Your Retirement Plan Can Keep Employees Emotionally Invested

Could the retirement plan you offer your employees help improve employee engagement? Employee engagement is one of the hardest puzzles for most businesses to solve. But, increasing engagement is essential if you want to grow. Your level of employee engagement is directly tied to your office culture.

If you want to improve your culture, you can start by leveraging your retirement plan to get more out of all of your employees.

Employee Engagement is Emotional Response
Employee engagement is not a simple switch that you can flip. Employees become more engaged at work when they feel financially secure, when they believe their work is meaningful, and when they feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves. Your employees want to feel like you appreciate them and their work. Nobody wants to feel like a generic cog in a machine.

Use Your Retirement Plan to Help Employees Feel Secure
You can use your 401(k)-retirement plan to help your employees feel more financially secure and to help them feel more tied to the mission of the company. First, you need to make sure you have a generous plan. When you are matching employee contributions, you are sending the message that you value your employees and their future, even after they no longer work for you. You are also helping to ease some of the constant, low-level anxiety many employees feel about their retirement. Even young employees worry about how they will be able to afford to stop working one day. Second, you need to make sure that your employees understand what you are doing for them and why you are doing it. You need to educate your employees about their retirement options and how your contributions compound over time to increase the value of their retirement account.

You cannot help your employees feel valued and more financially secure unless you are communicating with them.

Your employees will begin to feel more loyal to the company and its mission as they come to understand that they are a critical part of the company, and that their efforts are essential for the accomplishment of the mission. Your actions and messaging around your retirement plan are an important part of creating a culture of engaged employees.

Be Proud of Your Retirement Plan
Do not treat your employee retirement plan as a standard benefit. Employees won’t go the extra mile if you are only delivering standard benefits. You should be proud of the benefits you provide your people. Let your team know how their retirement plan stacks up against less generous plans. When you prove to your employees that you care about their future, they will show you how much they care about the future of the company.

Employees Want to be Part of Something Bigger
Engaged employees are innovative and driven because they believe they are part of something bigger than themselves. None of us want to think we are just chasing a paycheck. Use your retirement plan to make your employees strategic partners. Explain that you are investing in them because they are investing so much of their lives in your company. Your employees will invest more of themselves at work as they come to understand how much you are investing in them and in their futures. OmniStar can help you decide what plan is right for your company. Let us illuminate this blind spot, and keep your employees emotionally invested for years to come.