Employee uncertainty
during corporate
change
If you or someone you know is going through a significant workplace change such as a merger or corporate change, call us.
The highest profile change locally is the Adelaide Uni merger and there are plenty of others on the go.
Big business mergers, takeovers, corporate shake ups and restructuring happen all the time. With the stroke of a pen (or email), CEO’s, CFO’s, a Board or someone called Colin from Accounts thinks there’s a commercial advantage to making a corporate change and so the unsettling of a workforce begins.
I’ve never met an employee who has gone through a significant merger or restructure who says they haven’t been affected. New boss, new location, new systems, new peers, new responsibilities, new payroll details, new customers and/or new training (if you’re lucky); the changes to adopt can be huge. That all assumes you get to keep your job!
Redundancies are much more disruptive to life but for some actually brings a welcome change, or hopefully at least a payout. There are some specific rules around redundancy payouts and in particular the tax treatment of them that need to be considered, as does what to do with the payout itself.
Maybe it will allow for an early retirement. Perhaps you can use your super to your advantage and possibly add more to your retirement pool (if not yet ready to retire); but also consider what you would be investing in within your super fund relative to when you might need to access those funds; is the investment type conflicting with the investment timeframe?
Employees who go through a corporate change may have to re-nominate their super fund for their new payroll; some may realise that their old super fund is now called something else. This can be because recently, super funds themselves have been consolidating and merging, some better than others.
So, in the midst of your own workplace change or life change (if being made redundant), you may now have to familiarise yourself with your own super. Given it’s likely to become your second largest asset, now is the time to consider whether what you have had in the past is still right for you in the future.
- What are you actually invested in?
- How many accounts do you have?
- Are your death benefit nominations binding and up to date?
- Do you have insurance in your super?
- Is it enough?
- How much does it actually cost?
- Are you getting bang for your buck?
The other thing to consider is the service of your super fund. In the foreseeable horizon, the size of the super industry will be larger than the size of our banking industry. Given super funds generally don’t have “branches” like banks, how easily can you deal with your super fund? Why should you wait on hold 30 minutes for your $500,000 super fund to answer your basic call? Then, why can’t they answer your questions about your own super? If you had $500,000 in a bank account, you’d get a private banker… So you would expect that super fund service should be sharp but this is not often the case.
Our clients can request our help with changes in work, super, redundancy and, of course, retirement. Plus cut through the jargon… So again, if you or someone you know is going through a significant workplace change such as a merger or corporate change, call us.
Even if your situation is already optimal, it will be reassuring to hear from us that there’s no additional value we can provide.
Will Chapman Dip FS(FP)
Authorised Representative (No 311745)
