Given the current incredibly tumultuous state of any and everything to do with public and private finances in the nationally and internationally, it might not be that surprising to hear just about everyone you know talking about retirement. Retirement has always been a popular topic in part because of the natural allure—sitting around, resting on your accomplishments sounds ideal. But it’s fair to state most people discuss it because of the amount of time it takes to adequately prepare for it. Like it or not, your ideal retirement won’t be ready after just a couple weeks of thinking about it; it’s a multi-decade, incredibly consistent effort.
With that in mind, you can see why employees might need some help preparing for retirement. Truthfully, it’s likely more than most can manage on their own. Considering the deep resources at the disposal of many companies and the need to maintain a hiring advantage over their competitors, doing as much as possible here is advisable. Author and speaker Simon Sinek spoke broadly of the potential ramifications for not doing so by saying, “The responsibility of a company is to serve the customer. The responsibility of leadership is to serve their people so that their people may better serve the customer. If leaders fail to serve their people first, both customer and company will suffer.”
To get a better idea how businesses can set up their employees for retirement well, keep reading.
1. Start With the Bare Minimum
You’d be blown away to realize just how many companies don’t provide the bare necessities for their employees to merge gracefully into retirement. It’s safe to assume you’re familiar with the ever-popular 401k. How does it sit with you that less than 15% of companies provide any sort of assistance with these? This shouldn’t be an excuse for a company to avoid this practice. Instead, it should be the impetus to set yourself apart from the competition.
“When people are looking for jobs nowadays, they’re quick to understand all the benefits that are owed to them by accepting the position, especially their retirement ones,” said Chris Gadek, Head of Growth at AdQuick. “If they don’t see these, they may look for employment elsewhere.”
Even worse still, more than half of American employees who are working today don’t have access to retirement benefits of any kind. Seeing as every employed individual is inevitably headed for retirement, this reality simply won’t do.
“Implementing a retirement plan for employees is easier said than done” said Ryan Rottman, Co-Founder and CEO of OSDB Sports. “But it can be one of the more invigorating things for them when you finally choose to do it.”
2. What’s a Step Above the Bare Minimum?
If a company doesn’t have a retirement program in place at the moment, they’re not alone, but that in no way lets you off the hook. If anything, you’re on this proverbial hook by not having a program at all. To be blunt, now is the time to step up to the plate and set your employees up well for retirement. This starts with matching any contributions they make to their own 401k. But, trust us, this is only the beginning of what is possible.
“Coming alongside your employees in their retirement efforts is more straightforward than you might think,” said Dan Potter, Head of Digital at CRAFTD London. “The 401k and 403b are great examples of this. Furthermore, these examples will also benefit the company overall.”
Pairing either of these with what’s called a “default opt out” can make an employee’s journey towards retirement that much easier. This means that when a new employee joins your company, they’e part of the retirement plan you have in place, unless they choose not to be. Again, you’d be surprised to know how many people aren’t aware of their retirement benefits when they’re right in front of their eyes.
“Not enough companies make use of the default opt out, and it makes you start to wonder if this is intentional,” said Nick Wallace, Co-Founder, President & Chief Farm Officer of 99 Counties. “That part aside, using it is the best way to help employees prepare for retirement because there’s more moving parts here than one person can make sense of.”
3. Give Them an Education
If it hasn’t been made apparent yet, the general public is massively uninformed on and unprepared for retirement. With every working person likely headed for this outcome, it stands to reason that each and every employee should be given the opportunity to become informed on and prepared for retirement. As an employer of some of these people, you have the ability to make this happen. That said, this will never occur without practical steps put in place.
“Handing your employee a pamphlet isn’t an acceptable method of giving them the low down on retirement, yet ompanies persist in this and all it accomplishes is keeping people in the dark,” said Shaunak Amin, CEO and Co-Founder of SwagMagic.
Of course, there’s more than one way to go the extra mile in this regard. For example, sending some of your employees to a conference or other educational session focused on retirement planning is a surefire win. Then again, so is hiring a life planner to join the ranks of your employees. The truth is, the actual method you select for educating your employees doesn’t matter so long as you actually do something about helping your employees retire well.
“One way to go about this is to elect to make retirement planning part of HR visits. You might be surprised by how pleasantly surprised employees are by this,” said Ian Heyman, Founder of Male Drip Protection. “For many, the daunting task of looking decades in the future can now be palatable.”
4. Incentive-Based Contributions
Being told you did a good job on anything, big or small, can cause a real improvement in your overall demeanor. In fact, some of these types of compliments often strike so deep that you may be able to recall them years after the fact; any good leader knows and leans into this behavior with their employees. But in the business world, there’s a language stronger than the spoken word: the almighty dollar.
“It’s not exactly the most well-trodden territory, but there’s more than a few companies out there that contribute towards an employee’s retirement after said employee meets a performance goal,” said Breanne Millette, CEO of Bisoulovely. “You might want to look into this for yourself.”
The best part about using this particular approach is the amount of creative freedom available to you. The traditional retirement accounts mentioned above have rigid guidelines for how and when everyone can contribute. When handling retirement contributions and performance bonuses, the world becomes a bit more open, so to speak.
“Incentivized contributions to employees retirement funds could potentially increase their productivity level. Even better, it could also open the floor to general conversations about retirement,” said Alex Wang, CEO of Ember Fund.
5. Just Talk About It
We’ll keep harping on this until it is driven home—the general public is woefully under informed on anything and everything has to do with retirement. With the vast majority of these people hoping and pining for this stage of life, this can’t continue to be the norm. You may not realize it, but leadership holds the keys to jumpstarting this.
“People don’t talk about retirement simply because there’s so much to understand and they don’t want to look dumb,” said Sean Doherty, General Manager at Box Genie. “But with something so vital, beating around the bush seems counterproductive.”
In many ways, leaders serve as the icebreaker to conversations and discussions surrounding retirement. While they can’t make retirement a reality for another person, they can be their inspiration and sounding board in their doing so. But that’ll only happen if you make yourself available. Furthermore, it should be obvious that retirement is a welcome topic.
“Too many companies spend all their time focused solely on the present operations and neglect what’s going to happen to their workforce down the road,” said Cody Candee, Founder and CEO of Bounce Luggage Storage. “Quality leadership should always care about this by talking about retirement.”
Preparing for retirement by yourself is tricky business. You probably have some personal hands-on experience with this, so you can see why setting employees up for retirement should be a priority. To leave you with one more practical step, we’ll lean on the words of author and personal finance expert Suze Orman:
“Take free money. No matter how in debt you are, if your employer offers a matching contribution on a 401(k) or other retirement vehicle, you must sign up and contribute enough to get the maximum company match each year. Think of it as a bonus.
