Empower gives your plan a 401(k) portal and some participant education. But education is not the same as guidance. Many workers get tools, not answers. The people with the most at stake, your top earners, often get the least. Real, personal help comes from the plan advisor.
What Should Empower 401(k) Participant Education Include?
Strong Empower 401(k) participant education combines the platform basics with real human guidance. The platform handles enrollment forms, fund menus, and online calculators. A plan advisor handles the judgment calls: how much to save, how to invest by age, and when a rollover makes sense. The two together close the gap.
As the plan sponsor, you carry a fiduciary duty to act in the interest of participants. That duty does not stop at picking a recordkeeper. It extends to whether your people understand the choices in front of them. Education that nobody reads does little to satisfy that responsibility.
Where the Education Gap Shows Up
Empower provides a capable recordkeeping platform. It offers a participant portal, retirement calculators, target-date funds, and group webinars. For a worker who is comfortable with money, that may be plenty. For the high earner with stock compensation, a concentrated position, or a complicated tax picture, it rarely goes far enough.
The pattern is familiar. Enrollment happens once, the default investment stays untouched for years, and contribution rates drift below what the situation calls for. Self-service tools assume the participant knows which question to ask. Many do not. The people with the largest balances, and the most to lose from a mistake, are frequently the ones flying without a guide. Your highest-paid employees often have the least time to study a portal.
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Five Gaps a Strong Plan Closes
When you compare a platform-only setup against a plan that adds advisor support, five gaps stand out. Each one maps to a decision a participant has to make and often gets wrong on their own.
None of these gaps is a knock on the recordkeeper. A platform is built to administer a plan at scale, not to sit down with one worker and weigh a Roth conversion against a pension election. That work belongs to an advisor who knows the participant. Closing the gaps tends to raise savings rates and reduce costly errors over time.
What Stronger Participant Education Looks Like
The strongest plans treat the recordkeeper and the advisor as two parts of one system. Empower runs the rails. The advisor adds the judgment. Side by side, the difference is clear.
For participants with larger balances, a plan can also offer a self-directed brokerage account, a plan design option the sponsor elects to offer under the plan document and a fiduciary review. It lets a qualifying participant access professional management inside the plan, without forcing a rollover out. You can read more about how that option works in the guidance on self-directed brokerage accounts within a 401(k). It is one of the clearest ways to serve high-balance employees who want real management.
This approach reflects how a fiduciary advisor thinks about money in general: Preserve. Strengthen. Grow.™ Help people protect what they have built, add to it with discipline, and let quality compound. The same logic that guides a portfolio guides good participant education. For the broader picture of getting more from a workplace plan, the overview on how to maximize a 401(k) plan as a business owner connects the pieces.
Your Fiduciary Role as the Plan Sponsor
Choosing Empower as the recordkeeper is a sound decision. It does not, by itself, complete your duty to participants. Courts and regulators look at process: did the sponsor review the menu, monitor costs, and give participants a fair chance to make informed choices. Education that sits unused is hard to defend as a process.
Adding an advisor who works directly with participants strengthens that process. It documents that you went beyond the default and gave people access to real guidance. It also tends to lift outcomes, which is the point. When workers understand their choices, contribution rates and allocations tend to improve. To see how plan decisions connect to long-term income, the guidance on 401(k) and workplace plan strategy offers a wider view.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What Does Empower Include in Participant Education?
Empower typically includes a participant portal, retirement calculators, target-date funds, group webinars, and call center access. These tools cover the basics of enrollment and account management. They are useful, but they assume the participant already knows which questions to ask, which many do not.
Is Empower Participant Education Enough for High Earners?
For many high earners, the platform alone is not enough. People with stock compensation, concentrated positions, or complex tax situations face decisions a calculator cannot answer. They tend to benefit from one-on-one advice that accounts for their full financial picture, not just the balance inside the plan.
Who Provides 401(k) Advice to Employees?
Recordkeepers like Empower provide tools and general information, not personalized advice for each worker. Individual guidance usually comes from a plan advisor engaged by the sponsor. That advisor can meet with participants, review allocations, and coordinate decisions like rollovers and retirement income planning.
Can a Plan Add Personal Financial Guidance?
Yes. A sponsor can engage an advisor to deliver participant education and one-on-one guidance alongside the recordkeeper. This can include enrollment meetings, annual reviews, and access to professional management for qualifying participants. The recordkeeper keeps running the platform while the advisor adds the human layer.
Does Better Participant Education Cost the Employer More?
Costs vary by plan size and the arrangement chosen. Some advisory services are paid by the plan, some by participants who opt in, and some are folded into existing fees. The relevant question is value: stronger education and guidance may reduce costly mistakes and improve readiness, which can outweigh the added cost.
How Does a Self-Directed Brokerage Account Fit In?
A self-directed brokerage account is a plan design option the sponsor elects to offer. It lets qualifying participants access a wider set of investments and professional management inside the plan. It is not a recordkeeper feature switched on by default, and it is governed by the plan document and a fiduciary review.
What Should a Plan Sponsor Look for First?
Start with the gap between the tools your plan offers and the guidance your people actually use. Look at whether high earners are getting personal advice, whether enrollment is more than a one-time event, and whether anyone is helping participants with tax and rollover decisions. Those gaps point to where an advisor adds the most value. Our 401(k) Participant Education guide covers related considerations in more depth.
