Few employers have confidence that their employees are taking the required steps to meet their retirement savings goal, a new survey from Aon Hewitt finds.
Aon Hewitt’s survey of 210 mid- to large-sized U.S. companies representing 6.2 million workers revealed that only 30% of companies are confident that employees are sufficiently prepared for retirement, which is the same as last year. However, only 38% of employers are confident that workers are taking accountability for their financial future, and this is down from 43% in 2010.
In an effort to alleviate some of these issues, companies are trying to increase participation in savings plans by adding auto-enrollment features. Fifty-seven percent of plans now offer automatic enrollment this year, whereas only 24% did so in 2006. Of the plans that do not currently have this feature, 36% are likely to add it in 2011.
Automatic contribution escalation is another feature that is being offered more often. Now, 47% of plans offer auto-escalation of contributions, up from 17% in 2006. Automatic rebalancing is offered by 49%, up from 27% percent in 2006.