Helping busy plan sponsors to enroll and educate employees (2018)

User experience research and design

Target: Benefits administrators, SMBs

Challenge: How might we fill the last mile gap, helping plan sponsors to enroll and educate difficult-to-access employees? 

Insight: We found that many plan sponsors were going the extra mile to make sure employees were taking full advantage of their 401(k) plans. They often had to dig deep to find the information that they needed to motivate an employee to use the benefit. We wanted to help facilitate that action, by making it easier and more efficient to get information into the employee’s hands. 

Process – 

• Individual interviews with plan sponsors, focus groups, observation of education activities, advisor interviews, and synthesis of discovery

• Ideation and concept development with business stakeholders

• Concept testing, iteration, concept refinement

• Synthesis, report out, and hand-off to engineering stakeholders

Prototype: We combined features from several prototypes that ultimately allowed the employer to quickly (just a few clicks) send or print out enrollment information or frequently needed education for employees. 

Results: 80% of employers are satisfied with the feature. Work is underway to iterate and improve the concept. 41% of employees who were sent e-mails using this system opened the email – far exceeding Direct Marketing Association benchmarks of 9% open rate. 

Artifact: Demo: Enroll and Educate.