Now that 401(k) Day (on September 6) has been celebrated and retirement awareness has been elevated, plan sponsors and advisers need to hunker down and prepare their participants for retirement solutions in the second half of the year – promoting employee participation and offering tools (like annuities) to enhance retirement outcomes.

We spoke to Timothy Pitney, Head of Lifetime Income Default Sales at TIAA, about engaging employees not participating in the company 401(k) and providing participants with more options in retirement that can provide higher income and more guarantees.

Q: What should plan sponsors be preparing their participants for in the second half of the year?

A: The second half of the year typically means Open Enrollment for most organizations. For the employer, this is the perfect time to highlight the benefits of saving and investing in the organization's retirement plan as people are reviewing all their other benefits.  For those employees already participating, it is an opportunity to review how they are using the plan: contribution rate, asset mix, planning for retirement etc. to make sure they are taking full advantage of all features of the plans, especially the match. Most providers have online tools or advice to help with goal setting and tracking progress that employees can leverage.