Generally, for retirement plans in the United States, employees are fully vested in their own salary deferral contributions upon inception. For employer contributions, however, the employer has limited options under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) to delay the vesting of their contributions to the employee. For example, the employer can say that the employee must work with the company for three years or they lose any employer contributed money, which is known as "cliff vesting". Or it can choose to have the 20% of the contributions vest each year over five years, known as "graduated vesting".