3 Tips on Implementing an Effective Employee Education Plan
“Surrender your results to your preparation and your process” – Andrew Luck (ret), Quarterback, Indianapolis Colts
In the COVID-19 environment, it is now more important than ever to make a conscious effort to drive participant engagement. To successfully accomplish this, you need to have a well-thought-out employee education plan. Gone are the days of holding one large group education meeting once per year with the objective of motivating participants to act. In today’s times, employees are found working in less traditional ways: some employees are remote, some work in the shop and others are on the road. With the goal still the same, employees need to be better targeted with consistent, timely and relevant topics in order for them to engage and act. There is a long-standing rule of thumb that people need to hear and /or see messages 8 to 12 times before they take action. Having a consistent and thorough plan will drive results without leaving it to chance and luck.
Plan sponsors need to have a thoughtful and organized education plan that will engage participants in different ways throughout the year Below are three tips on how to create and implement an effective employee education plan among retirement plan participants with the goal of having them save, invest, protect, and ultimately retire on their terms.
Establish a plan
Employers must determine what are the objectives of the retirement plan? Is it to increase participation? Increase their monthly contributions? Increase the usage of the Health Savings Account? Have participants make better investment decisions?
Whatever goals are determined by the employer, the plan needs to adopt the appropriate metrics to achieve these goals. A well-organized annual education plan should include the following:
It should spell out how and when you are going to interact with the participants on an annual basis.
It should include the strategies that are to be used to engage the participants, such as in-person education meetings, virtual education webinars, email campaigns, or even posters in the break room.
Each strategy needs to define it’s annual cadence (i.e. how often you are going to deliver a message) so that you can track towards a goal of delivering a message 8-12 times throughout the year.
Since employees consume messages differently, the education plan should take a multifaceted approach. You cannot expect your employees that are working remotely to come to an in-person meeting and you cannot expect everyone to respond to an email campaignEmployees respond to messages in different ways and the education plan should incorporate various methods to drive participants to take action.
Adjust your plan
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – Albert Einstein.
Now we might not be sure if Albert Einstein really said this, but it is relevant in trying to achieve any goal. Whether that is trying to lose weight or trying to improve the metrics of your retirement plan. To successfully implement an education plan we must revisit the goals we put in place originally and evaluate and adjust them on an ongoing basis
Throughout the year we must look at how the metrics may have changed?
Did the needle move?
Did deferral rates go from 3% to 4%?
How many participants took advantage of the financial wellness program?
By reviewing the goals when the education plan was implemented, you can track the progress of the metric you are trying to improve.
The next question to answer is what worked well and what did not? For example, if you held a virtual employee education meeting and shortly thereafter you saw a number of employees request to increase their deferral percentage you can conclude that the virtual meeting accomplished the goal set forth and continue to deliver education in that fashion going forward. The idea is to continue what has made the biggest impact and to tweak what has not.
Drive Outcomes
With the goal of driving outcomes, the education plan should be re-evaluated every year as part of your annual plan review. Looking forward, what are the goals for the plan in the next year? Are they the same as the year before?
For instance, if upon review the retirement plan now has a healthy participation rate and deferral rates are high, maybe you adjust the goal to ‘assist employees to make better investment decisions’ or ‘educate them on the power of having an emergency savings account’.
By having the mindset of driving outcomes among your employees, you will continue to empower your employees and provide them with a plan that allows them to save, invest, protect, and retire on their own terms.