Maximizing Employee Retention
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again - providing valuable, relevant benefits is crucial when it comes to retaining employees. That topic was at the core of my recent conversation with Diane Helbig of the Accelerate Your Business Growth podcast. We also discussed how benefits are viewed differently among various demographics, the importance of “marketing” your benefits so that employees are aware of what they have access to, and how businesses can show they care about their employees. Read on below for the transcript of our conversation!
How relevant is your retirement plan to your workforce? We help our clients spend time and money wisely to maximize their retirement plan to get the outcomes they want from it. Take a look at some case studies here. Reach out if your organization needs help.
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Diane Helbig (01:08):
Welcome to Accelerate Your Business Growth, where we're exploring all sorts of business topics with experts from around the world. Join me, your host, Diane Helbig, for a conversation where they share their expertise with all of you. Take what you need when you need it. Featured on Inc.com, Forbes and MSNBC's Your Business, this podcast is recognized as one of the best podcasts for small business sales, leadership, social media, and more. When it comes to business, Accelerate Your Business Growth has got it covered. And now on with the show.
My guest today is Courtenay Shipley. Courtenay is the founder and Chief Planologist at Retirement Planology, a consulting and registered investment advisory firm for corporate-sponsored retirement plans. With a wealth of experience in the retirement plan industry, Courtenay not only offers her clients expertise in investment analysis, plan design and employee education but also helps them leverage their employee benefits in a way that supports their own business goals. Thanks so much for being here today, Courtenay.
Courtenay Shipley (02:27):
Hey, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Diane Helbig (02:29):
I'm thrilled to have you. Unfortunately, this is a topic we don't talk about enough, I think. And I love how you look at employee benefits in context with the business owner's goals because, right, sometimes we do these things in silos instead of making sure that they're all pointing in the same direction. So talk to us about evaluating all those benefits that are out there, all those offerings that are out there, but as a retention strategy, how should we be looking at these things in regards to keeping our good people?
Courtenay Shipley (03:21):
Sure. So they're definitely a product of your company culture to some extent, and the framework that you already have established for that. But no one goes into business to offer benefits. They have some other higher calling that they have. There's a widget that they're producing or something along those lines. So this is always a conversation that starts with a budget constraint. And it's also one where it's a balancing act, and it's so important to have employee benefits, especially on the retirement plan side, that employees care about because if they don't care about them, you can offer anything, but that's not going to help reach the goals that you have for retaining people and for attracting really good new people. So that's where the conversation usually starts…What kind of employees do you have? What do they appreciate? What types of benefits are they after?
Is everyone at your company a dog owner and needs pet insurance? So being able to speak to who your people are, what kind of people you attract. Maybe that's from an industry standpoint, maybe that's just from your particular company or what you are trying to do as the business owner or the HR office, and who you're trying to attract into the company at large. The more detail that you have about them and the more that you understand how they tick and what they appreciate, the better off you'll be as far as evaluating your benefit strategy.
Diane Helbig (04:50):
Okay. So I'm going to push on this a little bit because, I'm feeling like…is it possible to then drill all that down to a package that I guess doesn't have so many parts to it, that it's sort of hard for everyone to know what's available or is too weighty for the company?
Courtenay Shipley (05:20):
It is quite possible. It is quite possible. You want these things to be used, and I have seen situations with companies where they overhauled things and just did away with a lot of perks that they had that no one was using. So they had a $50 stipend towards a laptop or something like that long after they'd been giving company laptops out or something along those lines where they were able to actually recycle that money into something else that they did care about. So in that particular case, retirement was already strong. That's where we focus, so that's what I'm always concerned about. But, they did decide to implement a student loan payback program. They found that one of the reasons their people were leaving was to go across town to another similar type of company for 25 cents, a dollar more an hour, whatever it might be.
And the reason that they were giving in their exit interviews is, “Hey, this matters because I have student loans and life is expensive.” So really taking a hard look at, does anybody have that gym membership? Does anyone use those other benefits that you might've put in place a long time ago, or is it now time in our new day and age of a lot of work from home and maybe cultural shifts about how we do work, to maybe examine that package again and just see this is what people want. And one of the easiest ways, of course, would be to craft an employee survey.
Diane Helbig (06:43):
One of the things that really hit me when you were talking is that things change. People's lives change, their priorities change, their needs change. So yeah, then it's important for the company to be paying attention to that because something that we implemented 10 years ago may not even be a thing now for the majority of our people. So do you find that there are competing priorities when companies are creating benefit plans?
Courtenay Shipley (07:15):
Yes.
Diane Helbig (07:17):
Like what?
Courtenay Shipley (07:19):
Money, time, effort, usage, all of those things. So being able to funnel your benefits dollars as the employer to the right benefits. Let's start with that. Everybody wants to be very generous, but generosity of course costs a lot more typically. And so it's a balancing act of finding the right mix of medical insurance and other voluntary benefits and the retirement plan that doesn't break the bank. And when we're meeting with our clients, it's typically a small committee that has representation from HR as well as the CFO office. And sometimes those two are at odds where HR is saying, we really want to have a better retirement plan. We want people to be comfortable when they leave here. We want them to stay a long time and be able to accumulate money to have the life that they want in the future. And the CFO is saying, “Yeah, but that's a lot, and let's look at the vesting schedule and how much are we going to spend on this? And oh, have you heard about how much our health insurance went up last year?” So there's usually those two competing priorities, one of making sure that you're staying competitive or living out your cultural ideas versus how much money does all of that cost. So you have to be a little savvy, I think, at times.
Diane Helbig (08:38):
Yeah, it sounds like it. And I can see those definitely being competing priorities. And let's talk about employee demographics, because that's another thing that I feel, like different demographics have different needs or different beliefs maybe about what they think they need. And so what are you finding? What do you notice out there?
Courtenay Shipley (09:06):
So the easiest thing to start with is on the retirement side…we do see younger generations being saddled with student loan debt and having a harder time contributing to the retirement plan as easily. We're also seeing younger generations be more responsive to automatic enrollment: “Just put me in there so I don't have to fill out paperwork. That's great, opt me in.” They are happier with an environment that has less friction in it, so automatic enrollment fills that need; automatic increase, many of them are in favor of, as well.
What we're seeing kind of in the mid-millennial/Gen X is that they're realizing maybe they haven't been saving as much as they need to, so having the option for stepping up their contribution; we're also seeing folks who are closer to retirement or the baby boomer age, “Oh shoot, now I really need to load up into my retirement plan, but now I need planning. Now I need to understand better what I need to do in the next five to 10 years before I get ready to retire.” And so they're looking for a different type of education than those who are just starting their careers and they're also looking for a different experience.
The younger side, younger generations tend to gravitate more towards this idea of things being more personalized for them. I have jokingly said that I think it's Mr. Rogers’ fault because my generation and below, we watched Mr. Rogers, he told us every day that we were special and there was no one else like us on Earth. And so we're like, “Yeah, we're special. There's no one else like us on Earth, of course we want to have Netflix that makes a suggestion about what I might like to watch next.” So we are seeing retirement plan providers having to cater to two distinct different experiences, one that's more like Uber and Amazon and one that's more like, “Hold my hand and tell me what I need to do and I need that advisory piece.” So it'll be interesting to see how that goes. But you have all the generations in the workforce right now.
Diane Helbig (11:10):
Exactly. It's got to be challenging.
Courtenay Shipley (11:13):
Yeah, employers definitely have a challenging position. Poor HR in particular, having to serve all of these different groups with education, and with relevant and timely education that will help them use that benefits package and derive value out of it. So I think that's a real challenge for everyone.
Diane Helbig (11:33):
Wow, boy. No kidding. And what about marginalized groups? Because my understanding is they're more likely to just neglect the benefits offerings. Is that true?
Courtenay Shipley (11:48):
Yeah. Yep, that is true. It goes back to, I think, bad advertising, bad marketing in a way. Because if you don't see people like you using the plan or using those benefits, then you start to wonder if they're really for you. We used to see this a lot before the automatic enrollment revolution, especially with the millennial generation where it was, “Retirement, that's for old people. I don't need to sign up for that.” And so then you just have to take it one step further to, say, a person of color looking at it saying, “Oh, that's not really my thing.” So that's a big part of it, having the messaging right, also understanding how decisions are made, because not all cultures make decisions the same way…knowing who your employees are. Again, this is all going to feed back to that, that is very important. We have seen that automatic enrollment in particular increases those marginalized groups' participation for retirement and in retirement plans way better than a lot of the other demographic groups. So having those nudges in place, the behavioral nudges, really does equalize the playing field for everybody, which is nice.
Diane Helbig (12:58):
No kidding. Okay. And so one of the points of this conversation is really about how having these sorts of benefits packages can help you retain top talent, which makes me think about employee engagement, as well. We know that we have a real problem in this country with disengaged employees. So how does an effective…let's talk about retirement plans. How does that impact an employee's engagement, do you think?
Courtenay Shipley (13:34):
Yep. So I think that there's not going to be a direct straight line here very easily. In some cases, there is like a defined benefit plan or a cash balance plan or something where you are accumulating a chunk of money that the employer is putting a lot in for you, that is always harder to walk away from. If you are someone who's in management or a very hard-to-replace person, and you have been given a non-qualified deferred compensation plan; that's extremely hard to walk away from in many cases with how those are built. They might be on performance metrics or after a certain amount of time you get this amount, that sort of thing. So those are the easy answers for retaining people. The one that's not as easy maybe is the 401k profit-sharing world where it's kind of table stakes to have a match these days of some sort.
So really hammering home what that match is and how it might be the same or different or better than your competitors just makes you a better place to work as part of the whole benefits package. And again, it comes back to the employees appreciating it and getting value out of it because they know about it. You can also look at it from the perspective of, if you are a more generous company and you want to give people a stake in the profits, so at the end of the year you're determining your profit sharing and distributing that among employees and making a big deal out of it. “Hey, we hit our numbers this year. Look at this…this much is going to you as a bonus, this much is going to you in your retirement plan for your future.” So it's all kind of tied back to PR a little bit.
How are people perceiving the plan? What are you using the plan to do and are they aware of that? And so that's where it's going to tie in that retention piece. It's also what I've said before, is an employee probably will not tell you I stayed all because of the retirement plan, but they will tell you a sob story or a bad story about how they didn't even care enough about us to give us a 401k match. It can be the straw that broke the camel's back more so than maybe the reason that they stayed when we're just looking at the 401k and the profit-sharing piece of it.
Diane Helbig (15:56):
Okay. I think that is a huge point, and the thing that I am finding so valuable about this conversation and that is really hitting me, is that this is really about understanding your employees, taking the time to engage with them, understand who they are, all of those elements that are so necessary in order to be able to meet them where they are and provide them with the things that are valuable to them, that they are looking for in a work environment and that meet their personal needs so that they see your company as caring about them, as wanting them to be successful and wanting them to be part of your organization and can keep 'em. This makes a lot of sense to me.
Courtenay Shipley (16:48):
Yeah, I think belongingness maybe is probably the overarching theme…is that they want to feel like they're doing good work for an organization that cares that they do good work and about them as a person.
Diane Helbig (17:00):
I think that spans the generations, too, right?
Courtenay Shipley (17:06):
Yes, for sure. Financial wellness is another place that can show that they care. And so providing the opportunity for employees to build a stable financial foundation for themselves, I think, is also a valued benefit and perceived as a valued benefit for those especially who haven't maybe accumulated enough money to ever meet with a financial advisor. That's part of our service offering, talking to employees about, okay, yeah, we're going to make this decision about how much to save and where to invest it, but what else is going on here? What are the other parts of the picture? Are you a solid budgeter? Do you feel like you spend your money and you monitor your cashflow? Are you confused about the rest of your benefits? Do you need life insurance? Is this a situation where disability policy may be more important? Or are you planning to send your child to college and has that been something you've thought about before? So being able to, for the employer to provide that other resource to their employees, I think is really good, but also keeps the employer out of it so they don't get all the information about the employee.
Diane Helbig (18:33):
That’s a big deal.
Courtenay Shipley (18:33):
Yeah. Having a place that's safe for them to go to ask those types of questions if they haven't been able to before.
Diane Helbig (18:41):
Right. I think that's huge. I mean, boy, what better shows how much you care about your employees than providing them with that real…
Courtenay Shipley (18:53):
They're really providing the financial foundation. I mean, your paycheck is your greatest asset. The fact that you can show up at work and get your paycheck and then the employer provides those benefits for the “what ifs.” What if you're not around to receive that paycheck anymore and your family needs it? What if you can't go to work because something happened and you're out on health leave for a while? What if you don't want to continue to work there forever when you're 65? So that financial foundation is really what the employer is building. So the more that they can reinforce that, I think the more that the employee will understand that they care.
Diane Helbig (19:29):
I totally agree with you. I think that is such a good point. And I so value this information. I said at the beginning of this conversation, we don't talk about this enough on this podcast. It's true that we don't. Having said that, this has been some really valuable information for the business owners listening to this, whether they've looked at it this way or not. And so one of the things that keeps floating around in my head is it's also important for them to engage with a company that's going to help them go through this process, like a company like yours that helps them think about these things because that's what you're doing, naturally. But business owners aren't necessarily thinking about all of the tentacles and all the impacts. So first of all, thank you so much for sharing this information, and second of all, will you please tell the listeners how they can find you?
Courtenay Shipley (20:25):
Absolutely. So on LinkedIn, it's Courtenay Shipley, and you can also go to our website at https://www.retirementplanology.com/learnmore. We have a great site there that's built for listeners who may have stumbled on us through a podcast, but they also, we've outlined all the resources for small businesses there, as well as established businesses who might need a little bit more help in maybe fixing what they have rather than starting something new.
Diane Helbig (21:04):
Right. Thank you so much. That's awesome. I'll make sure that's in the show notes. So thank you Courtenay. And listeners, thank you. You are who we're doing this for. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Accelerate Your Business Growth, a production of Evergreen Podcast. Discover more episodes of this podcast and explore others at https://evergreenpodcasts.com/. As always, continue to prosper and be curious. And if you're looking to get your sales strategy headed in the right direction, pick up a copy of Succeed Without Selling on Amazon or wherever books are sold. Until we meet again on another episode of Accelerate Your Business Growth, goodbye and good day.