Services / Business

Employee Benefits

The Sandberg Phoenix Employee Benefits attorneys know and understand that every client has an employee benefit need.  Our job is to proactively understand each client’s business and assist in providing practical guidance in whatever area that encompasses, whether it be with general compliance obligations related to employer-sponsored employee benefit plans, design and assistance with executive compensation arrangements, helping to navigate critical employee benefit issues in merger & acquisition events, or leading our clients in mitigating the impact of regulatory or litigation activity.  In each situation, we utilize decades of experience to provide real-world solutions to what can be complex employee benefit issues.

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Compliance Oversight

For 401(k), 403(b), employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), and other qualified retirement plan arrangements, we help ensure our clients:

  • Understand their fiduciary responsibilities when offering a retirement plan to eligible employees;
  • Evaluate the merits and feasibility of ESOP and non-ESOP arrangements for employers who seek to include employee-ownership in the company’s culture and experience;
  • Assist with plan document review and compliance updates;
  • Assist with noncompliance correction when operational errors are identified.

For health and welfare plans, we work with human resource departments and employee benefit specialists to ensure:

  • Unique fiduciary duty obligations are also adhered to, like with retirement plan arrangements, regardless of the funding methodology;
  • Assist with plan document drafting and review, and ensure compliance with the myriad of state and federal laws that impact employer health plan arrangements, including the Affordable Care Act (ACA), COBRA, HIPAA, Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA), among other obligations;
  • Compliance with ACA annual reporting obligations (e.g., Form 1094/1095-C) and annual open enrollment mandates;
  • Exploration of captive insurance and other aggregated coverage arrangements;

Executive Compensation

We routinely work with clients to develop non-qualified compensation arrangements that allow the organization to attract and retain valuable employees with a variety of incentive compensation arrangements, including but not limited to:

  • Incentive compensation arrangements;
  • Retention bonus programs;
  • Long-term incentive programs;
  • Phantom/restricted stock arrangements;
  • 457(b)/457(f) deferred compensation arrangements;
  • Other “top-hat” executive compensation and “perquisite arrangements.

Our goal is to assist in designing programs that are flexible and efficient to manage, as well as being fully compliant with Internal Revenue Code Section 409A and other regulatory guidelines.

Merger & Acquisitions

We regularly work with corporate partners in review and evaluation of employee benefit issues in all aspects of merger & acquisition transactions, including:

  • Benefit plan issue identification during due diligence;
  • Triaging potential employee benefit compliance issues and obligations, under either as a buyer or seller, or under a stock or asset acquisition event;
  • Assist co-counsel and outside third parties with compliance events and obligations prior to and immediately after the closing transaction;
  • Advise on post-closing, benefit plan transition and termination events.

Our goal is to always involve our team as early as possible in the event transaction process to minimize surprises before the closing transaction.

Litigation and Regulatory Oversight

Most businesses will at some point have some adversarial event that involves or relates to the employee benefit programs that they provide to their employees.   When any dispute arises, our goal is to help mitigate the cost and organizational impact of such occurrences:

  • If the IRS, DOL or other federal agency advises of a potential investigation, we immediately work with our clients to analyze the list of information being requested, evaluate the information that has to be disclosed, and work in a cooperative manner with the assigned agent(s) to achieve a favorable result;
  • In actual or threatened litigation, we work with our clients to evaluate the merits of any claim and determine the most appropriate method of response and manner of defense;
  • In all situations, we work to ensure clients are organized and fully prepared with appropriate fiduciary oversight and documentation to support all decisions that need to be made.