Take the pulse: What your plan may be telling you
Every benefits enrollment season serves as an important nudge for me: My kids’ appointments are up to date, but there are a few for myself that I’m behind in scheduling.
An annual physical. A skin check. An eye exam.
With the focus on health benefits, enrollment season has become my personal reminder to check in on my own health. Lately, it’s gotten me thinking about another kind of checkup.
Don’t wait for a symptom
Through my conversations with plan sponsors, I know how valuable enrollment season can be for reconnecting employees to the benefits available to them. For some sponsors, it also can be a great time to step back and assess the health of the retirement benefits.
For a retirement plan, that means looking beyond any one metric. Where are participants making progress? How does your plan compare with others? Where are the gaps? And where could a focused action make the greatest difference?
The most valuable insights can come from looking beneath the headline number. Take participation, for example. An overall participation rate of 78% may suggest employees are engaging with the plan and making progress toward retirement. But when you look closer, participation among newer employees can tell a different story.
That doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem, but it does raise an important question: What may be preventing newer employees from getting started? Is there an opportunity to better support them earlier in their retirement journeys?
Looking beneath the overall numbers can help sponsors focus their attention where additional support may have the greatest value. Spotting an opportunity is only the beginning. The next step is understanding what’s driving the result.
Turn the checkup into action
Plan Health reporting in My Plan Manager™ can provide the vital signs. But the value of a checkup isn’t the readout alone. It’s understanding what the results may be telling you and knowing which question to ask next.
We’re continuing to make that follow-up easier with PlanIQ . Our new tool will allow plan sponsors and consultants to ask questions about their plans in plain language and explore what may be behind the initial reading. How does participation compare by job tenure? Are employees saving enough to capture the full employer match? What patterns are emerging in loans or advice usage?
The real opportunity comes from looking deeper, asking targeted questions, and using those insights to inform what comes next.
Now excuse me while I schedule my eye exam … the time for readers is looming!
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Kristin Collins is principal and head of Business-to-Business Client Experience for Vanguard Workplace Solutions, where she leads teams focused on delivering seamless human, digital, and operational experiences for plan sponsors and consultants. Her organization is responsible for understanding client needs, building trust, and designing experiences and services that help clients achieve their goals.
Kristin has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry, focused on marketing, experience, and strategy development. She previously led Participant Strategy for Vanguard’s institutional business, where she and her team were responsible for the digital and marketing strategies that drove retirement plan participants to take action toward their retirement readiness. She spent the first half of her Vanguard career in various roles supporting Vanguard’s financial advisor business including offer development, strategic integration, and marketing management. Before joining Vanguard in 2006, she held sales, marketing, and relationship management roles at Lincoln Financial Group.
Kristin earned a B.S. from Boston College and an M.B.A. from Saint Joseph’s University. She also holds FINRA Series 24, 7, 6, and 63 licenses.
