The High Way to Retirement

For nearly 30 years, the High Company has partnered with the Principal Financial Group® to provide retirement plan services to High Company employees (co-workers). In 2013, The Principal® produced a targeted campaign to promote the High Company LLC Retirement Savings Plan, educate co-workers on its benefits, and encourage them to become more retirement ready. The campaign, which won the 2014 PSCA Signature Awards for Highest Distinction in the Events and Workshops Division, is detailed below.

High Company History & Culture
High Company was founded in 1931 in Lancaster, PA. The third-generation, family-owned company is comprised of multiple business units across many industries including steel fabrication, precast concrete building systems, metal processing, safety consulting, commercial and multi-family real estate development and property management, architecture, and construction, and hotel ownership and management.

High Company has more than 2,000 employees spread across multiple states, primarily in the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions. The company prides itself on having a small-business environment with the benefits of a large company. The average High Company co-worker is blue collar, has a high school education, and has limited retirement knowledge. Co-workers are employed in a variety of shifts, and some work non-traditional hours. The employee base is currently growing and increasingly diverse.   

From a cultural perspective, the company’s corporate values include innovation, relationship building, and customer service — known as The High Way. The company encourages holistic wellness of its employees, from healthy lifestyle choices to sound retirement planning. High Company offers a 401(k) retirement plan (the Plan), with a 100 percent match on the first 2 percent of pay contributed, and places importance on retirement readiness. Leadership believes in investing company profits to secure the company’s financial future — a sentiment that is reflected through encouraging co-workers to contribute their earnings into the Plan to work toward a more secure retirement for themselves. Participative management and teamwork is also encouraged, which is evident in the active role that HR leadership takes in promoting retirement benefits internally.

Boosting Retirement Readiness
As part of High Company’s commitment to the financial well-being of its co-workers, the company sought to develop a communications campaign to promote its retirement plan benefits.

Specific goals of the campaign:

• Create retirement-driven communications to resonate with co-workers and generate results throughout a year-long education effort.
• Increase the number of co-workers taking advantage of personalized one-on-one retirement planning meetings via the Principal Retire SecureSM service.
• Target co-workers ages 50–55 with required one-on-one meeting attendance and increase attendance for this targeted audience from past years.
• Enlist the support of the High Company CEO, along with Corporate and Location HR representatives, to be ambassadors for the retirement plan, campaign, and one-on-one meetings.
• Improve overall retirement readiness efforts by increasing salary deferral levels.
• Work toward an 11–15 percent average savings rate (a combination of individual and employer contributions over an entire career) in order to replace 85 percent of income at retirement.
• Work within a limited budget.

The campaign design also needed to account for several challenges:

• Employee knowledge of the retirement plan varied — some co-workers were participating in the Plan while others hadn’t enrolled yet.
• Employee demographics spanned different ages and career stages.
• Most employees did not have e-mail access, so electronic communications had to be limited.
• The Location HR advocacy element had to be compelling and provide specific instructions on how they could help positively impact overall goals.

The High Way to Retirement
As a result of the specific goals identified by High Company, The Principal developed an innovative campaign to align the co-worker base, corporate culture, and desired retirement outcomes. The High Way to Retirement campaign theme reflected the company’s name, brand, and values.   

The campaign groundwork was laid from the HR level down, beginning by educating Corporate and Location-based HR representatives on the Plan features and key employee benefits. Given High Company’s various industries, shifts, and work environments, along with varying levels of retirement-plan knowledge among co-workers, it was essential for the local HR staff to support the education effort and on-site one-on-one meetings.   

Messaging incorporating the tagline “Where Do You Want to Go?” was designed to encourage co-workers to determine if they were on track for retirement, participate in personalized Retire Secure one-on-one meetings and take action to plan for adequate retirement income. The tagline was used in conjunction with images of driving and maps to relay that co-workers are in the driver’s seat for retirement — making the message relatable and emphasizing the importance of determining a retirement destination sooner rather than later.   

Critical campaign elements included a letter from the CEO to local HR representatives showing support of the campaign, along with an HR Train-the-Trainer web conference. HR representatives relied on this education to help target a total of 2,080 co-workers from 18 locations in five states. The group was made up of members from corporate, along with concrete, steel, and hotel divisions.   

To effectively reach the co-worker base, the campaign communication channels included e-mail, direct mail, a web conference, on-site meetings, personalized website information, and worksite posters.

Specific High Way to Retirement deliverables included:

• Training guide for location HR representatives, including:
  -Letter from the CEO
  -Overview of the High Way to Retirement campaign
  -Details on the Retire Secure one-on-one meeting experience (who is eligible, what to expect before, during, and after the meeting, etc.)
  -Co-worker communication samples
  -HR representative responsibilities and timing
  -List of co-workers at each location who were ages 50–55
• Personalized retirement outlook chart on principal.com to help employees understand their individual retirement readiness.
• Promotional postcard detailing the Retire Secure program, upcoming one-on-one meetings, and Retirement Outlook Chart.
• Life-stage flier with age-specific information (i.e., age 49 and under, ages 50–55, ages 56–64, etc.) reiterating the importance of attending one-on-one meetings, as well as a checklist of items to bring to the meeting and a save-the-date for local meeting times.
• ‘Sorry We Missed You!’ follow-up postcard sent to targeted individuals who hadn’t attended a one-on-one meeting.
• Worksite poster promoting and directing co-workers to the location of one-on-one meetings.

Campaign Results
Overall, High Way to Retirement met the company’s goals and was successful on multiple levels — by both qualitative and quantitative measures. From engaging the CEO’s support, to using a multifaceted approach that combined meetings with electronic and print materials, to incorporating HR reps to help promote the campaign from within the company, the campaign took a holistic approach. Segmented communications targeted co-workers at various ages and life stages, and personalized retirement outlook content on the employer’s Principal.com website paired with on-site Retire Secure one-on-one meetings created a customized experience for co-workers. Tuning in to the corporate culture and corporate messaging paid off for the High Company, with a significant response rate to the campaign and co-workers who increased their contribution percentages to be on the road to a more secure retirement.

Specific High Way to Retirement campaign results included:

• 100 percent attendance by Location HR representatives at the train-the-trainer session.
• 71 percent increase in attendance of Retire Secure one-on-one meetings from the year prior (455 co-workers, up from 266).
• 56 percent increase in number of co-workers increasing deferrals from year prior (122 co-workers, up from 78).
• 253 percent increase in the number of co-workers ages 50–55 attending the meetings (127 co-workers, up from 36).
• 49 percent increase in the total number of co-workers electing automatic deferral increases (148 co-workers, up from 99).
• Overall, there was an increase in salary deferrals for one-on-one meeting attendees (from 9.9 percent in 2012 to 10.3 percent in 2013).
• 21 percent increase in the average account balance from 2012 to 2013 (measured as of previous month’s end).
• Costs for the campaign were contained to $6.25 per co-worker.

Direct mail communications results were also tracked for the 2013 campaign:

• Promotional postcard — mailed to 2,080 co-workers and 401 of those individuals attended a Retire Secure meeting. Of those people, 177 increased their deferrals during their one-on-one meeting, with an average increase of 2.24 percent.
  -The response rate for this piece was 19.28 percent, compared to an industry average response rate of 1.22 percent.
• Life-stage flier — mailed to 1,965 co-workers. 395 of those individuals attended a one-on-one meeting, and of those people 174 increased their deferrals by an average of 1.95 percent.
  – The life-stage flier had a 20.10 percent response rate, compared to an industry average of 3.02 percent.

• ‘Sorry We Missed You!’ follow-up postcard — sent to a targeted list of 1,676 co-workers who had not yet attended a one-on-one meeting. This postcard helped drive 108 individuals to attend a meeting. 17 people increased their deferrals during a one-on-one meeting as a result, with an average deferral increase of 2.94 percent.
  – This postcard had an average response rate of 15.74 percent, compared to an industry average of 1.22 percent.

Since the 2013 High Way to Retirement campaign, the theme has continued to be used with materials promoting the High Company 401(k) plan and Retire Secure one-on-one meetings. This year, posters, appointment reminder cards, and other communications will yet again feature the High Way to Retirement look and “Where Do You Want to Go?” tagline. These items will be updated slightly to refresh the design, but the overall messaging and theme have become recognizable to co-workers and continue to resonate well.   

Darryl Gordon, Vice President-Human Resource Services, High Company LLC, summarized the campaign and the partnership between High Company and the Principal in his own words:   
“Working with the Principal Financial Group, we have been able to develop and execute an education strategy that has resulted in a 93 percent participation rate as of the end of 2013. A key component of our strategy is to regularly offer one-on-one financial counseling sessions through Principal Retire Secure. In 2013, 455 participants (a 58 percent increase over the previous year) benefited from meeting with a financial professional and, as a result, many elected to increase their salary deferral … Through various other communication mediums — direct mailings, online seminars and group meetings — The Principal has helped us achieve our goal of educating a multi-generational workforce at each step of the retirement planning process.”