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In episode 109 of “The JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast,” JoDee and Susan discuss employee benefit plan audits with Dave Leising, National EBP Audit Director for BKD.

Generally, employee benefit plans involving at least 100 eligible participants must have an independent audit of the financial statements of their plan; this helps protect participants and their benefits in the plan. There are a lot of rules and laws to follow around these plans, so JoDee and Susan invited employee benefit plan audit expert Dave Leising to share his expertise.

Dave explains the details of the requirements for companies to have independent audits. Typically, if you have more than 100 participants in the plan, whether they actively participate or not, you should be having an audit. The Department of Labor does their own audits, too, and typically those are targeted to plans where they think there’s a possibility that something is happening that would create an issue.

When they hear the word “audit,” HR professionals often get nervous, thinking if they accidentally made a mistake, they’ll be fired; this is not necessarily the case. For the most part, as long as you didn’t know what you did was wrong and you fix it going forward, you’ll be fine. It’s also a good idea to have an administrative committee that oversees the plan and taking minutes at the committee’s meetings to show that you’ve talked about and addressed issues.

Dave shares some of the most common mistakes he finds when auditing plans. Make sure you and your third party administrator are remitting payments promptly; if your TPA doesn’t remit on time, the DOL will still consider that your fault. You also need to make sure your plans are using the right definition of compensation, especially if you have a lot of different pay codes.

In this episode’s listener mail, a listener asks whether organizations will shift to a four-day workweek. In the news, a Jobvite survey reported that stress significantly increased for recruiters during 2020.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Purple Ink
• Susan Tinder White Consulting
• Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)
• BKD
• AICPA Employee Benefit Plan Audit Quality Center
• AICPA Employee Benefit Plans Expert Panel
• PPC’s Guide to Audits of Employee Benefit Plans
• Form 5500
• Dave’s email
• BKD’s Employee Benefit Plan Audit Services
• “Recruiters’ Stress Significantly Increased in 2020”

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