Episode 8: The State of Oregon PERS Expo

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Welcome to Revamping Retirement, a podcast brought to you by CAPTRUST Retirement Group, where we tackle the retirement plan related issues plaguing fiduciaries and plan sponsors. Our host, Mike Webb, has more than 25 years of experience in the retirement plan industry and is a nationally recognized subject matter expert. We hope you enjoy revamping retirement.

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Thanks, Kara—Kara McCauley, our wonderful producer as always with the excellent intro. My name is Mike Webb, as always, and this is Revamping Retirement. And today we have a very, very special edition of our podcast. I am super excited to welcome Dean Carson and Roger Smith from the State of Oregon Public Employees Retirement System, or Oregon PERS. Welcome to the Revamping Retirement Podcast, gentlemen. How are you doing today? Everything’s going well. Thanks so much for having us.

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Yeah, thank you, Mike. It’s nice fall weather out here. Wonderful. I know it’s a very busy time in the season for you, which is what we’re going to be talking about in a few minutes. Again, I thank you for taking the time out to join us here on Revamping Retirement. Our audience is a mix of retirement plan participants, plan sponsors, and those who work with them. For the benefit of them, especially some of them who might not be familiar with the wonderful work you’re doing, can you talk a little bit about yourself? And we can then

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jump into the great work that you do. Let’s start with Roger. Yes, thank you, Mike. Again, my name’s Roger Smith. And for about 12 years, I was a customer service manager for Oregon PERS. And in 2015, our director asked me to take over as the program manager for the Oregon Savings Growth Plan, which is our 457 deferred compensation plan. Thanks, Roger. And Dean, you want to tell everybody a little bit about yourself as well?

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Yeah, hello everyone. My name is Dean Carson. I’m the member engagement and communications director at Oregon PERS. I’ve been here since about fall 2016 and my position was actually a new one for the agency. We are a public employee retirement system for all state employees and the majority of local school districts, cities, counties, you name it in the state of Oregon. And we’re a pretty complicated plan. We have both a pension, a separate piece and then

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Also, our members can participate in the Oregon Savings Growth Plan, which is a deferred compensation plan. And because of that, we kind of recognized that we weren’t doing the best job in educating our members holistically about what they need to do to prepare for retirement. So my position was a new one because we recognized that we need to engage members throughout their careers and help them understand that even though they have a pension, they may need to save more, such as through the Oregon Savings Growth Plan.

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and they need to fully understand social security, Medicare, health insurance. And so lot of my role has been figuring out how we can better partner together. And as we’ll talk about the PERS Expo is a key piece of that. Yeah. And as you indicated, the main reason we’re having this conversation is the amazing job that you guys do. And when I first heard about this, was like, Hmm, that sounds really ambitious to do this PERS Expo, but it’s really become something that’s really taken off. And I guess

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Let’s start at the beginning. Talk a little bit about the history and how the idea of the PERS Expo came up and the evolution to where it is today. Great. So when I took over as a program manager for the Oregon Savings Growth Plan, our director really kind of gave me two mandates. He says, I want you to go down there and expand the 457 plan. At the same time, do whatever you can do to bring the 457 plan more into

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PERS the agency. So during my onboarding, was interviewing staff and they were telling me what they did, what duties they performed. And one of the things that they had been doing for over 10 years was holding an annual open house. and they did that by having the Oregon Savings Growth Plan as the sponsor. They invited PERS pension counselors, social security participated in that open house and

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They were explaining to me that it takes quite a bit of logistics because they were using free government facilities, state or county buildings to do the open house. And they had a target of doing it in two cities. They’d alternate between Salem and Portland and Salem and Eugene, which are three of our largest cities. And over the 10 years, they’ve seen an average tenants rate of about 300.

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And that whipped into another conversation about the logistical demands of trying to find low cost facilities. So one of my questions was, have they ever considered leasing a facility or renting a facility? And so the conversation kind of evolved from there. What we did was we started looking what type of facilities are available to rent.

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and we came across the Salem Convention Center. So we had an informal meeting with them and we put together a plan to hold a larger open house. We had not branded it as an expo yet. And then we took a proposal to our executive leadership team and told them what we’d like to do. And as you may know that we did the open house in conjunction with the National Retirement Security Week efforts.

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And they really liked the idea of expanding the open house into a broader venue, as Dean mentioned earlier in his introduction, where you can bring all of the retirement resources to bear under one roof for one day. So with that approval, we locked on the Salem Convention Center, the entire first floor, and we started marketing the event. And we were hoping to have at least 300 people show up.

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and we had over a thousand our first year. my goodness. To me, 300 sounded big, first of all, but I recognize that you’re a very, very large organization, so you wanted to get more people attending. I mean, that’s just amazing to me. Engaging your members can be a very tough proposition. They’re busy, there’s inertia, there’s habits of doing things a certain way. So I’m just amazed. Let’s talk a little bit about where the event is today. I think you still have this every year.

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We do. So, you know, from 2017 to 2019, which are Expos coming up on October 9th, 2019, It is a free event, but it is sold out. That means all of our workshops are full. It went quickly. You know, each year we’ve tried to improve and expand the event, come up with new activities, come up with new themes. We do get around 3000 people that attend this event each year. You know, that just shows.

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Again, people need to understand the basics about their retirement system, but they’re really excited to get all those additional services that we provide. Being able to talk directly to our counselors is always a key piece that people love. You know, we have a call center, we have an email team both for the pension side and the Oregon Savings Growth Plan side, but getting that face to face with someone, both our staff and our members really love that because when they’ve just…

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been educated about some complicated aspect of their pension and they want to clarify something about their issue, we have staff available for that. You know, I think the other key thing that we’ve improved as we’ve grown this as a whole agency event is, you know, it really focuses the goal of our agency as being a retirement education resource. We realize that we need to be there for our members. We do our best, but given how complicated things are with legislation that changes often every year,

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We need to be there for our members and we want them to know that especially at events like PERS Expo, we are there and we want to get them everything that they need to know so that they can have a more secure retirement. One of the things that the executives also appreciated was they’ve seen this as a great opportunity to utilize the Expo as a team building exercise for our staff. As you can imagine, ever since our first Expo, we now rent the Salem Convention Center in its entirety, two floors to hold.

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3,000 people, but it takes about 100 volunteers, and I say “volunteers”—our staff, of course, are paid for their efforts, but it takes 100 plus people to do all the presentations, do all the counseling, be ushers in the rooms and everything else. And we’ve seen real value in that. One of the things that I brought to the expo was a concept I used in one of my prior jobs was we needed to identify the staff that are working it. So they wear branded green polo shirts.

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And that sea of green really is a positive team building mechanism. Yeah, and that in particular sounds like a wonderful idea. With 3,000 people there, mean, really, I think is a great recognition. Being able to stand out in the crowd, for one thing. You guys are sounding a little modest here. I think you should be teaching other organizations how to do this. To go from 300 to 3,000, that just boggles my mind. Now, other than members voting with their feet by attending these things, have you gotten good

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post expo feedback, anything you can share on that end? Yeah, I’ll talk a little bit about the kind of event side and then Roger can talk about some of the goal because of growing OSGP, the Organizations Growth Plan. That’s obviously a piece of this. You know, from the post expo surveys we’ve done, we see that people are really appreciative of the educational activities that we put together. Even if it’s something like a photo booth that we do, which we call Picture Yourself in Retirement,

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People get a green screen, they can choose what background they want. Just that simple aspect of thinking about your future. We’ve seen from research actually can spur increased deferrals in deferred compensation plans. And we want to make it fun. We’ve seen at the beginning of the day, people are tense. They’re thinking about retirement. They don’t know what to expect. We see the shoulders drop.

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at the end of the day, people are excited, they love the activities. Last year we had a a fake money booth—one of those wind-blowing booths at the bottom and we used that as an opportunity to educate people about Roth. This year we’re gonna have a prize wheel with questions to help make sure people know about PERS and social security and some other common themes about retirement. And again—

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I think people are so appreciative that we are doing the work to bring everything together because especially Social Security and Medicare aren’t part of PERS, the agency. So the fact that we give them the resources they need to holistically plan for their retirement, you know, that’s a real gem for a lot of people. Well, a photo booth and a prize wheel. What’s next? Do have rides coming on maybe for the next expo? I’m being a little facetious, but I think it’s so important the way you engage people.

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to entertain them. If they’re not having fun, they’re not going to be engaged. So I think it’s wonderful that you’re doing it that way. I mean, it obviously takes a lot of work to pull these off. It just sounds like a blast. Roger was going to talk about not only the feedback, but also, I mean, this is all wonderful. And it sounds great. And so many people are attending. And it’s a lot of fun and a photo booth and a little prize wheel. But does it actually change member behavior? Because at the end of the day, I find usually that’s the toughest part.

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You can get people excited, but does it really have the payoff in terms of changing the engagement level with the benefit. Well, Mike, as you probably can imagine, renting the Salem Convention Center and all the cost of putting an Expo on of this caliber and size, it is expensive. It costs a considerable amount of money, and we want a return on that. So of course, we had after…

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our post-expo surveys where we could get feedback from the attendees, but also we wanted to see statistics that show that people are listening and getting the message and saving more for retirement. So our third party record keeper, VOYA, of course they keep all the statistics for us on new enrollments, deferral increases and statistics like that. And we’ve seen a significant spike immediately following the expo. I mean, if you were to look at the year

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the peaks and valleys for all the other months, they come and go. You know, when school teachers come on board, we see a small spike. When people get cost of living increases, we see a small spike. But you look in October, and it’s a Mount Everest type of spike. So we knew right after the first year that we have struck a chord with the participants. And one of our major goals was to raise the visibility level of the Oregon Savings Growth Plan.

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We are a plan for all state employees, but also for local governments that adopt our plan. And we wanted to see that participation rate increase. And we’ve seen positive results immediately after each expo. And one of the great things about having it year after year in close proximity to National Retirement Security Week is that word of mouth has gotten out that you have to go to the expo.

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the second and third year, we had this robust marketing plan put in place that we had from the first year, and it became evident that we don’t need that much of marketing because of the word of mouth. And so that’s one indicator that this is something that people want to do and they see that it adds value to their retirement. And yes, the only thing we’re missing is popcorn and cotton candy. Let’s just forget about retirement plans for a second.

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It sounds like it’s more and more becoming the hottest ticket in town is the Purs Expo from what I’m seeing. I just smile about that because that’s just amazing and kudos to all of you for the great effort and the great results you’ve gotten out of this. That week we talked about the photo booth, we talked about the prize. Was there anything else as a fun element that you want to talk about or what do you think may be the best element in terms of member engagement? I would say, you know, I have to put my communications hat on. We do a lot of work around branding with this event.

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And one of our goals is to brand PERS as a retirement education resource. And part of that, as I mentioned earlier, is getting people to understand, yes, you have your pension, but you need to be saving more. And the Oregon Savings Growth Plan is this great opportunity for that. What we’ve done, even with our green t-shirts, and we did a rebranding effort that connects both PERS and Oregon Savings Growth Plan, mentioning that they are better together.

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All of our posters and especially our themes all generate that same information, get people to realize, hey, your pension system is here for you. Your retirement system is here for you. This year’s theme is your path to financial wellness through our partnership with VOYA in addition to the PERS education presentations, the OSGP presentations, our health insurance presentations. We have a lot of specific presentations about financial wellness since we know this is the trend that the industry is going in.

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We want to make sure, you know, we we’ve learned from feedback that the word “retirement” can be intimidating or off-putting to some people. And so, you know, in 2017, the theme was retire with confidence. And we used to call this the retirement expo. We’re still struggling to get younger people like myself to come to this event, but even just changing it to PERS expo, we want to make sure people know that PERS the agency is there for them.

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And that I think has been a big success. And especially even though, you know, we do hear from people that didn’t sign up on time and aren’t getting the workshops they want. Just the fact that we’re doing this event, we can use it as another education and communications opportunity to remind people that we have teams that travel the entire state of Oregon year round and offer many presentations, both on the pension side and the Oregon savings growth plan side.

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And so it’s just a great opportunity to further remind people who we are and what we do. Yeah, some of the other outcomes that I think are just from a management perspective is to see the smiles on the participants and the members faces as they go through this. They don’t come into it thinking there’s going to be a prize wheel or these fun activities. They’re almost stunned that there are all of these counselors available to answer their questions and all of our

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Investment managers are there and boy is there to assist them. Social Security, Medicare, our state health plan are there all under one roof at one time. the attendees spend a lot of time searching out people in green shirts to thank them profusely for making all of these resources available. We had one attendee comment in the survey.

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that it was worth the two and a half hour drive. Wow. Very few things are worth a two and a half hour drive for me. That’s impressive. What about the future? I mean, you’re selling out the Salem Convention Center, which is not a small place. Those of us who haven’t been there, you seem to be selling out pretty far in advance from what I could see on the website. What is the future hold for this? You’re doing extremely well with it, obviously. Where do you go from here?

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Yeah, you know, Roger and I have talked about when do need to rent out the Moda Center, you know, where the Blazers play and fill up that whole thing in Portland. But, you know, we’re not there yet with our state agency budget. And so, you know, we’re definitely at the point where as an agency and, know, we have a new director who joined in summer 2018, and a lot of his goals are making sure PERS, Savings Growth Plan, our PERS health insurance program are all collaborating together and reaching people throughout the state.

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We are going to have 2020 Expo. We have the date set October 7th, I believe, but you know, we need to think about, can we have a smaller model that’s replicated throughout the state? I was actually part of a group that went for our 2017 Expo. also did a little road show and sent teams through each part of the state of Oregon. went out to Eastern Oregon with a team and did kind of mini presentations. We didn’t see the level of engagement and participation that we had hoped for in that effort.

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But again, as we continue to make sure people are aware that PERS, Organizational Growth Plan, and our other resources are available, we need to be thinking about, we have smaller types of events? One thing we’ve seen that’s actually kind of flattering is some of our employers, such as the university system, have taken our model and used it as their own, which we’re happy to see. The university system actually called it a retirement expo.

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And we like that they’re using that term because, and you know, obviously they invite us, invite Oregon State’s growth plan, they invite Perse Health Insurance Program, along with their own resources. But you know, how can we replicate this as something that, you know, maybe doesn’t have a photo booth or the whole prize wheel, but at least gives people the resources they need to prepare for retirement. With renting a facility such as the Salem Convention Center, we do have to plan about 18 months out if we want, in October.

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for National Retirement Security Week. So we do have to plan in advance and we had to lock that 2020 date in. It’s interesting, just this morning I was talking to a member of our correspondence team and she said she was receiving email regarding when is the expo next year? Have you picked a date yet? And that’s pretty amazing in its own right. And one of the things that we’re very, very proud of is we’ve been recognized for three years in a row by the National Association of Governmental Fert Compensation Administrators in the general

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NRSW campaign, a leadership award. And so my program coordinators in New Orleans at this time accepting that award on behalf of the agency. And what’s important about that recognition is we bring that award back to the agency and we promote it throughout our 367 staff. And they are very proud of their efforts. So, like I said, about a third of them volunteer to work the Expo and then they get recognized.

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publicly for their efforts. As they should be. think those won’t be the only awards you’re going to be winning and you’ve won actually already for the Expo and I can’t emphasize enough. I’ve been doing this for almost 28 years. I’ve seen everything and I think what you’ve been doing at Oregon PERS has been extremely special with this PERS Expo. I want to thank you once again for joining us today on revamping retirement for Dean Carson, Roger Smith, Kara McCauley and our entire production group.

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My name is Mike Webb, and this has been Revamping Retirement.

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Content in this podcast is for institutional investors and plan sponsors. The information is intended to be educational and is not tailored to the investment needs of any specific investor. All examples of investor gains and losses are hypothetical and intended to illustrate the importance of early saving and consistent retirement contributions over time. Investment decisions should be based on an individual’s own goals, time horizon, and risk tolerance. Nothing in this content should be considered as legal or tax advice, and listeners are encouraged to consult their own lawyer.

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accountant or other advisor before making any financial decision. Thank you for listening to Revamping Retirement.