CATEGORIES

You must choose a category for your entry in the P&I Eddy Awards. Please carefully read the category descriptions below and choose the most appropriate one for your entry. All entries may include both print and online materials.

Pensions & Investments reserves the right to move your entry to a different category upon review.

FINANCIAL WELLNESS
Workplace experts increasingly warn that employees’ financial stress can damage their productivity, health and ability to retire. This category aims to recognize efforts that take a holistic view of employees’ financial well-being outside of traditional retirement programs. Those efforts include, but are not limited to, education or tools regarding student loans, health savings accounts, emergency savings or debt reduction and household budgeting.

ONGOING INVESTMENT EDUCATION

Entries should educate existing employees on the investment options of the plan and how it helps them save and reach their retirement goals, or new employees about investment options of an existing plan. Entries must focus heavily on the investment process.
Note: Campaigns aimed at educating participants on the importance of saving in their defined contribution plan for retirement, via their 401(k) plan, for example, can be included in this category. If retirement-preparation campaigns are specifically aimed at workers 55 and up, those materials should be submitted in the Pre-Retirement Preparation category.

SPECIAL PROJECTS
Showcase special investment education and communication programs. Entries can focus on one objective, such as trying to increase the employee deferral, educating participants to more broadly diversify their asset allocations, or bolstering employee financial wellness. Entries can be as simple as a single postcard or as complex as a multi-pronged campaign.

CONVERSIONS
This category recognizes campaigns devoted to explaining the move to a new record keeper. This category also includes consolidation of record keepers by 403(b) plans. None of the entries needs to include all of the investment education expected in the ongoing education categories.

PLAN TRANSITIONS
Entries in this category should reflect the investment education and communication — in print and/or online — necessary when employees are eligible to participate in a new defined contribution plan. Such eligibility most often occurs because of mergers, acquisitions and spinoffs, or when a defined benefit plan is frozen and its participants are moved to a new or existing DC plan. The completeness of the investment education typically ranges from what is found in investment education materials for new employees to what is found in conversion materials.

PRE-RETIREMENT PREPARATION

Awards in this category will recognize organizations that have done the best job of educating participants nearing retirement — specifically, those age 55 and older — on how much they should save, how to make their savings last and other steps they need to take for a financially secure retirement. These campaigns should also include information about non-retirement plan matters, such as retiree medical, housing and other expenses, and Social Security. Note: Campaigns that are not focused on those 55 and up do not qualify for this category, but could be submitted in the ongoing investment education category.

Campaigns must have been launched no earlier than Jan. 1, 2023, and include metrics to gauge effectiveness.

Having trouble deciding which category to enter? Contact Ann Acum at ann.acum@pionline.com for assistance.