Similar to what we stressed earlier this week, people are living longer. No worries though because you feel that you have your future retirement perfectly planned out. But.. what about your small business’s employees. They need to worry about this too and the classic retirement age of 65 years is no longer going to prove possible without your help. First, people are not just living long but they are living better and healthier. This means the average person should be able to continue to work well past age 65. Further, if they did retire at 65, but lived to 100 or older, that means they saved enough to live on for possibly 40 years or more?! Highly unlikely unless they were in the right plan. Especially unlikely when looking at a recent data from Fidelity stating that “the average 401(k) balance of a 55-year-old who has been participating in a company plan for at least 10 years is $233,800. Sounds good so far. If that individual is making $60,000 per year and continues to contribute 10 percent of his income to his plan, he’ll retire on-time at about 75 percent of his final year’s salary. Of course this also assumes that Social Security will continue to pay out at its current rate of return.” So what can you do to ensure your employees are taken care of in old age? TLNT offers up some advice, “It has been well documented that financially distressed employees incur far higher health care costs, are distracted at work, and have much higher rates of absenteeism. A few may even be tempted to find ”alternative” sources of income from amidst your inventory.

So what to do? Following are some of the essential ingredients in crafting a healthy financial relationship with your employees – and helping to insure both their current — and future — financial health”:

1. Adopt automatic 401(k) enrollment
2. Build in the most aggressive annual escalators possible
3. Provide HR intervention to reduce abandonment
4. Supplement the services of your 401(k) provider with a qualified asset management/advisory company
5. Match, match, match
6. Host a financial wellness “fair”

Click on the link below to see the explanation behind each.