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Brooks named Syracuse entrepreneur in residence for Launch NY
A Buffalo–based nonprofit group aiming to aid entrepreneurs and young companies across upstate New York has a named an entrepreneur in residence for the Syracuse area. Paul Brooks, former vice president for entrepreneurship programs at the Tech Garden in downtown Syracuse, will serve in the role for Launch NY. The organization focuses on a 27-county […]
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A Buffalo–based nonprofit group aiming to aid entrepreneurs and young companies across upstate New York has a named an entrepreneur in residence for the Syracuse area.
Paul Brooks, former vice president for entrepreneurship programs at the Tech Garden in downtown Syracuse, will serve in the role for Launch NY. The organization focuses on a 27-county region stretching from Buffalo to Syracuse and down to Binghamton.
It launched in 2011 and has received $1.2 million in financial support from the federal Economic Development Administration and the John R. Oishei Foundation and Margaret L.Wendt Foundation, both of Buffalo.
“We want to be the group that connects the different organizations that currently exist,” says John Seman, Launch NY president and CEO. “We want to work with them and help support their efforts.”
The group’s regional entrepreneurs in residence are a key to that goal, Seman says. In addition to Brooks, Launch NY has one stationed in Buffalo and one in Ithaca.
The organization’s goal is to have one entrepreneur in each of the major cities it covers, Seman says.
The entrepreneurs will serve and coaches and mentors to companies in their areas and help connect them with resources around the state, Seman says. Brooks, for example, could help a company in Buffalo tap into resources at the Tech Garden through his connections or help a Syracuse firm reach experts in Buffalo.
“Making connections is one of the foremost attributes of this organization,” Brooks says. “There are … throughout Upstate a lot of people trying to do similar things. The advantage we will have at this point is having feet on the street in several different locations.”
The local entrepreneurs will also be looking for potential investments. Launch NY is working to raise another $5 million by the end of the year so it can begin making investments in Upstate businesses, Seman says.
The group’s regional entrepreneurs will make recommendations to its board of directors, which will make final investment decisions.
“My role is to identify entrepreneurs that are promising and have the opportunity to grow,” Brooks says.
Brooks joined Launch NY in March.
The group is not targeting specific industries, but is looking mainly to aid companies a bit beyond their initial startup stages. The goal is to help firms on the cusp of going to market that have already gotten over their early hurdles and may have already been through an incubator program, Seman says.
Partners in Launch NY include Erie County Industrial Development Agency, the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics & Life Sciences at the University of Buffalo, Tompkins County Area Development (TCAD), and the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.
The organization is based on JumpStart, Inc., a similar group located in Cleveland, Ohio.
In addition to its local entrepreneurs in residence, Launch NY is planning other efforts, including an online resource meant to help Upstate’s startup community make connections with regional and national resources and long-term business opportunities.
IdeaCrossing is a Web–based resource to help entrepreneurs find mentors and potential investors, access a regional directory of service providers, invite existing advisers to collaborate online, and more.
The group announced IdeaCrossing in March.
Contact The Business Journal at news@cnybj.com
SBA deputy administrator discusses business ownership at veterans’ event
ONONDAGA — After they’ve served their country, veterans are encouraged to seek the services of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for help in launching and growing their own business ventures. That was the message Marie Johns, the SBA’s deputy administrator, delivered in her remarks during Operation: Start Up & Grow, the SBA’s sixth annual
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ONONDAGA — After they’ve served their country, veterans are encouraged to seek the services of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for help in launching and growing their own business ventures.
That was the message Marie Johns, the SBA’s deputy administrator, delivered in her remarks during Operation: Start Up & Grow, the SBA’s sixth annual business conference for the military community held Thursday, March 21, at Onondaga Community College (OCC).
More than 250,000 service members are annually transitioning out of the military possessing the skills, experience, and leadership to start businesses and create jobs in their communities, Johns said in her remarks.
“So our goal at the SBA is to make sure that we give each of you the tools you need to make informed decisions about whether you should pursue business ownership, and if you do, how to make that business grow,” Johns added.
For the SBA, that means providing the capital, the counseling, and the access to federal-contracting opportunities to help veteran entrepreneurs start their business and grow successfully, she said.
Supporting loans to small businesses that have challenges obtaining credit in the conventional credit markets is one of the most important services the SBA provides, Johns said.
“So, our loan programs have a strong track record of leveraging billions of dollars in credit to help small-business owners and entrepreneurs nationwide start and grow their businesses so that they can create jobs,” Johns explained.
For example, in fiscal year 2012, SBA approved more than 3,200 loans to veteran business owners supporting a total of more than $2.1 billion in capital. The agency’s Patriot Express loan program was specifically designed to offer low-interest loans to members of the veteran and military community, and it supported more than $580 million in lending to veteran entrepreneurs and small-business owners over the past four years, Johns said.
Counseling is another important component of the SBA’s services, Johns added.
Nationwide, the agency annually counsels more than 200,000 veterans, service-disabled veterans, and reservists. And the SBA conducts the counseling through a network of resource partners that includes the Small Business Development Centers, such as the one at OCC, the Women’s Business Centers, and the SCORE volunteers.
“We engage our veterans through that network of 68 local SBA district offices, 16 veteran business-outreach centers, and our partnership with 1,000 Small Business Development Centers, and we have 12,000 SCORE counselors,” Johns said.
SCORE is a Herndon, Va.–based nonprofit association dedicated to helping small businesses get started, grow, and achieve their goals through education and mentorship.
The SBA also has a program called Boots to Business, which is focused on providing the training, the tools, and the resources veterans need to make the successful transition back into the community as successful business leaders, Johns said.
In 2012, the SBA joined with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense to launch that pilot program.
“Boots to Business provides entrepreneurial training to transitioning service members from every branch of the military at 151 locations across the country,” Johns said.
The program includes an exposure to entrepreneurship as a potential career path that’s offered to every service member as he or she is leaving the military. Those interested can opt-in to a program tract that offers an in-person training course, including interactive classroom-based learning. The next step is a feasibility analysis on a potential business plan, and if a veteran wants to continue, there’s an eight-week online course on the fundamentals of small-business ownership.
“For the men and women of our military who want to leverage their skills to become small-business owners and entrepreneurs, this program provides exactly the types of resources and counseling that will increase the likelihood of their success,” Johns said.
The agency also plays a role in helping small-business owners pursue federal-government contracts. More than $90 billion of the almost half-a-trillion dollar government-contracting market goes to small businesses. Federal contracting provides “a critical tool” for small-business owners to help them grow, drive innovation, and create jobs.
“At the SBA, we’re responsible for ensuring that 23 percent of the federal-contracting dollars go to small businesses, and furthermore that 3 percent of that federal-contracting spent goes to service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses,” Johns said.
In a separate interview with The Central New York Business Journal, Johns said the federal sequestration budget cuts are having an impact on the SBA. The cuts will affect the agency’s loan-subsidy dollars “to the tune of about $900 million,” which will impact the SBA’s ability to support “probably 2,000 fewer loans,” Johns said.
“We’re doing our best to manage our resources as efficiently as we can, but it does have a detrimental impact on our ability to serve small companies.”
Johns has served as SBA’s deputy administrator since June 2010. Under her leadership, SBA had back-to-back record years of lending, supporting more than $30 billion in loans annually in 2011 and 2012. As the deputy administrator, Johns is focused on ensuring that underserved communities, including women, minorities, veterans, and young people, have the tools and resources they need to start businesses and create good-paying jobs.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
Annese expects to relocate local office to aid growth
Company generated $66.9 million in revenue in 2012 SALINA — Annese & Associates, Inc. could soon be looking for new space in the Syracuse
State to increase minimum wage, federal government may follow
New York employers who employ workers in jobs that pay minimum wage will have to gradually increase their wages over the next three years. The New York State Assembly on March 28 gave final approval to the state-budget proposal after the state Senate had approved the spending plan earlier in the week. The state budget
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New York employers who employ workers in jobs that pay minimum wage will have to gradually increase their wages over the next three years.
The New York State Assembly on March 28 gave final approval to the state-budget proposal after the state Senate had approved the spending plan earlier in the week.
The state budget includes an increase in the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9 an hour over three years, and employers of teenagers in part-time jobs will get a taxpayer-funded subsidy to cover most of the increase.
The minimum wage will gradually increase over the next three years from $7.25 to $8.00 per hour on Dec. 31, 2013; to $8.75 on Dec. 31, 2014; and then to $9.00 per hour on Dec. 31, 2015, according to the office of State Assemblyman Samuel (Sam) Roberts (D, WF–Syracuse).
But one of New York’s two U.S. senators is proposing federal legislation to boost the national minimum wage even more than that.
U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D–NY) on March 19 announced a new effort to increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour over the next three years, with future increases indexed to the rate of inflation.
The nearly 1.8 million New Yorkers earning the minimum wage or just above the rate, representing 20 percent of all workers statewide, is prompting the effort, Gillibrand said in a conference call with reporters.
Gillibrand is pushing for approval of the “Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013,” a bill of which she is an original co-sponsor.
The senator, hailing from the greater Albany area, is citing information from the Washington, D.C.–based Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which says the bill would boost the incomes of an estimated 1.8 million New York workers and would generate an estimated $3.2 billion in wage increases for New York workers.
EPI calls itself a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank on its website.
For New Yorkers working their hardest and making the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, it’s getting harder and harder to make ends meet with the rising cost of gas, groceries, rent, and other basic necessities, Gillibrand contends.
“It’s simply unacceptable that in New York, a single parent working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year to support a family earns just $290 a week. That’s only $15,000 a year without any time off,” Gillibrand said.
That annual salary for a minimum-wage earning, working poor, family of three is $3,000 below the poverty level on an annual basis, making it difficult to make ends meet and increasing dependency on government-assistance programs, according to Gillibrand’s office.
The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 would boost the minimum wage to $21,000, lifting those working poor families above the poverty line, the Democrat says.
Gillibrand contends that the higher wage would spark new consumer spending at New York businesses.
Beneficiaries
The Democrat’s office broke down by region the number of those who could potentially benefit from the higher wage.
The Central New York region has average of more than 500,000 workers, over 100,000 of which, or 20 percent, would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage.
In the Southern Tier, nearly 55,000 of the region’s nearly 240,000 workers, representing about 23 percent of workers, would benefit from such an increase in the minimum wage. In addition, the North Country region has, on average, over 170,000 workers, nearly 38,000 of which would benefit from this increase in minimum wage, representing about 22 percent of workers.
The proposal would increase the minimum wage to $10.10 in three 95-cent increments over a three-year period. The legislation would stipulate indexing the wage to inflation in order to keep up with the rising cost of living.
The purchasing power of the minimum wage is currently at a historic low, Gillibrand said, with the last increase in the federal wage in July 2009. If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be estimated at more than $10.50 an hour today.
The legislation would also raise the minimum wage for tipped workers for the first time in more than 20 years, raising it to 70 percent of the regular minimum wage.
Adult workers make up a majority, or about 90 percent, of the lowest-wage earners in New York who would benefit from an increase, as opposed to teenagers in after-school and seasonal jobs, according to Gillibrand’s office. Additionally, 54 percent of low-wage New Yorkers who would see increased wages under this proposal are women, including many with children, and about half of whom are minorities, the Democrat said.
“Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 [an hour] would benefit close to 17 million women in America. 17 million women catching up in the economy almost overnight. Millions of families immediately closer to stable ground,” Gillibrand said.
Support and opposition
The Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2013 has “broad” support across the business community, Gillibrand’s office contends. Supporting organizations include The Main Street Alliance, U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, Business for Shared Prosperity, American Sustainable Business Council, and employers like Costco, along with New York–based organizations, including the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce and the New York City–based Business and Labor Coalition of New York (BALCONY).
Other organizations have expressed opposition to the increase in the minimum wage.
The newly approved state budget adds to the cost of doing business by extending assessments on electric, natural gas and steam energy (a total of $1.5 billion), and by increasing the minimum wage, a measure whose impact will be felt by many businesses, with total cost estimates as high as $2 billion per year, Heather Briccetti, president and CEO of The Business Council of New York State, Inc., said in a statement issued March 29.
“Though the budget includes a minimum-wage tax credit for students that mitigates the adverse impact on employers, The Business Council would have preferred a straightforward training wage. And, while the final agreement on both of these measures is an improvement over the original proposals, they are not consistent with a strategy to promote economic growth and the creation of good-paying jobs.” Briccetti said.
In a statement released March 12, the directors of two business-advocacy groups expressed concern over the potential for a higher minimum wage.
Michael Durant, New York state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, and Brian Sampson, director of Unshackle Upstate, said they believed that such an increase would have “a significant negative impact on small business.”
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
O’Brien & Gere hosts SU students for innovation competition
SYRACUSE — Engineering firm O’Brien & Gere on March 22 welcomed 24 engineering students from Syracuse University (SU) for an innovation competition called “Spark.” The
A.V.R.E. says NIB Survey is Misleading
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) recently published a story, entitled, “When it Comes to Hiring, Blind Workers Face Bias.” The WSJ article (available at http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2013/03/18/when-it-comes-to-hiring-blind-workers-face-bias/) summarizes the results of a survey of 400 hiring and human-resources managers conducted by National Industries for the Blind (NIB). The survey reveals that many employers still believe that people
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The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) recently published a story, entitled, “When it Comes to Hiring, Blind Workers Face Bias.” The WSJ article (available at http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2013/03/18/when-it-comes-to-hiring-blind-workers-face-bias/) summarizes the results of a survey of 400 hiring and human-resources managers conducted by National Industries for the Blind (NIB). The survey reveals that many employers still believe that people who are blind or visually impaired are unable to perform adequately in the workplace and that accommodations are too costly. These misperceptions help explain why the unemployment rate for people who are blind is almost 70 percent.
In fact, research and experience indicate just the opposite. NIB represents more than 100 agencies nationwide that run businesses that create meaningful employment opportunities for people who are blind. Some individuals work within the agencies, holding positions in manufacturing, services, administration, and management. Others work with agency staff to secure or maintain employment in positions throughout our communities. Physical and technological accommodations are often needed, but are much less costly and more readily available than the NIB survey revealed.
The Association for Vision Rehabilitation and Employment (A.V.R.E.) works with people who are blind or visually impaired in nine New York counties to create, identify, and secure satisfying, good-paying jobs. We work with employees and employers to provide the necessary accommodations and training for success in the workplace. Our employees and consumers are proof that vision loss is a challenge that can be overcome.
Our mission is to assist people who have a vision disability enhance life quality through attaining or maintaining personal and economic independence, and help remove obstacles imposed by vision disabilities. If you have a vision disability and want to work, or you’re an employer interested in learning more, contact us at (607) 724-2428.
Robert K. Hanye is the president and CEO of A.V.R.E. headquartered in Binghamton. Contact him at (607) 724-2428 or email: avreinfo@avreus.org www.avreus.org
Management Training While the Game is in Play
Instead of sitting in that management-training course this weekend watching the ivy grow over the windows, why not investigate how baseball teams deal with talent at their spring-training camps, which recently finished. After all, baseball has a better training record than the corporate world. The draft-picks all want a call-up to the big leagues during
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Instead of sitting in that management-training course this weekend watching the ivy grow over the windows, why not investigate how baseball teams deal with talent at their spring-training camps, which recently finished. After all, baseball has a better training record than the corporate world.
The draft-picks all want a call-up to the big leagues during the season, but no matter what happens, all baseball players train on the same training field. Unlike in your management-training course, at baseball’s major training event, the top players sweat it out alongside the new recruits.
Big-league coaches understand that if they only train the A-listers, then longer term, the whole team will underperform. The corporate training world, on the other hand, tends to focus management-training resources on senior executives in the belief that companies topple from the top down. If sales are sluggish, products are not innovative, and staff is unmotivated, it must be senior management’s fault.
In fact, companies are seldom decapitated from the top like Enron during the accounting scandal or Lehman’s following the mortgage crisis. Instead, you need to watch out below. It is your middle managers who have the greatest impact on your business and its success. They uniquely touch all stakeholders of your company — employees, supervisors, vendors, and suppliers. And thus, they uniquely can drive or break the motivation and engagement of your employees and other stakeholders.
Perplexingly, when it comes to management training, the key supporting role of middle managers is often overlooked. In fact, as a consultant to owners and executives, I have overlooked it to a great extent. Only in the past several years, as I watched the senior folks age and head toward their own exit, have I become aware of the weaknesses of the people behind them. We have had them “making the donuts” every day instead of developing their managerial, leadership, and strategic-thinking capabilities.
This training gap is counter intuitive to everything we teach in the hottest management courses today. We know that self-efficacy — that is, confidence in one’s ability to do his/her job — is what keeps employees happy and productive in job positions, and training and development develops the competencies and skills that in turn build self-efficacy. Put another way, investing in training is investing in productivity.
The average amount spent on learning and development by U.S. organizations, about $1,100 per year, decreased in 2011, according to the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD). A little more than one-third is invested in training managers and supervisors.
So in a worst-case scenario, our middle-manager ranks are filled with relatively competent guys and gals with low self-esteem — walking the company corridors dragging their feet, head down, and not making eye contact. They are shuffling around the office like a pitcher who has just let three hitters in a row hit homeruns. At the root of their lack of confidence is your failure to invest in developing the competencies and skills that they need to perform the job.
The solution is to personalize your management training program. Imagine applying corporate training to the Yankees or Red Sox. As the pitching coach, you spend most of your time with your top pitcher and send him to expensive executive pitching programs, but then he hurts his arm. A replacement with a few weeks of training courses under his belt shuffles up to the mound. Are you worried? It is no coincidence that the world’s top companies invest the most in training. When management shortages appear, they have the bench strength to fill them. Here are the first three steps to start personalizing your management-training program.
▪ Destroy manager prototypes. Most training programs develop models and prototypes of the perfect manager. In their quest for the model manager, training managers are not unlike the game developers we spoke of in the last column in the gamification of the workplace. They begin by defining “player types” based on stereotyped patterns and archetypes.
Gamification is an attempt to institutionalize employee development. The bug in these training programs is that they are more likely to build emulators than innovators. Instead of building the archetypal manager, the best training programs break down position, hierarchical structures, personality type, and behavioral patterns. Any prototyping is done around common objectives, goals, and values; managers start training in the self-concept stage in which they define the competencies and skills they need to develop to achieve these goals.
▪ Do not design your workplace around a management prototype. Even if you have a middle-manager prototype of behavior and personality skills and have hired all A-types or WXYZ-types, truth is, you will have a diverse array of management styles. You will have introverts and extroverts, administrators and innovators, and everything in between. Training programs build prototype managers that function optimally in an imagined business environment. Identify the competencies and skills required and provide a fluid training structure.
▪ Integrate specific training to your culture and integrate it with development activities that help the company. Sending people off to generic management-training programs that are not focused on your strategic goals does little except make people feel valued and uplifted. Training that works is designed to meet your culture, your strategic objectives, and is integrated with projects that further the goals of the company, excite the participants, and add value to all.
Moving back to the baseball field and the recently completed spring training, one can quickly see the difference real-time training makes. The game is in play and as the players are moving on the field, their grip, motion, and form are being tweaked by their coaches. If a performance gap opens up, any one of the players are ready to be called up to play on the field.
In the business world, in contrast, only a few percent of managers are ready to step in and fill a performance gap because only a few middle managers are invited onto the training field.
How is your company doing at developing the talent pool?
Thomas Walsh, Ph.D. is president of Grenell Consulting Group, a regional firm specializing in maximizing the performance of organizations and their key contributors. Email Walsh at tcwalshphd@grenell.com
NY-Sun to provide $13.5 million to reduce solar-installation costs
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday announced that $13.5 million is available for projects aimed at reducing the overall cost of installing photovoltaic (PV)
Elmira Savings Bank repays 75 percent of SBLF capital
ELMIRA — Elmira Savings Bank (NASDAQ: ESBK) says it has repaid three-fourths, or $10.5 million, of the $14 million it received from the U.S. Treasury
EBRI survey: retirement confidence remains low
Americans’ confidence in their ability to afford a comfortable retirement remains low, despite the improving economy. That’s among the findings in the 23rd annual Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS) issued recently by the Washington, D.C.–based Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). The March 19 report, entitled “The 2013 Retirement Confidence Survey: Perceived Savings Needs Outpace Reality for
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Americans’ confidence in their ability to afford a comfortable retirement remains low, despite the improving economy.
That’s among the findings in the 23rd annual Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS) issued recently by the Washington, D.C.–based Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).
The March 19 report, entitled “The 2013 Retirement Confidence Survey: Perceived Savings Needs Outpace Reality for Many,” finds the percentage of workers confident about having enough money for a comfortable retirement is essentially unchanged from the record lows observed in 2011.
What researchers found was 2008 really brought down confidence to a record low, and the confidence level continues to lag to this day, said Mathew Greenwald of Mathew Greenwald & Associates, Inc., a Washington, D.C.–based market-research firm that co-sponsored the RCS. Greenwald offered analysis on the annual survey during a video interview with columnist Robert Powell on the financial-news website marketwatch.com.
“As the economy has recovered, retirement confidence has not,” Greenwald told Powell.
Only one in seven survey respondents is confident they’ll have a comfortable lifestyle in retirement, the survey finds.
At the same time, more than half of the respondents express some level of confidence (13 percent are very confident and 38 percent are somewhat confident), but 28 percent are not at all confident (up from 23 percent in 2012 but statistically equivalent to 27 percent in 2011), and 21 percent are not too confident, the RCS found.
Retiree confidence in having a financially secure retirement is also unchanged, with 18 percent very confident and 14 percent not at all confident.
One reason that retirement confidence has remained low despite a brightening economic outlook and rebounding stock market could be that some workers may be waking up to a realization of just how much they may need to save, the RCS report says.
Asked how much they believe they will need to save to achieve a financially secure retirement, a “striking” number of workers cite large savings targets, according to the RCS report. The findings indicate 20 percent say they need to save between 20 and 29 percent of their income, and nearly one-quarter (23 percent) indicate they need to save 30 percent or more.
“Many people have learned through this period, caused by the shock, just how much they need to accumulate for retirement. We asked people how much they need to save for the rest of their work life. Among workers, we have large number saying at least 25 percent, an impossible task,” Greenwald said in the video interview.
Aggressive as those savings targets appear to be, they may not be based on a careful analysis of their individual circumstances. Only 46 percent report they and/or their spouse have tried to calculate how much money they will need to have saved by the time they retire so that they can live comfortably in retirement.
Another factor affecting retirement confidence is that some respondents “really aren’t prepared,” Greenwald said.
“The people who are reasonably prepared kept their confidence the same level down through the great recession, but the people who really are not prepared crashed and stayed low and they’re worried,” he added.
Greenwald also notes that worrying may be good for some people because that’s a product of a greater awareness of really what they need for retirement.
Retirement savings may be taking a back seat to more immediate financial concerns, the EBRI report says. Just 2 percent of workers and 4 percent of retirees identify saving or planning for retirement as the most pressing financial issue facing most Americans today.
Both workers and retirees are most likely to identify job uncertainty (30 percent of workers and 27 percent of retirees) and making ends meet (12 percent each), according to the RCS report.
Employers have a key role in retirement planning, Greenwald says, noting that auto enrollment in a company’s savings plan can be quite helpful.
“Employers who have plans who automatically put people in at a higher level, like six percent, will be doing their workers a favor,” Greenwald said in the video interview.
People know they should be saving more, he said, and Greenwald believes employers who make more aggressive use of auto enrollment help their workers “get through that inertia that often stops people” from saving for retirement.
Survey methodology
The Retirement Confidence Survey was conducted in January through 20-minute telephone interviews with 1,254 individuals (1,003 workers and 251 retirees) age 25 and older in the U.S. Researchers used random-digit dialing to obtain a representative cross section of the U.S. population, according to EBRI.
To further increase representation, researchers added a cell-phone supplement to the sample.
Starting with the 2001 wave of the RCS, all data are weighted by age, sex, and education to reflect the actual proportions in the adult population. Data for waves of the RCS conducted before 2001 have been weighted to allow for consistent comparisons; consequently, some data in the 2013 RCS may differ slightly from data published in previous waves of the RCS.
EBRI is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan, public-policy-research organization; and Mathew Greenwald & Associates, Inc. co-sponsored the RCS. The 2013 RCS data collection was funded by grants from about two dozen public and private organizations, with staff time donated by EBRI and Mathew Greenwald & Associates.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
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