Automatic Enrollment: An Easy Way to Help Employees Start Saving for Retirement

Your church or ministry wants to offer meaningful benefits that serve employees well while also attracting and retaining talent to sustain strong operations and leadership for years to come.

Your employees want a clear, simple path to saving for retirement and building greater financial stability for the future. One retirement plan feature can help support both goals: automatic enrollment.

What is automatic enrollment?

Automatic enrollment is a retirement plan feature that enrolls eligible employees in the plan automatically unless they choose to opt out. Instead of requiring employees to take the first step on their own, automatic enrollment makes retirement saving an up-front, built-in part of the benefits experience.

Employees often do not consciously decide against saving; they simply do not take action to get started. Automatic enrollment helps that tendency toward inaction work for employees instead of against them. By creating a direct on-ramp to saving, it can help employees begin contributing sooner and make retirement readiness feel more approachable.

Why should churches and ministries consider automatic enrollment?

For churches and ministries, automatic enrollment can be more than a plan design feature. It can be a practical way to care for employees, strengthen a benefits package and encourage long-term financial stewardship.

When employees are automatically enrolled, they are given a simpler starting point. They still can opt out, but the default experience encourages action rather than delay. Over time, that can help improve plan participation and contribute to the overall health of a retirement plan.

How can automatic enrollment help employees save for retirement?

Many employees want to save for retirement but may hesitate because they do not know how much to contribute or how to invest. Automatic enrollment removes those initial decision points by enrolling employees at the plan’s default contribution amount and directing contributions to the plan’s default investment. Employees can change those elections or opt out at any time, but doing so requires action on their part.

For employees, this can create a clearer path toward retirement saving. For employers, it can demonstrate a thoughtful commitment to employee well-being and long-term financial health.

Is automatic enrollment right for your organization?

Automatic enrollment may be a valuable option if your church or ministry wants to encourage retirement plan participation, support employees more effectively and strengthen your overall benefits strategy. It can help make retirement saving a more natural part of the employee experience while still giving employees the choice to opt out.

Before deciding, it is important to review your retirement plan goals and consider how automatic enrollment may fit your organization’s needs. GuideStone^® offers additional resources to help churches and ministries evaluate plan design options and prepare employees for retirement.

Where can I find more plan design and automatic enrollment resources?

See how one ministry employer used automatic enrollment to increase employee participation and contributions in our Automatic Enrollment Case Study.

If you are considering automatic enrollment for your church or ministry’s retirement plan, our Automatic Enrollment Manual provides more information about why automatic enrollment might be right for your organization or church.

To help ensure ongoing compliance and effective administration of your plan, download our Annual Checklist for Plans with Automatic Enrollment, a practical resource designed to help employers review key notice, enrollment and operational requirements each year.

You can also review Designing a Strong Retirement Plan for guidance on identifying retirement plan goals and preparing employees for retirement.