Remember when, what and how.

Timing is important. If you use:

• Elapsed time to determine eligibility or Eligibility Determination Service: Build records right away when you hire new employees. We’ll calculate eligibility dates based on the information you provide in the record.
• Hours to determine eligibility: Wait and build records 60 days prior to each employee’s plan entry date.

Key points to include

• Work email addresses for employees you consider to be “wired at work” for electronic notice delivery. Tip: In general, they need to use a computer and your organization’s email system as part of their job to be considered “wired at work.”
• Personal email address for fraud mitigation and educational messages.
• Home mailing address for any paper mailings. 
• Full employment history for rehires so we can calculate eligibility and vesting. Tip: Provide original hire date, term date(s) and rehire date(s). Don’t use the rehire date as the original employment date.

Action steps

• Determine if your employees are “wired at work” for electronic delivery
• Manual entry: Watch a video to review how to build records one at a time
• File upload: Build multiple records using this sample file (Excel)
• Note: In some cases, we build records with data in files submitted by your payroll provider.

Let us deliver required notices.

Whether your employees choose to enroll or you automatically enroll them, you need to provide notices before eligibility or a participant’s first contribution.

2 service options

• Electronic delivery: No charge.
• Electronic and paper delivery: No charge for electronic delivery. $3.50 per paper kit.

When you build employee records, you include work email addresses for employees you consider to be “wired at work” and home mailing addresses for all employees. With that information, we send each employee an email or paper kit at 60 days prior to eligibility or the day after the record is built.

If we’re missing employees’ addresses, you’ll receive a task (Deliver Eligibility Notices) on your To Do List in the employer website. You can provide missing addresses or download eligibility kits, so you can handle notifications yourself.

If you don’t use either service, we don’t send the task, but you can still download or order eligibility kits through Enroll & Educate in the employer website.

The electronic delivery service is currently active for most plans. We’ll turn on electronic and paper delivery upon request.

Action steps

• See how eligibility notice delivery and enrollment reminders work (PDF).
• Review eligibility notice delivery results for your plan. (Log in to the employer site. Click Reports in the top navigation, then Employees, and then Eligibility Notice Delivery Results.)
• Employees aren’t “wired at work”? Build employee records and watch for Deliver Eligibility Notices tasks or access eligibility kits any time through Enroll & Educate in the employer site. (Log in to the employer site. Click Participants in the top navigation and then Enroll & Educate).
• Review guidelines and delivery options for other required retirement plan notices.

Understand how participants get started.

The Principal^® Real Start onboarding experience includes eligibility and enrollment reminders, the online experience at principal.com/welcome and a contact center team dedicated to new participants.

• Account setup and security: New participants set up login credentials and can provide email addresses and cell phone numbers for account alerts.
• Required notices: Your “wired at work” employees view notices on the site.
• Step-by-step support for all employees:
  • If you use automatic enrollment, employees can review and confirm or change their contribution amount.
  • If your plan uses Salary Deferral Service, employees can set a contribution amount.
  • Employees can typically choose investment options, let us know if they want to roll in any old retirement accounts and designate a beneficiary.

Action steps

• See how eligibility notice delivery and enrollment reminders work (PDF).
• Check out this demo of the onboarding experience at principal.com/welcome.

Helping your employees reach retirement.

Your participants automatically get simple, personalized communication and education designed to help build confidence and retirement savings.

But we know that you get questions. And you may want to encourage certain people to take action. Enroll & Educate makes it easier for you to distribute educational content.

Resources if you need them

When you’re logged into the employer website, click Participants in the top navigation and then Enroll & Educate. You’ll find content to download or email. It’s all organized by topic.

• Eligibility: Download or order eligibility kits. You’ll only need to distribute eligibility kits if you don’t use our eligibility notice delivery services.
• Enrollment: Promote the plan to those who’ve been eligible for a while but haven’t signed up.
• Other topics: Answer questions or encourage action related to account access, saving, loans and withdrawals, beneficiaries and rollovers.

Action steps

• Review education experience details (PDF).
• Check out Enroll & Educate. (Log in to the employer site. Click Participants in the top navigation and then Enroll & Educate.)