Annette Grabow believes the key ingredients to a successful 401(k) plan are getting workers' attention, winning support from senior leaders, workers helping colleagues and providing valuable information.

These are the components she's put into place as the manager of retirement benefits for M.A. Mortenson Co., an international construction firm. It's a winning recipe, as Grabow has been named by EBN the 2010 Benny Award honoree for Benefits Leadership in Retirement Planning.

At the Minnesota-based company, Grabow is responsible for designing, implementing and administering qualified and nonqualified retirement plans, and chairs the retirement plan committee. She has been at the company, which employs about 2,200 workers, for 26 years and has 21 years of experience in the retirement industry.

'Sharpen Your Pencils,' sharpen your skills

In 2009, Grabow and her team rolled out a retirement and financial education campaign titled "Sharpen Your Pencils." The "Sharpen Your Pencils" campaign idea occurred to her because "it was the fall season, and my kids were going back to college," she says, adding that themes for other annual campaigns on retirement education can come to her during the middle of the night or when she is driving.

The back-to-school themes also focused on the fact that many employees may not have learned about managing their finances in school, so they needed to carve out time from their workday for a workshop to fill in the gaps as adults.

Retirement education in the workplace "seemed like something that was bigger than one company. I felt it would affect our economy, the lives of people I knew, the elderly," she says. "Mortenson is an outstanding employer who recognizes the importance of offering retirement plans and other well-designed benefits to its team members. A bonus to that for me is that the senior leadership fully understands and supports the need for educating team members."

Grabow teamed up with Financial Finesse, a financial education provider, for the 2009 campaign, which involved workshops tailored to specific employee demographics to help participants develop individual retirement plans. The workshops also taught employees how to save, invest and withdraw assets from the plan. Workers were educated about other sources of retirement income outside their plans.

During the campaign, each employee was mailed an invitation with a lunch box theme, and those who attended a workshop received a "lunch backpack" with fun school supplies.

Grabow tries hard to ensure that mail sent to workers' homes about the workshops is eye-catching enough that they can't resist opening it. It also makes her job easier that workers are required to pay attention to the company's intranet to check out what is going on within the organization.

Campaign success

As a result of the campaign, nearly 90% of workers who participated in the behavioral change workshop decided to make at least one change to improve their finances. Company data show most workers made two or more changes after attending a financial education workshop.

The most common changes included reviewing the asset allocation in their retirement plan, using the calculators and worksheets provided by financial wellness providers and increasing contributions to 401(k) accounts.

Grabow and her team had employees take a financial wellness assessment provided by Financial Finesse. The results revealed the Mortenson workforce was quite financially savvy.

For example, about 80% of survey participants report they have a handle on their cash flow and spend less than they make each month, while 63% said they regularly pay off their credit card balances in full. In addition, 35% of employees who took the assessment said they are comfortable with their amount of nonmortgage debt.

When Grabow and her team polled workshop participants, they found the majority of employees are now better prepared to make a financial decision, consider financial education to be an important part of their total benefits package, plan on increasing their retirement plan contributions or changing the way they invest, and would recommend a workshop to someone else.

"Once we get employees to attend the workshops, we know it's going to be successful because we are providing a level of education that you don't normally see in the workplace," notes Grabow.

The Grabow philosophy

"The goal on the annual campaign is to educate our employees. We feel that education enables our team members to save more for retirement," says Grabow. She adds that while the team works to educate them about the 401(k) plan, "my team realizes that we need to educate them about their finances as a whole. Research suggests employees who are financially healthy are better workers," she explains.

"Every year, it's our goal to educate our workforce about their retirement plan, finances and retirement issues. Employees are more likely to adequately save for retirement when they know how to take care of their finances," she says.

At M.A. Mortenson, founded in 1954, employees do a substantial amount of internal training regarding their jobs. The company employs many engineers and superintendents who have a heavy training schedule.

"We don't want to make the retirement education workshops burdensome to them, where they start to say, 'Oh no, another workshop,'" she says. Her team has to be mindful of the number of e-mails she sends out about workshops, understanding that any medium of communication used too much will turn workers off to the message content.

Her team also depends on senior leaders and managers within each business group to encourage workers to attend the workshops. Her strategy also entails designating certain workers as retirement advocates.

"The advocates work tirelessly to deal with people on a one-on-one basis, asking coworkers, 'Why haven't you been attending the workshops?' Or, 'This is a really great workshop because I attended it last year,'" she says. "They are really good at communicating with their own group. They know their people better than I know their people."

Professional, personal roads

In the mid-1980s, Grabow worked in the legal department at the company, but moved to finance after a couple of years. Back then, the company did not have an HR department, so the finance team handled employee benefits.

Grabow recalls when an HR department was created, company execs decided that managing the retirement benefits would stay housed within the finance department.

"As I had been administering them since 1989, I stayed in the finance department. The more I learned about retirement plans, the more I talked to team members about retirement, the more passionate I became about getting our team members to enroll," she says.

She's just as passionate about her home life, the mother of three sons and married for 26 years to her husband Ty. In her spare time, Grabow also enjoys gardening, spending time on projects with her husband, is active in her church and enjoys horses - all activities she'll no doubt continue once Mortenson's retirement "school" adjourns and she retires herself.

Follow EBN on: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Podcasts