How Can Employers Encourage Young Workers to Save for Retirement?

The brief’s key findings are:

• One reason young workers don’t save for retirement is that the event is so far off.

• An experiment to boost their saving tested different ads:
  • abstract or concrete wording (“why you should save more now” vs. “how you can save more now”); and
  • a short- or long-term savings goal (“how much to save from each paycheck” vs. “how much to save over your lifetime”).
• The most effective ads paired abstract wording with a long-term goal and concrete wording with a short-term goal.
• Therefore, communications designed to spur saving by young workers should match the framing of the message to the time horizon of the savings milestone.