Financial security is our focus at NM. We do everything in the best interest of the policy owners. We focus our work to provide clients the ability to achieve this goal. With smart planning and discipline, you will get there. Yet many of the employees that work hard to bring this vision into reality for clients will never achieve that vision themselves. For employees coming close to reaching the age of 55, you have been given the “option” to retire on Dec 31, 2021 and get the health care supplement. Anything else and you’ll pay full price for health care. So those that have worked for NM for 15 - 30+ years have had their pensions eliminated, salaries have always been relatively stagnate, the 401k match will be paused and they now have 15 months to prepare to say goodbye to jobs they love during a pandemic when jobs are scarce and they get to choose between financial survival or continue paying for the NM products we purchased to make that financial security come to life. The reason? We need to be “good stewards of our resources”. My question is, as people have only a few months to prepare for a life-changing decision, where were those “good stewards” that used planning and discipline to ensure our hard work and dedication would help us achieve financial security?
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This company has gone from lean and mean under Zore, to bloated, top heavy, and inefficient under Schlifske. In 2017 company executives announced the coming layoffs, and blamed low interest rates which started around 2008. Well it was in fact the incompetence of Schlifske and the useless board. The company files form 5500 with the DOL every year and it makes for some interesting reading. Looking at the past forms, I found that NM increased employee head count by 846 in 3 years 2014 to 2016. Schlifske is reckless and stupid. If you want to see these forms go to https://www.efast.dol.gov/portal/app/disseminatePublic?execution=e2s1 enter 390509570 as EIN and 003 as PN.
Yes, they started to give retirement quotes to eligible employees almost immediately. They are trying t plan how many will retire as a result of losing retire health insurance at the end of 2021. Giving them advance notice only helps them and not you! They have to look at the numbers and see if they will meet their planned quota or if they will have to let others go. Don't be fooled - there are many reasons they want the older and higher paid employees to leave.
I repeat - employees need to clarify if they can retire year-end 2021 with retiree health insurance even if they don't give their notice by 3/31/21. Nothing can stop them from letting you go anyway. And, watch for that to be immediately after 1/1/22.
NM only has their best interests at heart.
They don't want to hire those old directors and managers back. If anything, they want the worker bees that in many cases know more than leadership.
Who knows why they added the verbiage to the summary booklet except to CYA.
That summary booklet gets sent when NM makes changes to benefits potentially impacting employees and retirees. I agree with the other comment. There's no way NM will bring back a retiree as an employee. I'm not sure why rehiring is in there, but maybe there's a legal reason.
Yes to the Summary booklet. See page 9. They are not talking about "temps". They are talking about rehiring retirees. When all is said and done with these changes ( layoffs and people leaving because of the insurance), they can't call Manpower and say send us 2 directors, 6 managers etc. They want to know your decision by March 2021. It doesn't take 9 mos. to prepare retirement quotes. As I understand from an active employee, they are already giving eligible people their numbers even though they have not made their decision. Would people come back? I think so. Before the layoffs started around 2016, 1/3 of retired staff came back as temps. NM has always had a great number of dedicated people that loved their work. Not so much now but back in the day. NM will need to get talent from somewhere
I also retired about 3 years ago (forced). I did not receive a booklet recently in the mail. There is no way they are going to hire retiree's back as anything but contractors. They'll do that in cases where they let experience go and now need it back. In essence they are using you all over again. I don't recommend you give them the satisfaction.
As a contractor you won't get benefits from NM and their hourly rate for contractors is abysmal. I got called to come back and gave a resounding 'No'. I got a position immediately after leaving NM and the salary was 40% higher.
Are you referring to the booklet titled "Summary Plan Description of the Northwestern Mutual Employee Retirement Plan"?
I retired 3 years ag A few weeks ago I received a booklet. I wondered why I received the booklet as it was not just about retiree benefits but covered active employee benefits. Page 9 discusses rehiring. It is not as a temp as it discusses suspending your pension. So what is up? Will they be rehiring retirees as active employees at some point?
There's no such thing as a free lunch. They want to keep employees captive for lunch so they get more work out of you. As a contractor (turned employee), I used to bill for those lunches when I was required to be there and work. Lunches were not a break. Professionals don't clock in / out for 8 hours a day. Professional / non-union employee's get paid to work during lunch, early & late hours talking with teams in India and weekends. That's why there are bonuses. By the way, you would be totally depressed if you ever counted up the actual hours you worked and divided them by your salary /bonus.
I am not sure where you worked based on your reply. the majority of people put in a full day's work, often more than the 8 hours they were paid for. Yes, we all enjoyed a free lunch, but many of those lunches were working lunches where you could get something done one-on-one. There were plenty of meetings that seemed redundant, no question about that. and those meetings took up precious time that could have been more productive. To say that employees were not equipped to be productive is just to true. Maybe in the department you worked in, but not in the ones I was a part of.
For many years NM was a safe place to work. People didn't have to be terribly smart or need strong work ethic. You showed up in the morning, ate your free lunch with your pals and basically put in maybe a solid 2 or 3 hours of work during a regular day. You attended countless useless meetings with too many people in the room because it was the culture to do so. You never stuck your head out to be bold, provocative change agent because that type of behavior was shunned. Nope, the way to play the game at NM in Milwaukee was to blend into the woodwork and not call personal attention to yourself. Try to look busy, go to lots of meetings where your presence and value was nominal at best, stay inside all day and have long lunch with your pals, then dash out the door at the end of the day. THAT was the NM culture for decades....an inwardly focused safe harbor. Well, the real world washed up onto the shores of Milwaukee, and NM was finally victim to what has impacted 99% of businesses across the globe. It's a highly competitive dog-eat-dog business world, where it's all about the ruthless drive for productivity, profit margin, shareholder value and adaptability. The big majority of NM employees in Milwaukee were very ill equipped to deal with this new reality. And the pain felt the past few years is only the beginning. Fast forward 5 years from now and 80% plus of the old guard will be gone completely from every level of management and employees. Fast forward 5 years and NM will be a completely transformed company that won't be recognizable to most folks who have worked there in the past. Schlifske and his henchman are doing what needed to be done. And they've only just begun.
You can clearly see NM used to be competitive with their dividend until 2009-2010. Now they lag behind the others. Can anyone guess what happened around that time?? Hint: Take a look at the top.
https://topwholelife.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Whole-Life-Dividends-History-2020.png
NM has been lagging its' top competitors in dividend rate for years https://topwholelife.com/whole-life-insurance-dividend-rate-history/
Well said and very informative! It's sad and disgusting all at the same time. Schlifske is such a weak leader with no moral compass
Dividends have been decreasing for years and is unrelated to the change in benefits. Poor management and the lack of an investment strategy are to blame. There are now more Vice Presidents at the company than there are actual employees. This is where the majority of cash is going. Cutting the 401k is the most recent slap to the face. Any individual or company with half a brain would know that putting money into an account earning at most 3% is nothing compared to a 401k earning 10%. A CEO should be focused on their policyholders, their employees, and the company as a whole. They should not be getting involved in headline politics and recent "social causes". That is for the politicians to figure out, not corporate execs. Millions are being thrown and these nonsense causes that only fuel more rioting and take away cash from policyholders and employees alike.
A few clarifications: the healthcare supplement is pretty good if you worked there MANY years; if not, it's basically useless.
Most companies cannot support pension plans anymore. I can't blame NM for getting rid of theirs though understand it was a blow to the long-term financial planning of older employees. I think this occurred around 2013. However, NM replaced it with a 'cash balance plan' they contribute to and it is fairly generous especially as you age. I think I heard that they will contribute more to some plan but the stable value fund won't be offered for that money. Yes - that funds' interest rate is phenomenal & matches that of policy holders which is why it is so good. But, I suspect that will go way down for 2021. But, if they get rid of some contributions to this fund it will help them sustain a higher rate for their policy holders.
Suspending 401(k) contributions at this time is what many co's have started to do along with no raises & lower bonuses, partial furlough's etc. during the pandemic.
Most employees are keeping their jobs at this moment and are able to work from home since last March. It's the right thing to do but not a typical NM allowance.
I find it interesting how quickly they got out the information to eligible employees after the announcement re. early retirements & health insurance benefit. This obviously has been planned for a long time & I'm not sure it is a result of the pandemic.
Also interesting is that you have to give notice of your wish to retire by 3/31/21 for any retirements by 12/31/20 in order to get the health insurance. This is suspect - what if you don't know by 12/31 or your circumstances change? I'd be pounding on the door of HR to get exact information in writing.
Notifications by 3/31 likely will impact raise, bonus & a host of other items. It will help the co. decide how many other employee's need to be sacked. And, what if you decide not to retire - will they let you go in January 2022? If you give your notice to retire by 12/31 but after 3/31, will you be eligible for the health insurance subsidy. Don't be blindsided by not getting the answers to these questions.
The moral of the story is that they need to cut positions and/or bring in new employees at a lower wage. And, they want to pay as high of a dividend rate to their policy holders.
This is nothing new - this is what employers have been doing since time immortal. Unfortunately, the Stepford wife/husband mentality of long-term employee's just can't wrap their heads around this.
Good luck to all - retirement is great even during a pandemic.