PLANSPONSOR - September/October 2024 - 15

an ongoing task. Most employees are not financial experts, and
industry jargon can be confusing, Drake observes. Participants
can also vary widely in age and economic needs, leading them
to want more personally applicable information. For example,
younger participants might be concerned about student loan
debt, child care and saving for children's education.
" Their challenges will be different than for those who are
getting closer to retirement, " Drake says. Those employees are
" worried about, 'Do I have enough money? Have I saved enough?
What is my income stream going to look like? How will I pay for
medical expenses when I retire?' These are very different conversations,
and the education has to be targeted and personalized. "
A group Schwab targets, Miguel says, is participants who have
maxed out their annual contributions. Schwab sends a communication
offering congratulations but also guidance on the next steps
the participant might consider. " We can then serve up education
and actionable items to serve that individual in that moment that's
very relevant, at the time they hit that max, " Miguel says.
Some plan sponsors use their recordkeeper's educational
materials, while others use materials developed by their plan
consultants. For instance, CAPTRUST offers its internally
developed CAPTRUST at Work financial wellness educational
program to plan sponsors as an optional service.
Still, developing customized participant education requires
skills different from those used in plan design and investment
selection. The process is " incredibly time-consuming, " says Phil
Sherman, senior retirement plan consultant with Deschutes
Investment Consulting LLC in Portland, Oregon. " It's one of
the most difficult things for us to scale because it oftentimes is
incredibly customized. It's just a decision we made as a firm that
it's worth the investment from a time standpoint. "
Deschutes scales the delivery of its educational material in
several ways. It produces a quarterly email newsletter containing
generic content for all of its plans. The material varies, reflecting
what participants have expressed interest in. It is not specific to
a participant's retirement plan but discusses general financial
subjects such as inflation, long-term care insurance and 529 plans.
The firm supplements the newsletter with quarterly
webinars. These sessions also deal with more widely relevant
in-demand topics and are open to all of Deschutes' plan clients.
One recent webinar discussed investing in an election year, while
another took on inflation and the Federal Reserve Board's role. If
participants want more information, they can discuss specifics
during subsequent personal meetings.
Reaching Participants
Efforts to create informative content are wasted if the recipients
ignore the communications. Drake cautions sponsors that effective
delivery can require using various approaches and multiple
channels. " It depends on the demographics, the labor force. Is it
a manufacturing organization where people are in the field or a
factory and not in front of computers? Is it people with different
shift schedules? Is it a primarily minority population? "
Sherman says Deschutes, itself, wrestled with the delivery
question for years because of the varied working situations of its
clients' employees. Some workers, for instance, had swing shifts,
which included overnight hours, so attempts to gather them on
a Zoom call proved mainly ineffective. The firm also had trouble
creating email blasts that it knew would get read.
Instead of continuing to experiment, Deschutes asked the
sponsors' human resources staff and company leaders how
they communicated important messages to employees. " The
HR teams, the C-suite teams, they knew how to get hold of
their people, " Sherman says. " We went back to them and said,
'Anytime you have a major announcement within the company,
what's the channel you use to bring awareness to this?' What we
found is that there was no cookie-cutter answer. "
Based on sponsors' feedback, Deschutes now uses multiple
channels. This approach is working, Sherman says, and engagement
is returning to pre-COVID levels. " It just may look a little
different in that I'm sitting in a conference room with 10 people
who came into the office that day, but I also have some folks that
are Zoomed in, some who are having lunch, and some who are
having breakfast, " he says. " It just depends on where they are in
the U.S., but we're seeing those numbers tick back up, which is
really exciting for us. "
Send also uses multiple methods to reach participants. Francis
produces short YouTube videos and sends targeted messages to
participants via the firm's mobile app. Send says on-site workplace
presentations and optional follow-up personal financial planning
sessions are also critical to increasing engagement.
Message Received?
Some educational content's sole purpose is to inform participants,
but other messages aim to generate a response. Tracking
whether recipients read or viewed a message is a helpful utilization
metric, but Drake says the more important question is how
many recipients acted based on the communication.
For example, if the goal was to increase participants' contacts
with available financial coaches, were there more after the message?
" Are we seeing the activity change across the plan, whether it's
fewer plan loans or seeing people more engaged? That's how we
can tell if it's working, " she says. " If we're just sending communications
over and over again and we're seeing very little activity or
feedback from the employees, I don't think that is effective. "
Schwab measures action responses across its delivery channels,
Miguel says. " If somebody goes through an advice or planning
interaction, what we find is that we're driving fantastic
outcomes: 80% of people will implement the investment changes;
60% will increase their savings rate, " he says. " The average jump
is nearly 4%, and we see a boost in people's confidence. ... There's
a direct connection to what the employer's trying to achieve on
employee retention and having people be more engaged and
effective at work. So, all of those things are connected, and
we're working to help measure those different items and provide
benchmarking and outcomes attached to them. " -Ed McCarthy
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