PLANSPONSOR - April/May 2021 - 40

PLAN PROFILE
Handled With Care
E
ighty percent of the employees
at Knight-Swift Transportation,
headquartered in Phoenix, are
truck drivers who drive " over the road. "
This, according to Cheryl Maccano,
director of benefits at Knight-Swift,
means they eat, sleep and effectively
live in their vehicle for approximately
three weeks at a time, en route somewhere
in the country. " It's a very difficult
job to attract people into, especially
now, so our drivers are golden.
We treasure them; we don't want to
lose them. Employees who are not drivers
work to support the drivers. "
In addition, the drivers are tough
to reach. They are not " wired at work, "
with a computer in front of them, at a
desk all day, and they lack a companyprovided
email address.
Maccano and Knight-Swift's
financial adviser, Kathleen Kelly,
AD
Cheryl Maccano, director of benefits
managing partner at Compass Financial Partners, a Marsh &
McLennan company, repeatedly suggested to the retirement
committee that automatic features be implemented. Plan
participation had been stagnant for many years, and only onequarter
(26%) of the truck driving workforce deferred into the
plan. The two women believed that if the company added automatic
enrollment, making it easy to join the plan, that participants
would benefit by starting to save for retirement as soon
SNAPSHOT
PLAN SPONSOR: Knight-Swift Transportation, Phoenix
KEY PLAYER: Cheryl Maccano, director of benefits
NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 20,152
PLAN: 401(k) plan
TOTAL PLAN ASSETS: $386mm
AVERAGE DEFERRAL RATE: 5.6%
PARTICIPATION RATE: 56.8%
EMPLOYER CONTRIBUTION: The greater of 100% of 3% or $2,000
This sponsor focuses on its truck driver employees' future and security
as they were eligible, Maccano says.
With changes in committee
membership due to company acquisitions
over the past four or five years,
Maccano says, the minority in favor
of auto-features finally tipped to a
majority. There are eight committee
members, with representation from
each of the brands covered in the
corporate plan.
Maccano says, " We are out there
to help our employees, and, the way
we set it up, they can stop contributing
at any time, and if they contact
the recordkeeper within 90 days, they
can get their money back. We tried to
make it as driver-friendly as possible. "
After adding auto-enrollment, the
company closed out 2020 with a
participation rate of 56.8%.
" We took the plunge and implemented
automatic enrollment and
automatic escalation features, effective January 1, 2020, for all
new hires and employees who terminated and were rehired, to
combat the participant inertia that had plagued our plan for years, "
Maccano says. The sponsor set the auto-enrollment deferral rate at
3%, and auto-escalation at 1% annually to a 10% maximum. " As
of this April 15, 10,276 employees were [auto-enrolled], " she says.
In addition, last year, Knight-Swift's recordkeeper,
Principal, and Kelly teamed to develop a new approach to
branding and to design communications that stressed the critically
important concept of account security. The " Secure Your
Account " communication campaign used humor-a close-up
image of a cow, with a tagline that said, " High Steaks! Take
steps to help protect your 401(k). "
The goal of the six-month, multichannel campaign was to
increase the number of participants who have secured access to
their account using two-factor authentication, while also driving
engagement with their retirement savings account online.
As an incentive to secure their account access, Knight-Swift
purchased several Ring video doorbells that were raffled off in a
sweepstakes. Principal reports that approximately 800 accounts
had their access secured, and participants used at least one
website tool based on this campaign. A similar campaign will be
used this year. -Judy Faust Hartnett
40 PLANSPONSOR.COM April - May 2021 Art by John Cuneo
http://www.PLANSPONSOR.COM
PLANSPONSOR - April/May 2021

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