Lumen Technologies

Telecommunications and technologies company Lumen Technologies, in Monroe, Louisiana, has been working hard to boost its retirement plan participation.

Last April, in observance of Financial Literacy Month, Lumen launched several initiatives to that end, with goals of also driving employees’ retirement salary deferrals higher, engaging participants who were forgoing company contributions, and hosting webinars on personal finance topics such as wills, trusts and powers of attorney.

Another initiative was presenting webinars for those approaching retirement, on subjects such as “Medicare 101,” “Medicare Advantage 101” and Medicare and health savings accounts.

And a further one specifically targeted participants who had enrolled in the plan but neglected to contribute or who contributed too little to receive the full company match, says Frances Brown, director of retirement and policy at Lumen Technologies.

Lumen also launched a separate webpage with the help of the company’s financial wellness provider, SmartPath Financial, to target eligible nonparticipating employees.

To reach each of these different employee groups, Lumen worked with digital engagement and communications platform company Evive “to do very specific targeted electronic communications across all of its benefit areas,” says Lumen’s retirement plan adviser, Sondi Johnson.

Using the Evive tool, Lumen can get out employee-cohort-specific messages, Johnson says.

For example, the tool “lets [Lumen] target people that don’t have a beneficiary on file, [and] they can send them electronic communications [tailored for the participant],” says Johnson, a senior relationship director at Principal Financial Group.

Principal worked with both Lumen and Evive, coordinating between the platform and plan sponsor, Johnson adds.

Among other projects, Johnson says, Lumen used Evive to collect “reporting on things like ‘Are people using our retirement wellness planner?’” That tool can help participants project whether they’ll have enough money saved at retirement, she says.

The financial wellness initiatives produced many positive results. Among these, plan participation rose from 91.3% to 93.8%; 37% of eligible nonparticipants did enroll in the 401(k); and 238 employees engaged with a SmartPath coach and started to participate in the 401(k) at a 7% average contribution rate. Additionally, 356 participants who were contributing less than 10% raised their deferral rate by an average of 3%; the percentage of participants receiving the full company match rose from 79% to 81%; and 401 employees made new 401(k) beneficiary elections. Over 400 employees attended webinars.

Within the 3,547 participants who visited Principal’s planner tool, 25% or 686 workers, upped their deferral rate by an average of 4.5%. Another 8% elected to enroll in the plan’s automatic escalation feature.

—Noah Zuss