The Empower 401(k) enrollment form authorizes your employer to withhold retirement contributions from your paycheck and tells Empower how to invest them. Most employees complete it online through the participant portal at participant.empower-retirement.com, though some employers still hand out paper forms through HR. Either way, you’ll make four decisions: how much to contribute, whether those contributions are pre-tax or Roth, how to invest the money, and who inherits the account if you die. Get each section right the first time and you avoid payroll delays, tax surprises, and an invalid beneficiary designation.
Check Whether You’ve Already Been Auto-Enrolled
Before you fill anything out, find out whether your employer already enrolled you by default. If your plan was established after December 29, 2022, the SECURE 2.0 Act likely required automatic enrollment at a contribution rate between 3% and 10% of pay, with a yearly one-point bump up to at least 10% and no more than 15%.1Empower. What is SECURE Act 2.0? Small employers with ten or fewer workers, businesses less than three years old, and church and government plans are exempt.
If you were auto-enrolled and want out entirely, you have 90 days from your first automatic paycheck deduction to opt out and get a full refund of what came out.2Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Automatic Enrollment After that, you can stop future contributions but the money already deducted stays in the plan. Filling out the full enrollment form is still worth doing even if auto-enrollment caught you first, because it lets you override the default contribution rate, swap out of the plan’s default investment, and name actual beneficiaries instead of relying on whatever the plan does by default.
Personal Information to Have Ready
The top of the form asks for your full legal name, Social Security number, date of birth, and home address. Many employers also want your date of hire and an internal payroll ID. Those last two confirm you meet the plan’s eligibility window, which often requires 30 to 90 days of employment before you can participate.
Make sure the name and Social Security number you enter match exactly what the Social Security Administration has on file. A mismatch causes IRS reporting problems and can hold up your account setup. If you changed your name recently, update it with the SSA before you enroll. Keep a recent pay stub nearby in case the form asks for a payroll ID.
Choosing Your Contribution Rate
The contribution section asks for a percentage of your gross pay to defer each pay period. For 2026, you can defer up to $24,500 across all your 401(k) accounts combined.3Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA Limit Increases to $7,500 Most participants land somewhere between 6% and 15% of pay. A common starting point is whatever percentage captures the full employer match, since anything less leaves money on the table.
The form also asks whether your deferrals are pre-tax (traditional) or Roth. Pre-tax contributions lower your taxable income now and are taxed when you withdraw them in retirement. Roth contributions come out of after-tax pay, and qualified withdrawals in retirement are tax-free.4Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Contributions Some plans let you split your deferrals across both. Pre-tax is the default most people pick when unsure; higher earners who expect to stay in a similar or higher bracket in retirement often prefer Roth.
Catch-Up Contributions if You’re 50 or Older
If you turn 50 at any point in 2026, you can contribute an additional $8,000 beyond the $24,500 base, for a total of $32,500. Participants aged 60 through 63 get a larger catch-up of $11,250, bringing their ceiling to $35,750.3Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA Limit Increases to $7,500 Your form may have a dedicated catch-up checkbox, or your plan may apply it automatically once your regular deferrals hit the base limit. Ask HR which method your plan uses so you don’t accidentally cap yourself at $24,500.
Picking Your Investments
After setting your contribution rate, the form asks you to allocate your money across the funds in your plan’s lineup. Menus vary by employer, but you’ll typically see stock index funds, bond funds, actively managed funds, and target-date funds. The percentages you assign have to add up to exactly 100%.
Target-date funds are the simplest option for people who don’t want to actively manage a portfolio. You pick the fund with a year closest to when you plan to retire, and the fund gradually shifts from stocks toward bonds as that date approaches.5Empower. Empower Funds – Target Date Solutions Empower’s own Lifetime Funds blend active and index strategies across more than 20 investment firms.
If you build your own allocation, watch the expense ratios. That’s the annual fee each fund charges as a percentage of assets. Under 0.10% is competitive for index funds; under 0.50% is reasonable for actively managed ones. Half a percentage point sounds small but can cost tens of thousands over a long career. Fund fact sheets inside the Empower portal list the expense ratio for every option in your plan.
Naming Your Beneficiaries
The beneficiary section decides who gets your account if you die. For each person, you’ll enter full legal name, date of birth, Social Security number, and relationship to you. The form separates primary beneficiaries (first in line) from contingent beneficiaries (who inherit only if no primary beneficiary is alive). Assign a percentage to each person, and make sure each class totals 100%.
If you’re married and want to name anyone other than your spouse as primary beneficiary, your spouse has to consent in writing. That consent must be notarized or witnessed by a plan representative; the plan document says which.6Bloomberg Law. Retirement Benefits, Professional Perspective – Spousal Consent Requirements Under a Qualified Retirement Plan Skip this step and the designation may be invalid, with your spouse inheriting by default. Empower-administered plans often fold the spousal consent box right into the beneficiary form, so have your spouse available to sign.
You can also name a trust. If you do, you’ll need the trust’s full legal name, the date it was established, the trustee’s name, and a copy of the trust document for the plan administrator. One thing to remember: the beneficiary form overrides your will. The plan pays according to its own records, not your estate documents, so an outdated designation can send money to an ex-spouse no matter what the will says.
How to Submit the Form
Most Empower-administered plans handle the whole process online. Log in to participant.empower-retirement.com and follow the enrollment prompts; the system walks you through contributions, investments, and beneficiaries in order and asks you to confirm each choice before finalizing. If you need to upload something like a spousal consent form or trust agreement, use the portal’s secure upload rather than email. Empower’s contact page specifically warns against sending confidential information by email.7Empower. Contact Empower
For plans that still use paper, hand the completed form to HR and let them forward it to Empower. If you need to reach Empower directly, the corporate address is 8515 E. Orchard Road, Greenwood Village, CO 80111, and the workplace customer service line is 855-756-4738.7Empower. Contact Empower Check your form’s instruction page for any plan-specific fax number or mailing address, which can differ from the corporate office.
After you submit, watch for a confirmation email or portal notification. Your next pay stub should show the deferral within one or two pay cycles, depending on your employer’s payroll calendar. If it doesn’t appear, contact HR first. The holdup is almost always on the payroll side, not Empower’s.
Understand Your Vesting Schedule Before You Count on the Match
Your own contributions belong entirely to you from day one. Employer contributions, including matching and profit-sharing, follow a vesting schedule that determines how much you actually get to keep if you leave before a set number of years.
Plans generally use one of two structures. Cliff vesting means you own none of the employer contributions until you hit the milestone (up to three years of service), then become fully vested all at once. Graded vesting hands you ownership gradually, such as 20% per year over six years; federal law caps graded schedules at six years to reach full vesting. Any unvested employer money you leave behind goes into a forfeiture account that the plan can use to reduce future employer contributions or cover administrative costs.
Your enrollment confirmation or summary plan description will tell you which schedule applies. If you’re thinking about changing jobs soon, check where you stand first. A few extra months on the payroll can sometimes mean keeping thousands of dollars in matching funds you’d otherwise forfeit.