Deals & People July 9, 2015

ABG Widens Plan Administration Business

Alliance Benefit Group has added The Retirement Plan Company to its national network.
Reported by

The Retirement Plan Company (TRPC) is now a member firm in the Alliance Benefit Group (ABG) network. TRPC, with headquarters in Nashville, is among the largest independent recordkeepers and third-party administrators (TPAs) in the Midwest and Southeast.

TRPC’s recordkeeping platform serves 1,100 defined contribution plans with more than $3 billion in 47,000 participant balances. As a TPA and defined benefit plan actuary, TRPC provides administration and actuarial services for 1,200 retirement plans directly, and provides TPA outsourcing services for an additional 2,700 plans served primarily by eight mid-sized TPA firms throughout the country.

For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANADVISERdash daily newsletter.

Don Mackanos, president of ABG, cited TRPC’s business model and use of software engineering. “The team has created a number of automation tools not available elsewhere in the marketplace,” he said in a statement. “One set of automation tools in particular has enabled TRPC to build and manage a substantial offshore business unit. Adding TRPC provides ABG with greater geographic coverage for our various distribution opportunities, with our value proposition of local sales assistance and local servicing.”

John Kopra, president of TRPC, said in a statement that the ABG affiliation allows TRPC to provide services on national scale.

ABG is a national network of independently owned retirement plan consulting; investment advisory; health and welfare consulting; and benefits administration firms that operate as licensees. Collectively, Alliance Benefit Group is among the largest retirement plan administrators in the country, providing administration services to more than 19,900 plans representing more than $59 billion in assets and over one million participants.

TRPC provides open-architecture daily valuation recordkeeping and administration services for retirement plan sponsors, and support services for investment advisers and TPAs.

Diversions July 9, 2015

Employees Do the Darnedest Things

Do actual work… at work? Some workers will do just about anything, apparently, to avoid working while on the clock.
Reported by

From hiding in the bathroom to testing the powers of hypnosis, some workers will do just about anything to avoid doing actual work while on the clock, according to a new survey from CareerBuilder.

Thanks to smartphones, chatty coworkers and never-ending Twitter feeds, among other factors, obstacles that get in the way of actual work are seemingly endless.

Want the latest retirement plan adviser news and insights? Sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters.

Nearly three in every four employers have taken at least one step to mitigate productivity killers, such as blocking certain Internet sites (33%) and banning personal calls/cell phone use (23%). Other efforts include scheduled lunch and break times (21%), monitoring of emails and Internet use (21%), limiting meetings (16%) and allowing telecommuting (13%).

When asked to name the biggest productivity killers in the workplace, employers cited:

  • Cell phones/texting: 52%
  • The Internet: 44%
  • Gossip: 37%
  • Social media: 36%
  • Email: 31%
  • Coworkers dropping by: 27%
  • Meetings: 26%
  • Smoke breaks/snack breaks: 27%
  • Noisy coworkers: 17%

Employers were also asked to reveal the most unusual or most memorable things they have found an employee doing when they should have been working:

  • Taking a sponge bath in the bathroom sink
  • Trying to hypnotize other employees to stop smoking
  • Visiting a tanning bed in lieu of making deliveries
  • Looking for a mail-order bride
  • Playing a video game on their cell phone while sitting in a bathroom stall
  • Drinking vodka while watching Netflix
  • Sabotaging another employee’s car tires
  • Sleeping on the CEO’s couch
  • Writing negative posts about the company on social media

Employees were also caught sending inappropriate pictures to other employees, searching Google images for “cute kittens,” making a model plane, flying drones around the office, and printing pictures of animals and then naming them after employees and hanging them in the work area.

Productivity killers’ negative consequences included:

  • Compromised quality of work: 45%
  • Lower morale because other workers have to pick up the slack: 30%
  • Negative impact on boss/employee relationship: 25%
  • Missed deadlines: 24%
  • Loss in revenue: 21%

«