Just over 18 months ago, we began the conversion of our active health and savings plans to a new record keeper. Our conversion has had implementation and service challenges and I want to offer my apologies to those of you who may have experienced difficulties. We thank you for your patience and understanding during this transition. I am happy to report however that we are nearing the end of this year’s annual health plan enrollment and it has been a successful and seamless process; over 95% of you made your enrollment changes via the My Benefits Access Web site and 5% called the Northrop Grumman Benefits Center (NGBC) and utilized the services of one of our benefits representatives.

My Benefits Access is your connection to your personal benefits data. If you haven’t yet established your online account, we strongly encourage you to do so now. You have 24/7 access to your benefits information, including the ability to review and monitor the performance of your savings plan investment funds, links to informational investor sites (a valuable resource in this uncertain economy), model and request a loan and much more. In addition, clicking on the Health Plan tab shows your current coverage options, the cost of that coverage, how to find doctors, and a way to update or assign your beneficiaries, just to name a few of its features.

You can access My Benefits Access through the Benefits OnLine Website which has recently been updated with enhancements and improved capacity to post frequent important benefit updates. It is your single most important resource for information, including benefits news, wellness information, plan summaries, and links to other useful resources.

In March, we provided an update on the second phase of our conversion to our new benefits record keeper which is the transition of our pension and retiree medical benefits. As many of you know, this process has been extremely challenging. Quite simply, our external record keeper was not fully prepared to handle the complexity of our many plans.  These early transition issues have been aggressively addressed and are mostly behind us.  Several remaining issues will be resolved over the next few months. Again, thanks for your feedback and patience.  

In addition, we announced changes to the Cash Balance Pension Plan in February which have required programming updates and delayed pension estimates. The programming changes were completed in late April and the pension calculator has been updated and is available to many employees.  We continue to work on automating all of the pension plans so that most employees will have access to the on-line pension calculator by mid-2009.  Special individual circumstances (i.e., transfers, personal situations, etc.) will not allow some employees to generate a pension estimate on-line; therefore, manual calculations will be required.  

As we work through the remaining issues with the pension transition to our new record keeper, processing retirement commencement requests is our top priority. The benefits staff is working diligently to ensure that retirement kits are processed as quickly as possible.  For those of you who have requested a pension estimate, a letter will be sent to your home which will provide more information.  To expedite the most time sensitive requests, retirement commencements will be processed first. We continue to add resources to address the current backlog and we anticipate full resolution in the next few months. 

We sincerely appreciate your continued understanding and support ─ retirement events are receiving my full attention as well as that of our senior leadership team.

We will continue to provide you with transition updates and post them to Benefits OnLine. Finally, be sure to take advantage of the tools and resources we’ve highlighted for you here.

Best regards,

Ian Ziskin

Corporate Vice President, Chief Human Resources & Administrative Officer