401k Employee Communication Strategy Improves Savings

401k employee communication strategy is very important to employees when many employees are failing to take full advantage of a 401k match.  During a Fiduciary Education Program at Rutgers University Fred Barstein, Founder of The Plan Sponsor University (TPSU), interviewed Mandeep Kaur, a corporate benefits manager at the BodyShop.  Ms. Kaur, explains her role at a previous company with 30,000 employees, where she established and installed a new 401k employee communication strategy, That 401k employee communication strategy included a campaign showing and explaining to plan participants who were not deferring enough to take advantage of the company match.  Then, the company would communicate to those employees, how much money was left being on the table.

After depositing the annual company match, Mandy calculated how much each employee was leaving on the table by not deferring enough and then created a customized message for each of these employees. The participation match was very positively affected according to Mandy.

Significant takeaways: customization to the individual is more impactful rather than a generic message. Secondly, the message included a specific lost dollar amount, not a percentage.