2016-2017 Open Enrollment

Retirement plan

Dickinson will begin a phased approach to increasing retirement contributions, which will start with all eligible employees receiving an additional 1 percent of salary contribution to their retirement on July 1, 2016. That means Dickinson will contribute a total of 8 percent of each employee’s salary to designated retirement accounts, without any required contribution on the employee’s part.

Retirement contributions are planned to increase in subsequent years as shown in the chart below:

Dickinson’s retirement plan offers diversified investment choices through two platforms – Fidelity and TIAA. With the assistance of an independent investment consultant, we continue to evaluate and make changes to strengthen and streamline the investment options in the plan. Additional fund options are expected to become available in early fall.

Tuition Assistance

Enhance support staff tuition assistance benefit to match faculty and administrative benefit.

Health benefits

Dickinson will invest $400,000 over the next four years to enhance the overall benefits package. The benefits subcommittee of the All-College Committee on Planning and Budget considered input from the campus community and financial considerations to subsidize and expand benefits as outlined below:

Dickinson continues to work toward the goal of reaching an overall employee cost-share average of 26 percent to Dickinson’s 74 percent by 2018-19. In the 2015-16 plan year, the overall average was 19 percent to Dickinson’s 81 percent. The increases will be implemented equally over the next three years. The college believes this is a sustainable plan that will allow Dickinson to invest in expanded benefits, increased retirement benefits and other key initiatives.

Co-insurance percentage, deductibles and co-pays will not change this next year. As some of you may know, our long-term medical vendor (Coventry/HealthAmerica) was acquired by Aetna. As a result of this change, Aetna is unable to administer the existing co-insurance plan maximums. In order to preserve benefit equity, Dickinson is reducing the out-of-pocket plan maximum dollars for medical services from $4,850 to $1,300 for individual coverage and from $9,700 to $3,900 for family coverage. (Please note that new medical insurance cards will carry the Aetna name effective July 1.)

Dickinson uses a tiered structure based on individuals covered by the plan to determine costs. This year the benefits subcommittee recommended reducing the structure from seven to four tiers. Those revised tiers are: employee only; employee and spouse; employee and child/children; and family. The salary bands within the structure will remain unchanged.

Streamlining and simplifying the tiered structure will allow the college to provide additional employee plan choice, such as considering aligning participation in wellness programs with our benefits plan, the addition of a qualified high-deductible health plan with a health savings account and other initiatives being discussed with consultants.