The company offers a 401(k), and that’s great. It’s a competitive benefit that many employees value. A growing number of states even require it, but regardless, putting a retirement-plan benefit in place sends the right message about a business’s committed investment in the team.

But somebody has to keep it running. More often than not, that somebody works in HR and never asked to moonlight as a retirement plan technician.

Here are three things they’d probably like their boss to know about what it really takes to run a 401(k) behind the scenes.

1) No, It Doesn't Just Run Itself

Every pay period, contributions need to be uploaded, matched, verified, and posted. If your 401(k) provider doesn’t integrate with payroll (and most legacy ones don’t), that means downloading a file from one system, updating it in Excel, and uploading it somewhere else.

Miss a cell when copying and pasting, and you may very well have just tripped a compensation definition violation. 

Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? It’s one of the more common 401(k) flubs, and guess who has to fix it before you get tagged for a compliance issue.

2) It's Not Always Clear Who's Responsible

Is it the recordkeeper’s job to spot the error? The third-party administrator’s job to validate eligibility? Do we cc Pam in Accounting, or does she only handle loan repayments now?

In fragmented 401(k) setups (which, again, are pretty common), responsibility gets split across multiple vendors and internal teams. So, when someone submits a late remittance, or a deferral change never went through, it’s a pain to fix. Moreover, it’s not always clear who’s supposed to fix it. 

Usually an HR staffer is left in the lurch as a go-between, fielding emails like a part-time referee. There are nightmare scenarios out there.

3) Answering Employee Questions Is More Difficult Than It Should Be

When someone’s paycheck is short because of a loan repayment they didn’t expect, or when they max out early on annual contributions and get sent a refund with no context, they don’t email the recordkeeper. They come to HR.

And while HR is perfectly capable of explaining contribution limits or vesting schedules, they’re not trained for those edge-case instances. It’s frustrating to watch a confused employee try to make sense of a benefit that just made their paycheck worse.

Let HR Be Heard

If any of this sounds familiar, it might be time to audit your current setup. A retirement plan should support the people who run it, instead of burning them out.

Your HR team is already doing a lot. The right tools can go a long way in giving them more time, clarity, and sanity.

If your retirement plan is a constant mess behind the scenes, there’s a better way to run it.