Episode 10: Gonzaga University

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Hello and welcome to Revamping Retirement, a podcast brought to you by Cammack Retirement Group, where we tackle the retirement plan related issues plaguing fiduciaries and plan sponsors. Our host, Mike Webb, has more than 25 years of experience in the retirement plan industry and is a nationally recognized subject matter expert. We hope you enjoy Revamping Retirement.

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Thanks, Kara. Kara McCauley, as always, our producer. And welcome, everyone, to another exciting edition of Revamping Retirement. I’m, of course, Mike Webb. And we have a very, very special guest for you today. Her name is Lisa Schwartzenberg, and she’s from Gonzaga University. And I’m just so excited to have her. She’s going to talk about all the wonderful things that they’ve been doing with their retirement plan. Lisa, welcome aboard. How are you doing today? I’m doing great. Thank you for having me.

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The first thing I want to talk about with you is, I’m sure our entire audience is familiar with Gonzaga, but tell me a little bit about yourself and your role and some of the fun things you’re doing at Gonzaga. Well, I have actually been with the university for almost six years now. I am the Assistant Director of Benefits and Wellness here for the university. I came from a very large brokerage house where I worked eight years on the health plan.

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And so that’s been a little bit of a transition learning retirement, but I have managed to dig my heels in and quickly get up to speed on all things retirement. Yeah, I see that a lot. mean, I’ve been on the advisory side for 27 years now, but I do see that a lot. see a lot people who go from the advisory slash brokerage side over to the plan sponsor side, and they’re usually glad they did. imagine you are as well. I just want to talk a little bit about

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the unique culture that you have at Gonzaga. Can you tell us a little bit about it and the role that it plays in regard to employee benefits? you’re not like a lot of other universities in that respect. So we’re a Jesuit university, one of about 27 in the country. And it was a really easy transition for me because it was something that I held a lot of value towards with what the university’s values were. So in our mission statement, we talk about

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intentionally developing the whole person, both intellectually, spiritually, culturally, physically, and emotionally. And that just leads itself to all things benefits. And so when I’m working with employees, that’s always in the back of my mind that those are the things that I need to be focused on making sure that those employees are kept whole and that we’re really compassionate in what we’re offering. And then we’re very holistic. And so

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We started moving in the holistic direction in our wellness program six years ago when I started because it was already in our culture and our mission statement. So why not expound upon that and extend that throughout the entire benefits package. As part of that culture, you want people to feel financially secure. You’ve done some things with your retirement plan to achieve those goals. Can you tell us a little bit about them? Yeah. So we are very active with our retirement plan.

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We want employees to be comfortable with their retirement plan, what they’re investing in, or wanting them to be saving enough money. And so we have things like automatic enrollment. We have required minimum contributions. We have a very generous employer contribution. And then we also, we do a lot of education. Recently, we have consolidated down to a sole record keeper. That was a big move for us.

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As you can imagine, there was a lot of things that we had to look at. We have a retirement committee and as a Jesuit school, we are big on shared governance. And so there are colleagues across campus that are on this retirement committee. And we looked at it for probably about two years before we made the decision to move to a sole record keeper. But it was part of our mission to make sure that we’re offering the absolute best that we can offer to our employees. Since that move, I will tell you it has made a

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big change in our educational efforts because now I have a single message going out to participants. I can control it to a degree, but I’m able to make sure the messaging fits what we’re doing at the time. Also, it’s important for our educational efforts because I have guest speakers that can come onto campus. We just do a lot of outreach. We have consultants on campus five to six times a month working with our employees.

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For us, it’s very important to make sure our employees have great access to their vendors and also the investment options that they have the education on those investment options as well. How many record keepers did you have before the change to a single record keeper? We had two record keepers before we had a third way before I got here. It’s been closed out for a while. But as the committee was looking for some of the determinations on the decision of who we chose, it was kind of looked at with how many people did we have defaulting?

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into one record keeper versus actively electing another record keeper. So it’s part of the decision process that we looked at all of those things. And it’s not going to come surprise for those of us in the audience who are in the university community. A lot of universities have two vendors. it’s always been our recommendation as a firm to get to a single record keeper. There’s just so many, so many synergies as you’ve discussed. it’s wonderful that you’ve taken that step. How long have you been doing auto enrollment? Is that a relatively new?

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Phenomena? No, we’ve been auto-enrolling since about 2012. It does take a lot administratively just to make sure that everybody’s getting enrolled, but once you get your processes and systems in place, it runs fairly smoothly. And then we do checks and audits every once in a while. But again, one record keeper makes it so much easier when you’ve got those files going over automatically and they’re watching your eligibility with you. Yeah, in terms of universities, you’re probably one of the ones who’s

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been doing it the longest. A lot of universities, sometimes because of required minimum contributions, don’t have automatic enrollment at all. So kudos to you for having it. Now it’s going on five years. That’s a lifetime in retirement plans. That’s a wonderful thing that you’ve been doing. Given your location, you have an interesting dynamic with engaging new hires in the retirement plan benefit, of course, other benefits as well. Can you talk a little bit about that?

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Yeah, so we’re located in Spokane, Washington, which is about five and a half hours from Seattle. And we as a university relocate about 200 employees a year to this area. 200 employees a year? We do. We have grown. I was looking back over some of our numbers the other day, our headcount, when I started, you six years ago, we were at about 1100 employees and we’re out 1350 right now.

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and the growth, it looks like we’re going to continue to grow. We’re not growing at a fast pace, a slow and steady pace, but we have been relocating. A lot of our faculty come in from out of the area. Some of our senior administrators come from out of the area. We do have a lot of people that do relocate here to take positions at our university. How do you handle the issue of having all these people you’re relocating to Spokane?

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and somehow getting them engaged in your benefits as well. Well, and that’s that has been something that I’ve been pretty proud about. Part of my job is that nurturing and caring, concerned employee was really how do we make sure that the new hire process is the absolute best it can be? And it doesn’t take long to get the phone calls from stressed out employees moving across country.

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and not understanding where they’re coming to. You know, they might have come here one time for an interview, but they’re dragging their family across the country and they don’t have benefits because a lot of universities end benefits on May 31st and if you get rehired, you don’t start benefits until September 1st. And so it can be very stressful for our incoming employees not knowing how to access benefits or how to help find providers. And so

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Some of the things that we have been doing for a couple of years now is turning on some of our benefit plans and programs early. And I’m not talking about the medical plan because we have a list of rules that we have to follow, but I’m talking about some of our other benefits, like we use Health Advocate and that service helps our employees find doctors and providers, move medical records, sets appointments. We have our employee assistance program through SupportLink.

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And they have financial and legal counseling available. So if someone’s trying to buy a home and they need some assistance, they have assistance there or the stress that comes with moving. They can access those providers early at no cost and they don’t have to have coverage. And then recently I’ve been working with TIA to put in their new relocation package and they’re going to help throw assistance at finding moving companies, finding housing, finding real estate agents, giving information about Spokane.

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and just kind of walking participants that are moving to Spokane through the process so that it takes the stress out. So I figure if we can get employees engaged before they even step foot on campus with our culture of caring concern that it’s even going to make them happier when they get here finally and see that we do truly have that compassion for our employees. And let me get this straight, Tia, your retirement plan record keeper is also engaged with the relocation of these employees.

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is from what you’re saying, correct? Yes, we were putting in a portal, a relocation portal through TIA’s banking program. They have a relocation product that they offer to their schools that have their product. And it’s no additional cost to the schools, but it basically allows participants to access these services at no cost. they’re looking at how do you move your pet to your extra car, to your family? They’ll help find a rental.

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And so in our market, there’s a housing shortage. And I hear from new employees coming in that they had a hard time locating an apartment or finding a rental house, or if they did, it wasn’t in the best neighborhoods. And so we’re really trying to make that experience of their move unique so that when they get here, they’re just not stressed and they’re not worried about their family. They can actually come to work and work with our students and do what we’re here.

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to do and that was basically educate our students. So it sounds like you do a fantastic job of not only engaging employees benefits wise but in just about every way when there are new hires. How do you keep that momentum going on an ongoing basis? What ways do you ensure employees are aware of the benefits three years from their hire, five years from their hire, 10 years in? So I’m a slim staff. I only have three people in my benefits group and we manage all the leaves and accommodations.

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all the benefits retirement. So we have a lot on our plates, but we strategically put together a marketing program where we take a benefit a week and we strip apart benefits. So this is something that’s very easy. It doesn’t cost anything to do, but let’s take your EAP program. Your EAP is not just counseling. You probably have financial assist, legal assist. There’s probably will prep. There might be elder care services, a concierge service built into that.

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And that’s all bundled underneath the guise of an EAP. What we do is we strip apart our programs here and then we focus on one unique thing that our programs do and we market that to our employees for a week to two week period of time. We do that through what we call morning mail, but it’s a daily email that goes out every morning and we are constantly advertising. So whether it’s

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Teladoc services or nurse line services or one of our financial assist programs. We’re advertising that on a weekly basis. In addition to that, we’ve also stripped down how we’re marketing our benefits on our website. And so instead of showing benefits the way I purchase benefits, meaning here’s your medical, here’s your dental, here’s your vision, I’m actually taking my benefits and putting them into life events.

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So I actually on our website have a relocation tab and in that tab we’re talking about here’s all the benefits that Gonzaga offers our employees from all the different vendors that we have and here’s what they actually do for you and we put those things in layman’s terms so that even people who are not benefits savvy can really understand that we have those programs available and what those programs are going to do for them. And I think you hit upon a really important point at the end there. I think

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A lot of these programs tend to be a little bit too jargony, for lack of a better term, and participants become more confused actually than what was the goal, which was to make them less confused about their benefits. So I think you hit upon a really important point for our plan sponsor audience out there is I don’t think you can ever be too simple in how you communicate benefits to employees. I do agree. I do tend to rewrite a lot of marketing materials from my vendors because it really has to be bare bones. It just has to say, what does this benefit do for them?

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If it’s got a lot of jargon in it, they won’t read it. If it’s got too much wording on it, they won’t read it. And so I do access a lot of marketing departments and work with them directly with our different vendors, Tia included. And we do a lot of rewrites because it just needs to make sense to someone who’s not in the business of benefits. And I think that that unfortunately is where some companies get lost and why marketing doesn’t work if you’re just taking

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the information from the different vendors that you’re using. It kind of has to be tailored to your audience. 100 % agree on that. And that’s a wonderful takeaway. One of the unfortunate byproducts I see with a lot of universities, and you probably have experienced this as well, being able to engage employees, particularly in the retirement plan, is that they become a little too engaged in certain things. And what I’m getting at here is loans. A lot of my university clients suffer from participants taking out too many loans from their retirement plan.

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And now if they weren’t engaged, they wouldn’t even know they could borrow. But because they’re so engaged in the retirement plan, they know, hey, if I’ve got a need, I don’t necessarily have to have an emergency fund. I could just go to the retirement plan and borrow. What kind of things have you put in to prevent overutilization? Do you restrict the number of loans, for example? We do. Our plan is restricted to two loans, and you can only loan off your voluntary source. That right there probably limits a lot of utilization.

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You can’t borrow from the employer sources and you can only borrow, you can only have a maximum of two loans from even the voluntary source. So right there, I think you’ve done a lot to restrict the, are those fairly new developments or have you been, have you been restricting loans like that for some time? We’ve been restricting loans like that for some time. It dawned on me that people needed education when I had an employee come to me and ask me how to get a retirement loan because he needed to buy a new iPad. You’re kidding. And no, I’m not kidding. So.

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you know, four or $500 purchase, maybe. I’m not sure if he was going for a full iPad or the Mini. What dawned on me though was that employees didn’t really understand the loan process and they didn’t understand the ramifications of taking loans. And so we stepped aside with our consultant and created a loan policy document that really outlined how to take a loan, when to take a loan, what the process was.

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We talked about the interest rates. talked about the fees associated with it. And I send that document out every year with my annual notices. I actually include the loan plan policy document because I want to be very transparent about the loans. I don’t ever want anyone to come back and say they didn’t understand about the loan policy or the loan that they took. We continuously

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Look at that document to make sure that it’s up to date. I know that there’s a lot of litigation going on right now with loans, and so we’ll continue to watch that with our consultant to make sure that we have everything we need to. But it’s really to protect the employee to make sure that they know what they’re doing to their retirement savings when they take those loans. And if they choose to take them, that’s their decision. But we want them to make a good, educated decision on those.

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Well, you’re definitely well ahead of the curve, particularly university plan sponsors in that regard. And Lisa, this has been fascinating. There’s been, I think, a lot of wonderful takeaways for other plant sponsors to learn from Gunzac as an example. And I thank you for joining us today. Yeah, thanks for having me. For Karen McCauley and our entire production team, I’m Mike Webb, and this has been Revamping Retirement.

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The content in this podcast is for institutional investors and plan sponsors. The information is intended to be educational and is not tailored to the investment needs of any specific investor. All examples of investor gains and losses are hypothetical and intended to illustrate the importance of early saving and consistent retirement contributions over time. Investment decisions should be based on an individual’s own goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance. Nothing in this content should be considered as legal or tax advice and listeners are encouraged to consult their own lawyer.

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accountant or other advisor before making any financial decision. Thank you for listening to Revamping Retirement.