Do Well by Doing Good
As retirement plan advisers, we have a daunting task of keeping pace with legislative changes, dealing with discrimination testing issues, and coping with market turbulence as well as various other unpredictable circumstances. This is what we learn in order to do our job well.
How can we do our job even better? By doing good. Walking into a room filled with rank-and-file employees is part of the job. Showing them how they can achieve their personal retirement in the future is “doing good,” but it’s also the hard part. This is the audience that needs our help, and we should do so with a passion. Helping individuals enroll in their company-sponsored plan and watching them become self-sufficient is the reward, but it’s not that easy.
What we are doing today is more important than ever. With Social Security’s promise becoming more uncertain, teaching self-reliance in retirement can have a significant impact not just on the participants, but on their family, friends, and support structures.
Think about the individual who becomes a burden to his grown children later in life because he was not taught how to save for retirement, or never saved enough. His children will need to provide not only emotional support but also financial support—support that could easily prohibit a grandchild from reaching higher levels of education or college because of the economic drain. It is our job as retirement professionals to help stop this vicious cycle and create retirement self-reliance for every person that we come in contact with.
We thought educating employees was the hard part, but not all employers focus on the needs of their employees with the same passion as we do. Wouldn’t it be nice to think that every plan sponsor wanted what was best for his employees? Or even wanted to sponsor a retirement plan at all? What about a world where human resources and the corporate decisionmakers would all be on the same page, happily helping their rank-and-file employees save toward their own personal retirement plan with a generous match? It’s time to wake up.
Think about the many plan sponsors we face. Not every employer is a generous one, one that wants to help his employees with their future. Plan sponsors’ own retirement may be the corporate building they own, or other assets they value more than a workplace retirement plan that, to them, only represents a pittance of their salary. They may use the excuse of high turnover as a means of supporting their apathy, supporting their resistance. We need to be prepared to find the hot button that will open the door to lay the groundwork for a successful retirement plan.
Today, we can show corporations that, to stay competitive, a corporate-sponsored retirement plan can aid them in the employment market when hiring new individuals and in retaining existing workers. Our goal is to share with employers the balance of designing a plan that not only will meet their primary goal but can also accomplish an important socioeconomic goal. We need to be able to take different tactics with each sponsor depending on the business sector, employee demographics, and personality. It is our job to find that sweet spot between supporting the powers that be, while showing them the many benefits that a corporate plan can have not only for the company but also for society. Getting a plan sponsor to see the even larger picture of how this plan ultimately could touch many lives is even more important, an even harder task. Sometimes being altruistic works and other times being blunt is our only ally. It is a daunting task but, without a doubt, most rewarding when that balance is achieved.
We’ve become educated advisers giving us the tools to help set the right retirement plan in place. That is what we learn. Emotionally understanding where the client is coming from is how we achieve our goal—the goal of doing good. We, as retirement professionals, can make a difference in society, so go out and “do good”!
John Barry is a Registered Principal with JMB Wealth Management, Inc. (JMB), based in Torrance, California, and is dedicated to helping plan sponsors and participants achieve their retirement goals. Securities are offered through National Planning Corporation (NPC), member FINRA/SIPC. JMB and NPC are separate and unrelated companies. Barry was named the 2008 PLANSPONSOR Retirement Plan Adviser of the Year.
Photography by Michael Justice