For participant education to work, employees first have to pay attention. And sometimes, four minutes is all you need.
Following a recent TPSU program at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, Fred Barstein, founder and CEO of 401kTV and TPSU, spoke with Marissa, an HR director at an organization with 98 employees, about a simple idea that’s getting employees to take action.
Working with the company’s advisors, Marissa created a four-minute animated video that strips away the complicated retirement language and shows employees what their 401(k) can mean for them. Using relatable examples based on pay, contributions and the employer match, the video makes it easier for employees to see how their decisions today can add up over time.
And employees are responding. Marissa said that when the video goes out, she sees new contributions come in, sometimes as soon as the next day.
It’s a simple idea with a bigger lesson for plan sponsors: more information isn’t always better education. Sometimes the best way to get employees engaged is to make retirement easier to see, easier to understand and easier to act on.
Read the Full Transcript Here:
Fred Barstein: Greetings. This is Fred Barstein, CEO and founder of 401kTV and TPSU. We just completed a program here in San Marcos, in between Austin and San Antonio, at Texas State, and I am here with Marissa. Welcome, Marissa.
Marissa: Thank you.
Fred Barstein: Okay if we ask you a few questions?
Marissa: Absolutely.
Fred Barstein: Okay, great. Before we do, tell our audience a little bit about yourself.
Marissa: Sure. We’re actually an employer of 98 employees. I’m the HR director overseeing the HR department of the organization.
Fred Barstein: So, one of the things you talked about, I thought, was a very unique education and engagement tool. Can you explain to our audience what that is?
Marissa: Sure. We put together just a short four-minute video introducing our plan. We actually transformed it to be more animated.
We find that a lot of individuals are more visual, so we kind of diluted all the big terms that come with retirement and made it very easy to understand at all levels.
We kind of put them in the place of: this is how much I make, this is if you contribute, you get to this amount, and when your match hits, you get here.
So it’s, again, condensing it to a four-minute video to keep their attention and get them excited about what we have to offer.
Fred Barstein: Yeah, people don’t have much of an attention span, do they?
Marissa: Exactly, they don’t. At every level.
I work very closely with our advisors to put it together. We do update it every year, obviously when our maxes update. But yes, I work very closely with them to make sure the information is put out clearly.
Fred Barstein: Have you seen an effect on that with your employees?
Marissa: I sure do, actually. Every time we put it out, we capture an enrollee following it. I come in the next day and I have an email full of new contributions.
Fred Barstein: And they can do it at any time?
Marissa: They can watch it at any time. What I currently do is roll it out every quarter. I put it in front of them and they review it.
For those who have not started contributing, they see the video, they see what impact they can make, and then they start contributing.
Fred Barstein: So, final question: a couple of things you learned, and would you recommend TPSU to other plan sponsors?
Marissa: I definitely do recommend it to other sponsors. It was very informational.
I’ve been in the HR industry for 25-plus years, but I learned something new. 401(k)s are so fluid and evolving, and there are just different techniques that I’ve learned from other employers here on how to really make your plans transparent and educational for your employees.
Fred Barstein: Great. Thank you. Well, thanks for your time today.
Marissa: Thank you.
Fred Barstein: And thank you for watching 401kTV. Please stay tuned.
