Wayne-Sanderson Farms

Christy Freeman (left), Amy Resnick (right); Photo by Matt Kalinowski

Wayne-Sanderson Farms’ retirement team is skilled at many things, but operational efficiency tops the list, says Jason Chepenik, senior vice president for retirement and wealth at the plan’s adviser firm, OneDigital.

When you are in charge of merging three retirement plans, you have to be. In 2023, the company now known as Wayne-Sanderson Farms and headquartered in Oakwood, Georgia, combined the Wayne Farms LLC nonunion, Wayne Farms LLC union and Sanderson Farms 401(k) plans, following the merger of private company Wayne Farms and public company Sanderson Farms.  The plan sponsor for the new enterprise—self-described as “the third largest poultry producer in the nation”—faced a challenge: How could the plans come together effectively, especially when their designs were significantly different? Additionally, the plans had two different recordkeepers and two separate payroll and human resource information systems.

The first step was moving the plans from legacy administrators to one provider. The plans became the Wayne-Sanderson Farms 401(k) Retirement Plan administered by Empower as of January 1, 2023. One year later, all employees were migrated into one payroll and HRIS. “We’re off to a brand-new start. We’re a new family,” says Christy Freeman, director of benefits at Wayne-Sanderson Farms. “Empower was the catalyst that helped us paint that picture.”

Still, for the plans to be harmonized, Freeman says, employees needed to see the benefits. “It meant we had to make the plan more appetizing for those who would encounter the most change.”

Under the new Wayne-Sanderson Farms 401(k), employees enjoy a 100% employer match of the first 4% of their eligible contributions, and they are automatically enrolled and escalated 1% each year up to 10%.

Automatic features were critical to the new plan design, Chepenik says. The Sanderson plan, without auto-features, had below 30% participation, while Wayne’s legacy plan had around 90%. “This is a perfect lesson in behavioral finance,” he notes.

The sponsor relied on both Empower and OneDigital to help with communications and education throughout the transition. In the two months before the move to Empower as recordkeeper, OneDigital hosted live sessions for workers and their families.

Through this critical period and beyond, Wayne-Sanderson Farms kept language barriers in mind. Thirty-five languages—predominantly Spanish and English—are spoken among the approximately 26,000 employees, so communication and educational needs vary. Moreover, most employees are not on a computer during the day, and the company faces extremely high turnover—exceeding 100% in some years.

Chepenik describes the sponsor and committee as highly skilled at “operational efficiency.” They are “hungry for data” and consider all angles of the plan—not just investment performance, he says.

—Corie Hengst