Your Employer Tips

North Dakota Public Employees Retirement System sent this bulletin at 08/10/2023 01:55 PM EDT

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Employer Tips

Save the dates!

Annual Enrollment for the 2024 calendar year will run from October 16 through November 3.

The ACA Temporary Employee Special Enrollment – applicable to Health Insurance enrollments ONLY – will start on November 20 and end on December 8.

Notice within first two weeks of employment

Employers must distribute the Notice of Coverage to NEW permanent and temporary employees within the first two weeks of employment as required by the Affordable Care Act.

Political Subdivisions enrolled in NDPERS Health Insurance

Political subdivisions must meet minimum participation and premium contribution requirements to remain eligible to participate in the NDPERS Health Insurance plans.

View minimum contribution & participation requirements

Options for employees when leaving employment

Unused Sick Leave

When employees separate from employment, they have options to make the most out of their unused sick leave. Members must take action prior to leaving employment and will need your assistance to complete either Option 1 or 2.

Option 1.

Coordinate payout of unused sick leave with employer

At termination, eligible employees may use each 173.3 hours of unused sick leave to purchase service credit. This option is not available in all participating organizations.

This option is appealing for employees as it can increase the retirement benefit (pension) upon their retirement.

Assist the employee by completing Part F of the Conversion of Unused Sick Leave Application (SFN 58358) if pretax funds are being rolled to NDPERS.

View Retirement Forms

Option 2.

Transfer unused sick leave to another agency

Employees that transfer to another NDPERS participating organization may have the option to transfer their unused sick leave.

Each employer may accept or reject unused sick leave hours for transferring employees. Notify employees that only documented hours at NDPERS can be purchased upon terminating employment.

Interested employees must complete the Transfer Forms.

View Transfer Forms

Process Payroll Successfully

1. New Hires

Your responsibility: When you recruit new employees, enter your new team member's information on Employer Self Service (ESS) as close to the hire date as possible. This is how your organization officially notifies NDPERS of the new hire.

NDPERS responsibility: Once you add your new team members on ESS, NDPERS creates and assigns a unique NDPERS Member ID to each of your new hires.

NDPERS will mail a welcome kit in the mail with their unique NDPERS Member ID and other benefit information.

2. Eligible Retirement Contributions: Wages vs Salary

Use the Retirement Contribution Decision Tree to determine if an employee’s earnings (wages or salary) should be considered an eligible agreement/contract, and, if so, reported to NDPERS.

Remember 2 facts:

Not all earned wages are eligible to be reported to NDPERS as retirement contributions (reference wages & salary).

Overtime is not eligible.