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In an era where the line between work and life blurs, we're asking: why do we still treat employees less like humans and more like machines? There's plenty of talk about "enhancing the employee experience" but the conversation overlooks the core of it all - the human experience.
Getting Personal with Compt, hosted by Head of Brand and Communications Lauren Schneider, ditches the formalities and gets real with trailblazers and thought leaders who simply give a hoot about humanity. Join us as we explore the successes and challenges of shaping a workplace where people come first.
Stay connected with the movement and follow Compt on LinkedIn, or explore our insights and updates at www.compt.io.
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Welcome to Getting Personal, a monthly podcast diving deep into the stories of the heartbeat of HR. Brought to you by Compt, a global lifestyle benefits platform where companies empower employees with benefits and rewards they'll use and appreciate, whoever and wherever they are in life. I have a special guest with me today, Compt's very own Mary Magiano.
Uh, she is our head of customer success, but what does that mean, Mary? Tell me what you do, uh, the amazing things that you do, cause I'm here to hype you up, but you know, you are the best hype girl. Um, but not only the amazing things I do, it's really nothing to do with me all about my team. Right. So I support a team of customer success managers here at comps and really, um, in my role, it's really exciting and cool because I get to not only look at data right.
And like. high level and strategy type things. But I get to talk to customers every day. And also I get to see use cases and employee examples of kind of what's happening in the benefits world out there. Uh, love that. You were the perfect person to talk to then about our annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report that we just released.
I shouldn't pat ourselves on the back too hard, uh, but I think this data every year gets more and more interesting. Um, because While there are certain things that I expect to see, like the consistency of people favoring health and wellness and mental health and self care and financial well being and all of those good things, there are just like, there's always nuggets that jump out and surprise me.
Um, I want to talk about what you think makes this year's report different from previous years, especially since you are essentially living this data as you help customers. Design their programs day in and day out. Yeah, so I agree with you completely. And I know we're both a little biased, right, about the content we're producing.
But, um, with that being said, I think compared to last year's report or previous years, we've always had a lot of great, like, data nuggets, right? Like, you're like, oh, that's a, that's an interesting point, right? I didn't know that. But what I thought about when I went through the report this year is there's not just a few, but there's a bunch of things that you'll find insightful, not only from like a stipend side or point of view, but also just from an overall benefits view and where the market's headed with those things.
Right. So we also get very specific in some of those insights. And one of the things that stood out for me that I really enjoyed with this report was very specific benchmark amounts. for specific types of benefits, right? And that's really powerful because whether you're with comps or not, you can take that and apply it to your benefits program too.
I imagine that's one of the first conversations that you have with people too, where even if they've done this before, they want to know, what is everyone else doing? What is a good amount to offer people? How should I structure this program? Um, yeah, I think, I think what, no worries. I think the, uh, the key theme for anybody is the rise of flexibility, flexible benefits.
So that's the first topic that I wanted to talk to you about. Um, the data point, if you ask me, is stark. Uh, 71 percent of company budgets now go to all inclusive stipends. So it's not just one thing that people want. And I know we've been saying this forever. You can't just give a gym membership to everyone and expect someone who lives in a town without a plan as fitness to be excited about it.
So tell me what this actually looks like. What is driving, do you think, the massive shift toward flexibility? I think, honestly, employees are demanding it, right? I think we're at a point that's very different. So I think there's like five generations in the workforce right now, right? And you look amongst those five different generations and what that looks like lifestyle wise, right?
And the life changes people are going through. Very different things, right? So when I think about it, I look at how my life has changed myself in the past ten years, right? Um, I 10 years ago was engaged, getting ready to get married and planning for a wedding. And now 10 years later, and that's a pretty short span of time.
I've got three children. I'm worried about caregiving. I've been on a mental health journey, right? All of these other things that can change in one person's life. So you have to think about the overarching piece of it, right? With having five different generations in your work. really hit a point where benefits.
You can't do th scenarios anymore. Not to those three kids and rais They are all at different stages and then as they're growing up, enter different stages. So you go from what does postpartum care for you and your child look like? What does now entering daycare look like? And preschool and elementary school and they've got sports and ballet and interests.
Like what, how do you balance all that flexibility? Exactly. And I think you hit a nail on the head with, you know, how do you balance it all? Right. I think I look at our generation, Lauren, right? We're, we're millennials, right? The most amazing thing and the biggest strength I think we have is that we were brought up to think we could do anything, right?
We, we can do whatever we set our minds on. So we all came into the workforce, empowered, confident that we could do it all, meaning work, we can have families and things like that, and let's be transparent. That's not the case. It takes a lot to make this happen. Um, and I'm not just talking about moms or women either, men as well.
Everyone is flexing in different ways. So you need a support system that backs you up, whether you have kids, don't have kids, because that looks different for everyone. So what are you seeing then when you're talking to HR leaders who are trying to set up benefits packages that are transitioning from the traditional fixed models to a more all inclusive approach or just a lifestyle spending account in general?
Yeah, so I'm finding that as far as like them transitioning, it's really not a heavy lift, right? Like it's not like a major change. It's a pretty easy transition. Um, it's just really coming down to them migrating current benefits to kind of more of that like all inclusive benefit package, right? So instead of having like a specific commuter benefit along with like maybe a connectivity benefit of internet and cell phone.
They combine wellness, connectivity, commuter benefits all to one budget, right? And in that LSA account, um, so that employees can flex and use it where they need to. Um, you mentioned that it's pretty easy for companies to do this, but do you see any challenges at all? Um, is it maybe budgetary or HR trying to, um, create these new programs that maybe not everyone's on board with yet?
Because we know that there's some rigidity in organizations and hesitation to go all in and offer a bunch of different categories or, you know, fear that employees are going to go hog wild with these benefits. 100 percent right. So dealing with HR and people ops folks all the time, their role is to, to, um, provide great benefits, but, but make sure it's within guidelines.
Right. So I actually had a customer that had a conventional wellness. benefit and wanted to switch potentially, but was so nervous about doing it because of exactly what you said. Like, we don't want this to be a free for all for our employees, right? So I think not necessarily that it's a challenge, but something that makes those customers making this transition so successful is the ones that communicate this and think through the details effectively, right?
And what that looks like for your company. Because also offering an LSA doesn't mean you're. flexible, you can still have those set guidelines of what works for you and what the intention is for it. Right? So really thinking through that and what's acceptable, what's not and really going from there as far as setting up the program, but then communicating it to Um, really makes all the difference just to make sure everyone's aligned and on the same page.
And I have also seen maybe where we've been in parts of, um, time where budgets are getting cut that maybe even though a company's cutting a budget, they're offering more flexibility. So to employees, a lower amount doesn't necessarily make a difference because they've got more flexibility with how they can spend that.
And we know that they are definitely participating. Uh, next data point I want to go over is the utilization. I thought it was very interesting that we see an 85 percent utilization rate for lifestyle spending accounts specifically, versus a 60 percent for standalone stipends. So if you're only going to offer a remote work stipend, or you're only going to offer, uh, family or food.
Or health and wellness stipend. Those things kind of siloed. And this goes right back to the flexibility. If you give people the options, they will take advantage of those options. Yeah, and I think the biggest difference in those utilization rates are exactly like you said, because those stand alone things are for very specific things, right?
So a stand alone stipend is dedicated to like internet and cell phone, right? Everyone has different rates for that. So not always is a company going to see 100%, right? Or sometimes like things like professional development might be a stand alone, you know, stipend that's offered to employees. Or, um, commuter benefits.
co working benefits. There's a lot of things out there, specifically with those non taxable type benefits that they want a very specific budget allocated to that one thing. And that's why we see that utilization change, um, because with that flexibility of the LSA. People can kind of flex within the different categories and really, you know, maximize the usage of those.
So, as far as, you know, an LSA goes, I mean, you, you naturally see very high utilization with that. Do you see any additional patterns in how employees are favoring flexible versus the fixed benefits? Like, are they gravitating towards something specifically? And that could be Like an LSA that's offered quarterly or one that has a specific combination of those like high interest categories that we've seen because you know year over year we see like health and wellness, food, family, the treat yourself category.
A lot of those end up being like ranked within the top five. Yeah. So I really find that the sweet spot of the LSA side of things and being like all inclusive with your employees is that quarterly frequency, right? So that employees are constantly reminded of the benefit. They don't forget that it exists, right?
So they're, they're actively using it throughout the year. So on the LSA side, that, that piece. But then as far as, you know, the standalone stipend side, there's a lot of really cool ways to leverage that benefit. Right? So like, I'll give you an example. We've got some customers that use our spot bonus stipends to do very specific company incentives, right?
So like at random times during the year, we've got a customer who does these things called lightning deals, which I love, right? So, you know, they, they put a stipend out there for a few days with a very specific budget to do something different. Like in one case, it was cold and it was winter and there's snowstorms coming.
So they, they had all employees go buy fancy socks, right? Not a huge budget for that, but specifically allocating it to that one reason. So for the standalone type of stipends, that's where we see company initiatives brought into it for that like personalized touch there. Yeah those are like the extra special culture builders because you're creating touch points between people that maybe don't normally exist whether you're fully remote or hybrid or whatever that looks like even if you're in office but you're kind of siloed to your department and maybe you're in accounting and you don't necessarily talk to like a field technician or something all the time but when you have a program like that a spot bonus program that is First of all, communicate it really well so that people know about it and they get very excited about it.
And then you do those things kind of regularly, at whatever cadence that looks like. People are bound to participate. So it's not just the, you know, one off, here's 15 bucks to a gas station. Happy new year. It's it's the other stuff completely. And another way I've seen a company use it is like the company value side, right?
So one of the company that we work with, one of their values is about taking time off and having work life balance. So the way they use, um, a stipend to help with that and help promote that is they provide a vacation bonus to all employees that begin working with the company. So it's specifically for personal travel, right?
But it's to back up that company value to say, well, take your time off, but we're going to pay for your vacation too. We're going to give you some money towards that so that there's no road blocks there for employees. So those are, you know, a couple of cool ways that employees are able to, you know, take advantage of some cool incentives, um, for those specific company reasons.
There any other strategies that we haven't talked about that you've seen companies using to drive engagement? Um, you know, whether that's the way that they communicate or something that they're working on with your team to make sure that people are, you know, using these benefits participating. Yeah. So I think the biggest thing, um, as far as utilization is it really comes down to having an effective, um, update in like onboarding, making sure people are aware of benefits.
The cool thing about a personalized benefit like this is. It sells itself, right? It fits everyone's needs. So it's not about, you know, during the time frame that that's brought out to employees, making sure that they're using it. It's more so making sure they're aware of the benefit existing, right? So we see that in the onboarding side.
And then with very specific on, you know, possibilities within it, right? Communicating that to employees as well. So meaning like professional development, right? Incorporating that into your one on ones with your managers and employees. So that way that it's, you know, part of the conversation and those funds are being used in appropriate ways, right?
That, um, their manager encourages for their development too. Sure. That makes a lot of sense. Um, personal question. What cadence of communication do you find? works or like in, uh, dispersing stipends works best for you. Cause I also agree that the quarterly, uh, budget that we get personally is so helpful.
Like it keeps. to the top of my mind, I know relatively what I'm going to spend it on every quarter, as opposed to like the annual, uh, remote work one that we get where I feel like every November during like Amazon prime days, I am trying to panic buy something that I want for my office. And I've thought about it for a while, but I don't really pull the trigger until we're getting close to the end of the year.
And that stipend is going to run out. So, uh, it's so funny you say that because that's human nature, I think, right? So like, when we look at overall utilization, most people wait till the end of the stipend period. And that's why we find, like I said, that quarterly one to be the sweet spot because it's, you know, not too frequent where people are having to submit claims all the time, but it keeps them engaged and actively using the benefit.
So everyone's not waiting till December 31st to submit all the claims from the year. Oh, we, uh, need to do maybe a little bit better of practicing what we preach because I know that we are all guilty of the end of quarter rush where we are submitting claims and we are sending team recognition to one another, which we, you know, we do regularly for like the really big wins, but then there's moments where you're like, I've got this money.
I want to give it to people. Yeah, I know. Sometimes you get it at the top of the quarter, but agreed, we see that rush come through. And again, it's human nature. So I think it's just keeping it top of mind for them. So, you know, of course, you could send internal communications, but I think it's more effective to have it set to the right cycle.
And the cool thing with our stipends is there's a lot of flexibility in the way you want to distribute those funds, right? So just because we say annually or quarterly, that doesn't mean you have to give those funds all of from right? There's a lot of flexibility in the way you want those to be dispersed automatically by the system.
Very cool. We also learned that there may be some, well, not maybe that's not true. There is some variation, um, in the data points and what people are spending per employee per month. Uh, or even annually, uh, when it comes to stipends, and there's like some regional differences, there's some company size differences, and honestly, things that I didn't expect to see, I think the
Myth is that small companies aren't really spending money on this. Um, small companies can't afford it or small companies are still doing the, Well, it's Friday, maybe we could do a pizza party and, and that'll work for us. And that's not true. They are outspending the larger companies. As a matter of fact, we found small companies on average are spending A little over 1, 700 and large companies only 633.
I mean, that's like, that's a fraction of it. When you think about the huge variations in budgets. What is going on? Do you have the answer, Mary? I do have the answer, right? So, when we look at small companies, you're right. Like, I would think too, maybe smaller companies, smaller budget, right? That logically makes sense.
But, what you have to keep in mind is some of those larger companies, have benefits outside of comp, right? So there, they've got, you know, slew of benefits. They've got very comprehensive health insurance. They probably got like EAP programs and things like that, where your smaller companies have less of those, you know, comprehensive options, right?
So they might be bringing that whole benefit option right into comp, right? So when we look at that, that's where we'll see the larger budgets, right? Um, and then we'll see them kind of disperse based on that. And this keeps them in the game too. Like that is a way that they can stay competitive, even if they don't have this incredibly long list of shiny benefits in a package when you're onboarding.
Because if you think about it, like yes, health insurance and 401k and everything else is like table stakes and very interesting. But when you give someone the flexibility of like 1, 700 or something in a year, To use on anything. I mean, I could pay a mortgage bill with that. I could pay for cell phone bills.
I can get groceries for my family. Like, the flexibility is Almost, well, in my opinion, more worth it. It's more interesting to me. Like, if I was out on the market and looking through job descriptions, I think that's intriguing. Completely. Right? And one specific example I always like to call out for this, especially for a smaller company and being competitive, like you said.
is the flexibility when it comes to benefits and how you can leverage a stipend program, right? So like, I'll give you a personal example. Um, I wasn't on my, um, husband, I, I went and decided to elect my husband as insurance instead of coming on comps insurance, right? Because equitable benefits are so important to us.
We were, we actually have a stipend available to us where we can receive what would have been contributed into, you know, our, health insurance premiums if we elected them and receive them as a stipend instead. So I was really able to capitalize on that, right? And the amount that I receive where any other company, or maybe a super large company, if I work for them, I'm not going to get a stipend if I'm not opting into insurance.
It's just kind of like, that's a, that's a benefit I'm not taking advantage of, right? Um, and the money's left on the table, but in this case, I'm able to get some additional income because of that, right? And it's truly an equitable benefit. So as you mentioned with a smaller company, that's a really great way to stand out because what a great benefit to be able to share with somebody that's, you know, considering coming on board with your company, that, you know, you can go either way with benefits as well.
And then it reaches beyond your employee and to. Whatever their home life is like. If it helps them support their family. If it helps them support their pets. Whatever is personally meaningful to them. Which creates a greater sense of meaning and loyalty and just like a stronger relationship between employer and employee.
Completely. The other thing that I wanted to bring up, since we're talking about some variations, is the regional difference. The West in particular is We're like twice as much outspending the Midwest, so we're looking at around 1, 200 versus 600 per employee. It makes sense when you think about it. I mean, you have like San Francisco, uh, significantly swaying.
Uh, compensation packages. You see the same thing on the East coast too. Uh, but I don't know, it seems like the Midwest is still competing. Are you seeing, um, something in particular driving these regional differences, like what, what's going on with your customers? Yeah, what we see is, uh, with the Midwest, there's a lower cost of living, right, is really what it comes down to, so when you look at East Coast, West Coast, it's really that higher cost of living that's driving that, and then ultimately the Midwest doesn't really have a need for those additional stipends to make up for things, right, in the same way that the East Coast and West Coast does need to do that.
But because we have all of these variations, how do companies even begin to benchmark? There are a lot of different factors to consider. So can you benchmark? Can you compare yourselves to other people? What's your advice? Yeah, no, I think you can definitely benchmark. It's, it's having a pulse check of your entire benefits lineup, right?
So I think with any of these amounts, any data that you're getting from anywhere, it's not just about stipends, right? You really need to look at overall what you're offering and what that quantifies to, and then you're able to build your program from there. Because then it doesn't matter if you're a large or small company, it's really about being competitive based on that total lineup.
Unless we start to think about what 2025 looks like. I don't even want to say as we start to think about it. We've been thinking about this. We've been thinking about it last year. We're a month in, Lauren. I don't know. January was only 87 days. Oh my god. There are definitely some emerging trends that I've been paying attention to as I chat with HR leaders on LinkedIn and I read all sorts of, uh, articles on what's happening in the workplace, and then in diving into our benchmark report, there were things that I was seeing absolutely reflected out in the market.
Um, we're seeing professional development spending up, uh, that is up to 15%. We see caregiving support up, up 300%, which is, that was probably the most shocking to me and the data point that I throw at everyone, whether they ask for it or not. Um, and then remote work equipment is down to 3%, which I feel like when we started all of these reports was a leading.
Category, a lot of people were spending for remote work, but we know there's a return to office, but regardless, let's start with the first one. Let's start with professional development. What do you think is behind the surge in professional development? Are we suddenly seeing this career renaissance? Yeah.
Are you ready for the tea? I'm ready. What are you going to tell me that I don't know? Well, well, you probably know this or you have an inclination of it, right? So Gen Z is now like 25 percent of the work, right? What does Gen Z care about? Gen Z, not that they only care about promotions, right? That's a piece of it, but they want that skill development to get them there to the promotion.
Right? So I think that's why we're seeing the surge and how we need to. Support them and listen, professional development's not. Conventional things like a college course or, you know, an online class. This is get has become very varied, I should say, in the way it's being used, right? It's not just limited to courses, you know, there's a lot of, um, software tools out there that can support professional development too, right?
I think you and I both have a Grammarly subscription, right? Um, and not only is that helping in your day to day responsibilities, but it's teaching you as you go, right? Like, why am I, you know, doing this that way or things like that? And I mean, let's talk about the AI boom, chat GPT, right? Claude AI perplexity.
There's so many out there. That just make you so much more efficient in your job. So I think that's a big piece that you'll, you see there in the search, right? It's not just this old school, conventional way. There's books. There's all these other things and resources that you can use to develop yourself.
And, you know, from a marketing perspective, I remember when I first started at Compt and we were Working on some keywords and phrasing around tuition reimbursement, student loan repayment, and there was a huge focus around that. And there still is, but we're also seeing this phenomenon where, as you mentioned, there's so many different generations in the workplace.
Boomers are staying longer at their jobs. They're not necessarily retiring when they should be or maybe want to be. Um, and they're trying to figure out how do I extend my career? What does that look like? I'm no longer capped at some point, uh, and how can I upskill? So you're right. Like people are going back to school.
They're Going to conferences, they're taking online courses, they're using productivity tools to do the job of three different people in one. Well, and don't forget too, some of this doesn't require budget. I've seen a really neat idea floating out recently, even of Gen Z mentoring baby boomers in the workforce.
And I found that fascinating. Fascinating, right? Usually it's the other way around. But you think about the technology side of things, right? And boomers compared to Gen Z, it's second nature to Gen Z. So not only are you going to, you're going to have like a double mentorship, right? Because you're going to have the baby boomer experience able to bring that to Gen Z.
And Gen Z's been around computers and technology their entire lives. So now they give them that piece too. So it's a double win for something like that, you know? You know, when you said that, I was like, wow, that's insane. And then I realized I did the same thing for my Gen X mom. Like, she was in the same role for 30 years.
I was like, I need to do something else. And had never, except for that one time when she was What, 20 something put together a resume? I was like, well, times have changed. So let me help you put this together for your next role. And I can only imagine how many people are living that same story because we're not seeing people stay at the same company for their entire careers anymore.
Wow. I'm really glad you brought that up. Speaking of, as I'm thinking of mother daughter relationship, and I have a daughter caregiving support. I, and you know, this too. Know how intimately expensive it is. Don't bring up one of my traumas right now, Lauren. I literally last week at seven o'clock in the morning was waiting in my email.
For the summer camp and it's January at that point summer camp enrollment right and not and I'm paying for summer camp right this is a paid program that's expensive and I'm paying for it and I have to register within 30 minutes or I run the risk of getting on a waitlist right and not having covered So outside of the cost, there's the other side of it of just getting care, right?
And, and good affordable care at that. I have, I have the leftover trauma from, uh, waking up at midnight. in college so that at 1201 I could enroll for my course that I really wanted and had to fight everyone for. And I relive that every time that I try to sign my daughter up for swim lessons and I'm unsuccessful.
Like, it's ridiculous. I, I don't know how. Anybody personally is adapting to the increased caregiving demands that we're all experiencing, whether it's the cost of daycare and the cost of groceries and, um, work life balance and having to get your kids from school, pick them up because somebody's sick, you know, whatever.
Um, but the fact that support is up 300 percent is huge because that tells me that companies are finally not just seeing what's happening, but taking action. Yeah, completely. And we've seen some companies get really creative with that, right? So of course, some companies want to support their employees with caregiving.
There's been a lot of press in the media about how expensive it is and all those things, right? So some people set specific stipends up for caregiving, right? I've got another company that was able to get really creative. It was actually the beginning of last year. So cutting edge, right when this started to kind of hit the press and be a concern for people, um, they have kind of one of those LSA stipends we talked about, right?
That's all inclusive. So the way they got creative is if somebody had a caregiving expense submitted for their kids, they match the amount. Interesting. caregiving expense specifically by matching the amount for them. So it was a really cool, creative way that they managed that. Cool. Especially because I know that is a conversation that comes up a lot where people say, well, I didn't have kids and why should I miss out on an extra piece of compensation?
Just because my coworker has one or two or however many. Um, so offering a lifestyle spending account or some sort of stipend program where you say, okay, listen, this is, this is a lump sum of, I'm making this up 500 for the quarter and it's for family. And if one person wants to use that for daycare. Go for it.
And if another person wants to use that for dog grooming, or whatever their family looks like, elder care even, then we're all getting equitable benefits. And I know that we've touched on that earlier, but I think that's The theme here, flexibility, equity. The last thing that I wanted to cover in the trending, uh, first, I guess emerging trends, is the remote work equipment down to three percent, which for a long time was in Our like top three and then it fell to top five and then top 10 and it is hanging on by a thread down there with like the other one offs, you know, like the cell phone and internet and things like that.
Um, what do you think? Why? Why is there a decline in remote work? What does, what is that telling us? So this is twofold, the answer I have for you. One, it's what we've all heard about out there, right? The push of return to office. Some companies are out there pushing their employees back in, they're changing policies to require that they're in the office.
So with that, you're naturally going to see less of a need for equipment at home, right? If people aren't working from home anymore. So, so that's one piece of it. The other side of it is an enhancement we made to our system actually based on feedback from employees. Right? So when you think about like remote work office equipment, right.
And you think about how that's impacted with stipends, you know, maybe we make like an annual stipend where you can go in and submit, you know, for remote work office expenses every year. Some companies gave us feedback that the issue with that is in some cases they don't want their employees just to spend the money to spend the money.
Do you remember earlier in the call you were talking about that shiny tech that you like on drug day? Me trying to spend every last dollar. Well listen, I, I don't leave any money on the table either, right? If you're missing out, I am taking those funds and spending them, right? So I think with that, in this system update, we actually made it so that we have stipends available that have no expiration date.
So why this has been really helpful for companies is instead of saying, here, every year have 100. Now we can say for the lifetime of your employment, you've got this much, much, so you're not risking FOMO, right? And you're like, Let me leave those funds there for when I need to get my new monitor in two years, right?
Because it's got like two years of life left. Um, so there, there's that also with utilization and why we see that coming down a bit because some employers are opting in to have that no expiration date. So people just aren't buying things to buy things. So what you're telling me is the data is skewed because our customers are so forward thinking and flexible.
I make sense. I, I was wondering if we were seeing more people. Um, Going from like fully remote or hybrid into completely an office and then just dropping those entirely or if they were transitioning those funds into like a commuter benefit or something else that is either culture related or for the office or maybe they just decided to lump it into a larger health and wellness pod or something.
But it's interesting that they are. Possibly doing that and also making no expiration date on those funds so that maybe the situation arises where you need a new laptop because you don't need a new one every year. Maybe. I don't know. If you do, maybe you have other problems, but that makes a lot of sense.
Interesting. Hmm. All right. Let's see. Before we go, I want to talk about future outlook because I think we're going to see more of these trends. Develop throughout the year. There aren't huge changes year over year, but kind of the continuation, like we're seeing the momentum really pick up on things that we've been talking about for a long time with professional development and caregiving and health and wellness and mental health.
Um, so I wanna go over with you this new section that we had added to our report with our founder, CEO Amy Sperling's predictions for 2025. So a lot of this was informed by our data. And also just keeping tabs on the market. So we have as a, uh, as an overview here, benefits to offset return office costs, which we were just talking about a shift in DEI programs so that things are more specific.
Uh, AI upskilling huge. You mentioned that earlier childcare support, which we totally understand and generation specific mental health benefits, which I thought was particularly interesting. So. Which of these predictions are you already seeing evidence for as you are setting up programs or, um, having meetings?
They're getting ready for even quarterly reviews with your customers. Yeah, so I think something that's on everyone's mind right now, right, is DEI specifically, right? We've already, one month down in the year, seen the impacts out there already, right? So some companies are standing strong and saying, hey, our programs are working for us.
We're keeping things as is. And then others are saying, you know what? It's time to phase these DEI programs out, right? So there's those. Um, and reinforcing that these are working for them or they aren't and really determining where that goes the rest of this year. Yeah, that is true. Um, what other challenges do you think companies should prepare for?
Um, maybe even as it relates to, um, I mean, we know that they're already preparing for a shift in returning to office. Some people are like starkly one way or the other. Others are still trying to figure out the hybrid thing, um, which I know Amy is not on board for. She thinks it's the worst of both worlds, uh, which makes a lot of sense, uh, if you think about how disjointed it can be for organizations.
But you know, some companies, they have to be in person. Um, or they have a portion of their workforce who have to be in an office or working in the field or in manufacturing or something. Um, so I think the conversation there is, has been had or is known, but what about professional development? I know I had mentioned AI upskilling.
I know it's something that we've seen an increase in, especially year over year. Are there any challenges around that you think? Companies are already facing or hurdles are preparing for things. You're helping them work through. Yeah. I think the biggest thing is, you know, AI really blew up in the last year.
Right. And everyone is using it. So I think something that's on everybody in HR's mind is the ethical use of AI. Right. And that's something we'll continue to see evolve between policies that come out. Um, but also what information you're putting in there from a company perspective, right? Like what's okay.
What's not there's, there's a lot to learn with that still. Right. And like, what's okay to leverage it. When is it okay to leverage AI and when is it not okay. And that's going to be different for every company. So I think you're going to see a lot of people navigate through that through the rest of the year.
Good point. I actually had a conversation With our VP of Product and Ops, Joe Aleem, earlier about this exact thing. And how it would influence product development and like feedback loops where his example was, um, with sales, for example, we all started with cold calling, then we were emailing, then we were on LinkedIn.
And now we're kind of back to cold calling, but we're also meeting people in person. And he thinks those cycles are just going to get shorter and faster. And I see that already happening with how people are using AI. And I saw this emergence of like an AI HR tool, which a lot of us are curious slash worried about, suspicious of maybe.
So it'll be interesting to see how that develops this year as well. Uh, last question before we go, and probably the heftiest one, because that's how I apparently structure all of my interviews with people, is what advice would you give to companies planning their 2025 benefits strategy? Maybe they have the majority of it already together.
I would hope that they do, uh, but stay agile and flexible because things are constantly changing and we never know what's around the corner. What's your advice? I think the best advice I can offer is that HR folks, people ops folks, leaders are balancing so much, right? You don't need to create this stuff from scratch.
I promise you that the answers lie within your employees, right? And I don't mean to send a benefit survey out to your employees and say, rate how much you love our company 1 through 10, right? Like, that's not going to get you the info you need. What you need is to ask very pointed questions that's going to give you the insights you need, right?
Um, I recently, uh, shared like six different questions on an article we created for, um, developing a stipend program. So we'll make sure we share that article here, but there's six specific questions about how you should consider what benefits your employees need, right? So it's very pointed and detailed in the way of finding out.
How personalized you need to get, right? So even if you decide an LSA is for you and you're going to be completely personalized, that's going to show you how it can be communicated or what guidelines you need to put in place for that. Or if you're going to go outside of that, that will give you some ideas too of just different ad hoc benefits that you should have out there.
So I think the biggest, you know, piece of advice that you prepare for your next benefit year is, you know, get the feedback from your employees and know that you have to keep it personalized. Um, for them and just, you know, it's funny as leaders, we always say, we don't like to hear people say, Oh, we've always done it this way.
Right? So why do we do that with benefits? Right? Why do we, we've always done it this way. We've always had health insurance. We've always had an EAP program. Let's look outside the box a little bit. We, we encourage our employees to transform in that way and think differently. So we need to start thinking differently too.
Love that. That has been said in so many conversations that I've had with different HR leaders, where it truly does come down to the ask your people. They know what they need, ask how you can support them. Um, and if you're going to ask those questions, be sure to follow up with some kind of action. They, people want to know that they, that they've been heard.
And they want to see the support. So, yeah. And even like you said, even if it's not implemented, most people are reasonable people. And if you explain why you're not doing something to them, they'll get it right. You just need to connect the dots for people and then they're in a very good place and they're content with what they have.
So true. Mary, thank you for your time. Of course. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us on Getting Personal, brought to you by Lifestyle Benefits Experts at Compt. Remember, you can always find more stories and helpful insights on our LinkedIn and blog.