Wharton-Smith, Inc.

As the president and CEO of Wharton-Smith, Inc., in Sanford, Florida, Ron Davoli takes pride in the company’s mission of building communities—from delivering clean water and state-of-the-art schools to developing recreational parks and sports arenas.

He says Wharton-Smith’s general contracting and construction management experience is diverse and that the company’s projects speak for themselves. In many ways, Davoli says, Wharton-Smith brings this same focus and dedication to the delivery of its retirement benefits program, which is operated in tandem with UBS Financial Services Inc. and Empower.

As a construction company with hundreds of field workers operating in Central Florida, Wharton-Smith has many employees who either speak English as a second language, alongside Spanish, or who are solely Spanish speakers. Stephanie Pompeo, vice president of finance, says the firm embraces this diversity and ensures that all educational meetings, enrollment packets and plan information for participants are prepared and distributed in both English and Spanish.

“Our employees are our greatest asset,” she says. “We want to help them plan for a successful future.”

Because of its strong communication and educational efforts—which leverage both Empower and UBS resources—as well as its commitment to automatic plan features, Wharton-Smith boasts impressive participation and deferral figures. This is true both in absolute terms, says Jason Johnson, a senior vice president at UBS Financial Services who has worked with the plan for many years, but especially in relative terms to the construction and contracting industry. The plan has a participation of 95% and an average employee deferral percentage just shy of 9%. Nearly one-quarter contribute over 10% of their pay, while the median lifetime income score estimated for the plan is 90%. Driving these numbers is a design that sees automatic enrollment begin at 6% with an annual increase of 1% to a maximum of 15%.

Pompeo and Davoli say the firm’s leadership is dedicated to helping long-term employees achieve a stable retirement. To this end, Wharton-Smith matches 125% of the first 4% of compensation and 50% of deferrals from 5% through 10%. More than 50% of participants meet or exceed the company match, with 97% receiving the match given to those who meet the minimum 4% deferral.

Importantly, Johnson says, more than 87% of participants utilize the BlackRock target-date series, the plan’s default investment. In addition, Wharton-Smith offers a nonqualified plan for roughly 10% of employees, which provides generous employer contributions.

Johnson says Wharton-Smith stands out as an ideal client—one that pushes him forward as much as he pushes it.

On their end, Pompeo and Davoli credit Johnson for his skill in fee and contract negotiations, saying they feel the plan gets tremendous value for its fees.

In part due to pent-up demand stemming from pandemic-related shutdowns, Wharton-Smith is   busier than ever, notes Davoli, with field workers and office staff running at full capacity. He credits Johnson and the firm’s client service team at Empower for helping to keep the retirement plan running smoothly—and for ensuring that the company’s busy people still get all the information and updates they need.

“The average hourly employee we have out in the field does not have a lot of time to go online and work on his retirement account,” Davoli observes. “In recognition of this, we send our human resources people out into the field to promote our benefits and to engage the workers in their own space. Despite the COVID challenge, we’ve expanded this practice over the past year.”

Pompeo says the generosity and progressive design of the retirement package has been helpful as the company—alongside pretty much every other employer in the U.S. today—grapples with the implications of an unprecedented rise in worker resignations. Despite some turnover on both the field-worker and office-staff sides of the business, the company has had success collaborating with a staffing agency to support its hiring and labor needs.

“One of the testaments to our retirement program is that the longer someone has been here, the less likely that person is to turn over,” Davoli says.

—John Manganaro