Is your staff retirement ready?
TURNOVER HURTS. CUT THE PAIN WITH A GROUP RETIREMENT PLAN THAT BUILDS LOYALTY, BOOSTS PRODUCTIVITY AND MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE BOSS OF THE YEAR
Entrepreneurs lie awake at night thinking about the big picture, but employees’ nocturnal worries often lie closer to their wallets. During this year’s annual flurry of tax time surveys, 67% of Canadians said they wish they’d contributed more to RRSPs and 65% said they plan to work beyond age 65.
That’s no surprise to Peter Thompson, principal at Dartmouth, N.S.-based SBW Wealth Management & Employee Benefits, who regularly presents retirement savings seminars. “The most up-take that I see is people aged 45 to 55. They’re really paying attention.”
Thompson says many small employers believe they can’t afford a group retirement plan, but he points to the issues not offering one creates:
“A good group retirement program is absolutely a factor in retention and recruiting. Our firm is 17 folks and turnover hurts here. Good employees are scarce and it’s hard to replace somebody. Anything that retains good employees helps.”
The first step to offering a retirement plan is finding a professional advisor, Thompson says. Choose a firm with an advisor who specializes in pensions and the data to benchmark your fiercest competitors. He explains: “You’re running a good 10-person company, but so is someone else. If one of you has a group retirement program and the other doesn’t, that can be a deciding factor in where people want to work.”
Pick a supplier who, in addition to administering the plan, offers value-added services, including employee education, learning opportunities and wellness plans that prepare your team for retirement mentally, professionally and financially.
“Anytime you can assist employees with non-work related items, it gives them more focus for work. As an employer, if you can help provide that focus you’ll have happier, more productive employees because they’ll worry less about those other issues,” says Thompson.
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