Performance Management and Feedback: Shifting from Annual Reviews to Continuous Evaluation

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Traditional performance management systems have long relied on annual reviews as the primary method of evaluating employee performance. However, as organizations strive for greater agility and productivity, a shift towards continuous evaluation is becoming increasingly necessary. By embracing this change, companies can foster a culture of ongoing feedback and improvement, ultimately driving better employee performance and organizational success.

Annual performance reviews have several inherent limitations that hinder their effectiveness. Firstly, the lengthy intervals between assessments make it difficult to address issues promptly and provide timely feedback. Additionally, the focus tends to be more on past performance rather than ongoing development and improvement. This can result in missed opportunities to support employee growth and optimize their contributions to the organization. Moreover, the one-size-fits-all approach of annual reviews fails to account for individual employee needs and evolving job responsibilities.

Transitioning to a system of continuous evaluation offers numerous advantages over traditional annual reviews. Here are some key benefits:

  1. Timely Feedback:Regular feedback allows employees to make immediate course corrections, learn from their mistakes, and refine their skills. It ensures that performance issues are addressed promptly, preventing them from snowballing into more significant problems.
  2. Goal Alignment:Continuous evaluation facilitates better goal alignment between employees and the organization. With ongoing conversations and adjustments, employees can stay aligned with changing business objectives, resulting in higher productivity and better outcomes.
  3. Skill Development:By encouraging ongoing feedback, organizations promote continuous learning and skill development. Employees have the opportunity to identify areas for improvement and receive guidance and support to enhance their capabilities.
  4. Employee Engagement:Regular feedback and coaching foster a sense of ownership and engagement among employees. They feel valued, supported, and motivated, leading to increased job satisfaction and retention.
  5. Data-Driven Insights:Continuous evaluation provides a rich pool of data that can be analyzed to gain valuable insights into individual and team performance trends. These insights enable organizations to make informed decisions regarding talent development, succession planning, and resource allocation.

To fully leverage the benefits of continuous evaluation, organizations need to integrate it seamlessly with their existing systems, such as the UKG system. UKG is a comprehensive human capital management platform that streamlines various HR processes, including performance management. By integrating continuous evaluation practices with the UKG system, organizations can:

  1. Automate Feedback Processes:Embedding continuous evaluation features within the UKG system enables automated feedback collection, documentation, and tracking. This streamlines the feedback process and ensures consistency across the organization.
  2. Provide Real-Time Insights:Integrating continuous evaluation data with the UKG system allows HR professionals and managers to access real-time performance data and analytics. This empowers them to make data-driven decisions, identify trends, and provide targeted support to employees.
  3. Enhance Employee Development:By linking continuous evaluation with learning and development initiatives within the UKG system, organizations can create personalized development plans for employees based on their feedback and performance data. This promotes individual growth and drives overall organizational development.

Are you ready to transform your performance management practices and embrace continuous evaluation? Mosaic specializes in helping organizations integrate these practices seamlessly with the UKG system. Contact us today to learn more about how we can assist you in fostering a culture of ongoing feedback, enhancing employee performance, and achieving organizational excellence.

Adapting Your Open Enrollment to Today’s Workforce

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So much has changed in the year 2020 that even yearly business processes, like Open Enrollment, have to adapt to meet our team’s needs. With employees working remotely one of the biggest, and often overlooked, changes that companies need to consider is updating (or sometimes creating) their internal communication strategy to fit their workforce. Open Enrollment highlights a challenge that many companies are faced with today, how do you effectively communicate with an entire team who no longer reports to one central location? The short answer to this question is: proactively.

Watch the recording of our webinar covering this topic in more detail:

Click here to download the slides used during this presentation
Click here to read our blog – UKG Pro Open Enrollment: Simplified.

Communicating During Open Enrollment:

Keeping your team well informed on what their options are for Open Enrollment and when your sessions are open is crucial, and although this year it may need to look a little different it does not have to be any less effective.

Start your process by identifying your team and making sure you are all prepared for a smooth UKG Pro Open Enrollment. There are certain aspects of Open Enrollment configuration that are vital and should not be overlooked, see our blogs on Open Enrollment: Simplified and Best Practices for Effectively Managing Open Enrollment for more information around UKG Pro Core Open Enrollment.

Once your team decides on when you will hold your open enrollment session(s) it is time to schedule a presentation to communicate with your broader audience. This presentation is your opportunity to communicate everything open enrollment with your employees, so make sure that your open enrollment team recognizes how important it is. Start by identifying who will be the presenter, and then make sure the whole team supports them in their efforts to deliver a concise and relevant presentation that covers the appropriate content.

When scheduling when your team will deliver the presentation to your whole team, we recommend scheduling multiple presentations at varying times and on different days. Doing this will consider anyone who may be on vacation time or on a different shift. Try to schedule these presentations far in advance and get them on people’s calendars early, but remember, once you put something on a corporate calendar try as hard as you can not to move it. Rescheduling meetings can give the impression that your team is not prepared, even if that’s not the case.

Although the presentation you are preparing is extremely important, there are more supporting documents you should consider preparing to ensure your employees have everything they need to successfully complete their open enrollment sessions. These documents include:

  1. An invitation: A formal invitation letting your team know when the information sessions will be held for open enrollment. The invitations should be clear and include important information such as open enrollment dates as well as who to contact should they have any questions.
  2. Reminders: Remind your team of when the information sessions will take place, make sure they know that they can choose which one to attend and remind them of the type of information you will be going over. Use your existing communication tools to remind your team about this often, use #slack, e-mail, intranet pages and company huddles or meetings to remind your team to make sure every employee knows what to expect.
  3. A Presentation: The actual slides that your presenter will use are important, avoid the temptation of filling each slide with information, that will detract from the actual presentation. Instead, use the slides to communicate important points. Your presentation should begin and end with who your team can contact if they run in to any issues or have any questions about their sessions.
  4. “Benefits at a Glance” Document: This document should review your employee’s benefits and their different options in a concise way. At Mosaic, this document is also used during orientation, it’s a great way for employees to see all the benefits provided by your company in one central location. We also recommend modeling costs of common medical needs across your plans for an example; if you can show your employees what they would pay if they have a baby or break a leg, they will be able to make the best decisions for them and their families.
  5. An FAQ Document: An Frequently Asked Questions document is a great way to stay proactive. Your Open Enrollment team has probably been involved in this process before, ask them to think back to previous years, what questions do they have to answer every year? What information are employees always looking for? Use that data and put together a document to answer their questions before they even ask them!
  6. Follow-up: It is still important to follow-up with your team after your presentations. Make sure your follow-up includes a recording of your presentation as well as the slides you used during your presentation. Your follow-up should be before your open enrollment sessions close, so that your employees have time to review their options and make their elections.
  7. Office Hours: Finally, you should consider holding open office hours, communicate with your team when you are available to answer their questions and keep a line open for them to contact you during that time. This will make sure your team feels supported during this process and although they cannot come by your office to ask questions, they will still have a way to communicate with you in case they need any assistance.

With these assets prepared you will not only be able to keep your open enrollment project team on the same page but also ensure your entire team is prepared to complete their elections and have a smooth open enrollment experience.

Note: UKG Pro was formerly Ultipro.

5 Keys To Unlocking Year End

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It’s that time of year again – time to prep for year end. Year End can be a hectic time for you and your team but UKG Pro has the tools you need to stay on track and make this the smoothest year end yet. In the past, we’ve covered The Many Moving Parts of a Successful Year End and we’ve also presented you with tips on how to Simplify Your Year End. This year, we are going to dive in to the 5 Keys to Unlocking Year End.

Watch the recording of our webinar on this topic here:

Click here to download the slides used during the webinar

Key One – Make sure your system is set up for 2019.

It may seem counterintuitive but first, look back, not forward. Make sure your UKG Pro system is set up for the current year. Year End is your last chance to make sure that everything is set up properly.  First, review every location that had payroll in 2019 for an active tax ID – federal, state, local, and unemployment.

Next, ensure all employees have a valid Social Security numberby running a BI query with employee name, number, and Social Security number. Things to monitor:

  1. Social Security numbers do NOT start with a “9”.Taxpayer IDs can start with “9”, but they are not valid SSN numbers for employment.
  2. Social Security numbers will not have sequential zeroes in one section.Of the three sections in a social security number: three digits / two digits / four digits there are no cards where one of those sections is all zeroes.

The next step is to run a report out of BI to check W4s for the year. Check for:

  • Blocked: In UKG Pro, blocked means that an employee marked “Exempt” on the W4 form, and no income tax is being withheld, but their wages are still being reported to the IRS. In this case, the employee will need to submit a new W4 form by February 15, 2020 in order to keep this exemption.
  • Exempt: an employee marked as exempt in this report is earning wages not being reported to the IRS, and taxes are not being withheld. The only employees eligible for this are employees on certain types of work visas.
  • Finally, check employees with Lock In Letters. This is a letter from the IRS that requires you to set the employee’s withholding in a specific way. Review these and ensure they are still in effect.

The last thing to check in this key is is primary location assignment. This is especially important if you implemented UKG Pro this year, or you had an acquisition and brought in openingbBalances for the year. This is something that can be missed and, if you didn’t process any payroll for the employee in 2019, it would not be caught. Until you tried to print W2s, that is.

Key Two – Plan for All the Printing

If you are planning on printing your forms in-house, you must order supplies in advance. These forms are dated, so be sure to order enough forms to print one for every employee who did not opt out of a printed form (including terminations), plus extra for overflow pages, paper jams, and running out of toner (we recommend around +10%).

Key Three – Validate Everything

Your tax reconciliations should be performed after every payroll. For Year End, you will need to rerun them for each quarter and for the quarter to date. Note  any corrections that need to be made (i.e. moving wages from one state to another). The most important thing to look for are FICA taxes that are incorrect and do not offset on the next check.

Next, you must validate your year end tables and run the W2 summary. Compare the W2 summary to the Wage Summary report – these numbers should match, as they pull from the same tables, so if they don’t, there is a problem.

Use the Payroll Balancing Worksheet to doublecheck your numbers. You can find this in the customer support portal of your UKG Pro Instance.

Key Four – Prepare for 2020.

At the opening of your first payroll of 2020, UKG Pro will update some settings automatically — tax rates, annual limits for things like 401(k) and FSA contributions — But there are still a few things to review to ensure the first payroll of 2020 runs smoothly.

First, update the 2020company holidays table. Include any bank holidays that will impact your payroll calendar. Why?  You cannot run payroll on a bank holiday, so putting those in the system will allow UKG Pro to automatically adjust your payroll calendar for 2020 by moving any paydays on holidays to the day before or after.

Next, extend your pay calendar for 2020. This needs to be done before you can open that first 2020 payroll.

At this point, we recommend publishing an internal payroll calendar. Click here to download an example calendar. This is a 2020 calendar with important payroll dates on it, for example, the last day to make changes, the day the time is extracted from the timekeeping system, and the day payroll is posted.

Year End is a good time to clean up your deduction and earning codes. If you have codes you aren’t using, mark them inactive and if you have codes that you know aren’t set up right, or are missing, take this time to fix them or add them to make 2020 as smooth as possible.

Key Five – Relax – you’ve got this.

Lastly, take a deep breath and know that you can do this! Year End can seem daunting, but you have plenty of time. If you get stuck or confused, contact Mosaic today! We are happy to help you make Year End a non-event.

Note: UKG Pro was formerly Ultipro.

Open Enrollment: Simplified

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UltiPro offers you a variety of tools to help make open enrollment easier for your HR and payroll team. Whether you have an employee population of 30 or 30,000, the basic tenets of open enrollment are the same: develop a good attack plan and start early! Essential steps of your strategic plan for Open Enrollment include:

  • Having the right people to have on your team (and when to involve them)
  • Advance planning and scheduling
  • Tools from Ultimate and how to use them
  • A comprehensive OE checklist to guide the team’s efforts
  • Proper configuration; data management; and reporting

Watch our webinar on this topic here: 

To download the slides used during the webinar on this topic, click here

The Right People at the Right Time

Your Open Enrollment team should include the following roles:

  • System administrator – to configure the business rules and the OE session(s)
  • Benefits administrator – who will confirm benefits start and stop dates
  • Payroll administrator – who will confirm pay period dates.

These roles do not need to be assigned to three separate people, as long as these critical functions are represented on your OE planning team. Also important are testers, to provide a dry run on your OE sessions from the end users’ point of view and identify potential confusion or errors so you can make necessary tweaks in the process.

Advance Planning is Critical

The key to a smooth OE process is to start early! If your OE process is during Q4, as many are, you should be starting the planning process in late Q2 or early Q3, to finalize as many details about the process as possible, and begin advance communication to other departments who will serve as your partners in the process. Let them know what their part is and what you will need from them, and when.

Make the Most of What Ultimate Offers You

Ultimate’s toolkit provides guided tours, checklists and reports that walk you through all critical and post-open enrollment activities, and are vital for a successful open enrollment. Your project team should review the toolkit together. The toolkit covers planning; analysis and configuration; configuration and testing; final preparation; go-live; monitoring; and post-open enrollment.

Reports, Configuration and Data Management

Ultimate offers several standard reports in the web and through business intelligence (BI) that can help your HR team before, during and after Open Enrollment. Standard reports include:

  • Enrollment status
  • Dependents beyond qualifying age
  • Employees with benefit group changes
  • COBRA dropped dependents
  • Summary of elections
  • Employees with pending evidence of insurability

Be sure to review all your open enrollment custom reports from the prior year to make sure all data is complete, both for your internal team and your OE vendor(s). It’s very important to run reports before OE to be proactive with customer reports and vendor file feeds. Running reports for data validation (missing or invalid employee benefit data) can catch date discrepancies that can cause errors in the OE session for employees.

Before configuring your OE session, be sure to review and update all business rules that affect OE: deduction/benefit groups and types; dedication/benefit plans; benefit options, and relationships (spouse or child(ren)).

A critical piece of OE is the pending effective date. Use the Pending Effective Date Estimator to determine rates and when employees will be able to view their elections. Once the pending effective date is configured in your OE session, you may not make changes without deleting the contents of the session – which means you’ll need to reconfigure the entire session.

Decide if you will administer active open enrollment, which requires employees to elect/re-elect (or turn down) coverage, or passive open enrollment, which automatically re-enrolls employees, unless they make changes in their coverage. Mosaic recommends an active OE which requires employees to re-elect benefits, but passive OE is right for some companies, based on the size and type of employee population (with the exception of FSAs, which require employees to re-enroll every year).

New Features

Ultimate now provides the option to copy OE sessions from one year to the next, to save manual rekeying of information and the need to reconfigure information if your OE session has not changed significantly from year to year, and reduce potential data errors during configuration. Other new features include deduction/benefit groups page enhancements, which allows administrators to apply mass updates and change start and stop dates for OE sessions, and the option to delete OE sessions in an incomplete status – such as incorrectly configured or unnecessary sessions.

Want to learn more about how to plan and execute a stress-free, successful OE session?

Contact us today

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

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:

Simplify Your Year End

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The end of the year is a busy time for most industries, not to mention in our personal lives. Make your Year End easier with the following tips from Mosaic’s very own Year End Subject Matter Expert Aimée Morgan!

Year End Tips and Tricks:

Start By Setting Up Your Rockstar Team
Regardless of the size of your company, a smooth Year End requires the support of several members of your team, as  well as other departments. Make sure your team members know and understand their responsibilities as well as any deadlines that might be approaching. Communicate now with team members in other departments, like Finance and HR, to ensure they are aware that Year End is just around the corner to let them start planning for their piece of the project.

Don’t forget to make extra sure everyone is aware of their role and that you have communicated ownership of each task and accounted for the time required, including: printing W2s, sending W2s, benefits reconciliation, accounting and taxable fringes, communication with employees, and tax setup and reconciliation.

Set Up and Extend Your Calendars
Once you’ve established your team, make sure to set up, extend, and update the following three calendars: Team Calendar, UKG Pro Payroll, and Timekeeping. All three calendars should include Bank Holidays and Company Holidays, as well as the upcoming year’s pay schedule. By establishing the pay schedule and bank holidays within UKG Pro, the system will recognize if a bank holiday falls on a payday and adjust accordingly. By setting up these calendars in your internal team calendar, you will be able to plan in advance if a holiday falls within a processing week and adjust your schedule to allow enough time for you and your team to prepare.

Set up a Supplemental Payroll
Set up a supplemental payroll dated the last banking day of the year (this year, it is December 29th). Even if that day is already a payroll day, set up an additional payroll on that day and use it for any last-minute adjustments or bonuses. Set up this supplemental payroll for all pay groups and prepare yourself for the unexpected. Reach out to your Accounting and HR departments now to get an idea of any taxable fringes that may also need to go in to that supplemental payroll.

W-2 Printing
The easiest thing to simplify this part of Year End is to contact us today! Enterprise customers can completely remove the hassle of printing W-2 tax forms. Once your W-2 files are created, Mosaic can print your team’s W-2 forms and ship them directly to each employee or to the company. It’s that simple! If you do choose to do this internally, remember that you must send a W-2 form to anyone who was paid within the 2017 calendar year. You will also need to be sure to order enough forms (we recommend your employee count + 10%) to account for any special circumstances such as  team members who have moved out of state. If you have more than one component company or have team members in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Kentucky you may need to order more than +10% to account for extra pages. All W-2s must be post marked no later than January 31st, so make sure your postage meter has enough postage before then. Finally, don’t forget to order enough envelopes to ship all of the forms and remember, any extra envelopes can be used next year!

State and Local IDs
You can run a report within UKG Pro Business Intelligence to show if you are missing a state or local ID. If you do this check now you still have time to apply for any missing IDs (this process usually takes a few weeks, with some localities taking even longer). This information may be missing because new locations were added, or employees started working from home. Visit: payroll-taxes.com for information on any state or local taxes you may be missing.

Verify Employee Data
Make sure that the data in your UKG Pro system is clean. Verify employees’ Social Security Numbers by running a report from BI. No employee should have a SSN beginning with the number 9. Also remember to verify SSNs for dependents for your 1095 reporting.

All team members must have an assigned primary location or they will not receive a W-2. Review who is claiming “Exempt” and who is claiming “Block”. If current employees are claiming “exempt”, they will need to re-submit their request for the new year. If an employee is claiming “block,” they are not reporting taxes to the IRS, this may be because they are on a work visa but verifying is always a good practice.

You shoul also take this opportunity to verify and validate all employee’s adresses to make sure all W-2s are delivered to the correct location. Employees move throught the year and often forget to tell their employers.

Tax Recon
Tax Recon should be happening after every payroll or monthly. Year End is a good time to review and verify that everything has been done properly. Compare your Wage Summary Report to your W-2 summary; they should match.

Seize this opportunity
Finally, take this opportunity to change anything you have been unhappy with this is a new year! You have a chance to create or correct new versions of earning and deduction codes to work the way you want them to. Remember that once you set up a code, you cannot change the tax category associated with it, so take your time and plan your new codes appropriately.

We hope these tips and tricks are useful in supporting your work for a successful Year End. For more information, feel free to download our presentation, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for more updates.

10 Questions to Answer Before Open Enrollment

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Open Enrollment is just around the corner… Mosaic can help

Before you start your Open Enrollment process, be sure to get together with your team and answer the following questions:

1. When is the Open Enrollment going to be live?
Start with a clear schedule and make sure everyone on the team is on the same page.

2. Are you staying with the same vendors?
The decision to change vendors could have been made earlier in the year, make sure your vendor selections are complete before beginning the process.

3. Will new interfaces be needed or will existing interfaces need to be modified?
Regardless of whether or not you are sticking with your current vendors, review your interfaces and make sure they are working for you.

Now on to more tactical questions:

4. How many deduction benefit groups do you currently maintain and how many will be going through Open Enrollment?

5. How many pay groups and pay frequencies do you have?

6. How many sessions will you need?
If employees have different pay frequencies, pay period start/end dates, or plan effective dates, separate sessions may need to be configured.

7. Are you moving to new plan codes or are you updating the rates on the current plans you have in the system?

8. Are there any custom reports that might be needed?

9. Will you use UKG Pro for Open Enrollment or will you use external vendor or process? If external, how will you import open enrollment data into UKG Pro?

10. Do you have employee communication templates drafted?

Open Enrollment can be daunting, whether you need help answering these questions or need assistance throughout the entire process, Mosaic is here for you. We are dedicated to your success with UKG Pro and our team of experts will make sure that this is your best year yet and that you and your team will shine during Open Enrollment.