Recruitment & Retention
Principal Financial Group® | January 16, 2024
The picture of retirement is evolving with more Americans turning 65 in 2024 than any year1 before. According to new research from Principal Financial Group®, expectations around how and when to retire by generation vary greatly – placing increased focus on employee engagement and personalized investment strategies to help improve financial security and retirement readiness.
Phased retirement appeals to younger workers who want to retire earlier
According to the Principal Financial Well-Being IndexSM, among Americans in the workforce, gradually decreasing hours is the most desired way to retire (52%) and is most preferred by Generation X (67%) and millennials (56%). Baby boomers and Generation Z report similarities in how they want to retire, with nearly half preferring to move immediately from working full-time to not working at all. This echoes the most common approach taken by current retirees surveyed2, a group in which just over one quarter (28%) either transitioned careers or gradually phased down from their primary career.
“Attitudes and expectations for retirement continue to evolve, and we expect the desire to approach retirement in phases will continue to grow with future generations,” said Chris Littlefield, president of Retirement and Income Solutions at Principal®.
While there are some similarities in how generations want to retire, they have different expectations on timelines and the age at which they plan to retire. The youngest generation, Gen Z, expects to retire at 55 – approximately 10 years earlier than baby boomers (68) and Gen X (64), and four years sooner than millennials (59).
Employees prioritize saving for retirement
The survey revealed employees are focused on balancing basic needs with long-term savings outcomes against a backdrop of ongoing economic pressures that continue to top their list of concerns. Employees of all generations ranked saving for retirement as their top financial priority, followed by affording basic needs and paying off consumer debt3.
"Saving for retirement is the No. 1 financial priority for employees surveyed, which validates that access to workplace benefits and financial wellness programs is helping Americans save for retirement and achieve better financial outcomes,” Littlefield said. “Going forward, increased personalization as well as tailored savings and investment strategies that take into account an individual’s financial goals, lifestyle, health care needs, dependent care obligations, retirement income expectations, and other unique factors will help achieve improved financial security in retirement.”
Retention and recruitment of older employees critical for business success
Employee interest in phased retirement has added value for employers. Most employers (77%) agree that the knowledge older employees have about their company is crucial to their business’s success. Employers concerned with “having valuable employees retire” are more likely to take actions to either retain them or hire employees who previously retired from other companies.
Despite this, not all employers have experience with offering phased retirement. Only 11% of small and midsized businesses4 reported they offer phased retirement job opportunities on a regular basis compared to nearly one quarter of large businesses5. However, interest is there, as 61% of businesses that don’t offer a phased retirement still receive questions from employees about the options.
See all results and insights from the latest Principal Financial Well-Being IndexSM (PDF).
According to the Alliance for Lifetime Income
This wave included a survey of 137 individuals between the ages of 50 and 75 who consider themselves retired or have previously fully retired and gone back to work.
In order to be included in the survey sample, employees must work full-time, and their employer has to offer either health insurance or retirement as an employee benefit.
Businesses with 2-499 employees
Businesses with 500-10,000 employees
About the Principal Financial Well-Being IndexSM
The Principal Financial Well-Being IndexSM surveys business owners, decision makers and business leaders aged 21 and over who work at companies with 2-10,000 employees and offer either health insurance or retirement as an employee benefit. The nation-wide survey, commissioned since 2012, examines the financial well-being of American workers and business employers. In 2020, the Well-Being Index was transformed from an annual survey to a regular pulse, offering three waves, revisiting questions and measuring sentiment regarding timely issues in the small and midsized business marketplace. In the first pulse of the Well-Being Index in 2022, the employee audience was added to the survey to compare and contrast key sentiment from employers. The survey was commissioned by Principal® and conducted online by Dynata from November 6-13, 2023, with a total of 500 business owners, decision makers and business leader participants and a total of 200 employee participants. This wave included a survey of 127 individuals who consider themselves retired or have previously fully retired and gone back to work. The research report focuses on providing a holistic perspective on key trends and timely issues in the small and medium business market.
About Principal Financial Group®
Principal Financial Group® is a global financial company with 19,500 employees1 passionate about improving the wealth and well-being of people and businesses. In business for more than 140 years, we’re helping more than 61 million customers1 plan, protect, invest, and retire, while working to support the communities where we do business, and build a diverse, inclusive workforce. Principal® is proud to be recognized as one of the 2023 World’s Most Ethical Companies® by Ethisphere2, a member of the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index, and a “Best Places to Work in Money Management3.”
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Workforce Management
Mercans | January 24, 2024
Mercans continues to disrupt the global payroll industry and solidify its leadership position by rolling out exciting new features to its flagship, G2N Nova payroll engine. The recently launched features include game-changing technology and address some of the biggest challenges of global payroll, including international data privacy compliance and processing latency limitations.
Mercans’ G2N Nova leverages groundbreaking stateless application architecture to enable completely anonymous payroll processing. This unprecedented technological approach enables processing gross-to-net payrolls without any sensitive Personal Identifiable Information (PII) ever being passed from clients to Mercans’ G2N Nova global payroll application.
The stateless application architecture has never before been successfully deployed in the global payroll industry, and G2N Nova, is the only payroll engine that is able to generate 100% accurate gross-to-net calculations for 100+ countries. And that’s not all, it does so through a single, native platform in real-time without accessing or storing any identifiable information related to employees. This evidently innovative, payroll technology solution completely overcomes the complex data privacy compliance requirements, as confidential employee data never leaves the clients’ systems and is not needed by G2N Nova for gross-to-net payroll calculations. Thus, proving its technological prowess and independence.
Additionally, this approach is a game-changer for the industry because data breaches and ransomware attacks have created concerns about data security and privacy in the payroll sector. These concerns have been significant hurdles for companies trusting external service or software providers for international payroll processing. G2N Nova’s stateless app architecture eliminates these concerns entirely. Clients’ PII never leaves their data centers and payroll-related information used by G2N Nova is completely anonymized.
G2N Nova upgrade also includes a ground-breaking Continuous Calc feature that fundamentally changes how payrolls are processed. Until now, all payrolls had to go through a multi-step payroll processing cycle. G2N Nova breaks this legacy paradigm and introduces real-time net pay. The Continuous Calc feature maintains full gross-to-net values for each employee in real-time and automatically updates the net pay amounts of employees whenever there is an update to an employee’s record. This feature, thus, eliminates the need to wait for a payroll processing cycle to be completed to determine an employee’s net pay for a period. The gross-to-net values for all employees will be always available in real-time.
In addition, the new version of G2N Nova lays a foundation for incorporating blockchain technology into payroll processes, allowing instantaneous and 100% tamper-proof verification of payroll calculations and payments using blockchain technology. Blockchain will create a permanent, unchangeable record of real-time record of all payroll transactions and amounts — so no one can alter or remove it. This revolutionary approach, thus, solidifies the foundation for third parties, including financial institutions, tax authorities, etc.
The new ground-breaking version of G2N Nova offers global, gross-to-net payroll processing capabilities across 100+ countries, making it the world’s most advanced and powerful native payroll engine. G2N Nova is available as a SaaS or service delivery platform that can be used as a stand-alone global payroll platform or deeply integrated with all major HCM or Workforce Management software solutions.
About Mercans
Mercans is a global leader in payroll technology. Mercans’ revolutionary global payroll engine G2N Nova enables Enterprise businesses & HCM providers to perform gross to-net calculations across 100+ legislation.
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Employee Benefits
Springbuk | January 23, 2024
Reperio Health, the only provider of at-home and onsite biometric screenings with instant results, announced a strategic partnership with Springbuk, the leading health intelligence platform for employers and benefits advisors. By integrating Reperio’s full service biometric screening experience with insights from the Springbuk Activate partner marketplace, the solution will enhance healthcare outcomes through data-driven insights and personalized care.
The Springbuk Activate marketplace matches employers with possible partners based on their population's health needs or risks, showing them potential opportunities in savings and program engagement – all in one place.
"Reperio's innovative at-home and onsite health screening services bring convenience and timeliness to our employees,” said Joy Powell, CEO of Springbuk. “The instant results and metrics-driven insights empower our employer and broker clients and their members to take control of their wellness, marking a significant shift towards preventive care."
Reperio worked with Springbuk to develop a customized “card” within the Springbuk application that identifies the number of members in the employer’s population who may qualify for Reperio’s annual biometric screening program and a 12-month savings opportunity estimate based on assumptions of program success.
“We are excited to partner with Springbuk to offer their members an integrative, secure and easy-to-use biometric health screening kit,” said Travis Rush, CEO and co-founder of Reperio Health. “It’s our expressed intent to help them — and thousands of others — prioritize their preventive health with actionable insights. We’re proud to be in a collaborative effort to do just that.”
About Springbuk
Springbuk is a leading-edge health analytics intelligence platform that empowers employers and consultants to sharpen their benefits strategy, advance employee health, and contain costs. The innovative solution offers deep analytic insights, allows data-informed decision-making, and provides curated action steps and strategic direction to maximize return on employee benefit investments.
About Reperio Health
Reperio Health is the only provider of at-home and onsite comprehensive health screenings with instant results. An innovation in preventive care, Reperio’s patented technology pairs a mobile app with FDA-cleared devices, bringing a consumer-grade experience to biometric screenings. The solution modernizes the costly and inaccessible screening processes deployed today and reaches every corner of the healthcare industry—including employers, providers, payers and more. Clients are empowered by metrics-driven insights and HIPAA-compliant data integration to bolster their wellness, benefits and population health management offerings.
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