They think:

• How do I move work off my plate?
• How do I reduce admin headaches?
• How do I make benefits easy for employees?
• How do I prove to Finance we’re not paying for unused benefits?
• How do I consolidate perks without creating more complexity somewhere else?

In 2026, “easy-to-use employee benefits software” isn’t about a prettier UI. After talking about flexible employee stipends and Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) with hundreds of HR, Total Rewards, Finance, and Payroll leaders across tech, healthcare, logistics, and global organizations, one theme is consistent:

Leaders measure ease by what happens after launch.

In fact, 64% of Compt customers now run an all-inclusive LSA — up from 55% the year before — often after starting with multiple standalone stipends and deciding to consolidate them into one operational framework.

When these leaders evaluate Compt, the conversation usually centers around a handful of structural decisions that determine whether the platform actually reduces work. And these are the reasons customers tell us the platform feels simple and manageable once it’s live.

Here are some of the features they consistently point as priorities in easy-to-use employee benefits software.

1. Platform for multiple stipends or an LSA (without adding vendors)

Most midsize companies don’t run just one stipend. They run several:

• Wellness
• Professional development
• Remote work
• Commuter benefits
• Company swag
• Recognition or spot bonuses
• See Compt’s 28 stipend categories for more ideas

Managing each through a separate vendor creates fragmented reporting and duplicated work.

One People leader shared:

“The more and more you can get into one place, I think the better off you are.”

Another put it this way:

“I like that the entire [Compt] product is designed around simplification. … [With our current solution], we’re paying for a lot of things that our team members just aren’t using because there’s too much complexity.”

What customers consistently value is being able to manage multiple benefit categories inside a single system, with one clean integration into payroll and HRIS.

The first goal of creating a lifestyle benefits platform that prioritizes admin simplicity is subtracting work so you end up with fewer workflows, not fewer perks. 

2. Reimbursement-first funding (over prepaid cards and payroll-based stipends)

Prefunded debit cards create several predictable issues:

• Unused balances that sit in limbo
• Cash tied up for 100% allocation regardless of participation
• Questions from your Finance team regarding accruals and forecasting
• Card fees, replacements, and admin overhead
• Embarrassing transaction declines and MCC blocks at checkout
• Limited vendor flexibility based on platform restrictions
• IRS compliance complexity and audit risk because receipts aren’t tied to spend

Stipends issued directly through paychecks add another structural challenge:

• 100% payout regardless of actual usage

Stop overpaying for underused benefits.

Traditional payroll stipends are paid out 100% regardless of actual use.

With Compt, you only pay for the funds employees spend, saving you thousands while increasing benefits engagement.

Calculate your savings

Customers regularly tell us this difference matters more than they expected. It’s less about the surface experience and more about what the funding model does to cash flow, reporting, and operational lift over time.

One leader evaluating stipend models said:

“There’s no prefunded budget … so there’s no chance of losing those funds from the company perspective.”

Another emphasized the financial control aspect:

“Financial control will be a big one. … How do we protect against unexpected spikes in spending?”

A reimbursement-first structure changes that dynamic:

• Funds are only paid when the employee claims their reimbursement.
• Reporting reflects real employee usage and can be used to support decision-making. 
• No juggling prepaid card balances, fees, and replacements.
• Receipts support tax handling and IRS compliance.

For Finance, the clarity that comes with a Compt program changes the conversation from “What are we exposed to?” to “What are we actually seeing?” And that matters once you scale beyond a few dozen employees.

3. Clean payroll and HRIS integration (without duplicative work)

When HR leaders seriously evaluate easy-to-use employee benefits software, this comes up almost immediately.

A VP of People told us:

“Best-in-class is definitely a priority … but what would definitely make me select that software is if there was some sort of file feed from our ADP. … We don’t want to have to do duplicative work.”

Another leader put it even more directly:

“It’s all about: how does the data get into the benefit system, how does it get out to payroll?”

That’s the operational reality.

If HR is manually exporting files, reformatting payroll data, tracking eligibility in spreadsheets, or reconciling headcount changes across systems, then the platform isn’t actually easy to use; it just transferred the work somewhere else.

Compt customers talk about integrations the way payroll teams talk about them: the employee data stays current, eligibility doesn’t require babysitting, and the report you need is there when you need it (all without asking someone to build it for you).

Customers care about whether the system runs in the background without constant oversight — whether they can set the rule once and not have to think about it again.

Integration isn’t flashy. But it’s where hours are saved every month.

4. Built-in tax logic and compliance guardrails (so Payroll isn’t cleaning it up later)

Tax handling is where simplicity in easy-to-use employee benefits software often falls apart.

Simplicity often breaks down when companies need to consider mixed-use items, taxable vs. nontaxable stipend categories, commuter rules, tuition exclusions, and multistate payroll considerations.

For example, the IRS allows up to $5,250 per year in tax-free educational assistance and sets monthly limits on qualified commuter benefits (such as the $340 per month cap for transit and parking in 2025). If you’re tracking those thresholds manually in spreadsheets and adjusting payroll when someone crosses them, that becomes very operationally painful, very fast.

A Head of Total Rewards said:

“I like the reimbursement feature from a compliance standpoint.”

IRS compliance for lifestyle benefits isn’t optional. Under IRS Publication 15-B, fringe benefits are taxable unless a specific exclusion applies — and the burden of proving that exclusion sits firmly with the employer.

Compt customers consistently value:

• Category-level tax designation
• Clear taxable vs. nontaxable logic
• Receipt documentation tied to spend
• Centralized reporting for audit purposes

When those rules are set once and enforced consistently, HR isn’t revisiting policy interpretation every quarter. That’s admin simplicity in practice.

5. Broad category definitions (without sacrificing control)

Low employee participation in a benefit rarely comes from lack of budget. When employee perks are tied to one vendor, one marketplace, or one rigid list, engagement drops over time as employees struggle to find a way to use the benefit.

One leader evaluating stipends shared:

“I love the idea of a Lifestyle Spending Account because it puts choice back in the hands of employees. Instead of a one-size-fits-all perk, people can select what truly matters and makes a difference to them. … I think that’s the future of benefits.” 

Another said:

“The flexibility to reimburse people in different categories helps solve for some of the personalization that needs to come with benefits.”

Customers consistently point to Compt’s vendor-agnostic flexibility as one of its most valuable features.

It allows employees to:

• Use local providers
• Choose services that match their life stage
• Spend funds where they already shop

At the same time, policy guardrails remain centralized, categories are defined clearly, receipts are reviewed, and tax logic is applied consistently. Flexible doesn’t have to mean chaotic.

6. Visibility into participation (not just allocation)

Finance doesn’t want to hear that participation “feels strong.” They want numbers.

For example, in 2025, all-inclusive LSAs reached 93% participation and 89% utilization, according to our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report.

HR leaders want to see:

• Engagement trends over time
• Claimed vs. allocated funds
• Vendor diversity
• Category usage patterns

One Total Rewards leader said it plainly:

“Reduced admin time doesn’t always land home. … The story needs to be told in dollars and cents.”

For a multicountry SaaS organization with just under 1,000 employees, participation recently climbed into the high 90%s after consolidating stipends into one reimbursement-first platform. Nearly 11,000 claims were processed across 1,000+ vendors in a year. Participation even spiked in December as employees saw remaining balances and used the program before year-end — an insight that only became visible once reporting was centralized.

Pictured from a wider lens, 64,000 different vendors were represented among all Compt customers in 2025, according to our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report. Of those, 70% of employee spending went to independent, local, or niche vendors, with only 30% going to big names such as Amazon and Walmart.  

That kind of visibility changes how benefits are discussed internally and helps move the conversation from anecdotal to measurable.

7. Scalability for growing, distributed, and global teams (without adding local exceptions)

As organizations grow, complexity multiplies.

One Benefits Manager shared:

“We have employees in about 46 states … finding perks that work for everyone is just really challenging.”

Global teams introduce currency differences, tax variation, regional expectations, and compliance nuances, all of which compound as your team grows.

They also introduce equity challenges. A gym chain available in New York may not exist in rural Australia. A commuter subsidy that works in London doesn’t apply to a fully remote team in Texas. Cost-of-living differences and vendor access make point-solution perks difficult to scale globally.

Stipends make that manageable. Instead of negotiating separate vendors by geography, employers can define their budget by region or employment type while allowing employees to spend locally within clear policy guardrails. The policy stays centralized; the usage adapts to where people actually live.

That structure keeps reporting consistent across regions and prevents growth from turning into administrative sprawl — which matters far more at 1,000 employees than it does at 100.

8. Embedded discounts (without creating a second portal)

Employees don’t want to change how or where they shop just to use a benefit. At the same time, Finance teams are under pressure to stretch every dollar without expanding budget.

Embedded discounts solve that tension.

Because Employee Discounts from Compt + PerkSpot live inside the same platform employees already use to submit reimbursements:

• There’s no new portal
• No additional vendor relationship
• No separate reporting stream
• No new workflow for HR to manage

Employees can apply a discount to a purchase they already planned to make, submit the lower receipt within the eligible category, and stretch their stipend without increasing employer spend.

The operational advantage isn’t just the discount. It’s that the value is layered into the same workflow.

Why HR leaders choose Compt for easy-to-use employee benefits software

If administrative simplicity is on your evaluation checklist, start with one question: will this reduce operational drag after launch, or just reorganize it?

Compt was built specifically to make it easy to:

• Consolidate stipends and LSAs into one system
• Reimburse instead of prefund
• Integrate cleanly into payroll and HRIS/HCM
• Embed IRS tax logic and compliance guardrails
• Provide reporting Finance can use and trust

The result goes beyond flexibility for employees to fewer workflows for HR, cleaner data for Payroll, and clearer forecasting for Finance.

If you’re evaluating stipend or LSA platforms and want to see how this works in practice, request a demo. 

FAQs: Operational efficiency and easy-to-use employee benefits software

The post Why Admin Simplicity Is the Real Differentiator in Easy-to-Use Employee Benefits Software appeared first on COMPT.

This list brings together the most important employee stipend statistics from Compt’s 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report and select industry research. The data covers how common employee stipends are, how much companies spend, which benefits programs are most widely offered, and how employees actually use their stipends.

Use these employee stipend statistics to benchmark your employee benefits program, understand current trends in employee perks, and see how other organizations are structuring, funding, and evaluating stipend-based benefits in 2026 and beyond.

2026 employee stipend statistics: key takeaways

• 64% of Compt customers offer an all-inclusive Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA), up from 55% the prior year.
• Average stipend funding is $850 per employee per year, with small companies funding $1,675 on average.
• All-inclusive LSAs see 93% participation and 89% utilization, the highest of any lifestyle benefits structure.
• Quarterly funding delivers the strongest participation-performance balance among Compt customers.
• Health and wellness is the most common stipend category, offered by 37% of companies as a standalone benefit.
• Nearly 1 in 10 stipend transactions are for groceries.
• AI tools account for 20% of professional development spend.
• 70% of stipend dollars are spent with local or independent vendors.

Methodology

The statistics above and throughout this article are drawn primarily from Compt’s 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report (full-year 2025 Compt customer data).

• Dataset: Active Compt customers across industries and company sizes
• Timeframe: Full-year 2025 reimbursement data
• Geography: U.S. and global (62 countries)
• Participation = % of eligible and active employees who submitted at least one reimbursement
• Utilization = % of allocated stipend budget that was reimbursed
• Funding = Employer-allocated annual budget per employee
• Data excludes terminated employees. 
• Company-size and industry benchmarks may be influenced by outliers. Where possible, we report medians; where we report averages, we label them explicitly.

Where noted, additional industry comparisons come from external research sources.

Now, because “employee stipend” can mean different things depending on how a program is designed, we’ll start by clarifying what the term actually covers today.

What are employee stipends? How do they differ from perks?

Employee stipends are employer-funded allowances that employees can use to reimburse eligible expenses across defined categories. Unlike traditional perks, which are typically tied to a specific vendor, product, or service, stipends give employees flexibility in how and where they spend their benefit.

Employee stipend: An employer-funded reimbursement benefit that allows employees to submit eligible expenses within defined categories.

Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA): A multicategory employee stipend structure delivered through reimbursement.

In practice, employee stipends are most often delivered through reimbursement-based programs such as Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs). Employers set the funding amount, eligible categories, and cadence, while employees choose how to use the benefit within those guardrails.

The key difference between stipends and perks is control and flexibility:

• Stipends are employee-directed. Employees submit expenses that align with their needs, timing, and routines.
• Traditionally, perks have been employer-selected. Value depends on whether the offering happens to match an employee’s preferences or life stage.

Because stipends are funded by employers but only paid out when used, they also differ structurally from cash bonuses or raises. Stipends are designed to support specific lifestyle and work-related needs without permanently increasing compensation or adding any complexity to payroll.

Why this definition matters: When people talk about “employee stipends,” they’re often referring to a different, more modern program design. Clarifying this distinction upfront helps explain why some stipend programs drive high participation and relevance and why others behave more like underused perks.

What are the benefits of employee stipends? 

Employee stipends with Compt offer a different value proposition than traditional perks or one-off benefits. Their primary advantage is flexibility, and the benefits extend to both you and your employees. 

For employees, stipends:

• Adapt to different roles, locations, and life stages without requiring separate programs.
• Support both day-to-day needs and fun, discretionary purchases over time.
• Reduce friction by letting employees spend with vendors they already use.

For employers, stipends:

• Provide predictable, capped funding rather than open-ended spend.
• Reduce administrative overhead by consolidating multiple benefits into fewer programs.
• Pay out only when benefits are actually used, avoiding wasted budget tied to unused perks.
• Scale more easily across hybrid, remote, and international teams

Structurally, stipends sit between compensation and traditional benefits. They allow employers to offer real support without locking themselves into permanent payroll increases or managing a growing list of point solutions.

Why this matters: The benefits of employee stipends aren’t just about generosity. They’re about designing benefits that stay relevant, controllable, and defensible as your company budget, employee requests, and work models change.

What percentage of companies offer employee stipends?

Employee stipends are part of a broader shift toward flexible, personalized benefits as employers respond to cost pressures and evolving workplace expectations.

Employee stipend statistics from our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report help illustrate how widely stipend-based benefits structures are now used:

• 64% of Compt customers offer an all-inclusive Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA), indicating broad adoption of reimbursement-based, stipend-style benefits as a core program structure.
• All-inclusive LSAs grew from 55% to 64% year over year, highlighting rapid consolidation into stipend-based programs.
• 82% of multicategory LSAs include five or more eligible categories, showing that when companies adopt stipends, they tend to position them for broad use. 
• 20% of employers extend stipends to international employees, reflecting use of stipends as a scalable, global benefits structure.
• Among Compt customers, quarterly funding is the dominant cadence for stipend programs because it balances employee planning with employer budget control.

Why this matters: These benchmarks show that employee stipends are no longer experimental or limited to narrow use cases. Broad, all-inclusive structures like LSAs have become a mainstream way for employers to deliver flexible support. 

Table: Employee stipend adoption and structure (2026)

What employee benefits programs and perks are most commonly offered today?

Once an employer decides to offer employee stipends, the next question becomes which benefits to include. Most organizations focus on a small set of categories that allow space for choice across roles, locations, and life stages.

Data from our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report shows a clear hierarchy in the types of employee perks most commonly offered within stipend programs:

• Health and wellness is the most common stipend category, offered as a standalone stipend by 37% of companies. Wellness is also frequently bundled into broader programs: 71% of Compt customers include it as part of a multicategory stipend or LSA, rather than offering it on its own.
• Office equipment stipends are offered by 25% of employers, reflecting continued support for hybrid and remote work through reimbursements for desks, monitors, and related tools.
• Professional development stipends appear in 20% of programs, with employee spend shifting toward AI tools, productivity software, and online learning instead of traditional conferences or certifications.
• Cell and internet stipends are offered by 15% of companies, often tied to distributed or travel-heavy roles and, in some cases, compliance requirements.
• Commuter benefits are included by 8% of employers, typically as role- or location-specific programs rather than universal perks.
• Food stipends appear in 7% of programs, most often layered into broader benefits structures rather than run as standalone offerings.

Why this matters: The most common employee perks today are designed to support both everyday stability and quality-of-life moments. By prioritizing categories like wellness, work setup, connectivity, and professional development, employers can offer predictable benefits that cover practical needs.

How much do employers spend on employee stipends per year?

Employee stipend budgets vary widely by company size, industry, and program design. That said, employers are becoming more deliberate about how much they allocate by grounding funding decisions in employee usage patterns and budget predictability rather than aspirational perk lists.

Employee stipend funding benchmarks from our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report show how much employers typically invest per employee each year:

• Average stipend funding across all companies reached $850 per employee per year.
• Small companies (fewer than 100 employees) funded an average of $1,675, the highest per-employee stipend investment across company sizes.
• Midsize companies (100–1,000 employees) averaged $1,055, often refining existing stipend programs rather than adding new ones.
• Large organizations (1,000+ employees) funded an average of $649, reflecting lower per-employee funding paired with broader access across large workforces.
• Across all company sizes, stipend budgets now cluster between $800–$1,200 per employee annually, reinforcing this level as a common planning benchmark rather than an outlier.

Funding also varies by industry:

• Banking and investment firms average $2,350 per employee annually, the highest among industries in the dataset.
• Biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies average $2,060, reflecting higher overall benefits investment.
• Technology companies average $1,400 per employee, often pairing all-inclusive LSAs with targeted categories like wellness and commuter benefits.
• Education ($265) and professional services ($460) represent the lowest average stipend funding levels, highlighting how industry norms shape benefits budgets.
• The full 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report provides averages across 15 different industries. 

Why this matters: Employee stipends are not designed to replace compensation or scale indefinitely. Instead, the data shows employers converging on funding levels that are meaningful enough to support both everyday needs and discretionary use, while remaining predictable, capped, and defensible from a budgeting standpoint. 

Table: Funding benchmarks by company size (2026)

Are companies cutting employee benefits or changing how they are structured?

As budget pressure continues, employers are definitely scrutinizing benefits programs more closely. The data suggests, however, that this scrutiny is focused on structure and efficiency, not eliminating support altogether. Rather than expanding benefits menus or adding new vendors, employers are adjusting how programs are funded, delivered, and evaluated.

Data from the Compt 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report points to a better alternative than broad benefits cuts:

• Average stipend funding per employee declined slightly year over year. This demonstrates that Compt customers modified their budgets without the need for widespread elimination of benefits programs.
• Success is increasingly measured by employee participation rather than maximum utilization, especially for programs designed to act as situational support rather than always-on spending.
• Employers are maintaining “ground cover” benefits with lower participation, while relying on broader programs to absorb everyday needs without expanding their total budget.

Why this matters: Employers are not eliminating support; they are redesigning structure. Consolidation, participation metrics, and predictable funding allow companies to protect lifestyle benefits while maintaining budget discipline.

Which employee benefits programs have the highest participation?

When employers evaluate whether lifestyle benefits programs are “working,” participation speaks volumes. High participation indicates that employees understand the benefit, see it as relevant, and feel comfortable using it.

Participation and utilization data from the 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report shows that benefits tied to recurring, everyday needs consistently see the broadest engagement:

• All-inclusive Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) have the highest participation rate at 93%. They are the most widely used lifestyle benefits structure.
• Cell and internet benefits show 88% participation. These are most relevant for distributed, remote, and travel-heavy roles, and are a required benefit in some states.
• Wellness benefits have 85% participation, particularly when embedded within a broader stipend or LSA program rather than offered on their own.
• Office equipment stipends see 84% participation. These often support hybrid work and ongoing role-based needs.
• Team recognition benefits reach 82% participation, proving strong engagement even in a category designed for episodic use. (Gratitude always wins! And with Compt, team recognition is included in your lifestyle benefits program.)
• Food benefits see 79% participation, underscoring today’s demand for everyday financial support.
• Professional development programs show lower participation at 47%. This indicates their more intentional, opt-in nature, not a lack of value.

Importantly, participation and utilization are not the same measure — and the data makes that distinction clear.

• All-inclusive LSAs combine high participation (93%) with high utilization (89%), indicating that flexible structures absorb a wide range of employee needs effectively.
• Standalone wellness programs show lower utilization (70%) than wellness delivered within an LSA (86%), even when participation is similar.
• Situational benefits like caregiving and out-of-state care are designed for lower participation and utilization, serving as “ground cover” rather than always-on programs.

One important distinction is that with reimbursement-based stipends and LSAs, you only pay for benefits when your employees actually use them. If an employee is allocated a stipend but only uses part of it, you fund only what is reimbursed — unused dollars are never spent. As a result, lower utilization does NOT translate to wasted budget.

Why this matters: High-performing benefits programs aren’t defined by maximum spend — they’re defined by relevance. The data shows that flexible, consolidated structures drive the strongest participation. Lower utilization in certain categories isn’t a failure; it’s often a sign that a benefit is functioning exactly as designed.

How do employees use their employee stipends?

When employees are given flexibility, their spending behavior tends to be practical first, with room for discretion when it matters. Employees use their stipends to support a mix of priorities, depending on timing, life stage, and personal needs.

Employee spending data from Compt’s 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report shows clear behavioral patterns in how stipend dollars are actually used:

• Nearly 1 in 10 stipend transactions are for groceries, making food one of the most common real-world uses of flexible benefits (even when grocery spend is not explicitly marketed as a “perk” or part of the program — many Compt users submit grocery receipts under health and wellness.)
• This shift is especially telling when compared to last year: Sam’s Club replaced a national telecom provider in the top 10 merchants. It’s a notable move away from monthly subscription services and toward benefits spending that supports everyday stability.
• Health and wellness remains the single largest spending category, spanning recurring fitness costs, preventive care, mental health support, and everyday health-related expenses that often fall outside standard insurance coverage — not just one-time purchases or gym memberships.
• AI tools now make up a meaningful share of professional development spending, accounting for about 20% of total professional development spend, with online tools and productivity software representing the largest category and the majority of AI-related purchases.
• Roughly 70% of stipend dollars are spent with local or independent vendors, rather than national marketplaces, indicating that employees integrate benefits into existing routines instead of changing behavior to fit a platform.
• Employees rarely concentrate spend in a single category, particularly within all-inclusive LSAs, instead distributing usage across multiple everyday and situational needs over time. 

Why this matters: Employee stipend usage reflects how people actually live and work — not how perks are traditionally packaged. The data shows employees using benefits to cover essentials like groceries and connectivity while also making room for aspirational spending. This mix of practical and personal use is difficult to achieve with fixed perks or vendor-specific programs, and helps explain why flexible, reimbursement-based benefits consistently drive higher relevance in real-world use.

What are the biggest employee benefits trends today?

Across companies and industries, employee benefits programs are converging around a few clear design principles. Rather than adding new perks or expanding budgets, employers are reshaping how benefits are delivered to balance flexibility, predictability, and real-world relevance.

Based on patterns in our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report, four trends stand out:

• Vendor reduction through consolidation: Employers are continuing to move away from fragmented, single-purpose perks in favor of centralized stipend structures, with LSAs increasingly serving as the backbone for lifestyle benefits delivery.
• Predictable funding over ad hoc generosity: Funding cadence and program design now emphasize consistency and budget control. The wide range in funding underscores that structure and intent matter more than any single “right” dollar amount.
• Professional development shifting toward practical, AI-driven tools: Learning benefits are being used less for episodic events and more for ongoing skill building, with AI tools and productivity software emerging as a dominant use case.
• Benefits designed to support everyday financial stability: Employees are using benefits to offset recurring, real-life expenses in addition to treating perks as well-earned rewards.

Why this matters: Together, these trends show a shift away from “more perks” and toward better-structured benefits. 

How are companies structuring modern employee benefits programs?

As benefits programs mature, structure has become just as important as funding or category mix. HR teams are increasingly designing benefits with operational simplicity in mind by reducing the number of tools they manage while improving visibility, control, and compliance.

Patterns in Compt’s 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report show a clear shift in how benefits programs are being built and maintained:

• Centralized administration across HR and Finance: Modern benefits programs are increasingly managed through a single system of record, improving coordination between HR and Finance while simplifying approvals, reporting, and oversight.
• Fewer point solutions, broader coverage: Instead of adding new tools for each emerging need, employers are favoring flexible benefit structures that can absorb new use cases without reengineering the program.
• Clearer guardrails and visibility: Program structure is being used as a form of cost control, with defined funding, eligibility rules, and reporting replacing ad hoc reimbursements and manual workarounds.
• Benefits designed to scale without rework: As teams grow, go hybrid, or expand internationally, employers are prioritizing benefits programs that don’t require constant redesign or vendor changes to keep up.

Why this matters: Modern benefits programs are being structured to work at scale. By consolidating vendors, centralizing administration, and reducing reliance on point solutions, employers can offer flexible benefits that support both everyday needs and discretionary moments — without increasing operational burden. This shift makes benefits easier to manage, easier to justify, and easier to evolve as workforce needs change.

What all this means for employers using Compt

If you’re feeling pressure to simplify benefits without cutting support, the patterns in our employee stipend statistics should feel familiar. Stipends work best when they’re flexible enough to meet real needs and structured enough to stay predictable and easy to manage.

Compt is built for that reality. Our reimbursement-based approach helps you consolidate lifestyle benefits, pay only for what’s actually used, and adapt right along with your employees’ needs — without rebuilding your benefits stack every year.

Ready to see how it works? Request a Compt demo. 

FAQs: Employee stipend statistics

The post Ultimate List of Employee Stipend Statistics (2026): Adoption, Funding, Participation, and Usage appeared first on COMPT.

For years, many HR teams deprioritized traditional discount portals. They were easy to launch and sounded generous on paper, yet usage was inconsistent and the experience often felt disconnected from the benefits employees actually relied on. 

At the same time, reimbursement-based lifestyle benefits like stipends and Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) surged in popularity. They met employees where they were by offering freedom to spend on what mattered most, while giving HR and Finance a simpler, more compliant way to deliver support. 

Now, in 2026, those two threads are converging.

According to Compt’s 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report, participation across flexible benefits programs is remarkably high — 93% of active employees used at least one benefit in 2025 — but how employees use those benefits has shifted toward everyday essentials. 

Nearly 1 in 10 stipend dollars is now spent at grocery retailers, and 70% of total spend flows to local, regional, independent, or niche vendors rather than national marketplaces.

That context matters. It reframes the question HR and Finance leaders are asking in 2026:

How do we make the benefits we already fund feel like more?

That’s where an employee benefits discounts marketplace comparison becomes useful — not to crown a single “winner,” but to understand how these models actually work in practice, and where each falls short.

Why 2026 is the year to reevaluate employee discounts

The benchmark data shows a clear pattern: employees are prioritizing benefits that offset real, recurring costs. Food, wellness, connectivity, and household needs consistently rank among the most-used categories, and participation for these benefits remains high.

Employers, at the same time, are consolidating programs instead of adding new ones. In 2025, 64% of Compt customers ran an all-inclusive LSA, up from 55% the year before. The goal for many of our customers was to make their existing benefits and budgets work harder while reducing operational complexity.

The four models in today’s employee benefits discounts marketplace comparison

Most platforms HR teams evaluate fall into one of four models. Each reflects a different assumption about how employees engage with benefits.

1. Discount-only marketplaces

Traditional discount marketplaces give employees access to negotiated deals across retail, travel, entertainment, and wellness through a standalone portal.

They can work as a lightweight perk, but the benchmark data helps explain why engagement often fades. Employees don’t organize their lives around portals; they organize spending around their actual needs and wants. When discounts live outside the benefits employees actively use, they’re easy to forget.

These platforms also lack visibility into whether discounts meaningfully support participation, utilization, or financial wellness. Savings may exist, but they’re disconnected from benefits strategy.

2. Marketplace-first LSA platforms (Forma, ThrivePass, Espresa)

Marketplace-first platforms attempt to solve that disconnect by embedding curated catalogs directly into LSAs.

The upside is control; these models deliver hand-selected vendors, predictable spend paths, and a clean user experience. 

The tradeoff is constraint. Curated marketplaces require ongoing maintenance and inevitably exclude edge cases — especially for global teams, local vendors, or employees with specialized needs.

This matters because employee behavior doesn’t align neatly with catalogs. In 2025, employees spent stipend dollars across 64,000+ unique vendors globally, reinforcing that personalization, not curation, drives participation.

3. Open reimbursement-first platforms (Compt, Benepass)

Reimbursement-first platforms prioritize flexibility. Employees spend where it makes sense for them and submit receipts within defined categories.

The data strongly supports this model. All-inclusive LSAs reached 93% participation and 89% utilization in 2025, outperforming narrower, single-purpose stipends. 

• Participation reflects intent: the share of employees who submit at least one expense during the year, indicating how broadly a benefit is actually used across the workforce.
• Utilization reflects effectiveness relative to your goals: the share of issued stipend dollars that employees actually spend, measured within the program’s funding cadence.

Employees consistently direct spend toward what’s most useful in a given moment, whether that’s covering everyday essentials like groceries one month, investing in wellness or professional development the next, or using the benefit for small, meaningful joys that simply make them happy.

Historically, the limitation of open reimbursement models was simple: no built-in savings layer to pair with that unprecedented flexibility.

4. Open reimbursement + embedded discounts (Compt + PerkSpot)

This is where the category has evolved.

With Employee Discounts, powered by PerkSpot, Compt layers a proven discount marketplace into a reimbursement-first platform without turning discounts into a gatekeeper for value.

Employees keep full freedom of choice. Discounts are optional, discoverable, and relevant to how people already spend. HR and Finance teams keep one platform, one system of record, and one consolidated program.

See how it works:

Side-by-side employee benefits discounts marketplace comparison

What the data says about participation and why it matters for discounts

One of the most important insights from the 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report is the distinction between participation and utilization. In a tight budget environment, participation is often a primary success metric: are employees actually using the benefit?

Participation is highest for benefits tied to recurring needs:

• All-inclusive LSAs: 93% participation
• Cell and internet: 88%
• Wellness: 85%
• Food: 79%
• Caregiving and family: 78%

These are exactly the categories where discounts can have the most impact — not by replacing stipends, but by stretching them. Employees apply a discount to a purchase they already planned to make, submit the lower receipt for reimbursement, and get more value from the same benefit budget.

Where employees actually spend — and why marketplaces alone fall short

The benchmark data shows that employee spending is highly distributed:

• 70% of stipend dollars go to local, regional, independent, or niche vendors.
• Employees are not defaulting to large, centralized marketplaces like Amazon.
• Grocery and household retailers now account for a growing share of top vendors, with Sam’s Club replacing a national telecom provider in the top 10.

This behavior explains why marketplace-only approaches struggle. Employees don’t want to change where they shop to use a benefit. They want benefits that adapt to how they already live.

You can see this difference clearly when you compare where employees actually spend stipend dollars versus where they apply optional discounts.

How employees spend (stipends) vs. save (discounts)

When nearly one in 10 stipend dollars goes to groceries, savings matter most where spend is unavoidable. A $100 stipend used at full price covers $100 of expenses. The same stipend paired with meaningful discounts can stretch further — without increasing your benefits budget.

Savings-first benefits, without adding another tool

Because discounts live inside the same Compt platform employees already use to submit expenses and manage stipends, they don’t require new habits. They simply show up when relevant — including through the PerkSpot Chrome extension, which highlights available discounts as employees shop, search, and browse online.

Discounts are offered as a free add-on within an existing program, not a separate tool. There’s no additional vendor, no new workflow, and no separate reporting. HR and Finance maintain a single source of truth while employees experience more value from the benefits they already use.

Freedom plus deals: the real takeaway

For years, benefits conversations framed this as binary: marketplaces or flexibility, discounts or choice.

Turns out, the benefits world has evolved. Employees engage most when benefits reflect real life, adapt to shifting needs, and stay easy to use. Open reimbursement provides the foundation. Embedded discounts extend the value, without limiting choice or adding complexity.

That’s the real conclusion of this employee benefits discounts marketplace comparison.

See how this works in practice with Compt

If you’re evaluating employee discounts, marketplaces, or stipend platforms, the real question isn’t which model to choose — it’s how to design benefits around how employees actually spend.

With Compt, you can run a reimbursement-first lifestyle benefits program and layer in Employee Discounts, powered by PerkSpot, at no additional cost.

Request a demo to see how Compt + PerkSpot help you consolidate stipends and discounts into one flexible platform.

FAQs: Employee benefits discounts marketplace comparison

The post Employee Discounts, Marketplaces, and Stipends: A 2026 Employee Benefits Comparison appeared first on COMPT.

This month’s Compt product updates focus on tightening the everyday experience: making recognition more human, reducing friction in payroll workflows, and grounding benefits decisions in real benchmarking data.

Here’s what’s new across the Compt platform.

Recognition just got more expressive.

When we first launched Team Recognition in Compt, one of the earliest questions we heard was simple and telling:

Can we add a GIF?

Recognition is more meaningful when it feels personal. Now, employees using a Team Recognition program in Compt can search for and add a GIF (or upload their own GIF or image) to include visuals with every e-thanks or monetary recognition shoutout.

If your team uses the Compt Slack integration, those GIFs appear directly in your recognition channel, keeping appreciation visible without introducing another tool or workflow.

These moments might feel small, but they tie directly to a broader shift we’re seeing in benefits design: employees engage more when programs feel natural and lightweight. Consolidation works well here, too: You don’t need a separate recognition solution if it’s already embedded in your Compt lifestyle benefits.

If you’re interested in launching Team Recognition, request a demo of Compt.

The redesigned payroll experience launches for all customers on February 24.

Payroll is one of the most sensitive workflows HR and Finance teams manage. Accuracy, clarity, and tax compliance are nonnegotiable, and unnecessary friction increases risk.

Over the past year, we’ve refreshed several areas of the Compt platform. The latest update focuses on payroll, delivering:

• A cleaner, more modern interface
• Clearer navigation across payroll reports
• A more intuitive experience for reviewing and finalizing reimbursements

This update is intentionally evolutionary. Existing payroll reports, configurations, and compliance logic remain unchanged. The goal is simply to make a high-stakes workflow easier to get right.

All existing customers will be migrated starting February 24, 2026. New customers who launch after that date will receive the new experience automatically. 

If you have questions about how the new payroll experience will work with your current benefits setup, a Compt team member would be happy to help. 

The 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report is live.

Our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report is now available, marking the sixth year we’ve published this research as part of our ongoing Compt product updates.

Each year, we analyze how stipends and LSAs are actually designed and used across the Compt platform, then translate that behavior into benchmarks HR and Finance teams can plan around. This information can also help you stand out from a talent acquisition perspective in terms of ensuring your lifestyle benefits are competitive in the marketplace. 

The report answers questions we hear on many customer calls:

• Which stipend and LSA categories companies are offering
• What employee participation and utilization rates look like in practice
• How much employers typically fund, sliced by company size, region (including international) and industry
• Median, minimum, and maximum funding ranges (not just averages)

This year’s data also reflects a broader shift toward consolidation, simpler administration, and benefits designed around everyday employee needs (while still leaving space for moments of celebration and joy).

Explore the 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report.

Compt is committed to designing lifestyle benefits that are easy to run (and easy to use).

These Compt product updates reflect what we’re seeing across the market. HR and Finance teams want benefits programs that are easier to operate day to day, not just appealing on paper.

They also reinforce how Compt approaches lifestyle benefits: with an emphasis on durability, clarity, and ease of administration as programs evolve. The platform is designed to support teams as their needs change, without requiring constant reconfiguration or additional tools.

If you’re evaluating changes to your benefits stack this year, request a demo to see how Compt fits into your approach.

FAQs: Lifestyle benefits platforms

This section reflects the questions we hear most often from HR and Finance teams evaluating, expanding, or consolidating lifestyle benefits programs in 2026, including questions that come up when reviewing recent Compt product updates.

The post What’s New in Compt: Product Updates, February 2026 appeared first on COMPT.

Not in theory, and not in a slide deck — but in how lifestyle benefits like stipends and Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) are actually used once programs are live and employees begin submitting expenses.

That’s exactly where the Compt 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report comes in.

Available today, the report provides employee benefits benchmarks based on full-year 2025 data from Compt customers across industries, company sizes, and geographies. It shows how employers structured and funded their lifestyle benefits and how employees actually spent and submitted against them.

This isn’t a predictions piece. It’s a snapshot of real decisions and outcomes, offering a practical view of what’s working for HR and Finance leaders at a time when every employee benefit feels expensive.

What does this year’s employee benefits benchmark data reveal?

The defining shift in 2025 was discipline.

That discipline showed up less in what employers offered and more in how lifestyle benefits were structured, funded, and delivered. 

Across the data, Compt customers made pragmatic design decisions: consolidating scattered perks into all-inclusive LSAs, choosing funding cadences aligned to how and when employees actually use their benefits, embedding strong categories like wellness inside broader programs, and anchoring benefits in everyday needs that scale across roles, locations, and worker types.

The result is benefits design that balances employee impact with cost control — without adding complexity.

Our 2026 benchmarks show exactly how that plays out in practice:

• 64% of employers now operate lifestyle benefits through an all-inclusive LSA, confirming consolidation as the default operating model.
• Quarterly funding reached 85% utilization, compared to 52% for monthly and 65% for annual programs, reflecting differences in use patterns rather than performance.
• Wellness stipend utilization reached 86% inside an LSA, compared to 62% as a standalone stipend.
• Nearly 1 in 10 stipend dollars was spent at grocery retailers.
• 20% of professional development expenses were AI-related.

These patterns held across roles, worker types, and locations. Data from hourly and salaried employees on U.S.-based and international teams shows that when benefits are designed around everyday needs and personal choice — including space for small joys — they scale without requiring separate programs or differentiated rules.

Employees are now using lifestyle benefits to manage real life.

In 2025, employees directed stipend spending across 64,000+ unique vendors globally, with 70% of that spend flowing to local, regional, niche, or independent businesses. At the same time, familiar names like Amazon, Walmart, Costco, and Kroger remained prominent as grocery and household spending increased in response to economic pressure.

When employees are given flexibility, they direct their benefits toward the expenses that matter most in daily life — where financial pressure and practical support intersect.

As a result, lifestyle benefits are increasingly used to create stability, helping employees cover food, wellness needs, connectivity, work equipment, and other essentials that support their ability to stay grounded and productive, while still leaving room for everyday purchases that make life feel more manageable (and fun). 

For many leaders, this raises a practical planning question: Which everyday expenses are your benefits actually helping employees absorb?

Professional development is evolving into an always-on tool stack.

The report also highlights a clear evolution in professional development. 

We’ve talked a lot about AI stipends in the last year, and in 2025, 20% of all professional development expenses were AI-related. These were primarily online tools and productivity software rather than courses, certifications, or conferences. Employees are learning by doing and experimenting with tools they can apply immediately in their day-to-day work.

This marks a shift away from episodic learning and toward continuous upskilling that fits in naturally as roles (and the world) evolve. 

For organizations reviewing their benefits mix, this invites a broader reflection: Is your professional development program structured for how learning actually happens now?

Go beyond curiosity with real, actionable benchmarks and advice.

The 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report is designed to support real decisions that HR and Finance face every day.

Inside the full report, you’ll find benchmarks and context to help you navigate:

• Program consolidation and simplification
• Funding cadence and utilization expectations
• Participation benchmarks across employee types
• Global parity and international program design
• Taxable and nontaxable benefit strategy
• Benefits for hourly vs. salaried workers

Every insight connects data to practical implications, making it easier to explain not just what you’re proposing, but why it works.

Download the Compt 2026 Employee Benefits Benchmark Report.

The 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report is available now, and it’s free to download.

If you’re benchmarking an existing program, validating decisions already in motion, or planning refinements for the year ahead, these employee benefits benchmarks are designed to help you move forward with clarity and confidence.

Ready to see how your programs compare? Download your copy of the 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report.

If you want help applying these benchmarks to your own lifestyle benefits program goals, request a Compt demo to talk through next steps in real time. 

The post The 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report Is Available Now appeared first on COMPT.

Written by Holly Hazelton

Holly Hazelton is a people-focused content and communications leader with more than 10 years of experience supporting HR, benefits, coaching, and people analytics audiences. She has shaped employee experience narratives and content strategies for Workhuman, Crunchr, and AceUp, helping leaders create workplaces where people feel seen, supported, and connected. She also founded a global ERG for working parents, reflecting her belief that human-centered storytelling drives stronger performance and belonging.

Connect with Holly on LinkedIn.

This past August, my world was shattered when I got a call that my mom had fallen in the middle of the night. I immediately drove into Boston — half asleep and half in shock — and when I arrived, she was going into emergency brain surgery. My mom was having a hemorrhagic stroke. 

I didn’t realize it then, but this wouldn’t be her last hospital stay.

That was the day I unexpectedly joined the sandwich generation. It’s a somewhat endearing term for those of us who are simultaneously raising children while caring for our aging parents. 

There aren’t as many of us in this club as there are people who enjoy eating sandwiches, but still, we make up nearly 25% of U.S. adults. Plus, 71% of employees today have some form of caregiving responsibility. That includes childcare, elder care, medical coordination, household management, and unpaid labor.

Luckily for me, I was working part-time during the early days of my mom’s stroke and had the flexibility to support my family fully. Had I been working full-time, I would have quickly exhausted paid family leave and PTO while coordinating her care — all while juggling school schedules and the everyday logistics of parenting young children. Even so, there were some days I didn’t make it home in time to get them off the bus. 

I was stretched thin. 

When caregiving becomes a workplace issue

My experience isn’t an isolated one, and it reflects a reality many employers are already navigating. When caregiving responsibilities collide with full-time work, the effects extend beyond the individual employee and into day-to-day business operations.

Caregiving can cost employers $6,410 per employee per year in productivity loss, and employees who are caregivers miss an average of 3.2 workdays per month.

For HR leaders, this raises a pressing question: how can employers support the sandwich generation in a way that meaningfully reduces strain, without adding administrative burden or unpredictable costs?

One of the most practical options is caregiving stipends. These are a type of family stipend that employers can offer employees to support family members. Other types of family stipends typically include elder care stipends, fertility support, and childcare benefits.

Read ‘’Stipends for Caregiving Employees: Everything You Need to Know’’ to learn more about how to offer caregiver stipends in practice. 

What is an elder care stipend, and how does it work?

An elder care stipend typically rolls into a family stipend. It is a predetermined amount of money an employer provides to employees on a recurring basis to cover approved elder care expenses. 

Caregiving or elder care stipends can be granted monthly, quarterly, or annually, depending on your approach to benefits. You can also vary the categories of approved expenses based on your policy. Caregiving stipends can provide a financial safety net for:  

• Medical expenses
• Adult day care
• Children’s day care or babysitting services
• Personal care attendants 
• Transportation costs
• Home modifications or renovations
• Everyday personal needs 
• Household expenses 

The hidden costs of dual caregiving for employees and employers

Caring for even one other person is demanding. When employees are responsible for both children and aging parents, those demands compound quickly and create ripple effects that show up emotionally and operationally.

Sandwich generation employees perform complex, demanding work outside their regular hours, with little support. So it’s no surprise that caregivers are 48% more likely to have experienced increased anxiety and depression over the past year.

Carrying the mental load

Dual caregivers often feel constant worry and anxiety. We make medical decisions with limited context or preparation while assisting with homework or addressing behavior issues in our children. This unavoidable mental load often shows up as burnout, disengagement, or reduced capacity at work.

Financial strain 

Costs for childcare, elder care, transportation, meal support, and medical devices add up fast. Many caregivers pay thousands out of pocket each year, even when insurance or Medicaid covers some costs. Over time, that financial pressure limits employees’ ability to stay fully engaged at work or plan for long-term career growth.

Organizational impact: absenteeism, presenteeism, stalled careers

Many employees, myself included, try to keep caregiving struggles quiet at work, but the impact is felt nonetheless. If your sandwich generation employees feel overworked and underpaid before they even log on, it’s only a matter of time before the business experiences related pressure.

For organizations, the strain of caregiving shows up in measurable ways:

• Higher absenteeism: Working caregivers are twice as likely to take disability-related leaves of absence, and one-third of caregivers who take leave to care for family end up taking another leave for themselves.
• Missed promotions: One in five take demotions or leaves of absence to manage their intense responsibilities.
• Part-time transitions: 29% of caregivers are reducing their work hours.

Despite the growing need to support caregivers, Compt’s Midyear Benchmark Report found that fewer than 4% of companies offer caregiving stipends. This is a significant and surprising gap between employee reality and employer action, considering the number of family caregivers has increased by 45% over the past decade. 

For HR teams, this disconnect should be a wake-up call. Without intentional support, caregiving challenges translate into higher turnover, increased absenteeism, and lower performance and productivity — often long before they show up in engagement surveys or exit interviews.

Why flexible, multiuse stipends solve modern caregiving challenges

Addressing caregiving challenges doesn’t require adding more rigid benefits. Rather, it requires designing support that reflects how caregiving actually works. 

Caregiving needs rarely fit into neat categories. Employees may be supporting aging parents one month, coordinating childcare the next, or managing both at the same time. That variability makes rigid, single-purpose benefits ineffective and difficult to manage. This is where targeted family care stipends — or better yet, a flexible, single Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA) — come in. 

Unlike point solutions, with an LSA, employees can move between caregiving needs as their situations change:

• Childcare
• Elder care
• Transportation
• Groceries
• Visiting Nurse assistance
• Tutoring
• Wellness support

Other caregiving-related categories may apply here, depending on your team’s unique needs and how you structure your program. 

When my mom first went into the hospital in Boston, my expenses were primarily travel costs, lunches for myself and my father, and after-school care for when I couldn’t be there for my children. Upon returning home, we needed help purchasing sheets, blankets, and accessibility upgrades.

This is why flexible LSAs are so effective: they provide employees with direct support where it’s needed most, month by month, without forcing them into predefined categories that fail to reflect real life.

For HR, flexibility matters, too. LSAs reduce the need to juggle multiple point solutions or define numerous family scenarios. This makes it easier to offer solid benefits without adding operational complexity, and it trickles down to employees like me.

There’s also a generational aspect to all of this. Mercer uncovered that Gen Z and millennials want digital-first tools, personalized options, and flexible benefits, and when the benefits don’t address real needs, it can erode trust. Flexible stipends help close the trust gap by giving employees more choice rather than limited options.

The business case for supporting the sandwich generation

Supporting employees who are caregivers is a human decision — but it’s also a strategic one. When caregivers receive even modest levels of support, research shows the benefits extend beyond employee well-being to workforce stability, cost control, and better long-term performance.

Mercer’s CFO survey highlights why caregiving support aligns directly with finance leaders’ top concerns:

• 67% of CFOs view healthcare costs as a major concern.
• High-cost claimants are the #1 driver of increasing cost volatility.
• 72% say healthcare is less predictable than other expenses.

Caregiving support plays an important role here because it helps reduce disruptions that drive cost volatility, such as sudden leaves, burnout-related exits, and delayed care, which can lead to higher-cost health claims in the future.

As the workforce ages and healthcare costs continue to rise, the risk of inaction becomes harder to ignore. The sandwich generation is growing, and fewer families have access to affordable private care. This increases the likelihood that caregiving responsibilities will fall directly on your employees. 

Employers that fail to adapt risk compounding these pressures over time, particularly among experienced, mid-career employees who are hardest to replace.

In contrast, organizations that invest in flexible, modern caregiving support are better positioned to retain critical talent, plan benefits spending with greater confidence, and continue to innovate. For many organizations, especially midmarket companies, this shift isn’t theoretical. It’s here, and it’s already shaping how benefits strategies are evolving.

How midmarket companies are integrating family care reimbursements into broader benefits strategies

Among midmarket employers, caregiving support is increasingly being addressed through broader, more flexible benefits strategies rather than standalone solutions. Instead of adding more vendors, these organizations are using flexible stipends to consolidate support across caregiving, wellness, and everyday needs and drive a more holistic and manageable benefits strategy. 

Simply put, caregiver support isn’t just for large companies. 

Compt’s Annual Benchmark Report highlights how this approach is taking shape in the midmarket:

• 64% of employers offer all-inclusive LSAs (not just siloed categories), reflecting how midmarket organizations are consolidating support into broader, more flexible programs rather than adding new vendors.
• Average stipend funding reached $850 per employee in 2025, while midmarket employers averaged $1,055 per employee, demonstrating how midsize organizations are refining existing stipends to support multiple use cases and deliver holistic support in a predictable, manageable way.

Why leaders at midsize companies choose LSAs

LSAs have become a central organizing layer for modern benefits programs at many midsize organizations. Instead of adding new benefits each year, companies can use LSAs as a central hub for all types of benefits. This approach helps HR:

• Consolidate vendors. One platform can replace several separate solutions.
• Lower administrative workload. HR teams often lack time for manual reviews or managing specialized programs.
• Forecast budget needs for Finance. LSAs avoid unpredictable claims, unlike expanding medical or EAP programs.

Plus, this flexible, trust-based strategy grows with employee needs, which is especially important for those in the sandwich generation.

The takeaway for HR and Finance teams? Flexibility doesn’t have to mean complexity. For midmarket employers, it often has the opposite effect.

How to design a caregiving or elder care stipend that cuts down admin work

Once an organization decides to support caregivers more intentionally, the next question is how to do so without adding administrative burden. Benefits programs don’t fail because of poor design; it’s because too many rely on manual workflows, fragile spreadsheets, disconnected systems, and tools that weren’t built to handle stipends at scale. 

Simply put, even the best-laid benefits plans can go awry without the right system in place.

Luckily, whether you’re looking to offer a single caregiving stipend or a holistic Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA), Compt can help transform your benefits while cutting down on admin work. Compt’s flexible employee stipends help you:

• Design a customized, easy-to-modify plan including spending categories, amounts, and timeframes.
• Automate accurate payments with built-in tax compliance and payroll integrations. 
• Simplify reimbursements by allowing employees to snap a photo of their receipt, upload it to the platform, and submit. 

For an example of how this works in practice, read “How to Set Up an Employee Stipend in Just One Hour.”

Simplify caregiving and family support with Compt

Supporting caregivers should feel authentic, not forced. Have you ever had an experience like mine, where a friend offered to help, but gave strict limitations on what they were willing to do to support you? Of course not, and it should be the same for caregiving stipends. These benefits are meant to help, not hinder, people from accessing the resources they need.  

Compt is designed to help support employees and their families, including employees in the sandwich generation. It offers the flexibility employees demand and the compliance employers expect.

Compt’s LSAs were designed for employers seeking to support families and caregivers without additional administrative work. With flexible categories, employees gain access to benefits for a wide range of needs, ensuring families at every stage can find support that fits their real lives. Plus, Compt’s tax-compliant reimbursement system makes it easy for teams everywhere to access benefits without extra paperwork.

Support your sandwich generation employees with flexible, reimbursement-based LSAs built for real caregiving needs. Schedule a demo with Compt today.

FAQs: Supporting the sandwich generation

The post How to Support the Sandwich Generation With Caregiving and Elder Care Stipends appeared first on COMPT.

In 2025, the answers were sharper and more direct. Not because leaders lack intent — they don’t. Across hundreds of conversations, the commitment to employees is steady and sincere.

What’s changed is the level of constraint.

Budgets are tighter. Healthcare costs continue to rise. Teams are putting real effort into doing more with less. And many of the systems companies rely on to deliver benefits weren’t built for the level of complexity today’s workforce demands.

I’ve seen that the organizations making progress aren’t chasing new perks. They’re simplifying. Consolidating. And rebuilding benefits programs around what employees actually use, supported by infrastructure that doesn’t add more work to already stretched teams.

Our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report, grounded in real spending data from January through December 2025, shows how this shift is playing out across industries, company sizes, and geographies (including internationally). 

Below are the changes I expect to define the year ahead, backed by observations from my conversations with leaders that expand on what our peers should be paying attention to now.

1. Companies will consolidate perks and redirect budget into flexible LSAs.

When budgets were looser, it was easier to tolerate a patchwork of point solutions — each one solving a narrow problem, each one adding incremental overhead for HR and Finance.

That tolerance is fading.

In 2026, the companies moving forward will be the ones that stop trying to maintain everything at once. They’ll retire underused perks and redirect that spend into Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) that give employees meaningful choice without creating additional administrative work.

This isn’t about reducing support. It’s about preserving it in a way that scales. A single, flexible structure can replace multiple disconnected programs, reduce vendor sprawl, and allow employees to decide what support looks like in their own lives.

The data is clear: when programs are simpler and more flexible, participation and utilization rise — and benefits dollars go further.

2. AI enablement will become a core workforce capability.

AI isn’t a future-facing conversation anymore. It’s already reshaping how work gets done.

Employees aren’t waiting for formal training programs to catch up. They’re using professional development stipends to access AI tools, courses, and subscriptions on their own — because that’s where learning is actually happening.

I don’t love hype cycles. But I do believe in practical capability building. In 2026, companies that treat AI skill development as optional will struggle to keep pace. The ones that move faster will recognize AI enablement as foundational infrastructure, not a fringe benefit — something that supports productivity and long-term relevance.

Flexible professional development stipends, especially those that explicitly support AI tools and learning, are becoming one of the most effective ways to meet this need without forcing rigid programs employees don’t engage with.

3. Support for families and caregivers will expand across life stages.

Cost pressure is reshaping how employees experience work — and where benefits need to show up.

Across our data, employees are directing more of their lifestyle benefit dollars toward everyday realities: groceries, transportation, childcare, elder care, and other family and household expenses that have become harder to absorb.

We also expect broader employer support for life-stage and specialized health needs, including fertility care, menopause support, and out-of-pocket medical costs that traditional benefits may leave behind (think: GLP-1s for weight loss).

What matters most here is flexibility. Employees don’t move through life stages on a schedule, and point solutions rarely capture the full picture. LSAs and targeted stipends allow companies to offer support without making assumptions or forcing employees into narrow definitions of need.

4. Hybrid work, RTO policies, and global hiring will continue to reshape benefits design.

As expectations around where work happens keep shifting, employee needs shift with them.

Some days require a commute. Some require privacy. Some require better equipment. For many companies, their people’s day-to-day reality is a mix (not a fixed policy line). And that reality doesn’t always align with leadership’s assumptions about what work should look like.

At the same time, companies are rethinking how they build their teams. Growing friction around work-sponsored visas and cross-border mobility is pushing more organizations to hire globally rather than concentrate talent in a single market. As teams become more geographically distributed by design, differences in work norms, cost structures, and support expectations become harder to standardize.

Stipends remain one of the few benefit tools that can absorb this variability without requiring employers to design separate programs for every scenario. In 2026, more companies will rely on flexible benefits to support how work actually happens, across locations and life circumstances, rather than trying to enforce uniformity where it no longer fits.

5. Operational readiness will determine whether LSAs succeed.

Interest in LSAs isn’t the barrier anymore.

Execution is.

Too many programs struggle not because they’re poorly designed, but because they rely on manual workflows, disconnected systems, or tools that weren’t built to handle stipends at scale. HR teams don’t lack expertise — they lack bandwidth.

And in a market like this, the status quo often feels safer than a change that could create more work or unexpected tax issues with someone’s name attached to them.

The companies that succeed with flexible benefits in 2026 will be the ones that pair thoughtful program design with infrastructure that removes friction — especially platforms that integrate directly with payroll and handle compliance automatically.

At this point, the question isn’t whether LSAs work. It’s whether your systems can support them.

What this means for 2026

This is the year when good intentions won’t be enough.

Programs that look impressive but go unused won’t survive budget scrutiny. Perks added for the sake of keeping up won’t hold attention. And complexity without payoff will continue to slow teams down.

One final note: be cautious of anyone promising clean, universal benefits ROI. There are too many variables. What you can measure — and what Finance will respect — is participation, utilization, and whether a program reduces friction for the teams running it. That’s impact. And it’s measurable.

The organizations that make progress in 2026 will be the ones that:

• Consolidate what’s underperforming.
• Invest in benefits employees consistently use.
• Build systems that make flexibility operational, not aspirational.

Our 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report breaks down exactly how companies are structuring, funding, and managing these programs today — grounded in real employee behavior, not assumptions, to help you lead with clarity and build with confidence.

If you want data you can actually act on, I invite you to download the report today.

And if you’re ready to speak with the Compt team, go ahead and request a demo. 

The post What HR and Finance Leaders Are Getting Right — and Wrong — About Benefits in 2026 appeared first on COMPT.

Written by Theresa Fesinstine

Theresa Fesinstine is a 25-year HR executive and founder of peoplepower.ai, a leading education platform helping HR leaders confidently adopt and apply AI at work. She is the author of People Powered by AI: A Playbook for HR Leaders Ready to Shape the Future of Work, a practical guide to integrating ethical, strategic, and human-centered AI into People and Culture teams.

She also writes People Power Pulse, a LinkedIn newsletter followed by 6,000+ HR professionals, and serves as an adjunct professor at The City College of New York, teaching AI in Business and HR Management.

Across her work as an educator, advisor, and keynote speaker, Theresa is guided by one question: how do we build a future of work that is people-first and AI-forward? She helps HR teams navigate transformation with clarity, confidence, and a commitment to culture.

Connect with Theresa on LinkedIn.

“Can I ask you something without sounding dumb?”

That’s how a lot of conversations with HR leaders start these days. I hear it during workshops, after keynotes, at my monthly AI Quick Clinics, and in DMs from people who’ve been leading culture and talent for decades.

They’re not unsure about HR. They’re unsure about AI. They don’t know how to start or what to trust, and many of them already feel behind.

What follows is a version of what I’ve shared in those off-mic, off-stage conversations. These aren’t curated answers from a product sheet or vendor deck. They come from my own work as an AI for HR Educator on a mission to help HR teams explore, adopt, and operationalize AI through a people-first, AI-forward approach.

1. “How do I start using AI if I’m not technical?”

The biggest misconception I see is the idea that there are some magical technical requirements to use AI that HR leaders don’t have. This may have been the case seven years ago when I was stuck  in a General Assembly course trying to learn Tableau, but today it’s different. 

Leveraging AI is a leadership skill now — not a coding one. You don’t need to become an engineer. You need to become fluent in understanding what you need and asking for AI to assist the work you already do.

The fastest way to build confidence is to use AI on tasks you already know how to do and evaluate the results. Draft a job description using your preferred structure, then ask your Generative AI (GenAI) tool of choice (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, etc.) to generate a version based on it. Compare the two. Ask it to summarize a policy, prep notes for a stay interview, or analyze feedback from an exit survey. This is how you begin to understand how the tool “thinks.”

When I lead safe-to-learn sessions with HR teams, we’re not starting with tech. We’re starting with use cases. People quickly realize that AI isn’t taking their work, but it has the potential to make parts of it lighter. That’s where the confidence comes in: not from mastering the tool, but from seeing where it can make space for deeper, more meaningful work.

2. “What AI tools are actually safe, compliant, and HR-ready?”

There’s a lot of noise in the market right now, and HR leaders are understandably cautious. Every day, a new tool claims to “revolutionize HR,” but not every tool is compliant, secure, or actually built with people in mind.

Here’s the framework I offer:

• Separate experimentation from enterprise. ChatGPT might be your go-to tool for quick drafts or brainstorming, but unless you are on a team or enterprise account, it’s not built for sensitive employee data. 
• When evaluating HR tech vendors, ask better questions. Don’t just ask “Do you use AI?” Ask:
  • How is your AI trained and tested for bias?
  • Can you explain how decisions are made (transparency)?
  • What data is retained and how is it secured?
  • Are you embedding AI in workflows, or layering it on top?
  • How are you trained internally to leverage AI?

If they don’t have clear answers (or worse, if they can’t explain it in plain language), it’s a red flag. Stand firm that you need tools that align with your ethical standards, your regulatory responsibilities, and the trust employees place in you.

3. “How do I make sure AI doesn’t replace the human parts of HR?”

The fear isn’t just job loss. It’s culture loss. It’s the fear that, in the name of speed and efficiency, we’ll lose what makes our workplaces real: trust, conversation, relationships.

What I tell teams is this: AI doesn’t know your culture. You do.

AI can help with workflows, process optimization, summarization, and yes, even complex strategy and decision support. But it doesn’t lead with empathy. It doesn’t ask clarifying questions in a performance conversation. It doesn’t see the nuance in an employee’s shift in tone or expression. It can’t spot culture misalignment in a hiring interview. That’s your domain.

What we can do is use AI to reduce cognitive load and make more space for the emotional labor and leadership that HR excels at. For example: 

• Using AI to draft the framework for onboarding communications gives HRBPs more time to meet with new hires face to face. 
• Letting AI create more dynamic and exciting ways to onboard new employees creates more connected and engaged new hires. 
• Leveraging secure AI tools for engagement survey insights can free up the People Analytics lead to explore root causes more deeply.

It’s not AI or People … it’s both, when you design it that way.

4. “How do I upskill my HR team so we don’t fall behind?”

There’s a quiet but persistent pressure many HR leaders are feeling: the belief that we’re supposed to already have a fully formed AI strategy, and somehow also be ready to teach it to everyone else. That kind of pressure shuts down experimentation before it even starts.

The reality is, technical certifications aren’t a realistic path forward for most HR teams. The time and the workload we all face makes the intensity of this approach daunting. The more effective — and sustainable — approach is building fluency through real-world use. Peer learning. Safe-to-try spaces. Targeted working sessions with experts. Small experiments that create forward motion without overwhelming the team.

That’s the approach I’ve built my own work around, because it mirrors how HR actually learns: by applying tools to people-centered challenges and reflecting in real time. When HR teams create conditions for learning vs. expecting immediate expertise, they not only build capability, they build confidence.

Here’s what I recommend after a foundations workshop:

• Set aside intentional time for hands-on exploration. Start with everyday use cases: prompting for a policy rewrite, role-playing a difficult conversation, or analyzing exit survey themes.
• Create internal AI learning circles. Let small teams test tools together and report back what they learned — what worked, what didn’t, what surprised them.
• Make reflection part of the process. Normalize asking questions and sharing imperfect results. You’re not trying to get it “right.” You’re building the muscle.
• Talk about how AI shows up in your workflow. Don’t treat it as a secret sidekick. Make its presence visible and discuss where it helps.

Leaders often ask, “How do I know if my team is ready?” My response usually sounds more like a challenge: What would it take to make your team feel safe enough to learn this in the open?

5. “How do we use AI ethically, without creating fear or mistrust?”

This is the question behind all the others. And it’s where HR has a uniquely important role to play.

Ethical AI starts with transparency: being clear about how you’re using AI, why, and what it means for employees. That includes training your leaders to answer questions about AI adoption with clarity and empathy.

It also means creating systems for review, escalation, and employee feedback. If you’re using AI to assist with performance reviews, you need human calibration, bias testing, and a way for employees to flag inaccuracies. If you’re using AI in recruiting, you need to audit regularly for fairness and accessibility.

The bigger point here is that AI won’t create or fix your culture. It will amplify what already exists. If your culture is built on fear and opacity, AI will extend that. If it’s built on trust, inclusion, and accountability, AI can support it.

What HR leaders can do now to prepare for 2026

2026 is going to be a turning point. GenAI will be more embedded in workplace tools, employees will be more AI-aware, and expectations will shift from “Should we use AI?” to “Are we using it responsibly?”

Here are six actions HR leaders can take now to stay ahead without rushing the process:

1. Audit your current tools. Identify where AI is already present in your HR tech stack; many vendors are embedding it without fanfare. Ask the hard questions about bias, transparency, and compliance.
2. Build AI literacy into onboarding and manager development. Not just for HR — across the organization. This isn’t optional knowledge anymore.
3. Define your ethical AI principles. If your company values trust, inclusion, and growth, what do those values look like in an AI-powered world? Write it down. Share it. Use it.
4. Start documenting wins and missteps. Keep a shared space for learnings across teams. When AI breaks down, make sure you capture it. These stories will shape your adoption roadmap.
5. Design for trust, not just compliance. Focus on how AI impacts relationships, clarity, and experience. Employees can feel the difference.

Final thought

Every HR leader I’ve spoken with over the past year is navigating some version of the same challenge: how to stay human in the age of systems. I don’t believe we have to choose between people and progress. I believe we can lead both.

If you’re in the early stages of AI adoption, or still unsure where to start, know this: it’s OK to move carefully. And I’m happy to help you along your learning journey! 

And take a breath. … You don’t need to have all the answers. You just need to keep asking the right questions, and bringing your team with you.

The post The 5 Questions HR Leaders Ask Me Most About AI … and My Candid Answers appeared first on COMPT.

According to PwC’s 2025 Global AI Jobs Barometer report, workers whose roles are “AI-exposed” saw a 300% productivity increase, as well as a 56% wage premium. On a macro level, industries most exposed to AI had ~3x higher revenue per employee growth.

But while practically all companies are thinking about and investing in AI, McKinsey finds that only 1% believe they’ve reached maturity in AI adoption. Roughly half of those companies’ leaders pinpoint “skills gaps” as the number-one barrier.

Traditional roles are quickly becoming AI-augmented versions of themselves. And because the tech is evolving faster than the talent base, the gap between what people know and what modern roles require is only going to widen.

Addressing it requires a professional development program that focuses specifically on AI tools and training. The easiest-to-implement and lowest-cost place to start is with an AI stipend.

What are AI stipends and how do they work?

AI stipends are fixed, employer-funded budgets that let employees explore AI tools, courses, and workflows within clear financial and compliance guidelines.

They work much like any other stipend:

1. The company sets the allowance.
2. Then defines what qualifies (e.g., subscriptions, training, certifications).
3. Employees submit permitted expenses through a structured process.

But there’s a growing demand for AI, specifically. Our 2025 Midyear Lifestyle Benefits Benchmarking Report found that “AI and emerging tech” was the #2 professional development spend category within our user base. That’s why this is so important.

Ready to kick things off? Check out our guide to getting started with AI stipends.

What an AI stipend covers

An AI stipend covers anything that helps employees learn, test, or apply AI in their day-to-day work.

That includes:

• Tool subscriptions like ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and Perplexity
• Courses, certifications, and microlearning
• Prompt libraries
• Role-specific software (e.g., an AI note-taker, writing, or design tool)

The premise is simple: give people room to explore the technology while keeping spending aligned with company priorities.

How employees use stipends to build AI literacy

While ChatGPT already writes most of your devs’ code, less than half of front-line and nontechnical staff use AI tools regularly. Competency and adoption levels naturally vary by department, which is why an ‘across the board’ solution like companywide training doesn’t work.

AI stipends give your people a practical way to build the specific skills their roles demand without forcing everyone into the same training track. Some examples:

• A sales rep uses theirs on a note-taking assistant for prospect calls. (My favorite is Granola, for those wondering.)
• A marketer tests out AI research tools and buys access to a prompt library.
• An ops manager invests in automation training.

And because each person is learning in a way that’s totally relevant to their day-to-day work, adoption feels natural rather than forced.

Professional development accounts and LSAs make it easier to offer AI stipends.

A professional development account is the smoothest way to roll out AI stipends because it’s already built for L&D-oriented spending. It’s a recurring budget employees can use for broader learning, tools, and skill-building.

When you fold AI into that structure, it removes a ton of administrative friction. Instead of creating a brand-new program, Finance and HR can define AI as an approved category and let the same reimbursement process handle the rest.

Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) work similarly. Their broader focus on lifestyle benefits, however, can make them less effective at specifically driving AI adoption compared to a dedicated professional development account or AI stipend.

But if you’re working with a lean benefits budget or prefer a single wide-net program, an LSA does the job while also addressing your team’s other benefits priorities.

(Based on our midyear benchmarks, some of our customers offer as much as $8,000 per employee per year on professional development through stipends and LSAs!)

3 companies using AI stipends to drive productivity and companywide adoption

Now without further ado, let’s dive into three real-life examples of how AI stipends work in practice. While we’ve redacted the company names, these are all actual use cases from Compt customers.

1. How a midsize B2B gifting platform rewards employee AI ideas

One midsize B2B gifting platform uses AI stipends as a way to spark internal innovation. Instead of limiting the budget to tools or training, they created two spot bonus stipends that reward employees who submit ideas or projects to the company’s AI Challenge.

It’s a light-touch incentive, but it does two jobs at once:

1. Employees feel recognized for experimenting.
2. Leadership gets a steady stream of practical, employee-driven AI use cases.

It’s a perfect case study in how SaaS companies can use these stipends strategically. It reduces the pressure to “get AI perfect” while encouraging hands-on exploration and surfacing ideas that would’ve never seen the light of day in a traditional top-down rollout.

2. How a small AI automation firm enables daily AI usage

One small AI automation firm takes a straightforward, high-impact approach: giving employees ongoing monthly budgets specifically for the AI tools they rely on daily. They get a $24 stipend for ChatGPT, plus a separate $50 stipend for an AI-powered code editor like GitHub Copilot.

This is exactly what to do if your main goal is to normalize AI use across the company. Engineers get the tools they need to be more productive. Nontechnical employees get their foot in the door and familiarize themselves with conversational AI. Everybody wins. 

3. How a small VR gaming studio uses stipends to fuel AI hackathons

A small VR gaming studio uses Compt stipends to power one of its most energizing culture initiatives: a companywide AI hackathon. Employees prototype new AI tools and game ideas, then the company rewards that effort with $250 spot bonus awards.

Just like with our B2B gifting client, the benefit here goes beyond the prize itself. While other companies force idea development and AI adoption, stipends create a safe space for experimentation. That leads to a culture where AI is something people are excited to explore.

What these three companies have in common

What ties these three very different approaches together is that each company started with a clear business goal, then shaped its stipend strategy around the outcome it wanted. 

One used stipends to encourage bottom-up participation in AI initiatives; another to normalize daily AI usage; another to fuel hands-on experimentation. Different paths, same underlying mechanism.

Four other shared takeaways:

• Flexible for employees, predictable for Finance. Everyone uses the budget differently, but Finance always knows the maximum exposure.
• Clear guardrails facilitate safe exploration. Employees know what qualifies, so they can experiment without compliance risks.
• Adaptable across teams and skill levels. Stipends support nontechnical staff taking their first steps just as effectively as experts refining advanced workflows.
• The same software powers every model. Whether it’s monthly, on the spot, or challenge-based, the stipend system gives you control and visibility.

No matter the use case, stipends are the reason these programs work. Had these companies tried to roll out a single corporate license or a one-size-fits-all training program, they’d have lost the individualized approach needed to get people to participate in the first place.

How to launch an AI stipend at your company

Compt makes AI stipends simple.

Inside the Compt platform, all you have to do is set up a category for AI tools and learning. Then, define the specifics of your program and let employees take it from there.

The platform supports global currencies, so international teams can expense anything and you can pay them out in their home currency. And because Compt runs on reimbursement rather than preloaded funds, you’re never going to lose out on money that’s not spent.

IRS compliance is totally automated, which your back office will love, and employees get the flexibility to choose the tools and training that make sense for their role.

It also fits every approach you’ve seen in this guide: recurring monthly stipends, role-specific allowances, and spot-bonus rewards for challenges or hackathons.

Want to see what professional development and AI stipends could look like at your company? Request a demo today.

FAQs: AI stipends for professional development

The post 3 Ways Real Companies Are Using AI Stipends in 2026 appeared first on COMPT.

Written by Kim Rohrer

Kim Rohrer is a veteran people leader, writer, speaker, and advisor with over 15 years of experience building human-centered cultures at high-growth companies. She is the founder of Patchwork Portfolio, author of the I Care Too Much newsletter, and co-host of the HR Confessions podcast. Today, Kim shapes the future of work through a variety of roles, drawing on her HR strategy and storytelling experience to build cultures worth talking about. Her work ranges from Employee Experience and Employer Brand to Communications and Community.

Connect with Kim on LinkedIn.

Picture this: You’re an HR leader preparing to announce a shiny new perk. Free gym memberships for everyone! A meditation app subscription! Maybe even a snack wall if the budget allows!

You hit send on the announcement email, expecting celebration. Instead, you get … crickets. Polite thank-yous, maybe. But engagement falls flat, and your retention numbers? Still not where you want them to be.

Here’s what’s happening: We keep adding perks while people are making hard choices at home about what they can afford, stretching paychecks that haven’t kept pace with rising costs. And a kombucha tap doesn’t pay for childcare.

What if the problem isn’t that we’re not offering enough, but that we’re not offering the right kind of support?

One size fits no one: a total rewards reality 

The economic reality for most workers is brutal. So when your total rewards structure includes a $150 monthly gym membership as a wellness benefit, but your employee is a single father with a 90-minute commute who desperately needs help with childcare? That benefit doesn’t just miss the mark — it highlights how disconnected the company is from his actual life, decreasing trust and tanking engagement. 

Other common mismatches:

• A fancy coffee subscription when someone is struggling to cover groceries
• A meditation app when therapy copays are the real barrier to mental health support
• A professional development budget when student loan payments are crushing them
• An on-site massage chair when they need help paying for gas to get to the office

This isn’t about employees being ungrateful. It’s about benefits that sound good on your careers page but don’t actually help people live their lives. 

And here’s the retention risk: when your benefits feel disconnected from reality, your employees feel unseen. 

The 2025 Gallup Employee Retention and Attraction Report revealed that “Pay/Benefits” is the most frequent reason that Americans are leaving their jobs. Your cash compensation practices matter, yes, but so does the rest of your total rewards strategy. Because people leave when the gap between what you offer and what they need feels too wide to ignore.

How stipends align with talent strategy and retention goals 

This is where Lifestyle Spending Accounts and flexible stipends start to make sense as a part of your overall talent strategy. You don’t have to anticipate every employee’s needs, or even know the often-personal details of their lives that necessitate using specific benefits.

When you give people a stipend, you’re saying: “We trust you to know what support looks like for you.”

Real retention requires more than just flexible benefits, though; it also depends on competitive compensation, work-life balance, career development, and company culture. What people value varies wildly from person to person, and something that seems small might make a lasting impact on someone’s life.

People might use flexible stipends for:

• Commuting costs (e.g., gas, tolls, public transit)
• Childcare or elder care support
• Mental health services not fully covered by insurance
• A home-office setup that actually makes remote work sustainable
• Paying down high-interest debt, such as student loans
• Emergency household expenses that would otherwise go on a credit card

When benefits actually address people’s real needs, they fit into the bigger picture of their holistic employee experience, building more connection to the organization and a higher likelihood of retention.

And this approach helps with recruitment too — candidates can tell the difference between perks theater and a company that’s actually thinking about real life.

What this looks like in practice: from performative perks to benefits that work

If you’re rethinking your benefits strategy with retention in mind, start by asking what people actually need.

Look at your engagement survey results. Review themes from exit interviews and stay conversations. Talk to your managers about what they’re hearing in one-on-ones. You might find that your carefully curated benefits package is solving problems people don’t have, while ignoring the ones keeping them up at night. 

Sometimes low adoption is about the offerings themselves, but often it’s about how benefits are communicated or which groups they resonate with. Maybe a particular demographic really loves one of your benefits, and you could use that story for candidate attraction efforts. Understanding your employees’ experience helps you make better decisions across your talent strategy. 

Once you’ve launched an LSA, the spending data becomes another listening tool. If your team spends stipend money on therapy, that’s a message about mental load. If they spend it on continuing education, that’s hunger for growth. If they spend it on caregiving expenses, that’s data on how your workforce is actually structured. The patterns show you where pressure is building before burnout becomes churn and give you insights into adjusting programs, forecasting needs, and supporting your workforce more proactively.

Think about how flexible stipends fit into your broader compensation philosophy. LSAs aren’t a replacement for fair pay or good health insurance — they’re a supplement that acknowledges people’s lives are different and their needs don’t fit into neat categories.

Tools like Compt make this kind of flexibility manageable. Instead of trying to administer multiple point solutions for different life stages and circumstances, you can offer real choice within a single system.

And yes, there’s ROI here. Losing good people is expensive: recruiting costs, onboarding time, lost productivity, institutional knowledge walking out the door. A flexible benefits approach that improves retention is a cost-effective investment in your talent strategy.

The real strategy: flexible benefits that support whole humans

If you’re struggling with retention, ask yourself: do your benefits match the reality your employees (and prospective employees!) are living in?

The old playbook — more perks! fancier perks! — isn’t working because it was never really about the perks. Retention happens when people feel seen, supported, and trusted. 

And don’t forget the outside world: when candidates peruse your career page, do they see benefits that reflect their needs, or a standard copy-paste job from the latest perks trends? Are you trying to hire specific demographics, or for a diverse team? Does the way you talk about benefits and perks tell that story?

Lifestyle Spending Accounts aren’t a magic bullet. But they’re a signal that you’re paying attention, that you understand your employees are whole humans with complex needs, and that you’re willing to meet them where they are. Today’s HR Leaders need to be thinking about how to create personalized, equitable, and adaptable benefits to support their organizations. LSAs make that goal attainable. 

“Talent strategy” sounds fancy. But really, it’s just about treating people like adults with different lives, different priorities, and different definitions of what “support” actually means.

If you can do that, you might find your retention numbers (and other business metrics, too!) starting to move in the right direction.

Stipends and LSAs aren’t just perks anymore: they’re a strategic part of any modern total rewards strategy. They’re easy-peasy to administer, universally helpful for employees, and designed for today’s flexible, unpredictable world of work.

The post Why Lifestyle Spending Accounts Are Actually a Talent Strategy (Not Just Another Perk) appeared first on COMPT.