Is Your Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) Working For You?
Like all good providers of services and products
Like all good providers of services and products, the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) wants to know from its customers how they are performing. More than 5,500 civilian and uniformed service participants took part in a TSP survey in 2013 to provide feedback on a host of services provided by the Thrift Savings Plan. The survey’s results were compared with a similar survey taken in 2011.
TSP Satisfaction Survey
The survey revealed that 87 percent of plan participants were satisfied overall with the performance of the TSP funds. Another 10 percent were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied and 3% were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied, showing an overall increase in satisfaction of 1 percentage up from the 2011 TSP survey.
On the surface those numbers look pretty good on the TSP side. However, the measure of how the TSP is doing is not solely in overall satisfaction or dissatisfaction, but those participants who were neither impacted or engaged enough to render an opinion either way. Those participants perhaps speak louder than any other participants in the group surveyed, because they are saying – we need more of something. The position of not expressing an opinion either way can speak volumes to an organization invested in providing top quality services to its customers such as the TSP.
I know in our MBA programs we are told to look at the satisfaction and dissatisfaction levels to gauge how an organization is doing when evaluating survey outcomes. But in the real world the undecided population is a group worth of deep consideration and concern and in the TSP survey this is no different.
The TSP survey also asked the participants about how they were doing on administrative services such as ease of accessing accounts on line. Once again 89 percent of those surveyed were very satisfied/satisfied with the information provided in the annual statement. 84 percent registered satisfaction with the ease of accessing their account on line. Ability to take out a TSP loan received 69 percent with the ability to transfer money from IRAs or other retirement instruments receiving a 57% satisfaction rate.
Overall from the prospective of how an organization is performing, the TSP is doing remarkably well not just by their own standards, but by the watchful and discerning eye of plan participants. The share what you know lesson here is to always participate in plan surveys when possible because it is one of the most important ways an organization can measure its performance and make improvements to the ultimate satisfaction of the TSP‘s customers.
P.S. Always Remember to Share What You Know.
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