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Retirement savings matter for all employees

Posted On: Jun. 21, 2015 12:00 AM CST

Retirement savings matter for all employees

AT&T Inc.'s Your Money Matters program helps pave the way for its workers' retirement, according to Marty Webb, vice president of benefits in Dallas.

Both Your Money Matters and Your Health Matters are part of the You Matter program, with Your Money Matters primarily focused on pensions and savings, said Mr. Webb.

“In fact, pensions is one of the areas we feel we've made some great strides in,” he said.

Mr. Webb also noted that employees' 401(k) accounts are often their greatest source of wealth and what they think about when preparing for their retirement years.

“We feel we have an obligation to help people prepare for that as best they can,” including its health and financial aspects, “and so we do what we can to educate employees to participate fully in their 401(k),” said Mr. Webb. “We are close to 90% of our employees who are actively participating in their 401(k),” he said.

Similar to its approach on health issues, “we also send out a lot of education on Your Money Matters, and we do seminars that focus on anything from investing to budgeting to meeting (workers') retirement needs,” said Mr. Webb.

“And we've even done a couple of things that focus on specific sectors of employees,” he said. The most recent was a video on Generation X employees, he said.

AT&T has also held a seminar looking at women's investments, he said. And one still in the planning stages will focus on people who are nearing their retirement years.

AT&T seminars are filmed and then made available on the Web, he said. They can have attendance ranging from 50 to 100 people “and we'll speak directly to them, but we'll also broadcast it at the same time so anybody can participate and look at the presentations, and they can ask questions over the Web also,” Mr. Webb said, adding that thousands of people will sometimes participate.