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Benefits July 28, 2009
Majority of Sponsors Don't Know What SPDs Cost Them
July 28, 2009 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Eighty-five
percent of human resources managers surveyed by HighRoads, a
provider of summary plan descriptions, consider SPDs to be
both compliance and communications documents.
Reported by Rebecca Moore
However, according to the press release, the study found that as many as 65% of those not using SPD management technology do not know how much it costs to create, store and distribute SPDs in their organization.
Of the 200 HR managers surveyed, 74% expect to update their SPDs and 77% expect to streamline their SPD process within the next year. More than half (55%) of respondents had never asked their employees-either through surveys or focus groups-about their SPDs (and 20% didn’t know if they ever had).
The press release said half of respondents are still issuing Summaries of Material Modifications (SMMs) whenever they have a change to their benefits, but 20% are reissuing SPDs instead.
HighRoads found that companies are moving to electronic distribution, with 75% distributing SPDs to employees either entirely online or both online or on paper. However, only 45% of respondents have gone entirely electronic, with 35% of respondents citing lack of participant access to a computer as the reason they could not eliminate paper.
Fifteen percent cited the fact that their legal department was not comfortable with electronic distribution. A third of respondents indicated that they would like to shift to predominantly electronic distribution within the next year.