee voice, Mosaic has always emphasized listening to your team and caring about them on a human to human level. For many companies, including Mosaic, the COVID-19 pandemic held up a magnifying glass to employee experience efforts. In August of this year we heard back from our team, burnout had made its way across our organization and was affecting our team’s lives and their ability to provide the exceptional client service we strive towards.

I knew that we needed to find a short-term way to reduce burnout and, more importantly, a long-term strategy to keep our focus on our team members front of mind; especially for me and my executive team as we made business decisions. As a short-term solution, we held our first ever companywide mental health day of rest. We then began to work on a strategic solution to focus on our team, provide a great employee experience and recruit and retain top talent. This is a big task, and I know it will take us time to establish a strategy that solves the challenge at the source, but it’s important to start building one today. As we covered during our recent webinar and article on using technology to manage the labor shortage, the global pandemic has given employees a clearer understanding of what they want out of their jobs, and what types of careers they want to pursue in the long run. This means that to retain, recruit and engage the top talent we want on our team, we need to be the type of place they want to be a part of.

Now more than ever, we need to focus on our team and give them a workplace where they can bring their whole selves to work, a place where they can learn, grow, and make a positive impact on our client’s lives. I want Mosaic to be a place where team members want to be and feel inspired. This led me to the decision to promote Krystyn Sadler, our Vice President of People and Culture Warrior to President of Mosaic Consulting Group. As a strong HR leader Krystyn has proven to relate to and connect with our team as well as our clients. She understands the business and the importance of employee engagement for our success. I am so proud of Krystyn and her new role. Krystyn has been dedicated to our team’s culture and engagement since day one, over four years ago. In Krystyn’s own words: “I believe that a focus on our team, their experience and well-being, results in a better experience and better results for our clients” We cannot wait to see how Krystyn continues to be an agent of positive change and growth for Mosaic. As President, Krystyn will work closely with our team ensuring our day-to-day initiatives are running smoothly and keeping the team experience, which is so near to her heart, top of mind. This will allow me, as CEO, to focus on strategic initiatives to continue moving our business forward.

Mosaic has already benefitted from this decision and focus on the employee experience. In the month since we announced our company wide mental health day of rest, we’ve had an overwhelmingly positive response from employees and clients alike. The silver lining to these difficult times is the potential for a more empathetic world and this empathy should stretch out to our teams, clients and entire networks. I am excited to partner with Krystyn to make sure that we continue to grow Mosaic as a best place to work and a rapidly growing company with a strong focus on team experience. I invite other business owners to do the same.

What is Contingency Payroll?

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What is Contingency Payroll:

  • Contingency payroll is a term used to describe backup payroll processing support typically used in emergency situations. At Mosaic, we offer contingency payroll services to UKG Pro clients. Clients who seek contingency payroll services typically fall in one of two categories:
    • Event Preparedness: Clients will seek out contingency payroll service as a proactive support model to mitigate risks associated with unplanned events such as a natural disaster or unexpected staffing changes, which may affect their ability to complete their payroll seamlessly.
    • Short Term Backup: Clients who have a short term need for someone to manage their payroll, often referred to as short term staff augmentation. A short term need like this could be brought on by many different business situations, for example, planned leaves of absences or merger and acquisition activities including divestitures.

How would contingency payroll work within my company?

  • Payroll Shadowing:
    • The first step is to shadow how your company processes payroll. The shadowing should take place from the beginning of the process (after your employee’s time has been approved) and should end with the creation of a GL file. Payroll shadowing can be conducted on site at a client’s offices or virtually leveraging video conference technology and screen sharing.
  • Incorporate Best Practice & Efficiencies:
    • During the shadowing process, your contingency payroll provider should learn your organization’s current way of processing payroll while looking for ways to incorporate best practices and efficiencies through automation.
  • Standard Operating Procedure (SOPs) & Payroll Processing Checklist
    • The output from the payroll shadowing is a comprehensive operating procedure which details your organization’s payroll processing from start to finish in narrative form. The SOPs are leveraged to process your organization’s payroll during regularly scheduled shadowing’s or when an emergent need is enacted. The SOP’s are reviewed and updated as changes in your organization’s process occurs.
      • For example, for Mosaic Contingency Payroll clients, the Mosaic team will perform a minimum of four payroll shadows or independent processing. During the scheduled shadows, the team follows the client’s SOPs, ensuring any edits or updates are made. Scheduled shadowing’s are critical to the success of Contingent Payroll Service because they ensure the team remains current on the organization’s payroll and the SOPs remain accurate. Mosaic clients often take advantage of the quarter scheduled independent processing for their in-house payroll team to schedule time off, complete training, or use their time for other projects.
    • In addition to the SOPs a comprehensive payroll checklist is created specific to the steps, tasks or processes which must be completed to ensure a payroll process is completed accurately and consistently.

Why should I consider contingency payroll?

  • Peace of mind: knowing that your company is covered at the drop of a hat, regardless of the situation. With contingency payroll services you know there is a safety net and your most essential employee needs will be met.
  • Payroll Best Practice and Process Improvement: our UKG Pro subject matter experts leverage best practice and industry standards to make recommendations about your current way of processing and incorporate them into your future payroll processing.
  • Documented Payroll Process: following your current state shadowing, best practice and process improvements are incorporated resulting in the output of your organization’s documented payroll process. This ensures your organization’s needs are met, your payroll operations are streamlined and during periods of scheduled or emergent situations your end to end payroll process can be picked up and processed virtually.

Taking the benefits of contingency payroll one step further, some clients consider completely outsourcing their payroll processes. This outsourced payroll offering is also known as Managed Payroll. There are many benefits to managed payroll and can include:

  • Peace of mind: Contingency payroll ensures you are covered in case of an emergency but by completely outsourcing your payroll you ensure experts will manage your process and it will be done correctly, every time
  • Strategic focus: Managed payroll also removes the day to day tactical duties off your team and allows them to focus on strategic business initiatives
  • Compliance: With managed payroll you don’t have to worry about new/updated rules and regulations for compliance, payroll law changes frequently, but your managed payroll team will ensure your payroll is compliant and up to date
  • Best practices: The payroll experts managing your process will implement best practice and continued process improvements
  • Avoiding mistakes: With managed payroll you can count on experts to follow your processes consistently
  • Enhanced security and reduced fraud: Managed payroll ensures segregation of duties which removes the risk associated manual manipulation after time files have been approved
  • Staffing changes: After any unexpected team changes, or a reduction in force, you may not want to backfill a position, outsourcing may be the way to go

Note: UKG Pro was formerly UltiPro.

UKG Pro General Ledger (GL): Deciphered

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UKG Pro contains General Ledger functionality that captures payroll transactions and outputs them into a file formatted for import into your company’s financial system. When implemented and configured correctly, this GL function can eliminate or reduce manual manipulation of the data — which in turn reduces human error and improves compliance. Auditors love this type of automation, and your team will too! An optimized GL will allow your team to focus on bigger tasks, by freeing up time and improving efficiency.

GL: What It Is, Why It’s Important

Companies record their financial activity in a General Ledger (GL). This General Ledger is used for financial reporting, planning and compliance. GL affects every department within your company. From an HR and Payroll standpoint, GL is used for payroll recording as well as any forecasting and planning.

Scroll down to the end of this post to review our GL Glossary.

What causes GL challenges?

During your UKG Pro launch, or implementation, your GL will be configured. This includes setting up Organization Levels, GL Rules, and the GL export file and/or reports. (see our glossary at the bottom of this post for full definitions on these and other concepts).

During this initial configuration it is important to consider:

  • Finance, Payroll and HR: GL rules define how transactions are mapped and affect all three departments. If only one department is involved in the decision-making process; it’s possible that something will get missed, forcing another department to manipulate the data they receive. All departments should be part of the conversation.
  • Translations: Finance, payroll and HR departments don’t speak the same language! Each discipline has different words for similar concepts; for example, Departments versus Cost Centers. UKG Pro allows you to translate these words in a way that all departments will have the information they need at the end of each payroll.
  • Prepare for change: Consider where your company is now and where it is going. As you grow, so must your GL rules and tables. Your team should think strategically while implementing your system. Make sure to have your tables reviewed periodically to ensure that they still work the way you need them to for your current organizational structure.

So, what now?

At the end of the GL Process, you will have access to a GL Export File. This file, configured within UKG Pro, contains the required data for your financial system. If someone on your team is spending time manipulating this data, that is a sign that something needs to be optimized within your system.

The GL rules within UKG Pro are so configurable that they should work FOR you. Although it is not an accounting software, UKG Pro has the functionality, out of the box, to simplify your processes and make sure your data is clean and transferable across all departments.

If you believe you need a GL Review or have questions about how to optimize your system’s functionality, feel free to contact us today.

GL Glossary:

Components of UKG Pro GL configuration:

  • GL Base Account: The GL Base Account codes are used as the fixed portion of your General Ledger (GL) account number.
  • GL Segment Sequence: GL account numbers consist of cost center information, base accounts, and constant values that are unique to your accounting system. These components are referred to as segments of the general ledger.  Segment Sequences are sections linked together to form the GL account number. Your company defines which components are valuable for reporting, budgeting, and analysis.
  • GL Rules: The GL Rules defines how payroll transactions are mapped and reported on the GL export file or GL reports.  Mapping components on the GL Rules table include the GL Type Code, Payroll code (earning, deduction, or tax), base account, and segment sequence.

GL Export File:
An export template is configured in UKG Pro to allow the export of payroll data required for the financial system.  The export extracts its data from the General Ledger/Labor Allocations table. The resulting GL file includes the sum of debit and credit amounts by general ledger (GL) account number.

Organization (Org) Levels
Org levels in UKG Pro are typically used to classify employees based on a specific group for the purpose of reporting and/or GL posting. Examples of classification types include:

  • Cost Centers
  • Business Units
  • Region.

GL Type Code – each type of payroll transactions is identified with a GL Type Code.  The GL Type Code will assist with troubleshooting items that may appear on the GL Suspense Detail report.

GL Type Code
GL Type Code  General Ledger Code  Description  Debit  Credit
EE Earnings expense Debit  
DE EE Deduction payable   Credit
TE EE Taxes payable   Credit
NC EE Net pay checks   Credit
ND EE Net pay direct deposit   Credit
TR ER Taxes expense Debit  
TL ER Taxes liability   Credit
DR ER Deduction expense Debit  
DL ER Deduction liability   Credit

GL Suspense Detail report – this report is generated after the GL process is run.  If all payroll items are mapped on the GL Rules table, this report will be blank.  If items exist on this report, the GL Rules table must be updated to map that code.  Once mapped, the GL Process must be re-run.

Labor Allocations and the Auto Allocate feature are not necessarily part of GL and although commonly are used; they may not be used by every company. They are included in this list because they will affect the GL file.

  • Labor Allocations allow you to automatically or manually allocate your employees’ earnings and hours worked to cost centers such as departments, divisions, or projects.
  • The Auto Allocate feature allocates all employees’ wages according to a percentage, not specific time worked. This method is typically used for auto paid employees. Labor allocations for hourly employees can also be defined using the manual allocation method (such as through a time clock import)

If you believe you need a GL Review or have questions about how to optimize your system’s functionality, feel free to contact us today.

Culture by Design: Keeping Culture Alive With a Remote Workforce

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Culture doesn’t just happen. It must be developed, nurtured and maintained in an intentional way – especially when majority of your workforce is remote, behind a screen, in their home or home office, or possibly sitting in an airport while traveling to a meet a client.

Remote work has become increasingly popular in the United States with the rise of technology and new ways of staying connected and sharing information that are as efficient (and sometimes more so) than traditional offices and boardrooms. Companies are able to share information seamlessly, transmit data with the click of a button, share screens, chat over instant message, and connect with one another from nearly anywhere in the world.

Fast Company reported in February 2018 on Upwork’s Future Workforce Report, “Many of the 1,000 hiring managers surveyed said that they expect up to 38% of their full-time staff will be working remotely in the next decade.” Fast Company went on to say: “Currently, 63% of employers have remote workers, yet a majority lack remote work policies.” A written policy may not be necessary, but it is important to establish norms and be intentional about your remote workers’ experiences within your culture and connections to one another.

Not all remote work is the same – there are positives and challenges to the lifestyle. Remote work arrangements, when they first hit the work scene, were instantly alluring because of their novelty, the lure of greater work-life balance and a flexible work environment that seemed so desirable principally because of the words, “work from home.” For many of us, this conjured up images of working in pajama pants with a big cup of coffee, participating in a conference call from the location of your choice – a home office, the airport, or your car – and there was a certain sense of freedom, ease, even glamour, associated with having a “flexible” or “remote” work arrangement.

Connection & Culture

We now know that employing a remote workforce takes effort and commitment to a positive work environment and culture at all levels of the organization. Mosaic is proud of what we have learned about creating a thriving remote workforce – but there are always challenges to making sure that your workforce feels connected, engaged, and included. Maintaining a remote workforce with a kickass culture is a challenge, for sure. One of the primary challenges employees who work remotely cite is the feeling of isolation and being less of a “part of the team”.

At Mosaic, we strive to be the exception and maintain a strongly connected and centered team, regardless of where we all do our respective jobs. For us, this boils down to two things: our culture, and good communication. Here is a look at some of our practices that contribute to our connectivity:

Huddles

We touch base with each other regularly to talk about what we’re up to, what we’re stuck on, and what we need help with. Many of our remote team members tell us that it’s not simply the information shared, but the experience of being “in the room” virtually, and connected with the rest of our team, that makes them feel more a part of their team, and the company, when so many work in locations across the country and are in our Nashville office only a few times a year.

Video Chat

This is how we make our huddles happen, and many other points of connection throughout the day. We’ve found that our team prefers Zoom video chat over instant messaging. The personal aspect of seeing one another – no matter where you are – creates that human connection. We encourage everyone to “show their faces” for internal meetings; this reduces the intimidation factor and makes everyone more comfortable using this medium.

We encourage our team to have conversations that would have happened over the watercooler if we all shared an office building. It’s important to us to have these conversations as if we are physically in an office with our team – to connect when there is good news or difficult news. By doing this, we are able to better maintain that intimate, entrepreneurial, small-team family feeling, no matter how big we grow. I think it’s vital to know your team and know what they are dealing with and establish a relationship where you can coach and mentor, and this is one of the many things that I think sets Mosaic apart. Cheri, a Washington-based consultant, says, “Even though I work remotely, it is important for me to stay connected to co-workers to ensure I feel like I’m part of a team. One way I stay connected is scheduling short meetings to say hi and catch up on life. We share best practices and sometime have a glass of wine. While I am not in a physical office building, you can still have the same outcome by making simply efforts to stay connected.”

Work is life and life is work. Sometimes you are walking through a parking lot or sitting in a car when you join a call or you haven’t showered yet. There is grace within the team and within our walls. We trust that we all look professional as we go onsite or connect with clients, but our culture stresses being comfortable just being who we are with each other on a daily basis, and I hope everyone on the team feels this.

Having a conversation with a colleague over Zoom where you can see their facial expressions and body language helps us communicate clearly and understand each other better. Tricia, a remote Senior PAS team member in Tennessee eloquently described the value of Zoom when she said, “At Mosaic we choose to ‘assume positive intent’ of one another – with instant messaging you can sometimes misread inflection or intent. Zoom helps you maintain the assumption of positive intent because you are able to pair a colleague’s nonverbal cues with their words.”

Creative Workspace

Much like the “chat rooms” in the old days of the web, #Slack has become our place to gather (and from our climbing message stats, it seems like it’s taken off!). As most of you already know, we implemented Slack as a place to collaborate on projects with groups, to send group messages, or to launch video meetings. It’s the place we all meet up, and while the primary focus is work, we make room for fun, too. Encouraging a workplace where people bring themselves into the environment and share personal details, special moments, talents, and accomplishments, or just a good joke or two, reinforces the personal connection and makes our team feel like family.

Virtual Events

When our team does gather “in real life” – for quarterly or annual planning meetings or other company events – we’re able to pick up seamlessly because we “see” each other so often over Zoom and share information on #Slack.

Companies today must think outside the box. We learned as we outgrew the feasibility of flying everyone in several times a year for meetings and the annual holiday party, that we needed to take a creative approach to these events. We added virtual events, in addition to quarterly meetings and monthly All Hands Calls: our Secret Santa party, monthly BetterBookClub meetings, and more. It is this kind of celebration that connects individuals throughout the organization for a positive reason that has nothing to do with work that is extremely valuable. It provides the opportunity to connect and get to know one another. We are building grace equity in the relationship.

This year, I heard about a virtual happy hour that our Client Engagement team held. They all grabbed their beverage of choice in their home offices and joined a video conference call. Their “happy hour” turned into two-and-a-half hours of stories and belly laughs. I had a little FOMO when I heard about this bonding time for their team, but more than that, I was happy to see this team being proactive about connecting with one another as people who share experiences beyond office hours and routine work. They were embracing the culture and making it even better by prioritizing time to connect with their fellow teammates.

Our Wingman Program

We’ve all had the experience of joining a new company and thinking, “How am I going to learn all that I need to learn, and get up to speed?” You don’t want to ask what might be perceived as a stupid question, but you also want to connect and feel at home. Many of you have benefitted from our Wingman program at Mosaic or served as a Wingman yourself.

Some of you may not know that this program came into being organically, in sharing my own experience with a rock star consultant who had joined us and was struggling to adjust. Brian, a Texas-based consultant, was transitioning from a corporate environment to working with Mosaic from home. He had just left a position which involved a daily commute and a big office with fluorescent lights and people constantly milling about. Since I had been consulting for over 10 years already, I had disconnected from how difficult this transition could be. It takes time to adjust to life as a remote employee. Unlike a typical office environment, you can’t just pop your head into someone’s office to ask a question or ask a coworker something simple like where to find the benefits documentation you were given during orientation. These conversations would organically occur after morning huddle or in the break room during lunch. To the remote worker, asking simple questions that are necessary during the onboarding period feels like you are interrupting your boss or peer. Brian brought a wealth of knowledge and expertise to Mosaic, and his experience shined a light on a gap we needed to fill in our onboarding process. Our team stepped in and made time to support him. He eloquently described his transition to consulting life: “The way that the team scaffolded me allowed me to move forward and not worry about my inadequacies. They carried me until I could walk – and now I’m running!”

His experience exemplifies what we desire for each of our team members to find success as remote employees at Mosaic. We wanted all new team members to feel this way, so we created the Wingman Program which pairs each new member of our team with a peer who is dedicated to helping the new team mate acclimate. The wingman is a resource for all the questions that seem silly, helping the individual adjust, and being there for them as they settle in to help them feel connected.

Remote work as a consultant also requires a certain amount of self-management that is less common in some traditional workplaces. We expect consultants to self-manage many aspects of their day. They learn to juggle multiple clients, varying priorities and deadlines, and their workload on top of the personalities involved as well. The process of acclimating to this style of work takes time, and it can be different for everyone. The Wingman is a great resource for new consultants as they can learn first-hand how a peer juggles their day-to-day.

Celebrations and Acknowledgements

There’s something special about public acknowledgement of something that is important to you. It makes it real. That is why we record and remember our team’s personal milestones: birthdays, children’s birthdays, work and personal anniversaries. Our team understands that they are important. Run a marathon? Had a baby? Your child graduated from high school? We want to know it and celebrate it with you.

This is also why, during our monthly All Hands Call, we share the top company news and end with the open invite for team members to give one another a shout out and share their “Attitude of Gratitude.” This gives us an opportunity to thank one another, celebrate one another, and gas each other up. It is the most important part of that call. Publicly acknowledging what we are doing well in an open forum can never be overdone. It serves an additional purpose in allowing people who don’t frequently work with one another hear about what is going well in different areas of the organization.

You either have a culture by default or by design. And, to me, “by design” means more than just a few early team members setting standards for remote work nearly ten years ago. In order to sustain connection across a fast-growing organization, it takes a team that is fully engaged and bought into the rewards that come from the effort it takes to connect with one another. I am proud that Mosaic continues to stand out as a place of work that is committed to being a remote team of exceptionally connected individuals. I encourage you to continue to be creative and introduce new ways of intentional connection company-wide.

I firmly believe that remote workforces are not only here to stay, but a growing norm among leading companies. To attract the best talent and offer challenging and rewarding work, we must flex as to the location our team works from and give them ownership over the way they perform their jobs to meet company goals. But providing a “home base” for our team is critical: a culture they feel connected to, a work family, and an environment that makes it feel as if your co-workers are just an office away – no matter where they’re working from — and that is what makes our Mosaic team special.

The Many Moving Parts of a Successful Year End

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What is Year End?

Well, it means different things to different people and parts of your organization.

If you’re in Human Resources, Year End means getting ready for a new benefit year with Open Enrollment, reviewing policies to make sure they are in compliance with new laws, and fielding last- minute questions from employees about their existing or new benefits.

In payroll, Year End is the culmination of everything done during the year, as well as a number of processes that you execute only once a year. Year End is your last chance to find and fix issues from the current year before they become complicated. These issues might include: an employee moved without telling anyone; people were overpaid or underpaid; someone just noticed duplicate employee records.

In short, Year End can be hectic, but it’s easier to get all the details right, the first time, instead of having to go back and make adjustments later. UKG Pro gives you tools and resources to manage the process, and, if you are using UKG Pro, Mosaic is here to help! Check out Simplifying Your Year End for more tips and tricks.

UKG and Mosaic Consulting Group experts agree: for a successful Year End, the key is to begin the process as early as possible. Here are some other resources and tools that will help make the process easier for you. At the bottom of this article you will find a recording of a Mosaic Webinar on this topic.

Leverage UKG Pro for a Smooth Year End:

As an UKG-only consulting firm, Mosaic has the knowledge you need to be sure you are using this powerful tool to its fullest capacity during the busy Year End season. It is important to understand the what’s involved in preparing for Year End, know the resources available to you, identify the people to have on your team, make a checklist to keep track of all the moving parts, and get familiar with the new features of UKG Pro that will make the process easier for you! Keep reading for more information on what UKG Pro offers to ensure you have an easy transition in to the new year.

UKG Pro Year End Gateway:

If you are a Mid Market client, and UKG Pro files your payroll taxes for you, you can turn on the Year End Gateway in UKG Pro. This can be found under Administration > Year End, and you can provide access to this tool to everyone on your team.

If you don’t see “Year End Gateway” and you think you should, have your Security Administrator review your access level. If it’s enabled and you still can’t see it; you aren’t eligible. If that’s the case,skip to the UKG Pro Checklist section of this article.

The Year End Gateway is an online checklist for the Year End process as they relate to UKG Pro. Pay close attention to the Due Dates – these will change color if you don’t mark something as completed on time. The Gateway walks you step-by-step through the process, and it not only tells you which reports you need to run or the business rules you should look at; it will also take you directly to the report when you click on the links. As an added bonus, as you complete each task, it is marked “complete,” and people working on different parts of the process can see what has been done and what hasn’t. It is a great tool to keep you – and all members of your Year End team! — organized and informed.

UKG Pro Checklist:

UKG also provides a handy-dandy Year End Checklist. Typically, clients who use UKG Pro but who file their own taxes will have access to the checklist instead of the Gateway. To find the checklist, search for “Year End Checklist” on the Customer Success Portal. While not as interactive as the Year End Gateway, this list does provide the tasks that must be done and the sequence they should be completed in. It also gives you the names of the reports you need to run, and the pathways for accessing tasks within UKG Pro.

If you do not use UKG Pro for your tax filing, you will need to append any Year End tasks from your tax filer to this checklist.

New UKG Pro Features – Right on Time for Year End:

One of the biggest changes that happened to UKG Pro this year was the added ability to do reversals and adjustments on the web. This is a game changer for UKG Pro and Mosaic clients! Previously, if you needed to process a reversal and/or adjustment in order to correct a tax issue, you needed to go through the Back Office or, if you don’t have Back Office, open a ticket. Now you can process these changes on the web.

Another exciting change is the addition of an import tool on the web. With the new web import, you can give more people access to import files. If you’re not familiar with creating imports for UKG Pro, these can be complicated, so please don’t hesitate to reach out if you need any help. Here are some links that may help:

UKG Pro Import Tool Instructions:

Is Anything Else New in UKG Pro?

Yes! UKG Pro dropped a batch of new sample reports in BI last month, and these reports will save our clients a great deal of time during year end. Here’s a preview of what you’ll find:

  • New Tax Reports: Combines a few ‘Standard Reports’ and highlights errors. This means you can find problems quickly and address them effectively.
  • Earnings and Deductions Reports: Combine two or more ‘Standard Reports’ to make everything work better.
  • W-2 Box DD Report: This report will filter through your data and show you only those employees and deductions you need to pay attention to.
  • PTO Reports: These focus on the key dates in each plan, so you can avoid problems with accruals and rollovers at year end.

Want to know more about simplifying year end? Check out Mosaic’s tips and tricks to simplify year end.

Whether you’re executing Year End for the first time or looking for ways to make the process more efficient, we can help. Our team has developed best practices from working with a broad range of clients and can help make Year End seamless. Take advantage of the resources, tools and tactical support your Mosaic team can offer.

Contact Mosaic today for help with any and all UKG Pro related projects or questions.

Watch the Mosaic Webinar on The Many Moving Parts of a Successful Year End

Think Like a Marketer to Recruit Top Talent

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It’s been said that the hardest sales job is recruiting – because your product can change its mind. It’s true and it’s a good reminder that recruiting is selling. If you want to recruit the top performers, here are four important things to get right:

  1. Marketing.

The key to great marketing is to know your audience and speak to what matters to them. Audience is just as important in recruiting. Job descriptions that first answer “why work here?” are much more appealing than those that start with a long list of job requirements. You need to capture your audience, in the same way that the best marketing messages focus on how you or your product can help your prospect. The best job descriptions start by answering whats in it for me?

  1. The Sales Pitch.

When you describe your company to a candidate, is your message consistent with the company’s marketing materials? What is your market differentiator? Are you delivering the same message to candidates that the sales team is delivering to prospective customers? A solid understanding of the company’s business model and where it is going is essential for communicating how your opportunity will boost careers. Make sure recruiting is aligned with the sales team in terms of conveying a consistent message about the company.

  1. Get on the phone!

70% of the workforce is comprised of people who aren’t looking for jobs, yet 87% of both active and passive job seekers are open to new opportunities. Like customers, the majority of candidates do not magically appear. This means that you need to find them and proactively engage with them. Despite the heavy usage of technology and social media today: the most effective way to recruit passive candidates is to pick up the phone.

  1. Get the right technology.

The correct technology is crucial in finding and engaging top talent, and once you find the right one for you, it will simplify your process and improve both your team and candidates’ experiences. The right technology allows you to engage and navigate your candidate pool, it also removes barriers for applicants, making it easy for the right candidates to apply to the right jobs, while allowing your team the tools they need to manage their relationships with applicants. In fact, 77% of people think less of companies that don’t respond to job applicants, your recruiting processes are a big part of your brand! How do you track and manage your candidate pipeline? Timely responses to candidates and frequent updates to applicant status is critical in building a positive employer brand.

With all of this in mind we recommend UKG Pro Recruiting. As part of the UKG Pro Talent Acquisition Module, UKG Pro Recruiting offers a full breadth of services that will allow you to manage your candidate experience by personalizing your engagement with them. Candidates will be able to leverage familiar tools and use their mobile devices to search and apply for your open positions. Your team will be able to proactively engage with candidates and plan for future talent needs as well as assess not only skills and experience but also behaviors, motivations and career aspirations to ensure only the best people, with the best fit, join your team.

As a UKG-only consulting group, Mosaic can help you implement or optimize your UKG Pro Talent Acquisition Module as well as the whole UKG Pro suite. Our team of experts can make sure you are getting the most out of your system.

Note: UKG was formerly Ultimate Software. UKG Pro was formerly UltiPro.

Best Practices for Effectively Managing Open Enrollment

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Open Enrollment (OE) is a complex journey – one of the most labor-intensive processes for HR teams and one of the most important times of year for your employees. Managing the myriad details of enrolling employees, updating data, and keeping the process smooth and seamless for participants is critical, not only for regulatory compliance but also for employee engagement.

A successful OE session starts with the right technology platform for your business, first and foremost. We recommend UKG Pro because it is a simple and streamlined tool that is easy to use. That being said, technology isn’t the only thing you need. Other key factors in a smooth and seamless open enrollment include a thorough analysis of your OE process, planning ahead, good communication, and bringing on help – like your team at Mosaic Consulting Group — if necessary. Go to the bottom of this article to see the Mosaic Webinar on this topic.

Read on to learn 4 best practices we’ve collected over our years of experience with UKG Pro Open Enrollment.

Always Use Active Enrollment

When deciding between passive and active Open Enrollment: Mosaic recommends all Clients do an active Open Enrollment, every time. Active Open Enrollment is when all eligible employees must re-elect their benefits, even if there are no plan changes or they wish to make changes in their coverage, in order to keep them. On the other hand, passive open enrollment is when employees are automatically re-enrolled by default. In passive open enrollment if  if an employee does not make an election during Open Enrollment, they will be enrolled again, with same benefits they currently have.

There are a few reasons for our active open enrollment recommendation:

  • Active open enrollment allows for a much cleaner process and flow.
  • It also allows serves as a good reminder for all employees to review their current benefits and actively select keeping them.
  • It is a good reminder for all employees to confirm their current dependent and beneficiary information.
  • If any new vendor is included in Open Enrollment, the process MUST be active. This is because during a passive OE, your vendor only receives any changes — meaning that if someone wanted to keep the same selections but with a new vendor, those selections wouldn’t be transferred unless it’s done through active open enrollment

Teamwork

As mentioned earlier, OE is a complex process. Including the right people in the process is an important step to take very early in the planning stages. Make sure to have a conversation with your payroll team to define important dates. Since new benefits usually become effective at the beginning of the year, it is important to understand when the first payroll of the year will take place, not just when it is paid but when it will be processed, as well.

It is also important to keep your entire team informed and be on the same page when you define dates for OE and the dates when benefits and deductions become active. Remember, once open enrollment goes live, you can still change some dates EXCEPT the “pending effective date”. Pending effective date or dates (depending on how many sessions you have) is the date that all benefits become active. This is the cornerstone of the entire open enrollment setup and attempting to change the pending effective date, once open enrollment is live, will erase all other data and configuration.

Messaging

Included within your session are specific messages that are related only to open enrollment. These messages can be edited and personalized. We recommended you do so to help employees as they proceed through OE. These messages can include forms and links to resources and tools such as vendor websites, so that team members can get more information if necessary. The best way to format these messages is to type them all in to a Word document, format the font and paragraphs there, and copy and paste them in to the messaging field in UKG Pro. The formatting will transfer seamlessly from the Word document and you will be ready to go.

As a benefits administrator, you will also be able to see a dashboard with the progress of your team’s enrollment. On that page, you will be able to message employees based on their status, which allows you to remind employees about due dates based on whether or not they have completed their selections.

Testing

Once open enrollment is configured, it’s time to test. The “Employee Elections” tab will show all employees who are eligible for that session. At this point you can review and make sure all employees listed have the correct qualifiers for that session. From there, you can click on the employee’s name and run the process as if you were an employee, and the session will display to you in the same way it would for an employee. NOTE: the very first page, “Verify Beneficiary and Dependent Information,” is not on test form. This is the only screen in this “test-mode” that is live, meaning any change you make on that page will go in to the employee’s permanent information. Every other page following that will not affect the employee’s information.

Thorough testing should include:

  • Decline buttons
  • Plan rates
  • Plan names
  • Plan messaging
  • FSA maximums
  • Age limits
  • Valid dependent relationships
  • Any Open Enrollment customs

Once you completed the testing, make sure to “re-set elections.” This will re-set all of your test elections so that employees can start their own process with a clean slate.

As you prepare for open enrollment, don’t forget about your expert team at Mosaic! We are happy to answer questions, trouble-shoot, or help your team with extra manpower, if needed, to make sure your next open enrollment is a success! Don’t forget to follow us on social media for updates and information.

Watch the Mosaic Webinar on Managing Open Enrollment:

Cognos Analytics: A Brave New World

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The UKG Pro BI upgrade to Cognos Analytics is the most significant update to the platform in over a decade. The new environment looks and feels different to users, but once acclimated, you’ll find the system is more intuitive to use and provides some fantastic new capabilities that will allow you to manage data and create reports more effectively than before. Continue reading for a view of what is the same, what is gone and what is new with Cognos Analytics. At the bottom of this article you will find a recording of the Mosaic Webinar on this topic.

What is Cognos? 

If you’re not an experienced user of Cognos, Cognos Analytics is the next generation of Business Intelligence for UKG Pro. The Cognos platform provides a new, interactive way to find, explore and share UKG Pro data-driven insights. It integrates reporting, analysis, dashboards, and event management to help users access and mobilize company data to make business decisions.

What’s the Same 

The upgrade, which was rolled out this spring, maintains much of the same functionality that Cognos users have come to know: the same UKG Pro folder system they used to navigate,  delivered reports, delivered packages, learning resources and your company BI content, all remain. System administration, report-building capabilities, report delivery, execution options, and notifications all remain the same as before. Role level security within BI remains the same as in UKG Pro.

What’s Gone

Query, Report & Analysis Studios have been rolled up into a single report development environment, Public Folders from Cognos 10. Query Studio Reports convert easily to Reports. Portal Pages and Portlets pages open in a new window with the same look and functionality, including tabs.

What’s New

Cognos Analytics now features a brand new interface that is more nimble, with more features that make it more browser-friendly, delivers better content, and more interactive capabilities.

Highlights include a new welcome portal and new content search functionality. The home page replaces Cognos Connection. The welcome page lists recently accessed  reporting content. Navigation is controlled by a new panel on the left and a new status bar across the top that tells users what is open.

Other changes:

  • New folder nomenclature: “My Folders” is now called “My Content,” and the “Public Folder” tab is called “Team Content.”
  • Fly-out panels and icons have replaced icons and drop-down menus, for less visual clutter and more intuitive searching.
  • A single report development tool, where users can view and manipulate live data in preview mode.
  • More visualization tools, including bubble charts, Word Clouds and animations, which have replaced 3D charts.
  • A dashboard development environment that provides cognitive visibility of data.
  • Searchable by topic.
  • The capability to aggregate, sort, convert reports to charts and re-render with data, or “pin” data points as favorites.

Unless the user has a particular set of rules enforced, they will see the same information as in Cognos: Company Folders, Sample Folders, and BI Content.

A new Analytics User role replaces the Consumer along with increased capabilities, with no change to data access and filtering. Users still have access to delivered content including numerous reports, portal pages, and alerts. Users can modify these reports by simply copying into their folder and making their own versions and introduce different data filters.

Finally, the Cognos upgrade allows you to look at your company information in new ways and interact with it. Your Mosaic team can help you understand the new capabilities of Cognos Analytics to support your data analysis and reporting needs.

Watch the Mosaic Webinar on: Cognos Analytics: A Brave New World