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2020 Signature Award Winners - Creating Culture Change
Creating Culture Change
Sometimes you have to create a cultural change in order to meet retirement plan goals and maintain improved participant outcomes. The goal is changing attitudes over time for the better, creating improved behaviors. Measurement of goals is tracked over the life of the strategy, not necessarily a specific point in time. Campaigns in this category can be one campaign that lasts over multiple years, or separate campaigns created for each year that culminate in the intended behavioral/cultural change by the plan sponsor’s employees.
1st Place – Sonepar USA with Schwab Retirement Plan Services, Inc.
Sonepar USA is an independent, family-owned company with global market leadership in the business-to-business distribution of electrical, industrial, and safety products, services, and solutions. Sonepar has 14 operating companies, and 700 US locations with 10,000 total employees.
Since 2015, the company has completed eight plan mergers. The company needed to engage HR leaders working independently across the country to help determine the unique needs, cultural differences, and challenges that employees face at the local level. Battling the effect of automatic enrollment on average savings rates, continually merging new employees from established plans, assimilating the cultures from new and different operating companies, and exploring new ways of communicating using primarily digital technology all presented new opportunities to think differently and deploy new strategies.
The campaign objectives were to unite associates under a single company brand for retirement and health benefits and build a culture focused on employees taking ownership of their financial and physical well-being. HR leaders provided insight into cultural differences and perceptions from their employees in different parts of the country. A focus group was held to learn about employees’ views about money. Financial education tools were used to address the needs of the majority. The results were that participation and savings rates increased over the years, though this was not the focus. There was greater engagement in wellness events and increased utilization of plan resources and advice. Feedback from HR leaders and employees indicated that the messages are getting through.
Sonepar won because they used different avenues to change their company’s culture around saving for retirement and financial wellness. They created an inspiring video with a good tagline: “Life is Better with a Plan” and they used their HR leaders and vendor partnerships to help them effectively meet their goals.