Benefits October 1, 2010

LIMRA Finds Employees Want Automatic Escalation

October 1, 2010 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - When posed with the idea of an auto escalation beginning at age 45, 22% of defined contribution participants surveyed said they would like the increase to be 1% every year.
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However, the online poll from LIMRA found 45% would want their contributions to be automatically increased by 2% or more every year. This was especially true among those who earn $75,000 or more in annual household income, according to a LIMRA press release.  

The survey found of over 300 respondents who participate in or have access to a DC plan, 38% were automatically enrolled in their DC plans; 21% have automatic escalation and 16% have both automatic enrollment and escalation.  

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The press release said employees who make use of automatic features are more amenable to the concept of automatic escalation beginning at age 45 — 54% want the contribution increase to be 2% or more each year. But even among those who don’t currently have automatic escalation, 44% want the increase to be 2% or more every year. Only 34% of this group do not want their employer to automatically increase their contribution rate at all.  

“The message to employers is: don’t be shy about implementing an automatic escalation option in your DC plans,” said Marie Rice, corporate vice president and director of LIMRA’s Retirement Research, in the press release. “Employees understand they need to boost their retirement savings and automatic escalation is a simple way to increase the amount they are saving annually.”  

LIMRA also said its recent research indicates that the majority of pre-retirees (age 55-70) are ill-prepared for retirement; only 30% consider themselves to be very prepared for retirement. Only 15% of employees increased their contribution rate in the past 12 months (excludes those enrolled in auto escalation plans), and 42% of employees have never changed their DC investment line-up (especially true of 25-45 year olds).   

More about LIMRA is at http://www.limra.com.
Benefits October 1, 2010

Employees like Healthy Workplace Food Offerings

October 1, 2010 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – Forty percent of employers have policies or practices promoting healthy food at work and employees like it, a new Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) poll shows.
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Almost all surveyed (97%) said their employees responded “favorably or “very favorably” to efforts to promote wholesome food and drink options at work and work-related functions.

More than half of employers promote better eating habits at work regardless of their healthy food policies by offering healthy food and beverage options at company meetings, parties and events, providing healthier food options in office cafeterias, and adding wholesome food options to vending machines.  Twenty-seven percent provide point-of-purchase nutritional content on cafeteria menus.

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Other findings included:

  • Organizations in the Midwest (49%) are more likely than organizations in the West (29%) to have an informal or formal policy or practice promoting healthy food and drinks in the workplace.
  • Employers with 500 or more employees are more likely to offer healthy food and beverage options in workplace cafeterias than employers with fewer employees.
  • Multinational operations are more likely to offer healthier vending machine options, provide point-of-purchase nutritional content on cafeteria menus, and offer healthier food and beverage options in the cafeteria than U.S. based-only organizations.

“The poll found responsive organizations giving their diverse community of employees what they want and need – a wide array of food options,” said Mark Schmit, director of research at SHRM, in the news release. “HR professionals walk a fine line between creating initiatives to help employees and acting like the food police. Ultimately, the proactive approach to creating both formal and informal initiatives that support health and wellness has been shown to have positive impacts on employees’ lives and organizations’ bottom lines.”

The poll, which measured opinions held by 598 randomly selected HR professionals, was conducted July 15 – 21. More information is here.

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