Senior Management brings a lot to the table when they are active on the retirement committee. This was evident when senior management attended The Plan Sponsor University (TPSU) Fiduciary Education Program at the University of Denver, in Denver, Colorado. Among the topics discussed during the TPSU half-day education program was having senior management actively engaged in the company retirement plan. 401k Retirement Plan Committees would be well served to have such an engaged group guiding the 401k plan.
Upon the conclusion of the TPSU Program, Fred Barstein, TPSU Founder and CEO, interviewed Mr. Jeff Schultz, Executive Vice President of a global building consultancy that employs 225 building industry professionals.
The good job being accomplished by upper management is evidenced by the organization’s 98% participation rate, employee-retention statistics, and recruiting efforts. Company executives understand the benefits of having leadership and executive talent on the Retirement Committee.
Full Transcript Here
This is Fred Barstein with 401k TV. Just completed a TPSU program here in Denver at the University of Denver and I am here with Jeff. Welcome, Jeff.
Hello, Fred.
Okay if we ask you a few questions?
Absolutely.
Very good. Thank you. Before we do, just tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at your organization, number of employees.
I’m Jeff. I work at Lerch Bates. We are a building consulting company, global. I am the executive vice-president there. We have approximately 225 employees currently.
Great. Well, one of the things that we’re really advocating for at TPSU and 401k TV is getting senior management involved in the 401k plan. It’s great to have you and great that you could spend a half a day here. It sounds like your organization has senior management involved. Why are you involved and other senior managers involved in your retirement plan?
Well, I know we made a good decision because in listening today, I heard a lot of people struggle with trying to get senior management buy-in.
Right.
That is one that we’ve avoided by our agreement. We have our director of human resources, our CFO, and one executive member as our committee.
Right.
That way it allows us not to spend a lot of time trying to convince senior management what the right thing to do is, because we have access to the data. We have access to the advice and we can figure out what’s the right thing to do for our employees.
And how do you think that has helped in the retirement planning, having senior management engaged?
Well, we have a very lucrative plan now, and we have gotten 98% employee participation, so I think by us all working together, we’ve managed to put together a plan that is attractive to help our employees for their retirement.
And it probably helps with retention, doesn’t it?
Absolutely. It’s a selling point for us, not only in retention, but in our recruitment, as well.
In the recruitment. And you probably have pretty good healthy account balances, right?
We have very good. Because we compare it to the peer statistics, and we’re very happy with not only our participation rate, but our savings rate.
Great. Well, thank you. Final question. Just a couple of things you learned today you might want to take back.
One of the things that I’d like to take back is working on our loan policy. That’s a little bit of a concern. And also the cybersecurity was very interesting today. It’s not something I’d really given it a lot of thought, so it’s a real problem today and something that we should probably be talking about.
Great. Well, thanks for your time today, Jeff.
Well, thank you, Fred.
Thanks for attending the program, and thank you for watching 401k TV.
