During Benefits Canada’s annual DC Plan Summit, plan sponsors participated in interactive sessions. They split into small groups and were given questions to discuss. Based on these discussions, moderators later offered their insights and relayed key take-aways.
Nadia Darwish, vice-president, client relationships and business development with Sun Life Financial shares the best ideas from the question she moderated: Do higher participation levels mean greater levels of member engagement?
Participants offered innovative ways for leveraging engagement within existing programs, such as loyalty programs. It’s a way to promote the plan, increase participation and incent employees to take action. Provide credits for completing certain tasks such as asset allocation. Consistently use technology, especially short videos (YouTube), sound bites (text messaging) and notifications. Most important, have information accessible to employees where they want and how they want it. In many organizations, employees are required to complete mandatory training sessions, such as security awareness training—why not take a similar approach to train employees on the options available in their retirement programs?
Call to action:
- Build a strategy that considers the diversity of your employees. Take a multimedia approach: use print, face-to-face and new media.
- Create excitement around pension programs—develop an affinity for your brand. Build on that loyalty and create incentives to reward people for what they’re doing.
- Leverage other programs within your organization against your retirement program. Show members what they could be getting if they were participating to the max.
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