Old, Archaic and Incredibly Effective
No, we’re not talking about Blake Thibault (although he is incredibly effective). We mean the measures he and his team use to achieve successful participant outcomes.
“Over the years we’ve been trying to change the discussion away from looking just at participation percentages,” Thibault, managing director with Heffernan Financial Services, says before rhetorically adding, “For so long, we talked about being a fiduciary and fees, etc., but what has that truly impacted?”
The change to which he refers is what he believes are more important measures of outcomes—savings rates and replacement income.
“What we’ve learned, however, is that financial wellness is also increasingly important. You can’t get people to save for retirement if they’re not tackling what’s on their minds right now—whether it be saving, paying college debt, saving for a home, you name it.”
So how, specifically, is he moving the needle in the areas he just described?
“We’re doing it through the most proven (if somewhat old and archaic) method, which is education and communication.”
The firm has professionals dedicated to education and communication (and education and communication only) for every one of their clients.
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“Our admittedly rudimentary and cheesy slogan is, ‘Because you’re different,’ meaning every one of our clients is completely different and has a unique culture. We take that a step further in retirement planning, because our education and communication specialists develop customized education and communication calendars for every one of our clients.”
Since it’s located in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, Heffernan has a large millennial clientele that only wants technology-based education and communication.
“We’ve therefore developed Brainshark videos and a lot of interactive material that clients can push out via their intranet or have it come from human resources that have embedded links to drive participants to online education material.”
Yet they also work with other organizations (nonprofits, for instance) that want live meetings and, of course, one-on-ones. It naturally raises the question of scale, and cost-effectively touching each participant when the company has thousands of employees.
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“We’re willing to do it as long as our days are utilized well by our clients, meaning that if there’s terrific turnout we’ll make it work.”
He points to one energy technology company where his staff spent three days at its Midwest location and three days at its Southwest location.
“They were booked solid, back-to-back for those three-day visits. They’re scheduled to go back because they were so well-utilized and so well-received. We’re happy to do it as much as possible because we feel that it has the most impact.”
The company has a participation rate of 91 percent and utilizes automatic enrollment and automatic escalation. Their manufacturing plant has a high number of blue-collar workers who they treat very well.
When the financial crisis hit in 2008, they took a very aggressive stance, re-enrolling the entire company with an automatic deferral of 4 percent. They also have a 4 percent match with automatic escalation, which has resulted in an average deferral of 8.7 percent.
“We did the re-enrollment in December 2008, so think about that in terms of timing. It was right at the absolute worst moment you could think of doing something like this. But they absolutely thought it was the right thing to do.”
At Heffernan’s direction, the company also instituted financial wellness through Financial Finesse.
“Last summer, the city in which they reside voted them the best company to work for in the area, and they felt it had a lot to do with their retirement and financial wellness offering. It’s a great case study of using plain design, combined with boots on the ground for education communication, to achieve superior results.”
Blake Thibault is managing director with northern California-based Heffernan Financial Services.