If we're truly going to help people retire on their own terms with choices, then we must make sure we're looking at this noble cause through a holistic lens. Retirement planning isn't just about depriving yourself of money today so you’ll have money in the future.  Money in the future isn’t worth too much without your health and peace of mind.  Retirement planning is really about life planning.  It’s about how you live your life today with the future in mind.
The retirement and benefits industry is changing.
Socrates was quoted as saying, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”  And that’s precisely the focus we must embrace…  CHANGE is prompting a CONVERGENCE of benefits in our industry.
Just as we gradually moved from Defined Benefit to Defined Contribution with retirement, the health and welfare industry is now doing the same thing.  The employee benefits landscape is changing from an employer-funded benefit to an employer-enabled benefit.  Employees must partially fund and also construct their own personalized benefit offering.
Without proper guidance, employees and employers tend to overweight their limited discretionary benefits dollars more heavily on more immediate needs, such as healthcare, vision, and dental insurance. Other longer-term needs such as retirement readiness fall by the wayside.
The problem is every benefit is viewed as a silo.  The truth is, they intersect. Both for the employer and the employee.
For the employer, having a growing population unprepared for retirement and continuing to work when their heart’s not in it creates significant future liabilities: Healthcare costs, increased workers comp premiums, and productivity losses, to name a few.   
For the employee, all of their benefits are competing for the same limited discretionary dollar.  We tell them to invest as much as they can in their 401k, but they also have 4 kids and need health insurance and have a High Deductible Healthcare Plan and a Health Savings Account.  ...And every employee is different!
If you're like me, you probably don't think about your health insurance very often.  But I sure thought about it last week when I woke up feeling blahg and had to go see the doctor!  I'm fortunate that I rarely get sick, but I was sure glad to be able to pull that insurance card out of my wallet when I checked in.  It wasn't my 401k I needed at that moment.
It seems everyone is now talking about how including the idea of healthcare in the retirement planning process is important, but no one is actually doing anything.  Employees want more help and need more help!
We must view benefits holistically and provide prescriptive guidance for each individual employee for all of their voluntary benefits – including healthcare (and we’re not talking about selling them more health insurance!).  Put very simply: it’s time to change the course of our industry by taking a more holistic approach with all worksite benefits.  We can no longer separate the 401k from the rest of the employee benefits.  They are all integrated and it is time for employees to get the help they need in navigating their benefit needs.
Imagine a completely paperless environment during open enrollment for both employer and employee.  Imagine an environment where employees could go into a private exchange and “shop” for their benefits - with guidance specific to their own socio-economic situation.  In this private exchange they can also enroll in the 401k plan.    Imagine fewer questions to HR, more informed employees, better prepared employees, more satisfied employees, and all this with no cost to the employer.
As we head in 2016, I am so happy to be a part of an organization that is changing the way this business is done with integrated technology including a patent pending tool that brings together all of the benefits: maybe an employer offers CIGNA or United Healthcare for health insurance, along with Delta Dental, etc. as well as the 401k and disability and supplemental life insurance. By launching the first and only private exchange, the term “open architecture” now applies to the rest of the worksite benefits.  And this is so much more than just web tools.  By bringing a team of highly trained, licensed education professionals that can help people walk through the process one step at a time, open enrollment will never be the same.
Kirk Buchanan has worked with financial advisors and pension consultants for over 30 years to to structure effective pension, 401(k), 403(b), and 457 plans for corporate, governmental, and tax-exempt organizations. He is motivated by one core focus: to help save people from living in poverty during their golden years by helping them plan for their futures today. He is a noted author and publisher of 9 best-selling books available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk,  Barnes & Noble, and many independent booksellers throughout the US, UK, and Europe.
Special acknowledgement to Jenny Dodson, Molly Knapp, and Francesca Messano for thought leadership and contributions to this article.