Pensions may be a dying benefit.

"The days of using a pension plan as a retention tool are largely over," says Jeff Norton, president and CEO of the Teachers' Retirement Allowances Fund (TRAF), administrator for the defined benefit pension plan for 15,000 active and 12,000 retired educators in Manitoba.

"People are mobile and move around in their careers much more than they used to, so they rarely stay in one spot long enough to accumulate any real pension."

Fortunately, for Manitoba school teachers who are automatically enrolled in the TRAF-administered pension fund, this is not an issue.

"Our teachers have a very valuable program here and we would like to help more of them to become more engaged and understand what they have," Norton says.

In addition to administering the plan and assisting teachers as they approach and enter retirement, TRAF manages the $4.2-billion portfolio of funds that supports the plan. Every month, the organization pays out $20 million in benefits to retirees and has approximately 600 members entering into retirement annually.

"We certainly have challenges ahead as demographic trends create some headwinds against us," Norton explains.

"Last year for the first time we anticipated that teachers will soon be on pension longer than the duration of their working career. We project the average teacher will put in about 28 years of service and receive a pension for 29 years."

Most of TRAF's 35 employees work in the member services department, ensuring teachers understand and prepare to make important decisions about their financial futures.

Q: How does your member services department work with Manitoba teachers?

A: Retirement is a funny thing; some people have high anxiety about the end of their work career, others are thrilled about reaching the milestone. Our clientele are teachers who are very passionate about what they do and quite often, retirement is a scary prospect for them. We are the ones on the front line helping them prepare to make those decisions and provide the information they need through in-person meetings, phone inquiries and presentations. Sometimes, we are also called upon to help members deal with emotional or stressful situations like divorce and dividing up a pension. Ultimately, it's all part of being here to serve the needs of our members.

Q: What kind of training do you provide to help your people provide this level of service?

A: We have a thorough program that extends beyond on-the-job training. Our detailed process helps to evaluate skills and clearly define roles while providing cross-training so that people can become familiar with all parts of the organization. For example, in our member services department, there are six levels to our training checklist, each with three to 30 tasks that someone in that department is required to learn. It includes everything from answering basic questions and file maintenance to calling a client and telling them we have made an error. The employee must go through the checklist and do a self-assessment to determine which level they are at, and then their supervisor will identify areas where they may need additional training. We have found the program to be very effective in giving people clarity.

Q: What innovative programs do you have in place to help retain good people?

A: We try to be extremely flexible with our members, making ourselves available for about 1,200 meetings every year. Most are held in our office, but we also offer evening appointments, are open one Saturday per month and travel out to places like Thompson and Brandon to meet with rural teachers. The same flexibility we ask of our staff in serving members is what we try to provide back to them. For example, virtually everyone here has some sort of flex time, whether it's a compressed four-day work week or a time shift where they start as early as 6:30 and leave mid-afternoon. If it makes sense, we also allow people to work from home. We have invested in upgrading our technology and thanks to tools like our Voice Over Internet phone network, working from home or in the office is virtually seamless. Our people have positively responded to that flexibility and whether or not they use it, they like knowing it is available when they need it.

Having our office at The Forks is also a benefit and we take advantage of our great location by being engaged in The Forks community. We recently had someone in from Fenton's Wine Merchants to do a staff learning session and the Human Rights Museum here for a presentation. Last summer, our whole staff did a walking tour of The Forks and this year, we did a boat tour. It's a great place to work; one we all enjoy immensely.

Q: Since starting with TRAF five years ago, what have you been particularly proud of achieving?

A: There have been a number of things, including better defining our role and changing our mission statement to bring greater clarity. The mission originally stated in part: "We are here to secure the pension promise," but I knew that at the end of the day, that wasn't our role. We are the administrator; the sustainability of the pension plan is the sponsors' responsibility. So we implemented a new mission which reads: "We commit ourselves to manage the funds entrusted to our care in a prudent and professional manner, and to provide caring and responsive service to members."

In Keith Ambachtsheer's book Pension Fund Excellence: Creating Value for Stakeholders, he talks about plans as a business and the importance of governance. It boils down to measuring what you do and demonstrating value to members. TRAF now quantifies and reports what it costs per member to run the plan on an annual basis; and I am pleased to say our administrative costs have come down each year for four consecutive years.

Q: How have you managed to do that?

A: We aren't a traditional industry, so there's no sales line and no profit to determine. Our duty is to provide cost-effective service, and we have found a number of ways to do that. For example, we offer online services, giving members easy, anytime access to information about their pension and allowing them to make appointments or update personal data. We are also largely a paperless operation. When mail comes in, it is scanned and attached to the teacher's online file. If someone calls to ask us a question about their pension, no one here needs to thumb through a paper file because all statements and correspondence are accessible in our online system. Even our board meetings have gone paperless. There were growing pains at first, but now everyone loves it and it's really worked out well.

Q: What valuable leadership advice have you received that you would impart to others?

A: It would have to be that when you make a decision, don't be afraid to admit if you need to go back and rethink it. A leader needs to gather all the facts before making a decision, but the truth is, you'll never be sure you have all the facts. Instead of being dogmatic and forced to live with a decision, leaders should be prepared to adapt when new information is being presented, the situation changes or something isn't working. That's difficult, but always the right thing to do.

-- With reporting by Barbara Chabai

John McFerran, PhD, CMC, F. CHRP, is founder and president of People First HR Services Ltd. For more information, visit www.peoplefirsthr.com.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 9, 2010 I1