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Helping Your Employees With Their Futures

Heather Legg

July 12, 2013

As an employer, part of your responsibility is helping your employees with their futures.

What can you do to help them save for their futures? Remember, if you’re doing it right, it may be one of those things that attract top candidates and will draw them to you for the long haul.

Take a look at some of these tips to help them out:

Talk With Them

Whether it is when they are first hired, on an annual basis, or both, take the time to sit with your employees and go over the things they can do to save.

You can also do this in a meeting with everyone, just make yourself available for questions afterwards. If you don’t want to be the one in charge, and you have an HR team or payroll manager, let them handle it.

If you have options, such as 401(k), IRA or other stock options, educate your employees on these options. Try to help them do what is best for them now and for the future.

Encourage Savings

No matter if it is a lot or a little, your employees should be putting something away with each paycheck.

If they do it through automatic banking, it’s easier on everyone and they don’t have to remember to take care of it each pay period. Though 10% is the recommended contribution, even a small amount like 1 or 2% will be beneficial.

Match Their Contribution

If it’s possible, offer a matching contribution program.

This can be tough sometimes for small business, but if you are able, it’s a great asset to your employees. And just like you are telling them, some is better than nothing. Maybe larger companies can offer 1.5% or more, but even if you can match .5% you’ll be supplying them something that will benefit their futures.

College Savings Program

Not all savings need to go towards retirement; plenty of people have other priorities, like paying for their children’s college funds.

If your state has a 529 college savings program (and most do), this can be an option you can help your employees with. This is a newer concept, but it seems more companies will be taking advantage of this and helping their employees not only save for retirement, but help them with the cost of their children’s college tuition as well.

Counseling

Though this may seem harder to provide, it’s not a bad idea to have some financial counseling available to your employees.

Whether it’s through human resources or payroll or you bring in another professional now and then, your employees may really benefit from someone helping with their finances.

It’s a tough economic time out there, and it’s hard enough to make ends meet without taking more money out of the paycheck.

However, if your employees can see the benefits for planning for retirement, college or other aspects of their future, they will feel more settled and possibly less stressed.

By helping with this, you are setting the stage for loyalty and trust within the company.

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