It isn’t because they don’t care, or aren’t trying, but plansponsors could be doing more to help workers save for retirementand often don’t see eye-to-eye with their employees on just howbest to do that.

That’s according to “Assumptions, Assessments and Actions: PlanSponsor Views of Participant Support and Advisor Partnership,” anational survey of plan sponsors conducted by American CenturyInvestment Services of Kanas City, Missouri.

The study took the answers from 310 sponsors (representing planassets of up to $100 million) to questions about plan priorities,strategies to win employee participation and the value of advisors,and compared some of those answers to employee responses.

Also read: Higher ed takes retirement lessons from corporateworld

The results indicate that sponsors sometimes try to achievegoals in ways that employees feel are less effective — whiledismissing some of the strategies that employees wouldprefer.

One of the perhaps more surprising findings: sponsorsunderestimate the amount of intervention participants want andexpect from them.

Sponsors also may be wrong in focusing on the company match asthe most important indicator of how successful employees are inpreparing for retirement (38 percent consider it extremelyimportant and 48 percent say it is very important).

Meanwhile, a more important indicator of preparedness – thepercentage of employees who contribute the maximum to the plan –ranks quite a bit farther down the list (17 percent of sponsorsrank it as extremely important and 48 percent say it is veryimportant; 8 percent say it is not important).

Sponsors also think they’re doing a “solidjob” in maintaining plan participation, but only 28 percentactually measure how ready their employees are to retire. They’refar more concerned with the actual overall participation rate (83percent measure for that) and the percentage of employees who takefull advantage of the company match (81 percent measure forthat).

Only 16 percent say they are “extremely concerned” thatemployees might not be saving enough for retirement. While sevenout of 10 sponsors see education and communication programs asextremely or very important, they’re not so sanguine about how wellthey work. Just two out of five say they’re effective.

More troubling, employers assume that 30 percent of their employeesprefer to be left alone, when in fact only about 16 percent oftheir employees actually feel this way, American Centurysaid.

There’s another disconnect regarding automatic enrollment. Only20 percent of sponsors said it is “extremely important” vs. 31percent of participants aged 55-65 who thought so.

Moreover, while more than 60 percent of employees favored an autoenrollment option that took 6 percent of their pay for saving, 57percent of companies still don’t offer auto enrollment atall.

Employers cited several reasons for not using auto enrollment,from fear of employee backlash (39 percent) to having to deal withadditional administration (16 percent) or the cost of a companymatch (6 percent). The good news is that 38 percent said they justhadn’t considered it yet.

The same holds true for annual automatic increases in the amountvested, with 21 percent of 55-to-65-year-old participants sayingincreases were “extremely important” vs. only 13 percent of plansponsors.

Then there’s the issue of plan advisors. Employees didn’t weighin on this one, of course, but three out of four employers useadvisors — and among those who don’t, 30 percent said they werelikely to in the future.

Commentary: What's really feasting on America's retirementreadiness