Can't cover a $400 unexpected expense? These employers want to help with emergencies

The job posting for a northern Virginia account executive itemizes the perks now standard in a pandemic: telecommuting, work-from-home stipend, weekly meditation classes.

And … access to a “Family Fund, created to allow employees to request financial support when facing financial hardship or emergencies.”

Get ready to see this more often.

Benefits packages have morphed and expanded greatly over the last year; workers canceled pre-tax commuter cards, for example, and instead demand reimbursement for office chairs, standing desks and tutors to supplement homeschooling. As companies prepare to return to work over the next year, they are assessing which offerings might remain, and repeatedly land on two interrelated areas: mental-health support and rainy-day funds in case of emergency.

“Our focus right now is the fragile state of most American workers and their state in terms of financial resiliency,” said Rob Falzon, vice chairman of Prudential Financial Inc., the largest life insurer in the United States based on total assets. “Benefits packages must evolve to create a sense of resiliency so as we hit crises, employees are able to sustain themselves through it. We can either repair or we can prepare for crises.”

Prudential conducted a survey of American workers and found more than half report their overall stress is worse in the last year. Other key findings:

55% of workers say the pandemic made them realize they are not financially secure;
46% lost sleep because of financial concerns;
The top changes made to benefits are to increase or start to contribute to a retirement plan, upgrade health insurance and enroll in life insurance.

These findings are echoed in other surveys. An NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll finds 41% of adults are “very worried” about the negative economic effect on their household finances, thanks to COVID-19.

Significantly, simply being employed is not enough to assure workers they’ve escaped the pandemic economy’s wrath. Many are contending with the job losses of spouses or other members of a household, and one salary must now support many. Stress is rising as workers juggle demands of childcare and eldercare. Further, the uncertainty of the overall economy is forcing families to construct potential scenarios and check their financial health against them.

The data underscore underpreparedness. A Federal Reserve study finds that more than a quarter of Americans would need to borrow money or sell something to cover a $400 expense; 12% couldn’t even cover it.

Companies such as UPS, Etsy and Mastercard are rolling out new savings plans for their workforces where employees can create an emergency fund and accumulate cash in the same way they contribute to their 401(k). The difference is they can access the money in a day or two, much faster than retirement accounts.

As companies like Prudential examine what stays and what goes, Falzon says perks are being categorized as transitional and permanent. Reimbursement for, say, tutors for remote-learning kids falls in the transitional category, especially as schools prepare to open again. Securing a financial cushion, he says, feels like a behavioral change that might outlast the pandemic.

He cites the impact of millennials on the workplace: Millennial workers have exhausted their emergency savings, compared to 27% of Gen-Xers and only 16% of boomers. A quarter of millennials borrowed or took a withdrawal from their retirement plans, compared to 17% of Gen-Xers and 10% of boomers.

This demographic cohort is also changing another health benefit companies are rethinking: mental health benefits.

A poll of more than 1,400 workers by the Standard insurance company found 60% of millennials and 70% of Gen Zers reported mental health issues, compared with 20% of baby boomers.

“Five years ago, employers were just starting to realize millennials feel less of a stigma around mental health issues,” said April Koh, CEO and founder of Spring Health, which tailors mental-health services for companies and their workforces.

She said the pandemic has pushed companies to move beyond EAP (Employee Assistance Programs) as “check-the-box mental health benefits” into something more substantive and in service of workers’ development.

“Employers are starting to wake up to this reality they need to do better,” she said. “We want to be making sure to match each person with the right care for them. There’s a movement to find the right resource for them so they don’t have to go through this guessing game.”

That need, she says, will outlast the pandemic.

“The pandemic has been an accelerator,” Koh said. “We need to make sure employers know it was an accelerant rather than an isolated spike. These mental health issues have always existed.”