A new survey of 547 U.S. defined contribution plan sponsors from WTW finds that employers increasingly value their retirement plans — but many cannot demonstrate whether those plans are actually helping employees retire on time and with financial confidence. Only 60% of plan sponsors have even a working definition of retirement readiness, and the definitions they use vary widely: income replacement, retiring on time, and retirement confidence each cited by roughly 40% of sponsors. The result is what WTW calls a retirement outcomes gap — a structural mismatch between what employers expect their DC plans to deliver and what those plans were built to do. Three in four employers rank retirement savings as a core or top priority in their total rewards offering. Yet many plans are still governed, measured, and delivered for an era when accumulation was the goal. As the first generation to retire largely without pensions moves through the system, the pressure to prove plans work is mounting — and the solutions increasingly point toward guaranteed lifetime income as the missing link.