PLANSPONSOR - June - July 2022 - 23

BEST PRACTICES | 2022 PLAN SPONSOR OF THE YEAR WINNERS
Corporate DC >$250mm-$1b
True Value Company, LLC
Chicago, Illinois
T
rue Value Company, LLC, attributes its
97% 401(k) plan participation to plan
design, continuing financial education
and effective communication to its diverse
workforce. The plan allows all employees to participate,
and the extent to which they do, in a
retail environment, is unusual.
The company emphasizes its 4% employer
match, which has prompted many participants
to contribute to meet it, says Steve Lilienthal,
benefits manager at the company, which has
its headquarters in Chicago. " True Value has
educated its associates that, if their company
is offering a 4% match, it's in their interest
to contribute 4% to get [it all] and not leave
anything on the table, " he says.
True Value's 401(k) plan participants
are automatically enrolled at 5% of earnings.
The need for retirement readiness is stressed
to every employee cohort by way of financial
education and communications about plan
design features.
One challenge for communicating about
retirement planning is that the company has
several distinct groups of employees-hourly,
salaried and part-time workers-with a wide
range of backgrounds and levels of financial
or retirement planning sophistication. Hourly
employees in warehouses have no workstation
computer, nor might they have one at home,
Lilienthal says.
The company conducted a financial wellbeing
campaign a year ago May. Each week, a
different topic was the focus of companywide
emails, discussion on the True Value intranet,
webinars, human resource updates, and posters
at each company location. Week 1 highlighted
the free and unlimited one-on-one consultation
sessions that recordkeeper Fidelity Investments
offers. Week 2 provided a beneficiary- and
email-setup campaign. Week 3 introduced
employees to Fidelity's on-demand workshops
for creating a rainy day fund, gaining an understanding
of spending, and managing debt,
while Week 4 offered live webinars on financial
wellness topics.
Joe Scully, vice president and managing
director at Fidelity, calls the plan sponsor " superior, "
because of its
employee well-being. " This support was observable
when True Value partnered with Fidelity to
create the financial wellness month, he says.
" One goal of that month was to build
awareness of the online financial wellness and
life-events resources available to employees, "
he explains. " In the past two years, True Value
employees accessed these resources over 700
times. "
Events of 2020 and 2021 resulted in challenges
both at home and at work, testing True
Value's mettle as a plan sponsor, Scully says.
" True Value's team chose to lean in and do the
work necessary to ensure employees were aware
of the financial and well-being resources available
to them, " he says.
The success of the campaign was revealed
as follows: 8% more participants now have a
beneficiary's name on file; 6% more associates
used one-on-one consultations; 100% of
associates now have a current email address on
file with Fidelity; and employees use Fidelity
NetBenefits and tool kits 68% more than before.
Employee " communications are in all
different formats because not everyone is the
same and people retain information in different
ways, " Lilienthal observes. " We focused on
our hourly population in the warehouses, to
get them started on financial well-being-
maybe it's their first time. " Due to their lack
of computer access, this " was challenging, " he
says, " and we worked on how to get them more
comfortable with mobile apps. "
Lilienthal credits True Value's financial
wellness focus for having reduced employee
401(k) loans and hardship withdrawals. In the
past four years, participant requests to borrow
from their 401(k) account dropped to 19% from
28%. -Noah Zuss
" unwavering focus on
Steve Lilienthal,
Benefits Manager
" True
Value has
educated its
associates
that, if their
company is
offering a 4%
match, it's in
their interest
to contribute
4% to get [it
all] ... "
Finalists
Arvest Bank
Lowell, Arkansas
EBSCO Industries, Inc.
Birmingham, Alabama
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