Empower

It’s no surprise that a firm whose mission is to “provide financial freedom for all” would have a strong retirement benefit offering, but what sets Empower Retirement’s retirement plan apart is its integration with the rest of the company’s nonfinancial benefits.

The Greenwood Village, Colorado-based, recordkeeping firm has a five-pillar approach to well-being—with interconnecting benefits aimed at promoting physical, mental, financial, social and career health for all workers. For example, since financial stressors can exacerbate mental health challenges, mental health services and communication materials also include information about financial health and the tools and resources available to assist employees with that part of their lives.

“We have those well-being pillars to make sure we’re offering a broad spectrum of benefits to meet people where they’re at,” says Lisa Hutchens, Empower’s director of benefits. “Nothing actually fits neatly into one pillar. These things influence each other.”

Communications about the health savings accounts that accompany the high-deductible health plan option also include information about how to use those HSAs as a retirement planning tool.

“All of our pillars talk to each other,” Hutchens says.

That integrated approach seems to be helping drive interest and engagement in the plan. It has an 86% engagement level, and 76% of employees contribute enough to get the full company match of 100% of up to a 6% contribution, recently bumped up from 5%.

Empower attributes those high contribution rates in part to a concerted communications effort aimed at nudging participants to boost their savings. The firm has a 9.8% average deferral rate among the 96% of employees who participate.

“We are constantly promoting the benefits of meeting that match,” says Chris Flynn, a managing director at Empower. “Over the course of the past two years, we’ve done a lot of campaigns to really drive that number up and get it beyond the match number.”

That communication comes across multiple channels, including in-person educational events, online webinars, email and through the benefits app and website, where participants get targeted, personalized guidance on their financial situation, including a “next best step” tool.

The firm also looks for other opportunities or milestones to prompt participants to think about increasing their 401(k) contributions.

“Every year, when we do merit increases, that’s a great time to remind people to think about their match,” Hutchens says. “There are regular intervals when we remind people to look at that number.”

It was also a primary focus during the onboarding of the thousands of new employees who joined the Empower team in the past two years through acquisitions. Targeted messaging to that group led to 85% making an affirmative deferral election at an average contribution rate of about 10%—well beyond the auto-enrollment amount.

—Beth Braverman