We understand the importance in recruiting and retaining great team members for organizations like WM. The right retirement plan design can improve overall team member satisfaction, and reduce overall benefit expenses in the meantime.
WM offers a generous benefits program to your team members, including contributions toward team member retirement plans. The graph below illustrates WM's maximum employer contribution to retirement as a percent of salary and how it compares to your competitors, both in your industry and in others who hire similar talent. (Information from most recent 5500 filings – 12/31/20)
Therefore, WM could improve these positions by changing your plan to a newer version of Safe Harbor. This would move the plan to a 3.5% total team member contribution with 2 year vesting and auto-escalation to 10%.
Potential impacts of such a change:
This could allow WM to redirect this estimated $6-8M cost savings to increase sign-on and retention bonus offerings for CDL drivers and other difficult-to-recruit skill sets.