Vice President Ellis, Faculty Leaders Address Employee Benefits Questions

Town hall provides forum to discuss tuition remission, Benefits Task Force.

July 13, 2015

Sabrina Ellis

Vice President for Human Resources Sabrina Ellis fields questions from the audience Thursday at a town hall event to discuss concerns regarding staff employee benefits. (William Atkins/GW Today)

Speaking Thursday at a forum to address questions regarding employee benefits—including tuition remission and short-term recommendations made in May by the Benefits Task Force—Vice President for Human Resources Sabrina Ellis reaffirmed the administration's decision to reduce the university's employee tuition remission benefit and explained the difficulty behind the decision.

Ms. Ellis, participating on a panel of George Washington University faculty and administrators, called the fall 2014 decision to lower tuition remission for faculty and staff from 96 percent to 90 percent a decision that wasn’t “taken lightly.” It was a decision, she said, that prevented a double-digit increase in employee health insurance premiums and limited shifting a disproportionate amount of premium costs to employees during the current fiscal year.

“I know from speaking with some of you here that this has been a rather difficult change,” Ms. Ellis said. “There was a lot of rigorous discussion, a lot of rigorous debate and disagreement, and at the end of the day, a decision was made on how to move forward to help keep the university fiscally healthy.”

The 90-minute forum featured a panel of Ms. Ellis, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Planning Forrest Maltzman, Chair of the Faculty Senate’s Fiscal Planning and Budgeting Committee Joseph Cordes, Faculty Senate Executive Committee Chair Charles Garris and Associate Professor of History and International Affairs Benjamin Hopkins, who is a member of both the Benefits Task Force and Benefits Advisory Committee.

Talk often returned to tuition remission and the administration's decision to follow some, but not all, of the short-term recommendations made in May by a Benefits Task Force created to review GW benefits and compare them with those offered by certain peer institutions.

Benefits Task Force recommendations

Formed in January by George Washington President Steven Knapp to review GW health, retirement and tuition benefits, the task force—made up of staff, faculty and administrators—was charged with developing both short- and long-term recommendations to present to Dr. Knapp and to the Benefits Advisory Committee (BAC), a standing group of faculty and staff that provides ongoing feedback to GW’s Human Resources and Benefits Administration. The short-term report, released May 1, outlined recommendations to limit shifting a disproportionate amount of health insurance premium costs to employees. Among other recommendations, the Benefits Task Force endorsed restoring tuition remission benefits this summer to 2014 levels for employees enrolled in a formal degree or certificate program prior to Jan. 1.

Last month, at a meeting of the BAC in which he discussed the short-term recommendations released by the task force, Dr. Knapp said the university would work to limit rate increases for employee health insurance premiums but would not provide a grandfathering clause for employees already enrolled in degree or certificate programs.

A year ago, the BAC recommended that the tuition remission benefit be reduced to help lessen premium increases in 2015. In making the change, GW reallocated about $750,000 from its tuition remission benefit to its health plan benefit.

“The administration accepted the recommendation of the BAC, which was proposed to keep [health plan benefit] increases at about 4 percent,” Dr. Knapp said at the BAC meeting. “We believe the tuition benefit as we now offer it remains competitive with similar programs elsewhere. The money we saved by accepting this recommendation has been spent.”

Grandfathering discussed

Providing a grandfathering provision for employees was discussed at length, Dr. Maltzman said.

“On the task force, the discussion of grandfathering has been quite common—it’s come up a number of times,” he said. “I think there’s always a discussion of grandfathering.”

GW’s total benefit cost increased in 2012 and 2013 by double digits, Ms. Ellis said Thursday. Rising health care costs, Dr. Maltzman added, created the climate for both the fall decision to lower the tuition benefit and the June decision to not provide grandfathering.

“Benefits have been changing,” Dr. Maltzman said. “Health care costs have been going up. Everyone’s been grappling with premiums and co-pays. I think one very salient concern is over time, relatively small changes in the health care plan keep adding up.”

Long-term recommendations

As it examines university benefits and compares them with those offered by other institutions, the task force is compiling information for its long-term recommendations to the BAC, Dr. Cordes said.

“We’re trying to get as complete a set of comparisons as we can,” he said. “The first step is to get the best data we can to do the benchmarking. The president has been pretty clear on this: If we come back and demonstrate that relative to a number of benchmarks we’re below where we ought to be, he’s prepared to make that argument. I think he would like to see the evidence, and that’s what we’re trying to do now.”

GW’s tuition benefit, he added, remains competitive, though it differs from other institutions. Georgetown University, he said, offers 100 percent remission but limits the scope of the benefit to one degree.

“It really does depend a bit on how you view it,” Dr. Cordes said. “We have wider benefits than some other schools—you can earn two degrees and take, basically, as many courses as you want. We’re interested in getting your feedback for the next round of the task force report, and whether employees would prefer to have a narrower but deeper benefit and whether that can be done in a revenue-neutral way.”

Communication and guidance

At the June BAC meeting, Dr. Knapp offered guiding principles for the task force as it completes its long-term recommendations—both ideas to change benefits and compensation and how to pay for those changes. Those principles have been “front and center” during task force deliberations, Dr. Maltzman said.

The approach, Dr. Knapp said in June, must be sustainable, enable the university to compete with other employers, and ensure that the university’s benefits are affordable for all employees. He said he would not support recommendations that discriminate on benefits between faculty and staff. The long-term recommendations, he added, should enable the university to address future increases in health care costs.

In the meantime, Dr. Maltzman called the town hall meeting a “critical, valuable step” toward increasing communication on a range of topics, including benefits.

Ms. Ellis said she welcomes increased staff input.

“I know having some input into this process is important to you—it should be,” she said.