BCG Blog

It’s a stressful time in almost every way possible. How are employees feeling this financially, and what gaps are they looking for plan sponsors to fill?

It’s time for real change, and employees won’t settle for performative measures. However, learning what to look for comes before they can determine what’s “woke-washing” and what’s a real commitment to justice and reform.

What makes a safe workplace, and what are employees looking for when returning to work? Having a policy is only step one: making sure procedures actually work to make the workplace safer and are strictly enforced is step two.

The real estate market is seeing some significant changes, but not everyone can agree on what those are. Are people really leaving cities? Is Airbnb done for, or will it bounce back? Most importantly, how can sponsors help their employees find the tools and advisors they need to set themselves in the best position?

Zoom, Webex, Teams, oh my! Online meeting platforms are seeing an uptick in use due to the sheer volume of people working remotely, but not everyone can make every meeting. Here are a few tips for supplementing your meetings and presentations for all to enjoy…and for creating digital content to connect safely with clients.

Almost half of those in the workforce have a part-time “side gig” to help pay the bills, save for retirement, or generate a little extra spending money. As the COVID-19 pandemic prompted massive layoffs and record unemployment numbers, here are a few ways gig workers can cope during this economic crisis.

COVID-19 may have made your parent’s plans of living independently more complex. Here are four resources a Plan Sponsor can provide their employees to tackle the topic of moving a parent into their home.

Anxious coworkers may get more anxious when they can work from home. With the liberty to check their retirement dashboards without other coworkers seeing and a highly volatile time in the stock markets, how can a Plan Sponsor help reduce some of the anxiety among employees at this difficult time?

They may not be as cute as Baby Yoda, but digital pocket change apps may be just as appealing. Plan Sponsors may want to round out the information employees receive about them to make sure those apps rounding up purchases don’t leave employees broke or budgets broken.

The lunch room is a great place to help employees learn financial literacy. How so? Simply add a Free Library to it and encourage employees to borrow a book. Here’s a list of a few great books to get started.

While everyone else is planning their physical fitness reboot for 2020, employers and HR professionals may be wondering how they can improve employees financial fitness. Here are four ways to tackle financial education for your company in 2020.

As open enrollment time for health care plans comes around again, employees may be confused about the role that a HSA can play in both their retirement. In fact they may be surprised at some of ways they can use an HSA.

Many employees may think investing in the stock market is too risky. If risk is an issue, why not explain risk management using the same tools your company uses?

Employees are more willing ever to consider jumping ship for other opportunities. How can a plan sponsor keep up with an increasingly mobile workforce?

When it comes to money, children may learn more from by the actions we take than by the words we say. For parents working with a tight budget, whether in the short or long term, this can lead children to grow up with unwarranted concerns about money. How can plan sponsors help parents prevent that?

Can Plan Sponsors use the news of government employees’ use of loans from retirement accounts as a backstop to unemployment to help employees understand their retirement options? Here are a few key points to borrowing from retirement accounts that employees may need information about.

Childless couples may have different needs in retirement planning, the biggest of which may be not be treated like they won the lottery because they don’t, or can’t, have children.

Want to find a new way to get ideas about retirement across to your employees? Try using examples from the movies to engage your employees on retirement readiness.

Employees who may be in the eye of a personal storm, like divorce, death of a loved one, or other upheaval, may not recognize that their decision making is decreasing in effectiveness. And importantly, those life events often involve changes to retirement accounts.

Comparing your results to others can be motivating to some, but when comparing turns into trying to keep up with your social circle it can harm results instead.

While no one can plan for what they don’t know, there are unexpected events that happen frequently enough that employees should know how to plan for them. Plan Sponsors can help employees understand how to prepare for financial surprises.

Employees complain about not having enough time to focus on retirement planning. Plan sponsors can’t add a 25th hour to the day, but they can provide tools to plan participants about how to mind their time, both from an efficiency stand point and from a holistic standpoint.

The best behavior change for saving money may be to focus on what to stop doing, instead of what to start doing.

With a few years into the robo advising world, how is it working? What do sponsors need to know about how robo advising can help their employees and what do sponsors need to know about robo advisors and educating their employees.

Women often end up with financial burdens of caring for both children and aging parents: the so-called sandwich generation. Having a financial advisor who understands the juggling act required to carry that burden may mean more than just understanding how much (or how little) money to set aside for retirement.

Many investment advisors often find that a lack of a mental image of what an employee wants retirement to include is a roadblock towards getting employees to commit to retirement savings. Using a recent retirement can do more than help employees say goodbye: it can help some employees get a sense of what they might want their own retirement to look like.

A recent survey shows that the once-maligned defined benefit plan is making a comeback. Is a defined benefit plan right for your organization?