Bruce Bruinsma

CEO & Co-Founder

Make it High Impact to get the biggest return on your organizational investment of time and money.

To the Point: To Retain key employees and staff

Here are some key thoughts:

A suggested mission statement for your retirement plan: “Our retirement plan’s mission is to inspire, inform, encourage and enable our staff to plan and implement better today so they can keep making a difference for a lifetime.”

“Impact” - our context here means, “Changed lives”! Can a retirement plan really do that? Change Lives?

The future impact is clear. A Future-Funded Ministry Plan providing the financial freedom to minister when the paycheck stops is a great source of encouragement when you get to that point.

Unfortunately, many of us treat the retirement plan as a necessary program that only impacts the future and has little relevance to the present, except to drain assets that could be used for another purpose. We acknowledge that our act of putting aside resources for the future impacts the future. We are less clear how this act can and does impact the present.

Lives are changed when we stop going in one direction, and turn to face another. The decision to make that change, a conversion if you wish, is critical. When facing financial confusion, debt, arguments with one’s spouse, and questionable money-based decisions, our response is often fear, doubt, anxiety, and or a decision to “duck” and ignore the realities. This faces us in a wrong direction.

If we change to face a different financial direction, lives change. A comfort level and the development of key skills such as understanding what is true today, knowing what is needed for tomorrow, and taking action to address those needs impacts not only tomorrow, but how we act today. Translating needs into plans, learning the language of investing, taking personal responsibility for current and future circumstance, communicating with a spouse or significant other about money matters, deciding on what steps to take, and then following through are all life skills needed today. Interestingly, all these skills can be developed with high impact within one of life's great laboratories, the Ministry Retirement Plan.

You create a high impact retirement plan when the following are in place:

1. A solid, well communicated plan design
2. Best of Class Investments guided by an Investment Policy Statement
3. An Oversight Committee that is focused on communicating and overseeing the plan
4. The metrics and measurements of participant involvement are regularly reviewed
5. Easily communicated basics and principles mentioned above are made available and put in front of participants
6. Ministry leadership models the actions and attitudes necessary to manage a successful plan

A retirement plan is necessary in order to Attract, Retain and Impact your staff. A clear mission statement is certainly a good place to start. Stay tuned as we continue to expand on the topics prompted by a Changing Landscape. We’ll be To the Point.

There are undoubtedly additional reasons why the retirement plan increases retention. If you will share them with me, I will share them with all.

Sieze the Day!