It’s hard to engage employees in their 401k or 403b plan. One way is to make it fun. A plan sponsor with 85 employees attending a TPSU program at Marylhurst University in Portland explains how she uses St. Patrick’s Day to get her employees’ attention.
The company has a generous match plus profit sharing which is announced around St. Patrick’s Day. So the HR manager gives them gifts every year with a card that includes how much the employee will receive from the company. This year the gift was a cauldron with gold coins. They also receive a more serious email immediately after.
The result is that employees are more appreciative and aware of the 401k plan, especially the match, which leads to better engagement. Also brilliant was putting the match in dollar amounts rather than percentage which is confusing to many employees.
Though the Ideal Plan (with auto-features like auto enrollment, auto escalation and a stretch match) has a huge impact on improving outcomes, we should not underestimate the importance of employee engagement. Using gifts, food and celebrations may seem trite but they work. Making retirement fun is a challenge but HR manager attending the Marylhurst program has cracked the code using her imagination. At minimal cost.
She learned at TPSU Marylhurst what other plan sponsors are doing to run their plan and keep in compliance. The HR manager is doing most of these tasks well but it was good to hear it again to remind her to pay more attention. She also picked up ideas on how to engage senior management in their 401k plan which is a real challenge for more mid-level managers – without senior management engagement, it will be difficult if not impossible to move the needle on retirement readiness for 401k and 403b plan participants.
