Everyone loves to be recognized for a job well done, and our clients are no different. That’s why we’re so excited to announce that two of our clients, RELX and Seagate, each took a first place Eddy Award in the financial wellness category for the communication campaigns our team helped create.
Segal Benz supported RELX’s efforts to help its employees better understand how to make the most of their triple-tax-advantaged health savings accounts (HSAs) and to increase participant engagement. While RELX has high enrollment in the HSA among eligible participants, there were certain behaviors that the benefits team was looking to improve, such as encouraging people to save more and getting them to invest their savings if they're eligible.
To help employees maximize their HSAs, RELX and Segal Benz collaborated to create a communication campaign focused on encouraging employees to save enough in their HSAs to cover their health plan deductibles, learning the difference between a spending and saving mentality, understanding when and how to invest their balances, and repositioning the HSA as a retirement savings vehicle. This campaign included an infographic mailer, a decision support tool, a series of targeted emails, and web content to reinforce the messages, and it relied on proven behavioral economics tools to nudge employees in the right direction. These included loss aversion, rhyme, and self-relevant targeted messages.
The campaign was a stellar success. And the quiz continues to be a valuable resource to help employees maximize their HSAs.
Employees currently planning for and nearing retirement face more complexity and risk than any previous generation. Today’s defined contribution retirement plans offer tremendous flexibility and portability but put enormous responsibility on employees to save enough and invest appropriately to fund what could be a decades-long retirement. With the demise of defined benefit plans and the future of Social Security in question, today’s workers are also retiring with far less financial certainty, fewer financial safety nets, and a higher risk that they could outlive their savings.
Seagate understands that there are no simple solutions to the complicated and multidimensional topic of financial wellness and retirement planning. So they took an expansive approach to helping their employee population solve these problems.
Seagate embarked on an email campaign to help older employees be better prepared for their next step and to help all employees improve their financial wellness. While almost all employees participate in Seagate’s 401(k) plan (approximately 95% participation rate), Seagate wanted to create a comprehensive financial wellness campaign focused on encouraging appropriate behaviors—such as saving and investing—and addressing potential barriers to those desired behaviors—such as debt.
We applied both marketing and behavioral science principles to Seagate’s campaign, achieving success within the first two weeks.
The P&I Eddy Awards were created over 25 years ago to identify and reward the best practices in providing investment education to defined contribution plan participants. The awards are judged by an independent panel of plan sponsors and consultants. Awards are given out in six categories: plan conversions/403(b) consolidations, financial wellness, plan transitions, pre-retirement preparation, ongoing investment education, and special projects. They’re broken down by corporate employee size and/or type of firm. Entries can be submitted as joint (plan sponsor and service provider), plan sponsor only, or service provider generic.
Learn more about this year’s Pensions & Investments Eddy Award winners.
We're proud to work with organizations that value their people. If you want to learn more, we’d love to talk.
Laura Hensley, Senior Writer and Editorial Manager, is an award-winning writer and advocate for the reader. She works with some of our largest clients.