2023 Signature Awards - Investment Education

This category is for communications to plan participants by their companies regarding investments, investment diversification, or investment changes, including, but not limited to, programs that were successful in encouraging employees to take action on investments in their accounts, introducing new investment options, campaigns targeting pre-retirees who may have too much risk, or younger workers who may be too risk averse in their portfolios, etc.

1st Place – Dell Technologies with Fidelity Investments

Dell Technologies helps organizations and individuals build their digital future and transform how they work, live, and play. They have 45,000 employees in the U.S. In 2022 they removed the balanced fund and mapped the balances to a target date fund series. With the balanced fund being a popular choice, Dell had to put a robust communication plan in place as to why age-based funds make sense for participants.

In addition to informing employees about the fund changes Dell wanted to promote the broad financial wellness support the company offers. A two-phase communication approach was created focusing on the “Financially Well at Dell” website and phone coaching. A webinar series based on employees’ greatest area of financial need was developed and a letter explaining how to discover their need based on an assessment score was sent. Communications were in the form of emails, print pieces, a digital saving guide of plan features and content about market volatility and retirement readiness.

Results show that 14.8 percent of employees made the fund change themselves before the mapping, 6 percent of employees increased their contribution election, visits to the assessment increased 70 percent in two weeks, phone coaching sessions increased three-fold for the first three weeks, then 25 percent for next eight weeks, and the financial wellness webinar series had a record attendance of 2,451 people. Dell won because they conducted an in-depth needs analysis and used the information to develop a comprehensive multi-media two-pronged campaign. They took a unique approach and produced different communications and messaging for different groups through the use of conditional messaging and QR codes, and achieved good results.