Any working individual knows the hardship of buying retirement savings, from putting money on saving bonds to paying off a mortgage to own a home. Given that fact, employers have always been encouraged to provide retirement support to their people. It’s part of the responsibilities of managing a company.
Fortunately, business owners are becoming more aware of the need for a secure retirement. If your workforce is still not retirement-ready, it’s time to make some plans now. Regardless of the size of your workforce or your resources, there are multiple ways to help with your people’s retirement. Let’s discuss some of these below.
1. Organize retirement planning consultations
Providing online resources isn’t enough to educate your employees about proper retirement planning. You should provide them with comprehensive and engaging conversations regarding retirement. Make this happen by seeking the help of professional consultants that offer investment consultancy services. These professionals can guide you and your team with financial decisions, ensuring good investment outcomes.
Plus, most consultants can help you in creating benefit and contribution schemes for your employees. Hire one if you’re uncertain what type of schemes can benefit your entire workforce.
2. Provide company retirement savings plan
Creating and implementing a retirement savings plan may seem expensive and complicated. However, this provides great opportunities regardless of the size and level of a business. A retirement savings plan can encourage your employee to save and track their money. At the same time, this may provide you with some tax breaks as a company owner.
The most common ones are 401(k)s, SEP IRA, and Simple IRA. Check out the official website of the IRS to determine which plan works best for your company and employees. In most cases, an employer can provide the accounts to the employees or match their contributions as incentives.
3. Encourage team for auto-escalation
Offering auto-escalation for your company’s retirement programs or plans is a good way to encourage employees to participate more. Basically, the contribution percentage of an employee will be automatically increased after a pay raise or a certain term. Just be sure your entire team agrees to this kind of setup.
Automation, in general, can be used for contributing to a 401(k), making direct deposits, transferring savings, to paying bills. Discuss every detail with your team before you start operating on autopilot. Everyone has a different financial situation, so you need to consider that. If you’re met with resistance, consider offering flexible alternatives. You can allow your workers to make contributions on their own terms.
4. Open opportunities for continued work
This may not be ideal for all companies and organizations, but it’s worth considering. Ask your soon-to-retire employees if they’re planning to have full retirement or they’re interested in taking alternative work arrangements.
For instance, you can hire them as part-time instructors for your new and young team members for a smaller paycheck. This is a smart way to help them continue earning while still enjoying their retirement years. Occasional meetings with your team can give you an idea if this is a worthy alternative to offer.
5. Conduct succession planning
In terms of succession planning, you will need help from your departments, especially the HR team. This strategy will help your retiring employees move on to new opportunities without worrying about the work or projects they’ll be leaving. Have your HR department communicate with retiring staff and request them to help with the training of their replacements.
Succession planning is mandatory and regular for most companies. It can also help the company to reduce performance conflicts and project delays and ensure smooth turnover. Employees who’ve been working for a company for many years won’t usually have a problem with this as they understand the reason behind it. You need to properly discuss the succession planning process with them.
6. Conduct yearly assessments
Performing an annual retirement assessment can help you better understand the needs and preferences of your workforce. Talk with your long-time staff members about the tasks they’re doing that are not included in the job description. You’d also need to find out which positions or departments are holding too many retiring workers. This is beneficial not only for easing the workloads of your soon-to-retire employees but also for ensuring that those tenured ones didn’t create bypasses of inefficient or broken processes.
By helping your employees in planning their retirement, you can show you genuinely care about their well-being, too. This also encourages work productivity, engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty. While it may mean increased costs for your business, you get worthy rewards like better employee retention and a more efficient workforce.
