Participant Education Requires Innovation, 1-on-1 Coaching in Hybrid Labor Market

Special Coverage

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, company leaders have had to rethink the environment they provide for workers, from managing a workforce with hybrid schedules to abandoning office space altogether. But the need to provide retirement plan participant education and engagement, particularly in light of Peak 65 retirement in 2024, has only increased.

The challenge, then, is for plan advisers to help their clients navigate these new workforce norms while, ideally, increasing participant offerings.

“I think a hybrid work force makes it hard to engage with participants because you can’t go into an office and see them,” says Jason Chepnik, senior vice president of retirement and wealth at OneDigital. “The last three and a half years have been challenging to find new tricks and new things to do. “

Chepnik says against the backdrop of economic uncertainty, it has been challenging to get people to slow down and think about decisions they are making. Advisers must constantly re-evaluate their menu of services to ensure they can meet the ever-changing needs of participants.

Best Ways to Connect

“I think what plan sponsors really enjoy the most is having access to the one-on-ones, especially as most people are moving to virtual or hybrid work environments,” Chepnik says.

He says his advisory team is getting a lot of “positive feedback” from 20-minute, one-on-one meetings with participants. OneDigital has also found success segmenting the business by small, mid and large clients, he says. Depending on the pricing, they can generate education programs that fit client needs while also being profitable for the firm.

“For our larger plans and larger market clients, we’ll do custom events,” he says. “We will do a wellness event, something fun and engaging. It depends on market size and the clients’ budget.”

SageView Advisory Group has been providing participant education in the form of group meetings, one-on-one coaching and education for many years, says Kerry Woods, SageView’s vice president of participation education and engagement. Woods joined the firm in January in conjunction with the launch of PersonalSAGE, its financial wellness platform. She says the popularity of financial wellness offerings largely depends on the plan sponsor and its employees.

“We see heavy engagement within group meetings and webinars,” Woods says, though digital and online tools draw even more traffic.

Woods says that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to improve participant education, but SageView tries to offer something for everyone, be it a new employee entering the workforce or an employee two months away from retirement.

Matt Rafeld, director of financial wellness at the Alera Group Inc., agrees there is no blanket solution for participant education.

“We know that the most effective way to engage participants and drive positive outcomes is to meet them where they are,” he says. “That means being able to customize solutions and pull multiple levers that include technology and active coaching.”

Staffing and Fees

Providing personalized, and often one-on-one, education, however, requires commitment and resources. OneDigital, a large and growing advisory, continues to staff sectors dedicated to participant education, says Chepnik.

“We make sure we have enough resources by market or by the region to handle the traffic that’s coming in,” he says.

With the growing level of engagement in digital one-on-one meetings, SageView has also been growing its team, Wood says. The firm has been hiring new employees to take calls and offer one-on-one coaching.

“It truly varies based upon location, but we do have people that are well-versed in providing their education located throughout the U.S.,” Woods says. “We hire as needed within the field in order to bridge any of those gaps.”

Within the financial wellness suite of solutions, fees are typically paid for at a plan sponsor level, she says. She recommends that plan sponsors pay for the service out of a human resources expense budget. However, if a plan has some type of ERISA budget, a company can also use that to pay for services.

Increasing Engagement

Woods says participant engagement varies greatly across client bases. Some sponsors take a very paternalistic view of their employees, while others take a more hands-off approach.

“Some [plan sponsors] want to offer a financial wellness solution just to check that box,” she says. “We see more [participant] engagement rates from employers who truly take a deep dive within their employees, and you can feel that they want to be heavily engaged. We’ve seen better adoption rates from those employers.”

Christian Mango, executive vice president of retirement plan services at Alera, says he believes the greatest levels of engagement occur when there is a high level of leadership buy-in. The more company leaders understand employees’ financial needs, the more committed they will be to helping staff improve their financial well-being and engage more with their benefits.

“Depending on that level of commitment, we may see engagement rates range from 10% to sometimes north of 50%, and those rates typically climb over time,” Mango says.

The challenge for plan sponsors and advisers is creating a program to meet participants where they are, Mango says. That not only means dealing with the challenge of dispersed and remote workers, but also identifying and responding to how those workers want to engage. 

Chepnik believes organizations need a diverse group of educators that are “different ages, different genders, different walks of life.”

“Younger generations like everything electronic, whereas older generations like things on paper and in person,” Chepnik says. “We have to make sure we’re constantly thinking about whether we have enough in our menu of services that we can address these challenges differently.”