6 ways to increase enrollment in your group retirement plan
Once you have great benefits in place, you want them to actually get used. Here's how to get your team excited about — and enrolled in — their GRRSP
February 13, 2025
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Is your organization having a tough time attracting and retaining top talent?
You’re not alone.
- Statistics Canada recorded nearly more than 545,000 vacant positions across all sectors in the fourth quarter of 2024.
- The Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses (CFIB) reported in September 2024 that four out of ten small firms report skilled labour shortages, a two-year low.
- A survey by Express Employment Professionals found that 89% of Canadian employers anticipated hiring challenges, citing factors like increased job market competition and uncompetitive benefits.While we can blame an aging population and the lasting effects of the pandemic, the challenge moving forward is clear: to compete for top talent, you need to offer more than just a salary.
Many organizations are getting creative by offering valuable perks like a Group Retirement Savings Plan (GRRSP). A GRRSP offers employees a convenient and easy way to save for retirement, especially when you match their contributions. It is a compelling benefit for any employee who could use a boost saving for retirement.
Unfortunately, your job isn’t over once the GRRSP program has been rolled out. There’s a fair amount of work involved in getting a new plan up and running - you want to make sure you’re getting a good ROI for your efforts. To see the real impact of offering this benefit, a significant number of employees need to opt into the program — and ideally be able to easily see their savings grow over time.
It’s vital to have an ongoing strategy to ensure your employees are enrolled and getting as much value out of the GRRSP as possible. In this article, we’ll go over exactly why your enrollment rate is so important and share some strategies for boosting that rate and increasing overall engagement.
Why increasing enrollment in your GRRSP is important
If your organization is serious about creating a better employment experience for employees, it’s critical to ensure they receive (and understand) the complete value of your total rewards package. You don’t want your top in-house talent to leave retirement savings on the table, especially if you offer matching contributions.
Why?
Here are three good reasons:
- Group retirement plans help support the financial wellness of employees, which improves morale, overall satisfaction, workplace productivity, and more. The higher the percentage of your workforce enrolled, the more likely you are to see those improvements.
- Employees who enroll and see their wealth grow are likely to turn into ambassadors of the group retirement program for new or prospective hires. The more ambassadors you have, the more helpful they will be for increasing adoption.
- Enrollment can also serve as a proxy to retention: If an employee isn’t enrolled in the GRRSP, they are less likely to be in it for the long haul. When employees opt in, it shows commitment.
Why you should set a target enrollment rate
Like most things in business, you’re more likely to achieve meaningful success if you set an enrollment target. Based on our data, a company that provides contribution matching should expect as much as 80% adoption amongst their employee base. Employers who don’t offer matching can expect somewhere between 40% to 50% of employee adoption. Which is to say, if you want to double your adoption rate, offer matching!
Whether your organization is matching or not, it’s helpful to name a GRRSP champion within your organization who will not only help administer the program, but will also work toward achieving a high enrollment rate. An HR specialist is usually a good choice since a GRRSP program is beneficial for employee engagement.
6 tips for increasing enrollment
Whether you’ve recently launched a brand new program or you’re looking to get more employers interested in an existing GRRSP, it’s important to remember that communicating the value of the plan is not a “one and done” proposition.
It’s helpful for an organization’s GRRSP champion to create a communications strategy around ensuring employees are making the most of their GRRSP. This may be part of a broader employee engagement strategy or something that stands on its own. This doesn’t have to be a complex undertaking; it could be as setting calendar reminders to prompt employees to set up, check growth, and tweak their contributions.
Looking for ways to keep the GRRSP top of mind? Here are six things you can do:
1. Send out reminders via Slack / email / internal messaging system
Your GRRSP communications strategy could revolve almost exclusively around messages or push notifications through a variety of channels that you know employees engage with. How often you send reminders may depend on your internal communications culture, we recommend sending out at least one reminder every quarter.
If a large cohort of new employees join the company at any given time, it may be helpful to create a six-week communications strategy to remind them to enroll as soon as possible.
Like all employee communications, the reminders should be short, simple, and include a call to action with a link where they can sign up for or sign into their GRRSP account.
When it comes to content, consider sharing information like:
- If your plan has matching contributions in the range of 3% to 6%, remind employees how much they stand to gain every year by doing some math for them. (e.g. With a 5% match, someone who earns $100,000/year will receive $5,000 in employer contributions to their RRSP, in addition to their own contributions of the same amount. That’s $50,000 over five years — and that’s not including compound earnings!
- If your plan does not include employer-matched contributions, you could share the same math as above but point out that an employee setting aside 3% to 6% of their pay cheque could yield meaningful results.
- Information on how to maximize their personal contributions by setting up automatic deductions from their paycheque so saving is automatic and hassle-free.
- Reminders to check in on the performance of their plan. If your GRRSP program provider has an especially intuitive online interface, this can actually be enjoyable!
- If your GRRSP program includes access to portfolio managers, it may be helpful to remind employees to check in with a financial advisor to ensure their portfolio is aligned with their current financial goals.
- Information on how they can borrow from their GRRSP balance for the Home Buyer’s Plan (up to $35,000 each year toward buying or building a home for themselves or a disabled relative) and the Lifelong Learning Plan (up to $20,000 with a maximum of $10,000 each year to cover the cost of full-time or part-time education or training).
Your GRRSP provider may provide template reminder emails that make it easier to get started with your communications plan.
2. Take advantage of seasonal cues
There are several times a year when financial planning may be top of mind and worth a reminder of an employee’s GRRSP.
- Start of a new year (Jan 1): Help employees make financially responsible New Year’s resolutions by reminding them what awaits them in their GRRSP program. It’s helpful to send out a few extra prompts in December and January.
- RRSP contribution deadline (March 1): Since a GRRSP is directly linked to their RRSP, they’ll want to maximize their tax savings by contributing as much as possible before this deadline.
- Financial Literacy Month (November): Employees may be seeing other cues in the media so a timely reminder of their GRRSP this month may spur them to enroll or seek out financial advice through your provider.
- Bonus time or annual salary increases: What better time to increase GRRSP contributions than when employees get a bump in their salary? This is an ideal moment to remind them of the math, e.g. what a 5% contribution looks like over one year, five years, etc.
With each communication, you may want to remind employees that they have access to a GRRSP with perks like on-call financial experts and investment portfolios they can tailor to their needs which is available to all Weathsimple clients. Unique to the GRRSP is a hassle-free way to save for retirement with automatic deductions from every pay cheque.
3. Create a personalized contribution calculator
If you want to get creative, set up a personalized contribution calendar for your employees. Seeing how much retirement savings they’re missing out on by not contributing can be an eye-opening incentive to enroll or reset their contributions.
4. Offer financial education sessions
You can add to the value of your GRRSP program by empowering employees to hone their financial education. Engage your GRRSP provider to offer content, webinars, or “lunch and learns” to enhance the financial literacy of your employees and empower them to be in control of their finances.
One way to ensure you get maximum engagement for these sessions is to come up with a list of potential topics and poll your employees on what would be most interesting to them.
5. Benefits review during all-hands or town hall meetings
Larger organizations that hold regular all-hands or town hall meetings could add a 10-minute item to the agenda: How to make the most of your compensation package.
It can be powerful when leadership speaks to the value of the GRRSP and other benefits available to employees. The GRRSP champion could create talking points that emphasize the value of the program.
6. Make it a part of Employee Assistance program(s) (EAPs)
Employers with EAPs could include references and mentions of their matching program and access to group accounts. In particular, with the availability of numerous account times like a Group RRSP, Group TFSA, or Group FHSA, employees can specifically save toward the specific goal they are most focused on. Whether it’s a rainy-day emergency fund or their first home, mentioning the group account options in EAPs is a great way to push employees to enroll and take advantage of the benefit!
Most employers that offer a GRRSP program genuinely care for the financial well-being of their employees — both now and in the future. When you encourage your staff to make the most of your program, you’re also boosting their job satisfaction, peace of mind, and inherent self-worth.
That’s a goal worth setting.