The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Retirement Services, Benefits Officers Training and Development (BOTD) conducted their largest event of the year last week in Cincinnati, the Federal Benefits Training Event. During this week-long training, BOTD offered a variety of workshops attended by 300+ Human Resource professionals from various Federal and Department of Defense (DoD) agencies.

According to Ken Zawodny, Associate Director for Retirement Services at OPM, the goal of the training was to increase the attendees’ knowledge of Federal benefits programs and to improve their benefits counseling skills through a number of workshops. “OPM hosts this annual training to give our employees the opportunity to work one-on-one with HR professionals across government. This in-person training has proven to be very successful in addressing common benefits questions that HR employees tackle on a daily basis with their customers,” said Zawodny.

These workshops, led by OPM experts, offered an intensive, high-energy learning experience on a range of Federal benefits, including Social Security basics, TSP overview, disability application processing, and phased retirement, among others.