The research described in this paper was shown to increase workplace retirement plan adoption with small business owners through the application of a unique combination of two artefacts.
There are currently over 55 million working Americans that do not have access to a workplace retirement plan (CRI, 2018). Small business owners, employing 50 or fewer employees, are a significant catalyst to this problem. 67% of small business owners do not offer their employees a workplace retirement plan (GAO, 2017), and 33 million Americans work for a small business (GAO, 2017).
There is a significant difference in retirement preparedness between workers that have access to a workplace retirement plan and those who do not, as illustrated in Figure 1 (following page).
When workers are not offered a workplace retirement plan, 67% have less than $1,000 saved for retirement. But when they do have access to a plan, that figure goes down to 9%.
The purpose of this research is to discover why small business owners are so much more likely to not offer a workplace retirement plan compared to larger companies and what methods we can employ to increase that adoption rate.
Authors: Peter W. Kirtland
Link: https://doi.org/10.28945/4574
Cite as: Kirtland, P. (2020). Nudging small business owners to adopt workplace retirement plans. Muma Business Review 4(15). 139-141. https://doi.org/10.28945/4574