Compensation and Staffing News
UUA Office of Church Staff Finances Mission
Guided by the values of our faith,
we equip congregations for excellence as employers
and their staff for financial competence and well-being.
November 2020

You may need to click on continuation dots to view all articles and/or to see each one in its entirety.
Open Enrollment for UUA Health and Dental Plans
Rate Stability
November is Open Enrollment Month. Open Enrollment is the once-a-year opportunity for eligible employees to enroll in the UUA Health Plan, to make upgrades to their plan choices, and to add dependents without a qualifying event. This is also the one month that eligible staff can join or add dependents to the Guardian Dental Plan for the coming year without a qualifying event. For employees who are not making changes to their Health or Dental Plan elections in 2021, no action is required.
 
We are pleased to have negotiated renewals for our Dental, Life, and Long-Term Disability plans that keep 2020 rates and benefits unchanged for all of calendar year 2021. (Note that there is no Open Enrollment for Life or Long-Term Disability.)
 
For the Health Plan, benefits remain unchanged for 2021 and there will be no base rate change on January 1. We are keeping open the possibility of a rate adjustment in July, however. Because premiums are based on age, some Health Plan participants will experience a small age adjustment as we move into 2021 (because we get a year older every year).

In this time of uncertainty, we hope that this unprecedented rate and benefits extension is helpful to you and your staff.

Resources for Open Enrollment
If your congregation participates in the UUA Health and/or Dental Plans, all employees scheduled to work 750 hours or more per year are eligible to enroll and must be offered the opportunity. Please share this information with all of your eligible staff:

A Note about Equity
The UUA provides Benefit Recommendations that outline our suggested contributions to premiums. These recommendations are intended for all staff. In order to assure consistent and equitable treatment, we expect congregations to put policies in place that cover all employees.
Sharing Staff: New Resource and Platform
Is your congregation...

  • Drawn to the possibility of shared programming?
  • Interested in filling a part-time position with someone who has experience working in a UU context?
  • Seeking to create a new part-time position?
  • Employing part-time staff who would appreciate the opportunity to share their skills more broadly while earning additional income?

By sharing personnel, congregations can expand work opportunities for talented staff, enhance programs and services in UU faith communities, and live our theology of interdependence. With the onset of virtual operations, we're seeing an increase in both employee- and congregation-initiated arrangements that result in one individual working for more than one congregation.

New Resource on Sharing Staff
As more shared staffing situations unfold, we have identified key considerations and decision points to help position congregations and staff for success. See our new Sharing Staff LeaderLab article, which explains UUA benefit plan administration (reminder: hours at multiple locations are additive), discusses options, and lists questions to explore. We will continue to refine this page based on our learnings from you!

New Platform to Facilitate Staff-Sharing
To support congregations that may benefit from sharing an employee, and staff interested in such arrangements, we've launched a new section of the Ministry Search and Jobs Board – the Congregational Collaboration Board. There are three levels of access:

  1. Basic information on current listings is publicly available. No login is required. Feel free to browse!
  2. Anyone can easily create a MinistrySearch login in order to gain access to the contact information that accompanies the listings.
  3. Key congregational leaders recognized in MyUUA (including ministers, presidents, and administrators) can access the contact information on current listings and post their own listings.

Note that your MinistrySearch login is different from your UUA.org and MyUUA logins.

Sensitivities
In these challenging times, congregational staff are aware of the financial strain and uncertainty present in their congregations. Some have lost hours or positions. While sharing staff can help your congregation operate more efficiently, eliminating or reducing the hours of one of your own staff members and then taking advantage of the availability of staff from another congregation is likely to feel hurtful. It might even be experienced as showing a lack of integrity. Please be mindful of potential optics. Staff-sharing is a true win-win when positions become open through voluntary departures and/or there is a desire to expand capacity and programming.

Questions about shared staffing or the Congregational Collaboration Board? Contact Jan Gartner, Compensation and Staffing Practices Manager. When it comes to staffing arrangements, your regional staff are also great resources for you.
Salary Resources
As we explained in our October newsletter, we're holding our salary recommendations at 2020-2021 levels for the 2021-2022 program year, but salaries should still be reviewed and adjusted. We're providing a variety of resources to help you make decisions about staff salaries in the year ahead.

Process Guidance
Compensation is about more than numbers. Your compensation policies and practices are a way of living your values. This new Compensation Process Guidance page includes a checklist (with links to relevant resources) to help you ground your compensation decisions in equity and transparency.

Cost of Living Adjustment
Preservation of purchasing power is a fundamental compensation principle. From 2019 to 2020, the third-quarter Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) increased by 1.2%. This is roughly the wage increase needed to maintain the typical employee's purchasing power over the next year. As you budget for staff salaries in the year ahead, remember that the first 1.2% of an employee's raise will go toward increased expenses.

Updated Geo Index Listing
UUA Salary Recommendations are adjusted to reflect prevailing wage rates in communities where UU congregations are located. Wage data from the Economic Research Institute (ERI) is used to assign a Geo Index to each congregation. Geo Indices range from Geo Index 1 to Geo Index 7, with Geo Index 3 representing congregations in communities where the average wage paid falls close to the U.S. average. Find your congregation on our Geo Index Listing, now updated for 2021-2022.

We only change a congregation's Geo Index when it falls into a new range two years in a row; this avoids frequent Geo Index "flipping" for congregations on the cusp between two ranges. If your congregation’s Geo Index has increased from last year, we encourage you to commit to living into the new salary ranges for all staff over the next two years.

Retirement Plan Reminders
Changing (Employee and Employer) Contributions
Employers who have adopted the UU Organizations Retirement Plan provide a path for all of their employees, age 18 or older, to save for retirement. Everyone (18 or older) on your payroll, regardless of hours or length of service, can authorize voluntary contributions through salary deferral by completing an Employee Contribution Agreement. These elective contributions can be started, stopped, or changed by the employee at any time.

In addition, some of your employees may meet the Plan's criteria to receive employer contributions. Please make sure you understand the Plan rules that dictate who must receive employer contributions. (See the Benefits Tune-up Workbook, section 3.4.) The amount of the employer contribution is based on your congregation's Employer Participation Agreement on file with the Office of Church Staff Finances.

Unlike employee contributions, which can be changed anytime by the employee as described above, the terms of your employer contribution commitments can only be changed for the following Plan year. Employers who wish to change their commitments for 2021 must submit a revised Employer Participation Agreement to Linda Rose, Retirement Plan Director, by December 4 to ensure sufficient time for processing and authorization prior to the new Plan year (which begins January 1). A blank Employer Participation Agreement can be found in the "Key Items for the Plan's Employers" section of our main UU Organizations Retirement Plan page. If you make a change, be sure to amend personnel policies and employment agreements accordingly.

2021 Contribution Limits
The IRS has announced new contribution limits for 2021:

  • The maximum employee contribution for plan year 2021 remains at $19,500, with an additional $6,500 catch-up contribution allowed for those turning age 50 or older during that year.
  • Maximum contributions from all sources (employer and employee combined) will rise by $1,000 – to $58,000 for age 49 or younger, $64,500 maximum from all sources contribution for age 50 or older.
  • As always, total contributions from all sources may not exceed 100% of a participant's compensation.
  • Ministers’ elective salary deferrals cannot simultaneously be claimed as housing allowance.

Annual Plan Notice
This month, all Plan participants will receive the Annual Plan Notice. Please encourage participating employees to keep an eye out for this mailing, which includes timely reminders and outlines important Plan provisions.
Fraudulent Unemployment Claims
Many news organizations and even the FBI are reporting a significant uptick in fraudulent unemployment claims recently. Some UUA staff have been notified of unemployment claims in their names and we've heard that this has happened to a few congregational staff, as well.

The UUA, and most churches, do not participate in their state's unemployment insurance systems. Employees should be wary of any requests for information or claims that have been filed in their name as they are likely fraudulent. If one of your staff members does receive a fraudulent claim in their name, they should immediately report it to the appropriate state agency. Please share this information with your entire staff.
UUA Office of Church Staff Finances
24 Farnsworth Street | Boston, MA 02210