Attracting and keeping
good employees can be
difficult, but a good benefits plan can go a long way
toward accomplishing that goal.
Knowing that, Don Cochran
decided to seek a new source
of help in putting together a
comprehensive financial plan
for Warehouse Cabinets Inc.
and implementing a better benefits plan for his employees.
“The organizations we had
dealt with tended to be, ‘OK,
here’s a bunch of literature,
you guys read through it,
decide what you want to do,
hand it to your employees so
they can decide what they
want to do, and let us know,’”
says Cochran, founder, owner
and president of Warehouse
Cabinets. “It made a terrible
assumption that, one, we had
time for that, and two, even if
we did, we’d know what we
were doing.”
Before deciding to move
ahead with a new plan and a
benefits package, make sure
that you are committed to the
process. Planning does take
time and effort — it took about
six months during 2007 for
Cochran’s plan to be completed
— and if you are not committed, the plan and package will
never come together.
“It’s easy for stuff like that
to get pushed on a back burner, and the end result being
you make some rash or quick
decisions because you haven’t
devoted enough time and
attention to it,” Cochran says.
“It needs to be an objective
on the board, with clear goals
and a time frame to it.”
Cochran decided he wanted
an adviser who would come to
his cabinets, appliances and
countertops distribution company and explain the benefits
package to his 32 employees
and discuss with them their
goals and objectives.
He found his answer in financial planner Dennis P. Barba Jr.
of The Oxford Group of
Raymond James & Associates
Inc., whom he settled on after
reading several books by him.
He says that you need to do
your research before you
choose an adviser and not
just choose the first one you
come across.
“You want somebody who’s
been in the business for at
least 10 years and has been
with the same organization for
that kind of time, definitely
not somebody who’s bounced
around,” Cochran says.
Cochran says you may need
to interview several candidates before finding a financial planner with whom you are
comfortable.
“That’s something that’s got
to be done on an individual
basis,” he says. “A good personal connection with the people you’ll be dealing with and
definitely feeling confident
that they’re earning the money
that you’re paying.”
Cochran says you need to
make sure a financial planner’s goals and objectives
match your own by explaining what you’re looking for
and asking that person to
show you how he or she
thinks those goals can be
achieved. Then it’s up to you
to decide whether you are
able to work with that person.
A critical component of making that choice is ensuring that
the financial planner will communicate the benefits plan to
employees.
“It was just a matter of
keeping everybody in the loop
and interacting with them,”
Cochran says. “The crucial
thing at the end of the day
was the personal interaction
and not bombarding them
with a lot of forms and printed materials to try and read
and sort through.
“That’s what helped drive
more inclusion in it. It was not
left up to me to try to explain
the plan because I’m not qualified to do that.”
As a result of putting together a financial plan and better
defining the benefits program,
Cochran says he’s gotten nearly 100 percent participation
from his employees.
“In a competitive marketplace for good people, you’ve
got to be offering good benefits and programs for your
employees,” Cochran says.
HOW TO REACH: Warehouse Cabinets Inc., (440) 717-9500 or www.warehousecabinets.com
Commitment to execute
Putting together a good financial plan requires a lot of time
and effort from both the business owner and the financial
planner, says Dennis P. Barba
Jr., managing partner of The
Oxford Group of Raymond
James & Associates Inc. A
financial plan includes several
different parts, and creating an
employee benefits plan is just
one piece of the puzzle.
Barba says you also need to
clearly define what you’re trying
to accomplish with your plan
and run through different
assumptions regarding retirement and not just rely on basic
financial planning principles
that had been used in the past.
“It’s not that simple,” he says.
“If you’re just basing things on
what has happened in the past
and assume you’re going to
earn a given rate of return, it
doesn’t always work out that
way. Work with somebody who
can perform a lot of different
mathematical analysis on your
assumptions to make sure that
under different scenarios you
still feel like you have a high
likelihood of success.”
Putting together a successful
benefits package also requires
commitment.
“You have to make the commitment to do the planning
work,” he says. “If you’re not
committed, you’re not going to
go through the process.”
“If you’re going to spend the
time and/or money to do it, it
only makes sense that you follow through and execute what
you put in the document.”
HOW TO REACH: The Oxford Group of
Raymond James & Associates Inc., (216)
241-1920 or www.oxfordgrouponline.com
