Implementing Retirement Plans for Staff

When Gini Dietrich hunts talent for her 15-person Chicago PR company, she can tell candidates they'll be fully vested in the company's 401(k) retirement plan after a year. "It really allows me, as a small-business [owner], to compete with the big PR firms," Dietrich, 33, says of her employee retirement plan.

Having any retirement plan places Arment Dietrich Inc. among a small and shrinking minority of entrepreneurs. A 2005 Union Bank of California study of its small-business customers found that 75 percent offered no retirement benefits. Plus, the number of companies with less than $1 million in annual sales that had no retirement plan grew by 6 percent over the previous year.