It's been a little over a year since the death of Jim Lange. If you don't recognize the name, you'd recognize the leisure suit. Lange was the long-running host of "The Dating Game," and his look became synonymous with the 1970s.
As the title implied, the show turned the often-tumultuous process of finding a suitable date into a game.
As author Gabe Zichermann recently told me, (see "Exclusive Interview: Gabe Zichermann on How Game-like Techniques Can Motivate Behavior," FiduciaryNews.com, March 17, 2015), the idea of making a game out of normally challenging activities is spreading like wildfire.
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The term is called "gamification," and if you think it's something not to be taken seriously, know this: I recently took a Coursera course from The Wharton School on the subject. The professor had most recently run Barack Obama's election social media campaign. He knew the tools, he knew how to use them, and (for some of you, like it or not) they worked.
In the 401(k) arena, the most compelling application of game-like techniques will occur in motivating employees to save more.
In a sense, we can expect that engaging games will soon replace Powerpoint lectures are the preferred method to advance the cause of financial literacy. In a way, we've already applied gamification to 401(k) plans. You might be familiar with the company match. That's an example of making a game out of saving. The employee is rewarded with free money for taking a certain specified savings action.
Think about the actions we want encourage employees to take. We want them to save early. We want them to save often. We want them to save more. We want them to invest properly. We want them to avoid leakage. And, did I say we want them to save more? More importantly, we want them to take responsibility for their own success by making all the right decisions along the way.
Perhaps we're on the cusp of a new era of 401(k) plans. The 1990s saw the emergence and dominance of Modern Portfolio Theory style-box product pushing. During the 2000s, we witnessed the emergence of behavioral economics as the dominant theme when it came to plan design and education. Employees were gently nudged into doing the right thing. The most popular way to do this was to reframe the decision-making process.
Some feel we may have milked the advantages of behavioral finance about as much as we could. This has opened the door for gamification. Truth be told, gamification is just another tool in the behavioral kit. We can distinguish it from the 2000s version of behavioral economics in that the last decade featured a passive version of the concept. Gamification represents the active side of behavioral economics.
Imagine we had a method for determining how retirement-ready an employee is (I believe we do). This method could be used to generate a unique score for each employee. Now, imagine we use those scores to create a leaderboard which employees see every quarter. Do you think that might motivate employees? Many say "yes." This is just one example of how we might see gamification appearing in 401(k) savings plans.
I'm not saying we can immediately do this, or that it needs to be monitored to avoid disclosing private information, but the time is near when we solve these issues and make the company retirement plan a fun activity.
We'll call it "The Savings Game."
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Christopher Carosa
Chris Carosa has been writing a weekly article and monthly column for BenefitsPRO online and BenefitsPRO Magazine since 2011 and is a nationally recognized award-winning writer, researcher and speaker. He’s written seven books, including From Cradle to Retire: The Child IRA; Hey! What’s My Number? – How to Increase the Odds You Will Retire in Comfort; A Pizza The Action: Everything I Ever Learned About Business I Learned By Working in a Pizza Stand at the Erie County Fair; and the widely acclaimed 401(k) Fiduciary Solutions. Carosa is also Chief Contributing Editor of the authoritative trade journal FiduciaryNews.com and publisher of the Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel, a weekly community newspaper he founded in 1989. Currently serving as President of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and with more than 1,000 articles published in various publications, he appears regularly in the national media. A “parallel” entrepreneur, he actively runs a handful of businesses, including a small boutique investment adviser, providing hands-on experience for his writing. A trained astrophysicist, he also holds an MBA and has been designated a Certified Trust and Financial Advisor. Share your thoughts and story ideas with him through Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/christophercarosa/)and Twitter (https://twitter.com/ChrisCarosa).
