Therein lies the real value proposition of features like auto enrollment and auto escalation, she reasons. "They take the emotion out of the choice to save."

The Pension Protection Act of 2006, which paved the way for automatic features and default investment options, was transformative for sponsors and participants, but much work still needs to be done—particularly with respect to the robust implementation of automatic escalation features, Lucas says.

She was a lead researcher on the plan sponsor survey put out this year by the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association. The survey presented a good-news-bad-news breakdown of the role automatic features are playing in preparing the country for retirement.

Sponsors of large plans, with more than $200 million in assets, increasingly enroll participants automatically, especially new hires: In 2014, 62 percent of respondents report using the feature, up from 44 percent in 2010.

But the use of auto escalation has leveled off, the report found: 48 percent of large plan sponsors report using it in 2014, the same as in 2012, and only marginally higher than in 2010.

Why such a static level of adoption for automatically raising contribution rates?

It's not because sponsors don't think participants need to be saving more. Sponsors of large and small plans overwhelmingly say that between deferrals and employer matches, participants need to be saving between 10 percent and 15 percent of their salary per year.

Despite that, about 64 percent of sponsor respondents said participants' actual savings rate was below 10 percent.

There are several reasons for the gap. For starters, the most common default contribution level for plans that use automatic enrollment is 3 percent. Lucas says convincing data out of Yale and Harvard show that while defaulting participants in at that level certainly has boosted participation in 401(k) plans, it has unintentionally resulted in lower-than-desired savings rates.

Only 17 percent of sponsors said they default participants in at 6 percent, and just 1 percent said they use a contribution rate of 10 percent.

Automatic escalation is key to narrowing the gap between the actual savings rate and what sponsors say is optimal, says Lucas.

"There is a behavioral economics conundrum at the plan sponsor level," she said. "It will be very difficult to get sponsors to automatically enroll participants at a 10 percent deferral rate. We are not going to get there without auto escalation."

Sponsors have a "generalized concern" that implementing escalation features will ultimately lead to greater costs, particularly those plans that initiate a match once employees start deferring 6 percent of their own salary.

Simply offering employees the choice of escalating their own deferral rate won't cut it, said Lucas. "They don't think they can afford to do that either." Low usage of opt-in escalation features proves that, she said.

But there is a solution, one that Lucas thinks largely rests with advisors to 401(k) plans.

"Cost is a key obstacle to improving auto escalation adoption. Advisors need to take the lead in helping sponsors understand what those costs will be," she said.

That means taking a proactive role in helping sponsors budget plan enhancements such as increasing automatic deferral and automatic escalation rates.

Advisors can help sponsors get a clearer understanding of what optimizing their plan will cost. From there, sponsors can choose to budget a strategy over time.

"It doesn't have to be done all at once," Lucas said. "One way to move the needle is to show sponsors how they can phase in an enhanced plan over a period of time, say five years."

Some sponsors already are doing that inadvertently. By increasing the auto enrollment rate to 6 percent, and then later incorporating automatic escalation, sponsors are able to arrive at a design that gets them closer to an overall 10 percent savings rate.

But in formalizing such a plan for sponsors, advisors could prove to be critical in modernizing plan design to get employers closer to where they say they want to be when it comes to preparing workers for retirement.

Providing such service is not a small task for advisors, Lucas admits, but she said top-tier record keepers have the ability to support that level of analysis.

As simple as the approach may sound, Lucas says it would be a completely novel—and welcome—trend in the 401(k) industry.

"There are clearly obstacles to auto escalation, but short of government mandates, we're not going to get participants saving between 10 and 15 percent of their salaries without it," she said.

"The question is how we address those obstacles," she added.

The solution could very well rest in the hands of advisors, Lucas said.