Benefits Pro: Website Design Affects 401(k) Participants’ Decisions

Website design isn’t about making things look pretty—it can be a powerful tool to help employees make better decisions about benefits. Design is not just a “visual garnish,” but instead is “an integral part of any product or service offering. And it’s possible to navigate a path to behaviorally informed designs,” wrote Shlomo Benartzi, a professor of behavioral decision making at UCLA Anderson School of Management and Saurabh Bhargava, an associate professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University. Their goal was to find a website design that induced employees to contribute more than the default rate, since that’s often not enough for people to achieve financial security in retirement. Read more at Benefits Pro.