You Run a Business -- Why Do You Choose to be in the Benefit Plan Business, Too?

You've been successful in the business world. You've made your way up through the ranks. Suddenly, because your title starts with the word "chief", you find yourself on the company's Benefits (or some other similar name) Committee.

You're an accidental fiduciary. You have no benefits training. You've never studied ERISA. In some cases, you've never heard of ERISA. What are you doing in this role and why?

Perhaps there is not a single person on your committee with a strong grounding in ERISA issues. But, you know that in order to compete for employees, you have to provide your employees with some benefits. It's likely that some or all of those benefit plans are covered by ERISA. And, ERISA coverage brings with it a myriad of rules and requirements.

Oh no, now I have you panicking. What should you do?

Let's consider one of the most common benefit plan offerings in 2015, the 401(k) plan. What is your committee responsible for? Do you know?

While one could argue that the list might be slightly different, here is a pretty decent summary:

• Plan design
• Selection of plan investment options
• Compliance (with laws, regulations, and other requirements)
• Plan administration
• Communication to participants and education of those participants

That's a lot to swallow. Look around your committee. Presumably, since the committee has responsibility for all of those elements, at the very least, you can find people in the room who, between them, have expertise in all of those areas,

You can't? 

Do you really want the responsibility that comes with being a member of that committee when you have just realized that the expertise to handle the committee's roles doesn't reside on the committee?

You have choices, or at least you might. You could resign from the committee. Frankly, that usually doesn't go over well.

You could engage an expert. Suppose you could find an individual who could function in the role that a committee Chair would play in a perfect world. We're likely talking about someone who doesn't work for your company. This person will bring you peace of mind and essentially serve as the quarterback for the committee. He or she won't have a vote, but will guide you through the processes so that 

• Your plan is well-designed for your population and budgets, 
• It has investment options for plan participants that are prudently chosen and monitored according to an Investment Policy Statement (sometimes called an IPS), 
• It gets and stays in compliance with applicable rules, 
• Is administered properly and the firm that administers it is well-monitored, and
• Is communicated to participants in a clear fashion that properly educates those participants as to the benefits of plan participation.

That sounds great, doesn't it?

If you don't currently have such a quarterback for your committee, perhaps you should. I can help you find one.

The Best 401(k) Communication Ever

A little over a week, I heard a talk about the best 401(k) communication campaign to employees ever. It didn't have that title. The speaker who was instrumental in developing the campaign didn't claim it was the best ever. But, I think it is.

In 30 years in this business, few things have remained constant. Rules have changed, employee and employer attitudes have changed, benefits programs have changed, and cost sharing has changed.

One thing has not changed.

In 1985, I saw the results of a survey of employees in a variety of companies nationwide. The question that I focused on asked these employees how they liked to receive their communications. The winners in the survey by a large margin were from either their supervisors or from their peers. In my opinion, and I feel pretty strongly about this one, that hasn't changed.

Generally, you think about people like that as being like you. HR is often thought of as just being part of that corporate ivory tower. The recordkeeper/TPA is viewed as having something to sell. External professional communicators rarely understand the culture of the organization, and even if they do, they are often going with glitz and glam in an effort to justify the fees they are charging.

Suppose you keep it simple.

Suppose you use your own employees to keep it simple.

The company that I heard about has a fairly traditional 401(k) plan. Its employees are diverse. Many do not speak English well or at all. While the company compensates its employees well for their jobs and geography, these are generally what most of us would think of as pretty low-paid workers. They don't have discretionary income. Most of them are shift workers as the manufacturing company runs 24 hours per day.

So, what did the company do? What did the young Manager of Employee Services do? She found employees who would support the 401(k) plan. She developed communications around the 401(k) plan. And, she scheduled employee meetings catering to both English and Spanish speakers, catering to first, second, and third shifts, and catering to lower paid line workers and to higher paid engineers.

She didn't run the meetings. She is corporate. The message needed to hit closer to home.

She found employees in the workforce who she thought would be well-suited to deliver the right messages. She found people who could come across as credible in their peer groups. They would be her communications team and she trained them to deliver the message.

The results were astounding. Employees took an interest in their plan. Levels of participation increased. Levels of deferrals increased. Employees believed the message from people they work with. They stayed after work to hear the messages. In many cases, their spouses joined them. They are now in a better place on being on the road to retirement some day.

The company kept it simple. The company kept it credible. And, the company didn't have to spend a bunch of money on this campaign.

Effective communication doesn't need to be complicated. In fact, more often than not, it shouldn't be.

P.S.: This was the speaker's first time presenting at a conference. She was pretty nervous about it. I told her that after I heard it that I would give her honest and constructive feedback. The only feedback that I could give her was this: "I would hire you ... in a heartbeat."

Communicating Rewards

I haven't had a really good rant on here for a while. Today, I think I am going to change that. The topic is communication of rewards programs. That means benefits of all kinds, compensation, learning and development, work/life programs -- the whole kit and kaboodle. It's all part of rewards, and as a society, our communication of rewards is just plain miserable.

There, I said it. I'll say it again. In the United States today, communication of rewards programs to employees just plain sucks. I didn't say that companies don't try. I didn't say that supervisors don't try. Things have gotten really complicated. Most components of rewards programs today are offered because there is an underlying incentive. Perhaps the incentive is in the Internal Revenue Code. That means that either or both the employer and the employees get a tax break because of this particular rewards element. And, who understands that?

Consider either the communications that you receive or the ones that you send (if you represent the employer side) related to rewards. How do you get the communications of most of these elements? I'm guessing it's one of two way:

• e-mail
• a large packet of material filled mostly with required disclosures

Do you read every e-mail that you get including attachments? I don't. When you receive a large packet of materials describing the new health care plan, do you read the whole thing? I don't.

Once upon a time, but during my working lifetime, changes, especially improvements, to rewards programs were communicated differently. How is that? Someone spoke to us. Yes, a real live person with a real live voice spoke to us. Sometimes it was done in groups, sometimes individually. Often, the person who spoke to us could and would answer questions. Yes, the required disclosures were covered, but their was emphasis placed on what was really important and you knew it.

Let me give you an example. When your employer changes its 401(k) plan, there are pages of required disclosures. Most of those disclosures don't mean anything to you or to me. Everyone is worried about getting sued now, so often, most of everyone doesn't want to tell you anything that isn't prescribed by law. You get all the required information, but little relevant information. Therefore, you don't make optimal use of the new program. Why would you? You don't know the full benefit of the change. You don't know who to ask. And, even if you did, that person might be afraid to tell you.

My plea for the near future: let's go back to real communication.

Exploiting Casey Anthony Again -- This Time in Your 401(k) Plan

This Casey Anthony trial allows you to see just how warped a brain can be -- my brain, that is. Two days in a row, I am bringing that trial into a benefits and compensation blog. Yesterday, I claimed that I wasn't nuts. Today, I reiterate, still, I am not nuts.

If you read yesterday's blog post (it's just one down in this blog or you can go here), you know that I talked about branding in, perhaps, the oddest way you have ever seen. If you didn't read it and you don't want to read it now, I talked about how the prosecution delivered a much more eloquent case, but the defense effectively branded their case. And, throughout the trial, the defense pounded on it -- virtually everything they did was reinforcement for their brand. They had a far lesser product and they won.

Oh, yeah, if you didn't follow the trial and you didn't read yesterday's post, the brand was "Follow the duct tape."

What on earth, you may wonder, does this have to do with my 401(k) plan?

Your participants have a limited amount of money that they earn every week/2 weeks/half month/month. They have a good bit of that money already allocated to things like mortgage or rent, food, car payments, insurance, clothing, and lots of other things.

It's those other things that we are concerned about. These are the discretionary items -- the ones that your participants spend money on because they want to, not because they have to. Your 401(k) plan competes with those other things for discretionary dollars. And, you know what, many of those other things have strong brands.

Think about some of the most popular places for people to spend discretionary dollars these days. Many have strong brands and these brands (wittingly for them, but unwittingly for participants) pull the participants' money to them and away from important places like your 401(k) plan. Here are some examples of strong brands that the 401(k) plan competes with:

• Apple with its iPad, iPhone, iTouch, iTunes and other related products (note the branding)
• Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony with their various interactive gaming consoles Wii, Xbox, and PlayStation
• Victoria's Secret and other retailers and brands targeting women's discretionary dollars
• NASCAR, and all of the brands that adorn the cars and uniforms of its drivers

Each of these brands are proverbially in the faces of your participants every day. If you want your participants to move more of their discretionary dollars to their 401(k) plan, then that plan needs a brand that is similarly in the faces of participants each and every day.

This post is not intended to tell you how to create that brand. It is, however, intended to tell you that if you expect your 401(k) plan to be as top of mind in terms of your participants' dollars as these other strong brands are, then it had better be at least as visible and have at least as strong a brand.

So, find ways to advertise your plan. Create a slogan or tagline that fits the corporate culture. Make it desirable and appealing. Make it fun. Yes, make it fun. 

Run contests. Let your employees help in creating the 401(k) plan brand. Give prizes. They don't have to be big ones. You will be amazed at the results. I almost promise you.

HR People and Consultants Can Learn From the Casey Anthony Trial

I know. You read the subject line of this post and the only reason that you made it into the body of the post is you were curious to see just how I have lost my mind. 

I'm not nuts. I swear to you that I have, in fact, not lost my mind. This trial was an exercise in communications. Two teams of attorneys and their various witnesses were communications consultants. They were each communicating to twelve people. And, unlike, you, me, and tens or hundreds of millions of other Americans, those twelve people didn't have any additional communications consultants -- all the talking head attorneys and attorney-wannabes on the various television and radio networks. These twelve clients, if you will, were held captive, largely in front of the communications consultants, for six weeks. They literally lived and breathed this trial.

Let's get back to benefits and compensation -- human resources issues. If you look at the HR press these days, you can find survey after survey about things like employee engagement, dissatisfaction with managers, cuts in benefits that are untenable to employees, workforce reductions, and many more. I say that the companies who score particularly low in these surveys suffer from the same malady as Linda Drane Burdick and Jeff Ashton, the two lead prosecutors in the Casey Anthony case.

Let's consider. [WARNING: There may be lots of cliches in here]

You only get one chance to make a first impression. In the Casey Anthony trial, there were lots of first impressions. There were the opening arguments. There were the beginnings of testimony by witnesses, both fact witnesses and expert witnesses. I heard a litany of legal experts say what a great job the prosecution did of wrapping up the case. I heard that Linda Drane Burdick put the nail in the coffin. Let's go from the courtroom back to the corporation. The jurors (the employees) were so disengaged by then that they already had one foot out the door. 

Consider this. The prosecution put forth more than 400 items of circumstantial evidence. The jury deliberated for about 11 hours. In reality, though, the jury deliberated for less than 6 hours. I say this because they all returned for the second day of deliberation dressed differently. They had their verdicts. They just wanted to be sure.

Let's reconsider. 400 items. 349 minutes of deliberation. That is less than 53 seconds per item of circumstantial evidence. 

Their minds were made up long before the closing arguments. The fact is that once a manager or consultant (prosecuting attorney) has failed to keep an employee (juror) engaged (on their side), that employee (juror) is likely lost.

The defense did not have a great case. The prosecution told us so. They told us that their experts were more believable. They told us that only Casey Anthony had a motive to kill Caylee. But, the case was lost by then.

If you didn't follow the trial at all, you may get a bit lost now, but I will try to tie it together (for all I know, you may be lost already, but I hope not).

The prosecution delivered a long and eloquent opening statement. Nobody quotes from it. Nobody remembers it. Whatever they said, they didn't link everything to their opening statement.

Jose Baez, the lead defense attorney, is not experienced. He began practicing law in 2005. To my understanding, this was his first murder case. His opening statement was not eloquent. But, as hokey as this is going to sound, Jose Baez did something different and, in my opinion, it stuck with the jury because, ultimately, he built his defense around it. He said. "Follow the duct tape."

From a communications/HR/marketing perspective, do you know what he did, on Day One, and thereafter, and constantly? He branded the defense. The defense's brand was simple: Follow the duct tape. The jury could understand this.

The prosecution case was all-encompassing, or overarching if your game of choice is Buzzword Bingo. It went from here to there to everywhere. They presented evidence upon evidence, all sadly circumstantial. But, they didn't have a theme. They didn't have a brand. Their first impression got lost and they didn't reinforce it. 

Much like many modern managers, they knew they were right, and therefore, the messages they were delivering didn't matter. The facts were so compelling that during the defense's closing, prosecutor Jeff Ashton could assuredly snicker.

A friend of mine went through an acquisition recently. Her company was acquired by another company. And, as she told me, right from the get-go, it was all about the new company. It was never about her ... or her colleagues from the old company. That was all ancient history. She got lost on the first impression ... and so did the acquisition.

OK, smart guy. You've written paragraph on paragraph, what would you have done differently [speaking to self]?

This was a circumstantial case. Everybody knows this. So, of the 400+ pieces of evidence, many (let's say 100) pointed to Casey Anthony as the killer with a very high degree of certainty -- for the sake of argument, let's say 95%. Frankly, though, a 95% likelihood that Casey Anthony murdered her daughter probably should constitute reasonable doubt.

So, what should the prosecution have done differently? I have an opinion, but you already knew that, didn't you. The prosecution needed to brand it's case as "The Sum of All Parts." In their opening statement, they should have said that this was a circumstantial case (I think they did). They should have said that the jurors (employees) were about to hear 400+ pieces of evidence that each, with a high degree of certainty, tie the murder to Casey. Of them, maybe 100 of those 400+ would each tie to Casey with about 95% certainty.

So, let's explain, in our opening statement, to the jurors how the Sum of All Parts works. 95%. That's 1 in 20. That is the same as me asking you to pick a number that I have in my head between 1 and 20 and guessing correctly. That's reasonable, isn't it? It might happen.

OK. So you got the first number correct. Now do it again. Hmm. That's pretty tough, isn't it? Now, let's see you do it 100 times in a row. Is it reasonable to think that you could do that 100 times in a row. We're going to bring on an expert later to show you just how difficult it is to do that 100 times in a row. That means that the likelihood that someone else could have done this is so small (it's a number with a decimal point followed by approximately 130 zeroes before you get a non-zero digit) that it fails to constitute reasonable doubt.

Back to my brand -- the Sum of All Parts. 

So, you start out with a brand, or a message, if you prefer. You explain in the beginning how it is going to work. And, you enforce it. And, you reinforce it. And, you make it believable.

If your brand relates to a wellness program, sell it on Day One. And, keep the message going. Don't let it leave the minds of your employees (jurors). Don't confuse them with a can of stink (if you're not familiar with the trial, that won't make sense) or with the pay raises that you plan to give when the company returns to profitability. 

Look at all the most powerful brands. They never leave their messages. Coke has been "the real thing" for years. UPS asked us "what can Brown do for you?". In it's most golden years, FedEx told us "if it absolutely positively has to be there overnight." Nike just gave us its swoosh.

Linda Drane Burdick and Jeff Ashton gave the jurors lots of powerful evidence, but it wasn't tied together. Jose Baez didn't give the jurors a whole lot, but he did give them a brand. In my opinion, that brand sat in their subconscious and he didn't let it go. Way back in May, he asked them to "follow the duct tape" and that was his case. It planted reasonable doubt that the prosecution, having the means to overcome, unwittingly chose not to.

So, Casey Anthony walks. And, if you (the employer) don't communicate any better to your jurors (employees), so will they.