Communicating with employees about their retirement benefits can be a challenge, but the process is getting easier. Many of the barriers that prevented employees from enrolling are coming down because the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor embraced concepts like automatic enrollment and automatic deferral increases, and the investment community created autopilot investments, such as target-date funds and lifecycle funds.

Employees still need to understand what is happening and why. They need to appreciate the benefit they are receiving and develop a fuller understanding of how saving for retirement fits into their overall financial picture. This cannot be automated.

These ten techniques for improving communication about retirement plans are broken into three categories: better attendance, understanding the concepts and taking action.

Better Attendance

Provide food. Getting attendance at meetings can be one of the greatest challenges to communication. Even if you have the best presentation ever, it does no good if no one is there to hear it. Anyone who has been in a company kitchen when a platter of extra sandwiches from a meeting gets dropped off knows exactly what I am talking about. Nothing brings people to a meeting like a slice of pizza.

Offer giveaways. Having some small giveaways or raffle items can help increase attendance. However, my experience has shown that the impact is felt not during the first meeting, but during subsequent meetings. Employees tell their friends about some of the giveaways they received, and that sparks interest for others who normally might not have attended.

Make meetings mandatory. Many companies are reluctant to do this. However, making the meetings mandatory assures the plan sponsor that employees will attend. Remember, half of the battle is just getting people in the seats.

Use multimedia formats. Web seminars are great for reaching employees who are remote or who cannot break away to attend a live presentation. House the presentation on the client's intranet for viewing at a later date. Don't try to do a Web seminar and a live meeting simultaneously. Keep them separate. Too often, technical difficulties present themselves, and you are stuck with a room full of people twiddling their thumbs while the conference call number is being worked out.

Understanding The Concepts

Make it personal. Tools such as paycheck calculators and gap-analysis statements that are customized to the employee can make the concepts seem much more real. Being able to see how contributing to the plan will impact their take-home income and how much they need to be saving can help demystify retirement saving.

Use props. Use giveaways that have meaning. For instance, when talking about mutual funds, hand out some items that are produced by the top holdings in the funds. For example, if Procter & Gamble is a top holding, hand out some Gillette razor blades.

Get the retirees to speak. Having employees who are retired or approaching retirement age speak about their experiences can help to put a face on retirement. They often hold standing and respect among the rest of the employee population.

Shift the focus to income, rather than accumulation. Describing retirement needs in income terms, rather than accumulation terms, resonates more with employees. Plan participants are much more familiar with the concept of a paycheck than with a large lump sum of money. When talking about retirement, focus on how much income their savings might generate. Or, rather than showing participants how much larger their savings will be by contributing an additional 1%, explain how much longer their income will last, based on that extra 1%.

Taking Action

Management buy-in. Even the best retirement plan won't be successful if employees do not take action. My experience has shown that participation rates are generally higher in companies where senior management touts the retirement plan as something of value. A client of ours recently changed its retirement plan vendor. As part of the rollout, the CEO made a point of speaking at each of the employee presentations in 11 different locations to emphasize the value of saving for retirement. The fact that the CEO was personally speaking to employees left no question that the retirement plan was important. Plan participation at this manufacturing company is north of 90%.

Measure it. Having some benchmarks to track the success of communication strategies is critical. Tracking participation, deferral percentages, number of funds, percentage in cash and other metrics all help show whether or not various educational efforts are working. Having employees respond to surveys or evaluations after educational sessions are conducted can provide insight into whether the topic was useful, as well as what additional topics might be desired. By measuring the outcomes, you can better focus the efforts to make sure that action is being taken.

When plan communication is executed successfully, employees feel empowered and secure, advisers reap an increased enrollment, and employers gain employee good will.

Kendall B. Storch is the director of retirement services at Longfellow Benefits, an insurance brokerage and consulting firm in Boston. He can be reached at kstorch@longfellowbenefits.com.