Clif Bar & Company

Clif Bar & Company was founded by owners who wanted to run the kind of company they would want to work for, says Chrissy Morss, director of employee well-being.

Its benefits include onsite childcare at a subsidized cost; paid volunteer time; paid workout time with an onsite gym and trainers; and paid, six-week sabbaticals. The company also offers generous retirement benefits: a 401(k) plan with a 100% match of 5% of deferrals and employee ownership for all employees, with an employee stock ownership plan contribution annually that averages 7% of employees’ salary.

Clif Bar also sometimes offers one-time financial benefits. Morss says that in 2018, when the ESOP had been in place about 10 years, the company recognized that employees might have been overly invested in company stock and that they might have other financial needs. “As a benefit, we wanted them to be able to diversify their retirement savings portfolio,” she says. “We also told them they could take cash out for other needs if they wanted, while making it very clear about distribution penalties.”

Morss says employees were only allowed to take a limited amount out of the ESOP. About 75% of eligible individuals elected to take a distribution, and the majority of those rolled it into the 401(k) or another retirement account.

Clif Bar made another one-time benefit offering during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when lockdowns were in place. In addition to implementing expanded distribution provisions of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, Morss says the company allowed employees to cash out a certain amount of their accrued time off. Employees had to show they had a COVID-related financial need. She estimates that around 30% of those eligible took advantage of the benefit.

Clif Bar & Company has been providing financial wellness education leveraging the services of its recordkeeper, Principal Financial Group, since 2009. Initially, it offered one-on-one educational meetings a few times a year with a Principal Retirement Education Specialist , as well as webinars. Employees were informed about the 401(k) plan and given specific education about the ESOP program to help them understand the benefits of employee ownership. The webinars were mostly focused on saving and investing, and occasionally covered retirement topics outside of the plans, such as Social Security and Medicare.

In 2020, Clif Bar expanded the one-on-one experience by engaging with its adviser from One Digital and a participant education firm, Financial Elements, which provides personalized advice and financial services that go beyond the 401(k) plan. Morss says the firm uses financial mentors that engage with individuals, and the Financial Elements webinars are on-demand, so employees don’t have to wait for the next webinar to be offered.

“We always wanted to support employees’ financial needs and meet them where they are,” Morss says. “They can’t focus on retirement if their immediate needs aren’t met.” She adds that automatic enrollment gets manufacturing employees to participate, but bringing in education and one-on-ones gets them engaged.

Keri Spanier, senior retirement plan consultant at OneDigital in Lafayette, California, says the implementation of Financial Elements came out of an urgent meeting about the effect the COVID-19 pandemic might be having on employees’ families. “The mentors assisted employees with whatever financial hurdle they might have to clear during this unprecedented time,” she says. “Get on a budget? Figure out what to do with COVID relief funds? Best place to borrow money if they had to? How to relieve financial stress? Help was there through this program for any financial question or concern they had.”

Clif Bar boasts a very high 98.1% participation rate in its 401(k) plan. Morss says she believes it’s not just auto-enrollment and financial education that contribute to the high rate, but also the generous employer match. There is also no service requirement for eligibility for the plan.

Morss says eligible employees used to be auto-enrolled at 3% of pay, but Clif Bar boosted that to 5% so participants could get the full employer match benefit. The company used to use automatic deferral escalation, but when COVID hit, it decided to pause that feature “to be sensitive to the special circumstances the pandemic imposed,” she says. The company plans to resume auto-escalation in 2023.

Morss also attributes the high participation rate to Clif Bar’s robust onboarding. “Onboarding is one week long and a whole day is spent on the retirement plan,” she says. “We take them to the website and show them all the tools.”

—Rebecca Moore