Latest Hewitt Assoc survey shows only 6% accept responsibility for retirem [View All]

[papau]

just because they get a 401k. So Employers feel that 94% of their employees still feel no ownership of the need for retirement income. The prior survey had 12% so it has dropped in half. This has not stopped Corporate America from killing (limit access to or freeze) their DB plans so as to gain a higher bottom line via a switch to 401k.

Indeed nothing effective is being done to change this employee attitude. The move to a "Auto Plan" features continues, but seems to have little effect. And improving participant education has actually been shown to be ineffective.

Only 6% of the respondents to Hewitt's survey said they are confident their employees will take accountability for their own retirement future this year, down from 12% in 2005, according to the press release on the study.  As a result companies plan to add automated features to their retirement plans such as auto enrollment, automatic contribution increases, and automatic portfolio rebalancing.
 
Hewitt's survey revealed that 23% of companies are very likely to add automatic enrollment features in their 401(k) plans by the end of the year, 13% are very likely to add contribution escalation features, and 20% plan to add automatic rebalancing of 401(k) accounts. Fifteen percent of respondents say they are very likely to close participation to new employees, six percent say they are very likely to freeze accruals, and five percent are very likely to change the design of their pension plan- 16%  of companies offering company stock will either limit employees' investment in company stock or eliminate it as an investment option in 2006 - and 79%of companies say they plan to make no changes to their company match. Eight percent say they plan to add/increase the company match, and only 1% say they plan to reduce or eliminate the company match.

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My Shock and awe moment was reading that 30% of the non-highly paid would not invest in a 401k or like program regardless of the size of the match!

Looks like America will indeed have a retirement problem in 50 years - and it won't be because of Social Security.