Written by Turiya Gray

Turiya Gray is a dynamic HR executive with 20+ years of experience building workplaces where people and performance actually thrive. Turiya is obsessed with making work better for everyone and known for her sharp insights, impactful leadership, and passion for helping organizations get people and culture right. She is also the cohost of the top-rated HR unConfidential podcast that launched in 2018. Currently, Turiya serves as Senior Partner & Fractional Chief People Officer at FXG Partners, partnering with midsize companies to deliver thoughtful, high-impact HR leadership.

Connect with Turiya on LinkedIn.

Almost eight years ago, my cohost (and dear friend) and I hit the “record” button for the first time and launched the HR unConfidential podcast. When we started HR unConfidential, we were just two HR pros pulling back the curtain on the often messy, complicated, human side of work. No podcasting experience. No fancy studio. No perfect plan. We simply had a couple of mics, lots of opinions and curiosity, and a desire for a space to have real conversations about life in HR and hopefully enlighten others on how to make the workplace better for all. 

Almost 100 episodes later, HR unConfidential has been one of my most rewarding and humbling life experiences. We’ve covered so many topics and had the privilege of talking with some amazing guests. Each episode has taught me more about what it means to build workplaces that actually work for people than any conference or textbook ever could. They’ve also pushed me to get comfortable putting my voice out there (literally) and to challenge some of my own long-held beliefs about what HR “should” be.

So as we near the 100-episode milestone, I wanted to share reflections from my podcast journey and why I’ve never been more convinced that the world of work needs brave, curious HR leaders.

The real voices of HR matter more than ever.

There’s no shortage of opinions about HR; everyone seems to have one. Scroll through LinkedIn or attend a conference, and you’ll find plenty of “hot takes” on what HR should be doing. Too often those takes come from people who haven’t actually worked in HR or even been in an actual workplace for a long time.

Don’t get me wrong — researchers, consultants, and thought leaders bring valuable perspectives. But sometimes, those big-stage insights miss the messy, nuanced reality of what it really takes to lead people, drive performance, and build cultures that last.

When we started HR unConfidential, one of our biggest goals was to elevate the voices of actual HR practitioners who are doing the work, making the tough calls, and balancing humanity with business impact every single day. For example: 

• When we wanted to discuss the power and risks of assessments in the workplace, we went straight to an Organizational Development expert (Oneka Cornelius) to hear real-life examples of how assessments might be misused and how HR professionals can ensure proper use. 
• When I wanted to learn more about HR in a global environment, we brought on two actual global CHROs to give us the real scoop about what’s alike and what’s different when leading a global team.

I’m happy to note that I’ve seen a shift in recent years. More and more real HR pros are using their platforms to share what’s working, what’s not, and what they’re learning in real time. My LinkedIn and podcast feeds are full of bold, insightful, and unapologetically honest voices who are reshaping the conversation about work from the inside out. 

That’s the movement I want to be part of; one where HR leads the dialogue about the future of work, not just reacts to it.

The “future of work” is already here.

We’ve been talking about the “future of work” for what feels like forever, and here we are, living it in real time. Work is changing faster than most organizations are built to handle, and HR sits right in the middle of that storm as part architect, part anchor.

Lately, every conversation about the future of work circles back to AI. Here’s what I’ve learned: most companies are still figuring out what AI actually means for their business strategy, people, processes, and culture. 

From helping people understand AI (and not fear it), to making sure it’s used ethically and responsibly, to rethinking how we upskill and reskill the workforce; this is HR’s lane and we are best positioned to lead the charge in our organizations. HR can help connect the dots between people and technology in ways that create real strategic advantage, not just efficiency. A couple of examples might be:

• Run an AI readiness scan: HR can lead a companywide AI readiness assessment that surfaces employee sentiment, fears, literacy gaps, and real use-case ideas, then turn those insights into a responsible AI framework that sets clear guidelines, privacy expectations, and transparent guardrails for how AI will (and won’t) be used.
• Build a skills engine: HR can use AI to mine job descriptions, performance data, and strategic priorities to build a living skills inventory that shifts performance and career development from static, role-based models to dynamic, skills-based frameworks that strengthen workforce agility and future-proof talent planning.

The future will belong to companies and HR pros that treat this moment as more than just a tech shift. It’s an opportunity for an organizational reset that calls for ongoing change management (vs. event-based), agile org design, culture transformation, and skills-based talent models that allow people to grow, move, and adapt as fast as the work around them.

Not sure where to start on your AI journey? Check out the episodes we’ve had on this topic: “Befriending AI” and “All In With AI.”

Human-centered design is the upgrade HR has been waiting for.

One of my favorite episodes of HR unConfidential is “The Power of Design Thinking in HR” (January 2025). It hits on something we don’t say out loud often enough: HR was never really trained to bring in other perspectives. We’ve been taught to prioritize control over curiosity and compliance over collaboration.

We talk about empathy all the time, yet so much of our work still happens in silos. 

COE colleagues and specialists design programs without checking in with HRBPs. 

HRBPs roll out initiatives disconnected from what the business really needs. 

The actual humans on the receiving end of the initiatives are often an afterthought.

That’s where design thinking changes the game. It’s about co-creating with your end users (aka the employees and leaders), testing ideas early, learning fast, and iterating based on real feedback. It’s about being willing to set aside the tried and (not so) true HR playbook and building HR practices that actually work for humans AND drive the business forward. 

HR doesn’t need more processes, policies, and frameworks. We need human-centered design grounded in empathy, experimentation, and humility. The biggest limitation in our field isn’t capability; it’s perspective. We’ve got to look beyond our own walls, invite challenge, and design with people, not for them.

The future of leadership won’t be taught in a classroom.

Across almost 100 episodes, one theme has been a constant: leading people is hard and getting increasingly harder. Constant change, information overload, the pressure to deliver results, all while caring for the needs of diverse team members — it’s a lot! Yet, most leaders are being trained like it’s 1999.

Traditional manager training and leadership development programs don’t work. They’re too slow, too abstract, and too disconnected from the realities of work. We send leaders to hours- and days-long workshops full of frameworks and buzzwords, but once they’re back in the whirlwind of their day jobs, what they learned rarely sticks. The 2025 Global Leadership Development Study by Harvard Business Impact confirms that “post-program sustainment” is a top challenge, with nearly 49% of companies saying that keeping learning alive after training is their biggest hurdle.

We need a different way to support managers and leaders. An approach that’s more agile, more continuous, and more human. Think learning labs, micro-experiments, communities of practice, regular coaching, and real-time feedback, not binders full of slides and leadership theories.

This clicked for me during our 2023 episode, “Leadership Trends,” with the brilliant author and leadership coach, LaTonya Wilkins. As we unpacked the skills leaders need for the future workplace, one truth rose to the surface: leadership isn’t developed through the information transfer of traditional training. It’s forged through iterative behavior change and real-world practice. 

The good news??? HR and talent development professionals are perfectly positioned to make this shift happen. Not as the trainers running programs, but as the creators of modern learning ecosystems who design experiences that help managers and leaders evolve within the flow of work, not outside of it. 

Connection is the cure.

HR can be lonely work, especially the higher your job level. When we started HR unConfidential, one of our hopes was to simply help HR professionals feel seen, heard, and a little less alone. We wanted to create a space where the conversations could be unfiltered, we could share practical ideas and insights, and folks could laugh a lot (and maybe curse a little). 

The past several years have tested the resilience of HR professionals like never before (it’s why we have multiple episodes about burnout!). We’ve been at the center of crisis after crisis, supporting others while quietly burning out ourselves. Yet, every time we chat with a guest, I get a LinkedIn message from a listener, or I’m forced to leave the house and attend a networking event, I’m recharged and reminded that connection is what keeps us going.

Community isn’t a “nice-to-have” for HR; it’s survival. When we share honestly, challenge each other thoughtfully, and learn out loud, we become better practitioners and better humans. HR doesn’t have to be lonely work. In fact, the more we connect, the stronger and more resilient we all become.

Bonus insight: Do it scared (and do it anyway).

When Gina and I started HR unConfidential, I was terrified. Terrified that no one would listen and equally terrified that a lot of people would.

Starting a podcast pushed me far outside my comfort zone. I worried about getting it wrong, not sounding “smart enough,” or saying something that makes people raise an eyebrow. I had to learn new tech, get comfortable hearing my own voice (still not there), and embrace a bit of self-promotion (which just isn’t my vibe). 

Then I reminded myself that impact doesn’t come from waiting until everything is perfect, and to just do it anyway! When you lean into your passion, even when it’s scary, it can ripple out in ways you don’t expect. Almost eight years in and our podcast is listened to in 37 countries, has beaten the odds as they relate to podcast longevity stats, and has been featured on several top HR podcasts lists.

Additionally, I’ve seen how one honest conversation or one shared insight can inspire someone or activate them to try something different: from the LinkedIn message from a listener/HR professional who shared how they started using data differently after our “HR vs. Racism” episode to the leader who told me they’d never thought about sobriety in the workplace until they heard our “Recovery in the Workplace” episode. And that’s what helps me set aside my fears every time we press record.

So my two cents: whatever you’ve been thinking about starting (a project, a business, a bold idea) just do it. You’ll figure it out as you go. Courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s hitting “record” in spite of it.

In closing …

Looking back on my podcast journey, I’m filled with deep gratitude for every listener who tuned in, every guest who showed up with honesty, courage, and heart, and the global community that has supported and grown with HR unConfidential over the years.

I’m excited about what’s next. Life in HR is messy, meaningful, and full of possibility, and there’s so much more to explore, question, and create together. So please stay tuned, and if you haven’t already, subscribe to HR unConfidential wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to leave us a rating and review. 

Have ideas for topics? Want to be a guest? Just want to say hi? Follow HR unConfidential on LinkedIn and feel free to connect with me directly. Let’s keep learning out loud, pushing boundaries, and shaping the future of work one real, unConfidential conversation at a time.

The post Reflections From the Mic: What Nearly 100 Podcast Episodes Have Taught Me About HR — and What’s Next 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.

Every year, HR teams everywhere enter the same spiral: Which holidays do we give time off for? What do we call the December company party? And of course — how do we show appreciation in a way that will actually make people feel valued?

I’ve been there. Working as a People Leader at companies with employees all over the world, I watched well-meaning leaders struggle with the same questions year after year about whose holidays get acknowledged and how to celebrate our teams.

Spoiler alert: there is no perfect one-size-fits-all solution, no matter how many vendor demos promise you there is. And your good intentions only go so far when someone feels invisible or misunderstood.

So let’s talk about which inclusive holiday benefits actually work when you’re trying to give back to your team without leaving people out.

Not everyone celebrates the same way (and that’s the point).

We’ve all experienced that fun time at work where “the holidays” is really just corporate shorthand for “Christmas … oh, um, but also Hanukkah and I guess Kwanzaa and maybe the Winter Solstice too? Here’s our office Winter Celebrations Tree and some candy canes? Secret Santa is inclusive, right?” Awkwaaarrrrrrrd.

Many companies moved past calling it the “Christmas party” years ago, but even “holiday party” dances around the reality: people celebrate different things, at different times, in wildly different ways. 

Some of your employees are fasting during Ramadan or Yom Kippur while meeting deadlines. Others don’t observe any religious holidays, but still like to celebrate the season. Some people want shiny company-branded swag, and others like to end the year holed up in a snow-covered cabin with no technology. 

The point is, plenty of folks have traditions they want to celebrate this time of year — they just don’t want you to assume what that celebration looks like.

It’s nearly impossible to design one holiday experience that reflects the reality of your entire team’s lived experiences — and you should stop trying, like, now. There is a better way!

This is where Lifestyle Spending Accounts start to make sense as an inclusion strategy, not just a benefits offering. When you give people a stipend they can use however they want, you’re not just giving them flexibility; you’re acknowledging the diverse spectrum of needs (and that you don’t know what they all are) and demonstrating that you trust them to make their own choices.

That might mean:

• Buying ingredients for a special family meal
• Covering travel costs to visit loved ones
• Purchasing gifts that align with their traditions
• Supporting a cause they care about through donations
• Using it for something completely unrelated to any holiday at all

And bonus: Compt’s Midyear Benchmark Report found that 70% of stipend spending goes to local and independent vendors rather than big-box retailers — hell yes to keeping those dollars in your local community, where they actually matter!

The point isn’t to celebrate everything. It’s to stop pretending there’s one right way to celebrate anything.

The great swag waste problem affects us all.

Let’s be honest: most company swag is expensive garbage.

Boxes of logo’d hoodies in the wrong sizes, sitting in storage until the company rebrands. Employees who already have four water bottles and zero interest in a fifth. Gift boxes filled with artisanal candles that smell like “forest floor” or whatever, shipped in packaging that could survive a nuclear blast, destined to sit unopened in a closet, waiting for the next white elephant gift swap.

And we do this every holiday season, convincing ourselves that this year’s holiday swag will be different. It’s not.

Not everyone wants to splurge on something for themselves, either. While some employees will definitely enjoy a free massage or a special excursion on an upcoming vacation, some would rather make a donation to a cause they care about during end-of-year giving season. Others might use it to cover groceries or household essentials when finances are stretched thin. 

But maybe someone does want that hoodie with the new company logo. Great! Let them choose it from your swag store so you don’t have to trek to every GAP within commuting distance to track down those cool hoodies in everyone’s sizes that they are sold out of online, so that you can send them to the local embroidery shop in time for the holiday party. (Been there.) 

Rather than giving everyone another mug that will end up at Goodwill because they’re still using last year’s mug as a pen holder on their desk and they don’t need another damn mug … let folks use a company gift platform to buy something for a family member when money is tight. (Done that.)

That flexibility matters.

Besides, when you default to one-size-fits-all gifts, you’re not just wasting money; you’re contributing to overproduction, excess shipping, and literal trash. The environmental impact alone should make us rethink the model. If your office swag closet (or apartment, increasingly common in our remote-work environment) is full of unwanted leftovers, you know what I mean.

The gift isn’t the hoodie or the expensive whiskey. The gift is respecting that people have different values and priorities.

Stop managing holiday chaos point by point.

Even if you’ve moved past bulk swag orders, there’s still the vendor management nightmare.

You research gift platforms. Schedule demos. Negotiate pricing. Sign the contract. Send the announcement. Next year (or even sooner), you’re doing it all over again because the last vendor didn’t have enough options, or the interface was clunky, or people just didn’t use it.

And every platform has the same rotation of meal kits, candles, and succulents. It’s like they’re all pulling from the same catalog of things people are too polite to say they don’t want. 🤭

Managing point solutions for every occasion — birthdays, work anniversaries, holidays, life events — is exhausting. You’re juggling logins, budgets, approval workflows, and reporting across multiple platforms, all for “personalization” that isn’t actually personal. And time is money, right? Your time is valuable. Don’t waste it on administrative nonsense that doesn’t make an impact. 

Meanwhile, your employees are drowning in accounts they never asked for, trying to remember which platform has their points, which one expires, and whether this quarter’s wellness credit can be used for that thing they want or if they need to wait for next quarter’s stipend. Only 28% of employees surveyed by benefits broker NFP report making maximum use of perks and benefits because of “the misfit of benefits offered versus what is valued.”

Blegh.

It’s a lot of effort for a system that fundamentally misses the point: people just want choice. Compt’s case study with Quickbase blew my mind (processing benefits now takes 90 minutes instead of literal days!), and — hot off the presses — their new case study with TEN7 says it only takes 5-10 minutes a month to administer!

Wish Compt had been around when I was having “help me organize my swag closet” body doubling sessions and hosting “swag trade” happy hours to help get rid of overstock!

The real gift? Feeling seen.

Holiday planning doesn’t have to be this hard. You don’t need the perfect gift, the perfect vendor, or the perfect way to acknowledge every celebration on the calendar.

You just need to treat your employees like adults — adults who know what they value, what they celebrate, and what would actually make them feel appreciated.

That’s what inclusive holiday benefits (and inclusion in general) actually look like in practice. Not a carefully curated gift box. Not a generic “Happy Holidays” email. Just respect, flexibility, and trust. 

Imagine that.

P.S. I wouldn’t write for Compt if I didn’t love the team and believe in the product. Book a no-pressure demo today and see what the fuss is about! 

The post How to Support Every Employee With Inclusive Holiday Benefits appeared first on COMPT.

Written by Jennifer Kean

Jennifer Kean is Chief Growth Officer at Umbra Health Advocacy, where she helps connect families with patient advocates who navigate complex healthcare systems and reduce caregiver burden. With more than 20 years of experience scaling consumer startups and developing HR strategies, talent acquisition programs, and retention policies, Jennifer brings both professional expertise and personal insight to the caregiving conversation. She became a passionate advocate for caregiver support after experiencing firsthand the challenges of advocating for her elderly father during his recent health crisis, including an 8-week hospitalization and subsequent transitions to skilled nursing and assisted living care. This personal journey reinforced her belief that every patient needs an advocate — and every caregiver needs support.

Connect with Jennifer on LinkedIn.

They arrive early for meetings looking tired. They take calls in the parking lot during lunch. They use vacation days for appointments that aren’t their own. These are your caregivers, and they make up one in five of your workforce.

If you work in HR, you already know that supporting employees means more than just offering health insurance and retirement plans. Today’s workforce faces a growing challenge that affects productivity, retention, and well-being. More than 20% of American workers are caring for aging parents or sick family members while maintaining their careers. They spend an average of 26 hours per week providing care, essentially working a second unpaid job.

The cost of ignoring this reality is steep. Caregiving employees miss more work days, experience higher stress levels, and often leave the workforce entirely when the burden becomes too much. Companies lose experienced talent, face increased recruitment costs, and see productivity drop across teams. But there’s good news. Forward-thinking organizations are discovering that supporting caregivers with employee caregiver benefits isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s smart business.

Understanding the caregiver employee experience

Picture Sarah from Accounting. She’s been with your company for eight years and consistently delivers excellent work. Lately, though, she seems distracted. She’s taking more sick days and declining travel opportunities she once jumped at. What you don’t see is that Sarah spends her evenings coordinating her mother’s medical appointments, reviewing Medicare statements she doesn’t understand, and arguing with insurance companies about coverage denials. She uses her lunch breaks to call doctors’ offices and her vacation days to accompany her mother to specialist visits two hours away.

Sarah represents millions of employees trying to balance caregiving with their careers. They’re making medical decisions they feel unqualified for, navigating complex healthcare systems, and often feeling guilty no matter how much they do. The stress affects their work performance, their health, and their financial stability. Many reduce their work hours or leave their jobs entirely, creating gaps in your workforce that are expensive and difficult to fill.

Building a caregiver support program that works

Supporting caregiver employees doesn’t require reinventing your entire benefits package. Here are practical steps you can implement:

• Offer flexible work arrangements. Remote-work options and flexible scheduling allow employees to manage both responsibilities more effectively. When someone can work from home twice a week, they save commute time that can be used for caregiving tasks.
• Provide paid family leave for caregiving. Your employees are already entitled to unpaid leave under FMLA for caregiving, but why stop there? Consider offering paid family leave for caregiving just as you do for maternity, paternity, and parental leave. Make sure employees know they can use their sick time for caregiving, too. When companies treat caring for aging parents with the same respect as caring for new babies, they send a powerful message about valuing families at every stage of life.
• Add patient advocacy services to your benefits package. Umbra Health Advocacy offers employer programs with which you can provide professional patient advocates as an employee benefit. You can choose to fully pay for the services, subsidize them, or simply contract with Umbra to get your employees a discount. Because Medicare covers these services for elder care, it’s a surprisingly low-cost way to provide high-value support. Patient advocates understand insurance benefits and help families navigate senior care, medical billing issues, and the transition to assisted living or nursing homes. They can also assist employees who need to navigate a new illness, like cancer, or care for a disabled child.
• Provide caregiving stipends for financial support. Through Compt, companies can offer monthly or annual stipends that employees use for caregiving expenses. In addition to the usual childcare needs, this might cover adult daycare costs, patient advocacy costs, respite care services, or a home care aid. Schedule a call with a Compt benefits expert to learn how to support your caregiving employees.

Connecting employees to professional resources

Many employees don’t realize that professional help exists for their caregiving challenges. You can provide a lot of support just by sharing valuable federal and state programs that are often free or low cost.

• Area Agencies on Aging: The first stop for any caregiver is their local Area Agency on Aging. They exist in every state, though they may be called different things. You can find yours by searching this term along with your state or county or city. They are a central resource on all the elder care resources available to you. They provide free consultations, connect families to local services, and help with Medicaid applications. They can arrange respite care, meal delivery, and transportation services.
• Local senior centers: Senior centers are typically for more active people 55+ that do not need supervision. They can be great places for social interaction and they offer all sorts of classes and community events. Their fees are nominal.
• Adult daycare: Adult daycare centers are for seniors that need more supervision or assistance with things during the day like meals or medication. These services cost a fee, which varies widely by geography. Typical rates are around $85-$100/day. Find local options through the National Adult Day Services Association.
• National Family Caregiver Support Program (NFCSP): This federally funded program through the Older Americans Act provides free services through your local Area Agency on Aging, including respite care, counseling, training, support groups, and supplemental services. The program serves caregivers of adults 60 and older, caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s, and grandparents raising grandchildren.
• Lifespan Respite Care Programs: Available in 38 states plus D.C., these programs provide vouchers or reimbursements for respite care services, often up to $750 per year. Many states offer emergency respite vouchers and self-directed options for families to choose their own providers. Visit the ARCH National Respite Network to find your state’s program.
• VA Caregiver Support Program: For families of veterans, this program offers education, training, health insurance (if otherwise uninsured), mental health counseling, monthly stipends, and respite care. Call 1-855-260-3274 for more information.
• National helplines and locators: The Eldercare Locator (1-800-677-1116) connects families to local services nationwide. The ARCH Respite Locator helps families find respite programs in their area.

Remember that many of these programs prioritize families with the greatest economic need, but middle-income families often qualify, too.

Making it easy for employees to access support

The best support programs fail if employees don’t know about them or feel uncomfortable using them. Many caregivers don’t identify themselves as such. They think of themselves as just helping out Mom or doing what families do. Here’s how to ensure your support reaches those who need it:

• Create a Caregiver Resource Guide. Pull together all your caregiving-related benefits and trusted local and national resources into one easy-to-access guide. Make sure employees can view it privately and understand which services are covered by insurance vs. those that require payment. Include practical details for elder care, like the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, what Medicare covers, home healthcare vs. home care services, and guidance on power of attorney and health proxies. Highlight how your EAP and other existing benefits, such as a caregiving stipend or applicable categories in your Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA), can support caregivers, and consider tapping internal or external experts to help ensure accuracy.
• Use inclusive language. Studies show that caregivers may be unaware of benefits or hesitant to use them, often because of stigma or perceived insufficiency. Instead of asking who needs caregiver support, talk about employees who help aging parents, support family members with health conditions, or coordinate medical care for loved ones. This will help your employees see themselves as caregivers and seek needed support accordingly.
• Train managers to recognize signs. When an employee mentions spending weekends at their parent’s house or taking time off for someone else’s medical appointment, that’s an opportunity to share available resources without prying into personal situations.
• Host lunch and learn sessions. Bring in experts to discuss Medicare benefits, long-term care planning, or managing medical paperwork. Record these sessions so employees can watch them privately if they prefer.
• Normalize the conversation. Share statistics about caregiving in your company communications. When employees realize that 20% of their colleagues face similar challenges, they’re more likely to seek help.
• Ensure privacy. Make resources available through self-service portals on which employees can find information without having to disclose their personal situation to HR.

The business case: Why supporting caregivers is smart economics

Supporting your caregiver employees isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s a strategic business investment that directly impacts your bottom line. Consider the stark reality: According to Guardian Life’s 12th Annual Workplace Benefits Study, caregiving responsibilities cost the U.S. economy nearly $44 billion annually due to lost productivity and absenteeism.

But here’s what smart employers know: much of this loss is preventable with the right support systems in place.

The hidden costs of unsupported caregivers

When caregivers lack workplace support, the numbers tell a sobering story. Guardian Life’s research reveals that working caregivers are twice as likely to take disability-related leaves of absence, with 27% missing 30+ days of work compared to just 14% of noncaregivers. Even more concerning, the same study found that 29% of caregivers reduce their work hours, and one in five take demotions or leaves of absence to manage their responsibilities. 

For employers, this translates to constant recruitment costs, knowledge loss, and productivity gaps that ripple across teams.

The ROI of employee caregiver benefits

By contrast, when employers provide flexible work arrangements, caregiver resources, and understanding policies, they see measurable returns. Caregivers who feel supported report better mental health and job satisfaction, and employees with better well-being are inherently more productive.

The math is simple: retaining an experienced employee costs far less than the typical 6-12 months’ salary required to replace them.

Moreover, supported caregivers become your most loyal employees. When you help them navigate their dual responsibilities, they can focus on their work rather than constantly juggling crisis management. They’re present, both physically and mentally, contributing their expertise rather than anxiously watching the clock or fielding emergency calls. 

How to offer support with employee caregiver benefits: Contact Compt or Umbra Health Advocacy

For more information about implementing caregiving stipends, request a Compt demo.

To learn about adding patient advocacy services to your employee benefits package, contact Umbra Health Advocacy at benefits@umbrahealthadvocacy.com or 857-766-8236.

The post Employee Caregiver Benefits: Why It’s Time to Add Elder Care and Family Support to Your Program appeared first on COMPT.

Written by Sarah Deane

Sarah Deane is a researcher, author, and founder advancing the science of human energy and performance. As CEO of MEvolution, she develops evidence-based systems that combine behavioral and cognitive science with artificial intelligence to help individuals and organizations measure, master, and sustain peak human capacity.

A former HP global leader in employee workplace experience, Sarah holds a Master of Engineering in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence and teaches at Stanford University Continuing Studies. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Thrive Global, Reworked, and SHRM, and she regularly speaks at conferences including SXSW, HRWest, and Gartner.

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn.

Ask any CEO what their priorities are, and you’ll hear one item again and again: adoption of AI. It’s on their mandates, it’s on their hiring plans, it’s on their strategy decks. Companies like Zapier now require AI fluency as a part of their hiring process. Gartner says 80% of enterprises plan to integrate AI into operations within the year. McKinsey projects up to $4.4 trillion in annual economic value. And Stanford University reports adoption jumped from 55% in 2023 to 78% in 2024.

It’s pretty clear: AI isn’t a side experiment anymore. It’s here. It’s scaling fast. It’s already changing how we work and lead. And … the benefits are real. Forty percent of U.S. employees now use AI at work, nearly double from just two years ago. One in four use it weekly. One in ten use it daily. Research from Stanford, George Mason, and Clemson Universities found “workers using AI report a three-fold productivity gains on many tasks” — as much as an extra hour back per task!

But here’s the truth: productivity, engagement, resilience — the KPIs we usually rely on to measure success — only tell part of the story. 

Productivity can measure output. Engagement can measure how people feel. Resilience can measure how quickly they recover from challenges. But …

They all run on one thing: energy

Human Energy is the foundational KPI — the core resource that fuels and influences every other human measure. More energy means more capacity to do higher quality work, to build deeper emotional connection, and to maintain perspective under pressure. When energy is depleted, we slip into autopilot, go through the motions, disengage, and lose the ability to bring our best contributions forward. It’s that drained feeling after four back-to-back meetings — or the exhaustion that hits when you are juggling family demands alongside the tasks that seemed to have crept into your job description over the last year.

In fact, research shows that people who are positively energized outperform in performance and profitability by a factor of four or more. In other words, more energy doesn’t just make us feel better — it makes us more effective humans.

So yes, it’s fair to say that AI is already delivering fantastic efficiency gains in many ways. And that it’s just getting started with what it can do for our work and personal lives. 

But if companies fail to measure and manage Human Energy, they’re missing the most critical KPI for sustainable transformation.

And after twenty years studying AI and human behavior, here’s what I’ve seen: AI can accelerate progress like nothing else — but it also creates blind spots, unintended consequences, and challenges that can be easily lost in the hype. 

AI without human depth = AI development and deployment that ignores the very human sciences it depends on

When I completed my master’s with a focus in artificial intelligence, nearly twenty years ago, AI wasn’t just about being able to “code an algorithm.” Along with modules in data and algorithms and computer vision, we also had the opportunity to study modules in contract law, criminal law, psychology, theory of evolution, and behavioral science. Why? Because AI doesn’t exist in isolation. It exists inside human systems. That means every decision in design or deployment connects back to humans. If technology fails in the moment, a human steps in. Who selected the datasets to train the model? A human. Who presents an AI-generated sales report in a way that motivates and engages stakeholders? A human. Who brings a presence or energy that resonates — something that doesn’t feel generic, flat, or repetitive? A human.

Fast forward to today, and AI progress has exploded. Certifications and quick courses enable anyone to start building AI tools in hours. While it’s certainly exciting to tap into all that creativity, innovation, and speed, if you are building tools designed to replicate certain functions of human intelligence, starting with a true understanding of humans is a significant part! That broader context isn’t optional — it’s what makes AI trustworthy, useful, and safe. Without it, unintended consequences happen that will cost in more ways than one.

AI without human wisdom = transformation theater

Too many companies are pouring billions into AI tools and not seeing the results they intended. Why? Because the decisions driving adoption are often made at the extremes. The knee-jerk question becomes: “How many people can we cut because AI can do this task?” That’s not a strategy. It ignores the uniquely human skills and wisdom that make work effective in the first place — the judgment, nuance, and contextual awareness that AI cannot replicate. Strip those away, and you don’t get transformation, you get theater: shiny dashboards masking shallow impact. 

It’s not just about whether AI can complete a task; it’s about how that task fits into the broader ecosystem of people, behaviors, and connection points so the value and return are fully realized. 

Worse, these reactive cuts trigger ripple effects across the ecosystem, disrupting quality, culture, and customer trust. Short-term savings are quickly overshadowed by long-term costs: burnout, rework, disengagement, and declining innovation.

The result: a negative energy loop, that drains the very energy needed to make AI’s great promise achievable.

AI without focused human energy = exhaustion

Every new tool promises to save time — but each one also adds context switching, decision fatigue, and cognitive overload. Multiply that by the speed of AI adoption, and suddenly the thing that was meant to energize us is draining us. 

Yes, AI, when used mindfully, can free up hours, act as a learning partner, and spark creativity. But it also creates AI fatigue and even AI anxiety — the endless scramble to keep up, the mental toll of constant pivots, the fear of job loss to AI, and even the weariness of hearing the word “AI” yet again. 

Every switch, every choice, every interaction carries an energy cost. So without understanding, measuring, and managing human energy, AI can accelerate exhaustion instead of bringing performance gains.

The truth about human capacity

You see, AI’s real potential doesn’t lie in the algorithms, datasets, and generative capabilities alone. 

It lies in us. 

AI is not here to replace our humanity, but to create more space for it to shine.

The most advanced AI still can’t truly do what humans can: genuinely feel and have its own values-based judgment, connection, or ecosystem thinking. But these high-functioning capacities aren’t free. They run on one finite resource: energy.

Think about it this way: We often view listening as a single behavior, but beneath the surface, it’s a complex sequence of mental transactions, each carrying its own energy cost. Everything we do, from making a choice to maintaining perspective to fighting off a common cold, draws from our energy pool. Now, multiply that across every interaction, every decision, every moment in an organization, and you start to see why human energy is the foundational element to individual and business success. 

Case in point: burnout, which is a state of energy deficit. Leaders spend millions training people in “behaviors,but if employees don’t have the energy reserves to fund those behaviors, nothing sticks. 

This is why I know Human Energy must become the next critical KPI.

Energy: The new metric for success 

Seven years ago, my team and I set out to understand what it truly takes to thrive with sustainable performance.  What we discovered was that those who thrive have energy reserves (i.e., they operate in an energy-rich state, mentally “cash flow positive”). 

It is energy that determines whether employees actually have the capacity to absorb and apply transformation initiatives. 

It is energy that predicts the quality of uniquely human contributions that AI alone cannot provide. 

It is energy that connects individual capacity to organizational performance and engagement, bridging the gap between personal resilience and enterprise outcomes. 

And ever since our big discovery, we’ve been hyperfocused on how to set out to measure, and master, human energy.  Here’s what we’ve learned on this journey:

• No one is measuring Human Energy right now, which means leaders are often flying “blind” and setting strategies and goals without a clear sense of whether their people had the capacity to achieve them. The result? Employees either burn out trying to meet the expectations — or goals go unmet. This led us to create the Energy Management Quotient (EMQ) evaluation, which maps an individual’s mind to reveal the state of their “human energy bank” and identifies opportunities to increase and optimize it. We included more than 1,200 points of analysis, so it delivers the depth of insight equivalent to multiple expert sessions — in just one assessment.
• Often, assessments alone aren’t enough — people don’t know what to do with the insights. That’s why we built personalized roadmaps that guide individuals through their own “brain libraries” and layered toolkits that let them engage at the right level, supporting the journey from awareness to mastery.
• Even a single 90-minute energy awareness session creates measurable impact 30 days later — 75% report reduced burnout risk, 94% feel more hopeful and positive, 75% feel better able to manage life and work, and 81% actively apply at least one technique learned.
• Gaining this level of insight and development has traditionally required high-touch, high-cost programs, forcing organizations into the difficult dilemma of who gets access — and leaving much potential untapped. We solved this by combining algorithms with human oversight to deliver insights that truly resonate with each person at scale. Even without a human facilitator, the analysis can land in a way employees can understand, connect with, and act on.
• Many investments deliver only temporary gains. Look at the last decade: stress has risen, engagement hit a 10-year low in 2024, and thriving is in decline. Energy management offers a strategy for lasting impact. Longitudinal studies show that even a three-month program can deliver lasting results, such as measurable improvements in focus, resilience, and performance that persist two years, and even six years, later.

Because AI only reaches its potential when the right humans build, use, and guide it. It has extraordinary possibilities. But let’s be clear: AI will only ever be as powerful as the humans behind it. And humans will only ever be as powerful as their energy reserves.

The post Why Human Energy Is the Next Billion-Dollar KPI in the AI Era (and What 20 Years in AI & Human Performance Taught Me About Measuring It) appeared first on COMPT.

At Compt, we’ve helped hundreds of companies design LSAs that actually work. Our programs see 93% employee participation — nearly triple traditional perk usage — because when employees have the option to choose benefits that fit their real lives, they use them. 

Let’s unpack the data, dig into those LSA pros and cons, and uncover why LSAs are becoming the centerpiece of modern benefits strategies. 

What is a Lifestyle Spending Account? 

Starting from the basics, a Lifestyle Spending Account is an employer-funded benefit that allows employees to spend on categories you define: wellness, caregiving, professional development, food, home office, and more — Compt offers 28 stipend categories. Instead of locking money into gift cards, marketplaces, or individual vendor contracts, LSAs give employees freedom to buy from the vendors they know and trust, and then get reimbursed. 

In the chart below, categories near the top — like wellness (99%) and family (94%) — appear in nearly every LSA program. Those at the bottom — like cell phone (16%) and internet (15%) — are included but far less common.

Employers stay in control by setting a budget, cadence (quarterly is most common for Compt customers per our midyear benchmarking, though annually tends to work well for specific categories like professional development), and eligible categories that align with your culture and values.

When weighing LSA pros and cons for your lifestyle benefits program, this balance of flexibility and control is one of the clearest advantages.

“We let people use it on basically anything because we want them to have the ultimate freedom. We use the Slack integration so people can share what they’ve used their stipend for, and they’ve really used it on everything.”

— Lucy Lemons, Chief People Officer, ButterflyMX

LSA pros: Why Lifestyle Spending Accounts work

Flexibility and personalization

Improved well-being and engagement

Talent attraction and retention

Candidates always want benefits that feel modern and inclusive, no matter the state of the job market. Listing an LSA as a benefit on a job description tells prospective employees that you trust them to choose what support looks like for them. That type of message resonates in recruiting and retention. According to internal data from one of our healthcare customers, adding wellness and caregiver stipends increased retention among nurses — a notoriously high-turnover role. 

Predictable budget for Finance

Unlike open-ended perks or expensive vendor contracts, LSAs come with a set cap. Whether you allocate $500 quarterly or $1,500 annually, that’s your maximum liability.

Because LSAs can scale effortlessly with headcount, they work for any company size — whether you have 10, 100, 1,000, or 10,000 employees. As your workforce grows or shifts, you can update budgets, categories, and reimbursements in just a few clicks.

Taxes are also accounted for automatically in Compt, unlike other point-solution tools with which HR and Finance teams must manually calculate deductions or risk audit exposure.

Cost savings

LSA funds are only spent when employees use them — no more wasted gift cards or unused vendor marketplaces. At midyear 2025, the average LSA/stipend budget per employee per year rose to $1,029, but employers remained in control by defining the cadence, categories, and overall limits. 

Simplified benefits consolidation

Speaking of saving money, how about reducing the sheer amount of benefits vendors in your portfolio? By replacing disconnected and underperforming perks (think ClassPass memberships, gift-card platforms, or niche wellness apps that only a fraction of employees use) with an all-inclusive LSA, you can simplify your tech stack and stretch every dollar even further — a massive win for Finance and your organization’s bottom line.

With Compt, LSAs can be designed to act as an entire perks program in one software platform, encompassing wellness, professional development, rewards and recognition, company swag and branded merchandise, and business expenses. In short, if it can be reimbursed, Compt covers it. This eliminates redundant contracts and improves your lifestyle benefits utilization.

Inclusive by design

Rigid perks often leave some employees out. These well-intentioned benefit offerings can accidentally exclude people with chronic conditions, caregiving responsibilities, or limited on-site or location-based access. LSAs fill that gap (without calling attention to it) by providing access to care on each person’s own terms. Because choice is inherently inclusive, LSAs quietly support DEI efforts in action, not just in policy.

Simplified administration

Managing multiple perks vendors eats up HR’s time, effort, and brainpower. You likely know that just as well as we do. LSAs can consolidate it all into one program. Compt LSAs take it a step further: reimbursements flow into payroll automatically, IRS compliance is built in, and admins spend minutes per month (not hours!) running the program.

“We cut our benefits processing time from days to just 90 minutes.”
— Kevin Sullivan, Global Benefits Manager, Quickbase

Boosts company culture and brand perception

An LSA sends a strong vibe on how you manage your culture. It says, “We see you as a whole person.” Employees notice. Glassdoor reviews, engagement surveys, and LinkedIn posts often reflect the goodwill that comes from providing benefits that employees actually like to use. (Have you ever written a post about how awesome your EAP is? I haven’t. And with good reason — EAPs see 5-7% utilization on average) In the LSA pros and cons debate, this is one of the most overlooked but powerful items in the “pro” column. 

Get all-in-one software with Compt

If you have lifestyle benefits needs that go beyond LSAs, which LSA platform you choose becomes even more important. Pick one that allows for reimbursements in every category you want to offer, such as tuition reimbursement, caregiving (for childcare and/or elder care expenses), company swag, recognition, wellness, professional development, and more.

With Compt, all these benefits live in one place: a unifed, vendor-agnostic LSA platform in which Finance controls spend, HR manages culture, and employees can see every lifestyle benefit for which they’re eligible. It’s one source of truth for stipends, rewards, spot bonuses, and reimbursements that scales along with your company.

Perks collecting dust? It’s time for an upgrade. Compt LSAs turn “nice-to-have” benefits into programs your team will actually use (and your Finance team will actually love). Request a demo today.

LSA cons: What to watch out for

Taxable in most cases

Like most perks, many LSA categories (like wellness and food) are considered taxable income. Other categories, like professional development or internet reimbursements, may be nontaxable depending on use. This doesn’t make LSAs any less valuable; it simply means taxes need to be addressed and managed appropriately, and it’s important to prioritize clear communication so employees know what to expect. Compt automates IRS coding and tax classification in real time, ensuring HR and Finance stay compliant without manual tracking or audit risk.

While taxes are one of the few true “cons” of LSAs, they’re a normal part of most modern perks (and entirely manageable with the right platform).

Upfront design required

Building an LSA program requires some thought before you roll it out. How much funding? Which categories? How often is it distributed? Without structure, even the most flexible of lifestyle benefits program can feel confusing. The good news, though, is that once your LSA is designed, it practically runs itself. And your Compt Customer Success team is available to help you make decisions. 

Compt has an 85% Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) from admins and employees.

Potential overlap with existing perks 

If you already subsidize gym memberships, commuter passes, lunches through DoorDash, or point-solution vendors, an LSA may duplicate these efforts. Many companies consolidate by replacing these one-off contracts with an all-in-one LSA (and if it includes rewards and recognition or swag, even better). When consolidating, make sure to communicate changes to your employees and keep them aware of how any new benefits might affect them. Ultimately, this is a neutral point in the LSA pros and cons discussion; it’s a challenge only if you don’t use consolidation strategically.

Ready to see for yourself? Request a demo with Compt.

When you weigh the LSA pros and cons, the advantages of an LSA with Compt clearly outweigh the drawbacks. Our LSAs deliver personalization, predictability, and inclusivity in a way that outdated perk approaches simply can’t. Programs launch in as little as two weeks, drive 93% participation, and eliminate redundant vendors with a comprehensive, five-in-one approach to lifestyle benefits. 

Request a demo with a Compt Benefits Specialist to see how well an LSA could work for your team. 

FAQs: LSA pros and cons

The post LSA Pros and Cons: Everything You Need to Know About Lifestyle Spending Accounts in 2026 appeared first on COMPT.

Compt, the best lifestyle benefits platform for personalized employee stipends and perks, and Snappy, the leading corporate gifting platform, today announced their partnership and the launch of the Company Swag Store — giving companies a free, fully branded and on-demand online store combined with a free swag stipend that employees can use to choose the branded gear they actually want.

Compt enables HR teams to deliver flexible, tax-compliant stipends across categories like wellness, professional development, family, and recognition. Snappy enables companies to create memorable, branded moments with personalized gifts, produced and shipped on demand. This is the first integrated solution that links stipends with a print-on-demand company swag store.

The free* Company Swag Store + Swag Stipend product brings these strengths together: HR can launch a fully branded store in minutes, employees get ongoing access to choose swag anytime, and everything integrates seamlessly into Compt’s stipend and recognition platform.

Swag made simple: branded items, employees order, store to door

Traditional swag programs require HR to manage bulk orders, track sizes, store inventory, and ship boxes, often resulting in unused closets of merch, wasted spend, and countless hours spent on facilitating shipping. At the same time, employees rarely connect with generic gear or gift cards.

With the Company Swag Store, HR selects products and sets a swag stipend, while employees shop on demand. Snappy produces and ships items directly, eliminating the need for HR to manage fulfillment or inventory. In other words, Compt and Snappy give HR the best way to set up an end-to-end swag program that lets employees spend their swag stipends on branded products without managing closets of merch.

Top Company Swag Store options and use cases

• Culture and community building: Always-on access to swag, purchased with stipend (or personal) funds, helps employees show pride in their company year-round.
• Onboarding: Day-one swag and a stipend help new hires feel connected from the start — a simple policy for onboarding that works just as well for global or remote teams.
• Recognition: Automate stipends and celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, and new hires with personalized gear.
• Distributed teams: Employees across locations can access the same branded perks, ensuring consistency and inclusion.
• Uniforms: Give front-line and customer-facing teams the branded gear they need to represent your company every day.

Everything runs inside Compt, eliminating the need for HR to act as a fulfillment center.

Best way to launch a free Company Swag Store 

The Company Swag Store is free for all Compt customers, with no subscription fees. Companies only pay when employees order, plus a one-time $500 setup fee for payroll integration. Because everything is tax-compliant and automated, HR saves hours while budgets stay predictable, making this the best way to budget for branded merchandise alongside other wellness or recognition stipends.  

“Too many HR leaders are stuck wasting time and money managing swag no one uses,” said Amy Spurling, Founder and CEO of Compt. “With Snappy, we’ve built a turnkey way to build culture and celebrate employees with branded gear they’ll actually want.”

Stores come stocked with 80+ high-quality items, including hoodies, hats, water bottles, backpacks, tech gear, and more. The catalog is always growing, so employees never run out of options.

“Snappy Stores empower HR professionals to bring culture to life. From branded
collections that reinforce identity to personalized campaigns for milestones, Stores create pride, belonging, and connection throughout the employee journey, no matter where employees are.”

— Hamutal Oren-Fox, Chief People Officer, Snappy

FAQs: Company Swag Store + Swag Stipends

See how the Compt + Snappy Company Swag Store works

Get started with a quick call with the Compt team to explore the first free company swag store powered by stipends. It’s the easiest way to link swag stores to lifestyle stipends and benefits, give employees print-on-demand swag credits, and manage everything in one tax-compliant platform.

Need buy-in first? Download our one-pager to share with your team.

About Compt

Compt is the global lifestyle benefits platform trusted by companies in all 50 states and 75+ countries. Compt’s flexible, easy-to-use, tax-compliant platform helps HR teams deliver stipends across wellness, professional development, family, commuter, recognition, and more. For more information, visit www.compt.io.

About Snappy

Snappy is a leading corporate gifting platform that helps organizations drive engagement, retention, and business growth through thoughtful, scalable gifting. Trusted by over half of the Fortune 100, Snappy has delivered over 7 million gifts to 176+ countries. Snappy’s gifting platform supports use cases across employee, customer, and prospect lifecycles, offering curated gift collections, branded swag, global experiences, and gifting APIs. Founded in 2015, Snappy is a series D company that continues to redefine how businesses build meaningful connections through gifting.

The post Compt and Snappy Launch First Free Company Swag Store + Swag Stipend for HR and Employees appeared first on COMPT.

Many insurance plans only cover these medications for diabetes indications. Others require strict prior authorization rules, BMI thresholds, or lifestyle program participation before coverage is approved. Medicare still carries a statutory exclusion for weight-loss medications, and Medicaid coverage varies by state.

Even where coverage technically exists, employees often face high out-of-pocket costs. In nationally representative polling by KFF, 54% of people who had taken a GLP-1 medication said it was difficult to afford.

For HR and Total Rewards teams, this creates a familiar tension: employees want support for a medication that can improve health outcomes, but expanding GLP-1 coverage through the medical plan can introduce unpredictable pharmacy costs and additional compliance complexity.

So companies are asking a practical question:

Is there a way to support employees who rely on GLP-1 medications without expanding the medical plan?

Increasingly, companies are experimenting with flexible lifestyle benefits like Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs) and wellness stipends as one possible answer.

These programs don’t replace medical coverage. Instead, they complement it by giving employees a controlled allowance they can use toward eligible wellness expenses, which may include GLP-1 medications, while keeping spending capped and making benefits easier to administer.

What GLP-1 weight-loss coverage means in employee benefits

Before diving into the “how” of employee benefits program design, it helps to clarify the terminology.

In benefits conversations, GLP-1 weight-loss coverage usually refers to employer programs that help offset the cost of medications such as Wegovy, Ozempic, or Zepbound when they are prescribed for weight management.

Traditionally, those costs would be handled through the employer’s health plan or pharmacy benefit manager. But GLP-1 medications are expensive enough to significantly affect pharmacy spending.

Medicare Part D claims for GLP-1 drugs grew from 4.8 million in 2019 to 21.8 million in 2024, according to KFF analysis. Over the same period, gross spending rose fivefold, reaching $27.5 billion. Medicaid programs have seen similar growth, with prescriptions increasing sevenfold between 2019 and 2024.

With demand rising this quickly, many employers are hesitant to expand medical coverage without guardrails — which is why flexible lifestyle benefits are emerging as a practical alternative.  Instead of creating a new health plan benefit, employers provide a defined reimbursement allowance employees can use across wellness-related expenses.

That approach keeps the benefit predictable for employers while still giving employees meaningful support.

Why employers are looking beyond traditional GLP-1 coverage

GLP-1 medications are effective for many patients — but they are also expensive. Retail prices often exceed $1,000 per month, and even after rebates, estimated net prices for some GLP-1 weight-management therapies still reach $7,400 to $9,190 per patient per year.

For employers considering full coverage under a medical plan, even modest adoption can affect their benefits budget. Modeling based on employer health policy research and ICER pricing benchmarks suggests that if 3–5% of employees use GLP-1 medications, incremental pharmacy spending could increase by roughly $20–$33 per employee per month across the entire workforce, depending on negotiated drug prices and adherence rates.

That expense is one reason many insurers and employers rely on strict eligibility criteria, including:

• BMI thresholds
• Documented comorbidities
• Prior authorization requirements
• Step therapy
• Response-based continuation rules

These guardrails certainly reduce costs, but they also create uneven employee access.

Flexible lifestyle benefits offer a different tradeoff. Instead of covering the medication itself through the health plan, employers offer a fixed allowance employees can apply toward wellness expenses, including GLP-1 medications if company policy allows.

In practice, many employers structure this support through taxable lifestyle benefits such as wellness stipends or Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs), which allow companies to provide partial reimbursement for GLP-1 prescriptions while keeping employer costs capped and avoiding the regulatory complexity associated with expanding pharmacy benefits.

Why flexibility matters for employees

Behind the policy discussions are real people trying to maintain progress in their health journeys.

A former colleague once told me how much a GLP-1 medication had helped her improve her health over several months. Then, earlier this year, her employer changed their coverage policy. When the health plan stopped covering the medication for weight management, the treatment that had been working for her was financially out of reach.

Nothing about her health or the treatment plan had changed — only the coverage.

Stories like this are becoming increasingly common as insurers and employers tighten eligibility rules for GLP-1 medications, and that instability is one reason some employers are exploring flexible lifestyle benefits to complement traditional health coverage.

Instead of tying support for a specific medication to the health plan, employers can offer a defined allowance employees can apply toward wellness-related expenses, including weight management. The employer still maintains a predictable budget, while employees gain more flexibility in how they use the benefit.

Flexible reimbursement benefits also give employees more control over how they access support. Health needs can be personal, and many employees prefer submitting expenses privately through a benefits platform rather than navigating a highly visible process through managers or specialized vendor programs.

Using mental health as an example, Deloitte found that only 52% of Gen Z workers feel comfortable speaking openly with their manager about mental health challenges, with 27% worrying that managers would be judgmental and possibly discriminate, as reported by workforce analyst Mervyn Dinnen.

For employers, that structure creates a practical middle ground: employees get flexibility and discretion, while HR and Finance teams maintain oversight of program design and spending.

Three ways employers support GLP-1 costs today

Companies that want to support GLP-1 costs through lifestyle benefits generally take one of three approaches with Compt. Each option offers different levels of flexibility, structure, and administrative complexity.

Option A: Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs)

A Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA) is one of the most flexible ways employers support GLP-1 weight-loss coverage without expanding their medical plan.

Common LSA categories include:

• Wellness
• Food
• Family
• Financial wellness
• Personal development
• Experiences
• Tech
• Home

Employees submit receipts for eligible expenses and receive reimbursement through the benefits platform. Within this structure, GLP-1 medications used for weight management can be included as an eligible expense under categories such as wellness or a dedicated category for weight management. 

Many employers prefer LSAs because they consolidate multiple benefits into one program. Instead of offering a wellness stipend, professional development stipend, and family benefit individually, employers can bundle those programs into one flexible allowance.

LSAs are structured as taxable lifestyle benefits rather than medical plans, which means they generally avoid the ERISA requirements associated with employer-sponsored health coverage.

For HR and Finance teams, LSAs also provide centralized reporting and visibility into how employees actually use the benefit. Participation, spending patterns, and category trends can all be tracked in one place, making it easy to evaluate whether the program is meeting employee needs.

In Compt’s 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report, all-inclusive LSAs were the most common stipend structure, with 64% of participating companies offering one, reflecting employers’ preference for flexible, multicategory benefits programs.

Option B: Wellness stipends

Another common approach is offering GLP-1 support through a wellness stipend. A wellness stipend uses the same reimbursement model as an LSA but is limited to wellness-related expenses. With Compt, employers can configure eligible wellness purchases and reimbursement rules within the platform.

Employees might use the benefit for:

• Gym memberships
• Fitness equipment
• Nutrition programs
• Supplements
• Mental health apps
• GLP-1 medications used for weight management

Because the benefit is narrower in scope than an LSA, wellness stipends are often easier for organizations to launch quickly.

Option C: Weight-management stipends

Some employers choose a more targeted structure: a dedicated weight-management stipend. These programs still function as lifestyle benefits, but eligible expenses are focused specifically on weight management.

Examples may include:

• GLP-1 medications
• Nutrition coaching
• Metabolic health programs
• Weight-management services
• Fitness programs

This structure sends a clear signal about the company’s focus on metabolic health and support of weight management. Because the benefit is designed for employees actively seeking help in this area, utilization typically comes from a smaller subset of the workforce, which can lead to lower overall program spending compared with broader wellness stipends or LSAs that are relevant to nearly everyone.

However, this structure also requires careful design to ensure the benefit remains a lifestyle reimbursement program rather than a regulated health plan. Because the benefit is closely tied to health outcomes, some companies consult benefits counsel to ensure compliance.

Comparing the three approaches to GLP-1 weight-loss coverage

How LSAs compare to wellness stipends for GLP-1 coverage

The main difference between a Lifestyle Spending Account (LSA) and a wellness stipend is scope. A wellness stipend is limited to health-related expenses such as fitness, nutrition programs, or GLP-1 medications used for weight management. 

An LSA allows employers to combine multiple benefits into one allowance, covering categories such as wellness, food, family, financial wellness, and personal development. For employers exploring GLP-1 reimbursement, LSAs often provide greater flexibility because the benefit can support weight management while still covering other lifestyle needs within the same program.

What about dedicated GLP-1 health benefits?

Some organizations explore offering GLP-1 reimbursement through a formal health plan or HRA. In those cases, the employer must establish plan documentation and comply with regulations such as ERISA, HIPAA, and COBRA.

Compt’s platform can support the technology side of these programs, including claims submission and balance tracking, but you as the employer would remain responsible for plan design, claims decisions, and compliance. Because of this complexity, many companies start with lifestyle benefits before considering a dedicated health plan.

How employers control GLP-1 benefit costs

One of the biggest concerns around GLP-1 benefits is cost. Lifestyle benefits help solve this by allowing employers to control spending through program design rather than relying on open-ended medical coverage.

Common cost-control strategies include:

• Fixed allowance caps: Employers set an annual or quarterly budget per employee, ensuring total program costs remain predictable.
• Quarterly funding: Instead of funding the entire allowance upfront, many organizations fund stipends quarterly to reduce financial exposure. This helps employers plan for recurring expenses.
• Flexible benefit categories: Allowing employees to spend their LSA or stipend allowance across multiple wellness needs naturally distributes demand rather than concentrating spending on one expense.
• Participation monitoring: Compt provides reporting that helps HR and Finance teams understand participation trends and adjust program design if needed.

Offering GLP-1 support with Compt

As GLP-1 demand continues to grow, more HR, Total Rewards, and Finance leaders are looking for ways to support employees without dramatically increasing healthcare costs.

Compt helps organizations design and manage lifestyle benefits programs that make this possible. With Compt, employers can launch:

• Lifestyle Spending Accounts
• Wellness stipends
• Weight-management stipends
• And other stipends across many different benefits categories

Employees submit their receipts through Compt, while HR teams can see exactly how the benefit is being used and Finance teams keep a clear handle on budget and reporting. Instead of introducing another point solution or expanding the medical plan, organizations can support GLP-1 and other wellness needs through one flexible lifestyle benefits program.

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

Need buy-in first? Download our GLP-1 one-pager to share with your team.

FAQs: GLP-1 weight-loss coverage with LSAs and stipends

The post Supporting GLP-1 Weight-Loss Coverage Using LSAs and Wellness Stipends appeared first on COMPT.

Written by Kat Kibben

Katrina Kibben is a nationally recognized expert in recruiting and job post transformation. As founder and CEO of Three Ears Media, they’ve trained thousands of recruiters to write better job postings, helping organizations reduce time-to-fill, lower costs, and remove bias. With 15+ years of experience working with companies like Monster.com and Randstad Worldwide, Katrina blends deep industry expertise with practical, actionable advice that drives real results.

A LinkedIn Top Voice on Hiring, Katrina’s insights have been featured in The New York Times and Forbes. They’re also the author of This Was All An Accident, sharing leadership lessons from life on the road.

Connect with Kat on LinkedIn.

When I worked in corporate America, I could always blame my boss for the burnout. They sent emails late at night, so I assumed that if I wanted to be the boss, I would also respond to emails at night. To be fair, no one ever told me they expected the 20-minute response time at all hours of the work week. I guess I just did some math of my own. Responding quickly became a benchmark of my success, then it almost killed my career.

COVID didn’t help. A year of sitting in the house left me more tied to my phone than ever. Even with all this time to seemingly do nothing, I made up all these rules that even went beyond my inbox hitting zero. It was everything about work — even my schedule. I would be at my desk by 9 and stay there until 5. But why? I never asked. I just did it. I had no one to blame four years into my business when the burnout hit me hard. I wanted to quit everything.

It took the unusual experience of moving into a van and traveling for a year where I couldn’t respond immediately to realize it. Just like I made up the rule about the response time, I made up all the rules about work.

The sum of that equation? A burnout I couldn’t kick for several years and something I’m still working to recover from today three years later.

Why does workplace culture ignore rest?

In any job, whether you work for yourself or a global corporation, it’s really hard to see the importance of rest when you’re busy navigating all the rules. Rest is not something taught or enabled at work. It hasn’t ever been part of the profit margin. No one even talks about rest, let alone plans for people to take rest.

If you do hear about CEOs incorporating rest? People treat it as something novel and unique, even though it’s common sense that we need rest to do our best work. We are all burned out and craving anyone to give us permission to rest. Over the last five years, the number of people reporting burnout has more than doubled every other year since 2020. Recent surveys from Mercer say that 80% of employees are at risk of burnout.

But the scale of burnout isn’t as important as the consequences for the most sacred profit-margin-maker: your brain. When a brain is burned out, it creates a cognitive load that takes up a lot of room. Research suggests that lack of mental space to process stimuli instead of stress makes people less flexible. They generate fewer unique ideas and have less problem-solving capacity.

Oh, and it’s not easy to just bounce back from that. It takes more than three years to heal your brain. Yes you read that right. More on that here. We can’t keep treating rest like a reward we earn and accumulate in PTO hours. If you insist on some bottom line, it’s clear: less brain space, less profit. 

Burnout solutions that don’t require more work

So, why aren’t companies trying to beat burnout? My guess is that there haven’t been a lot of practical solutions presented to companies that aren’t on the Fortune 500 list. Rest perks like nap rooms and therapy have always felt like a Silicon Valley service, not something anyone could do anywhere. 

But rest-related benefits don’t just belong in tech. Across every industry, rest is going to help with burnout and employee Net Promoter Score. But those are just your leading indicators it’s working. The lag indicators are the ones that will save you a lot of money and time: more referrals, less turnover, shorter time to fill, and lower benefit costs.

When I say rest-related, I’m not just talking about cots in some break room. That’s creepy. Maybe it’s a weeklong shutdown in the summer where everyone takes the week off. That means everyone, by the way. A $100 self-care stipend. This also might include flexible work arrangements. Just remember, healing burnout isn’t one size fits all.

The best part? I can’t emphasize enough how much people love these benefits. One of my friends gets $100 for the gym every month, and you would think this employer had bought her a car. She talks about it that much. Just don’t wait until your team starts buying up vans to realize everyone is burned out.

For more unfiltered stories and hard-won lessons that transformed my own approach to work and well-being, check out my new book, “The Bounce Back Factor: A Leader’s Guide To Liking Yourself While Leading Your People.”

The post Rest Up: Rest Benefits to Avoid Burnout appeared first on COMPT.

If you’re here, you already know that managing lifestyle benefits isn’t as simple as handing out stipends. It’s about delivering a program that actually fits your employees’ lives, works across countries and currencies, stays compliant, and doesn’t bog your team down with manual admin. Too often, teams using platforms like Forma run into the same roadblocks: merchant code restrictions, declined transactions, incorrect transaction approvals, tax headaches, and systems that just don’t scale.

A truly effective stipend platform should remove those pain points and support your team’s growth, not create more work. Based on what we’ve seen from teams transitioning away from Forma, here are the core capabilities to look for in a modern stipend management platform:

Platform consolidation that reduces tool sprawl

Forma users often end up supplementing the platform with separate tools for rewards, learning, wellness, and/or DEI. A strong alternative should bring all of these programs under one roof, reducing administrative chaos and vendor costs.

Built-in tax compliance you don’t have to fix later

One of the most consistent frustrations we hear from teams leaving Forma is around taxes. While it’s known that many benefits carry tax implications, Forma provides no visible guidance in its customer support documentation on how taxable vs. nontaxable spend is tracked or reported — just look at their support page.

The absence of documentation raises a few questions:

• Is the process simple or complex? If it were seamless, you’d expect it to be clearly documented. The silence suggests there may be hidden complexity.
• Who carries the burden? Without clear guidance, Finance often ends up retroactively sorting taxable vs. nontaxable benefits, making manual adjustments, and absorbing the compliance risk.
• What about employees who leave? A Finance team lacking clarity is left without an easy, visible reconciliation process for employees who received taxable benefits but are no longer at the company.
• Is this a priority area? If tax compliance were a core strength, it would likely be highlighted more prominently.

By contrast, a better platform bakes in tax compliance from day one. That means handing taxability in real time and generating audit-ready payroll files from the start. For detailed guidance, explore our comprehensive tax compliance guide.

True global scalability

If you have employees across multiple countries, you’ve likely run into Forma’s limitations with currency support, time zones, and compliance. Look for a platform that can support international teams with localized stipends and automated tax handling.

Vendor-free flexibility (no merchant code blockages)

One of the top frustrations with Forma is merchant code restrictions, leading to declined transactions, underused stipends, or merchant approval but with items listed on the no-go list. Every merchant is considered “unverified” until manually approved (yes, even individual sellers on Amazon), which means extra work for program admins. Employees are then stuck in a loop: their transaction gets blocked, they escalate to HR, and HR has to work with Forma to request approval and the code. This results in a frustrating experience for everyone. 

The best Forma alternatives use a reimbursement model that lets employees choose any vendor that fits your benefit policy, without time-consuming delays or having to approve each new vendor added. 

No more embarrassing card declines

Forma’s card-based system often leaves employees stranded when transactions get declined, damaging trust in the benefits program. A reimbursement-first platform puts the employee in control: they make the purchase, upload the receipt, and get reimbursed quickly — no awkward moments at checkout.

In this article, we’ll walk through four alternatives to Forma. But if you’re looking for a stipend solution that truly puts flexibility, compliance, and the employee experience first, Compt stands out from the rest.

Ready to eliminate stipend management headaches? Request a demo.

Comparing top Forma alternatives

1. Compt: The all-in-one tax-compliant choice

Compt is a lifestyle benefits platform built to help companies offer personalized, meaningful perks, without the complexity. Instead of locking employees into a rigid marketplace or forcing HR teams to juggle multiple tools, Compt gives people the freedom to spend their stipends in ways that fit their lives. Whether your program includes wellness, family support, and/or professional development, employees can use stipends within the categories you define, buying from any merchant that fits. HR and People Ops stay firmly at the helm with programs that are inclusive, easy to manage, and flexible enough to grow with your team. 

And where Compt really shines is behind the scenes. Built with robust functionality and a simple, intuitive user experience, Compt makes life easier for everyone. Designed by a former CFO, it’s built with Finance in mind, delivering real-time visibility into spending patterns, automated tax classification, seamless payroll integrations, and global currency support.

No merchant code issues. No card declines. No year-end surprises. Just a smart, scalable platform that keeps employees happy, HR confident, and Finance in control.

Feature #1: Simplify benefits by consolidating features, stipends, and rewards into one powerful platform (not a mess of disconnected tools).

One of the biggest headaches for HR and People Ops teams is managing a scattered tech stack: one tool for wellness stipends, another for professional development, a third for rewards and recognition. With Compt, you can consolidate to save money and reduce administrative burden.

Compt combines all your core employee programs: lifestyle stipends, LSAs, professional development, and employee recognition. That means less vendor management, fewer logins, and more time spent on strategy (not admin). You also get real-time reporting that’s payroll-ready, helping HR and Finance teams stay in sync and prepared for an audit, should it occur. 

Compared to platforms like Forma, which only handles stipends and pre-tax benefits, or Bonusly, which focuses purely on recognition, Compt’s all-in-one setup offers a truly unified experience for employees and admins alike. Benefits include:

• One platform to manage all employee reimbursements and rewards
• Unified reporting across programs for simpler analysis and decision-making
• A single source of truth for Finance and Payroll (no spreadsheet chaos!)
• Less training and setup time for HR admins
• A consistent, seamless employee experience across all programs

Learn more about how Compt’s stipend administration software can streamline your entire benefits program.

Feature #2: Tax compliance is automatic, accurate, and built in from day one.

Tax compliance is one of the biggest pain points for Finance teams when it comes to stipends, and most platforms make it harder than it needs to be. With Compt, tax treatment is handled at the source. That means every stipend is automatically classified as taxable or nontaxable, the right reporting is applied at the time of reimbursement, and payroll-ready reports are generated without any extra work.

In contrast, card-based and marketplace solutions like Forma and many other Forma alternatives leave the heavy lifting to you. Finance teams are often stuck manually sorting through year-end reports, retroactively adjusting payroll based on unclear tax rules, handling employee complaints about surprise tax withholdings, and taking on compliance risk from incorrect or inconsistent classifications

Compt eliminates all that. Our platform is 100% IRS-compliant and integrates directly with your payroll system, so Finance doesn’t have to second-guess classifications or chase down receipts. No more tax season surprises, no more year-end cleanup — just accurate, audit-ready data every single pay period.

Learn more about our payroll integrations and how we keep compliance stress off your plate.

Feature #3: Scale benefits effortlessly across 75+ countries with a unified global platform.

Managing employee benefits across borders is notoriously complex, but it doesn’t have to be. While card-based or marketplace platforms often break down across countries, time zones, and currencies, Compt was built to scale. Whether you have employees in five countries or 75, we make it easy to deliver a consistent, compliant experience — no workarounds required.

Compt supports global teams out of the box, combining vendor-free flexibility with built-in tax handling and multicurrency support. You don’t need separate vendors for each country, and there are no surprise exchange fees or compliance gaps to manage. Just one platform that works everywhere.

With Compt, you get:

• Multicountry support for 75+ countries (and counting)
• Multicurrency reimbursement without hidden fees
• A consistent experience for employees, no matter where they work
• Local country payroll process so you’re not chasing rules per country
• No vendor contracts or region-specific platforms to manage

For example, imagine having employees in both Albania and New York City who want the same robust experience without setting up separate vendors. Compt will handle that automatically.

See how Compt helps build global stipend programs that work seamlessly across borders.

Feature #4: Vendor-free flexibility, without restrictions, so employees choose what works for them — not what’s on an approved list.

Too many stipend platforms limit employees to a short list of pre-approved vendors — or worse, rely on confusing merchant codes that frequently block legitimate purchases. That leads to a familiar cycle: declined transactions, frustrated employees, and underutilized benefits that cost your company money but don’t deliver value. For example, an employee might be at Target picking up vitamins as part of their health and wellness stipend, but when they check out, the transaction gets declined because Target isn’t on the approved vendor list.

Compt takes a different approach. Our category-based reimbursement model gives employees the freedom to choose any vendor that fits within your program’s guidelines. There are no merchant codes to navigate, no restrictive vendor lists, and no red tape.

Imagine this: One of your employees wants to use their wellness stipend for a local climbing gym or a niche meditation app that isn’t part of a marketplace. On a card-based platform like Forma, the transaction might get declined or flagged for manual review simply because the vendor doesn’t match a specific merchant code. With Compt, they make the purchase, submit a receipt, and — if it aligns with your policy — it’s approved and reimbursed. It’s that simple. In fact, more than 99% of expenses were approved in the first half of 2025. 

This kind of flexibility leads to dramatically higher participation, fewer support tickets, and a more inclusive experience for your team. It also saves HR and Finance from chasing down exceptions or manually approving one-off vendor requests.

Feature #5: Zero transaction failures — because a declined benefit isn’t a benefit at all.

Card-based stipend platforms often come with a hidden risk: failed transactions. Whether it’s because of merchant code mismatches or vendor restrictions, declined purchases frustrate employees and flood HR with support requests.

Compt takes a reimbursement-first approach that eliminates this issue entirely. For example, say an employee signs up for a virtual conference using a card-based platform, and the payment is declined because of an unrecognized merchant. With Compt, that employee pays upfront, submits the receipt, and is reimbursed — smooth, simple, and stress-free, with no card declines or confusion.

When benefits work reliably, employees use them confidently, and HR doesn’t have to play tech support.

Feature #6: Maximum ROI on every benefit dollar with 100% of your budget going to employees, not intermediaries.

When you invest in employee benefits, every dollar should go toward … well, your employees. But with many platforms, a surprising amount gets lost to card processing fees, currency exchange charges, lost or stolen cards, and marketplace markups. Compt avoids all of that by using a vendor-free, reimbursement-based model, so 100% of your benefits budget actually supports your people, not third-party middlemen.

Unlike card-first platforms that require preloading funds (and leave unused balances behind), Compt reimburses only real, approved purchases. That means you’re paying for what employees actually spend, not what you offered. There’s no pre-funding. No wasted dollars. No expiration-related losses or hidden fees skimmed off the top. Every dollar is used with intention, and you’ll know exactly where it went.

Let’s say your team rolls out a $500 quarterly wellness stipend. With card-based platforms, you end up losing a percentage of that to processing fees or unused balances. With Compt, if an employee has an annual $500 wellness stipend and spends $300 at a local gym and $100 on a meditation app, they get fully reimbursed for the combined $400, and your company keeps the remaining unused $100 — no fees, no leftovers, no waste. 

The result is full transparency, maximum ROI on your benefits budget, and no wasted spending on unnecessary intermediaries.

Get a custom quote to see exactly what you’ll pay with Compt.

2. Benepass: A strong card-first option for personalized stipends

Benepass offers a card-first approach to employee stipends and lifestyle spending accounts, making it easy for employees to pay directly for their benefits without fronting any cash. This zero out-of-pocket experience is a big win for many companies, especially those looking for a smooth, familiar purchasing flow. Benepass also supports a broad range of benefit categories, giving employees plenty of flexibility to choose what fits their unique needs.

To help ensure compliance, Benepass codes eligibility rules into its Visa card, enabling most transactions to be automatically approved or declined at the POS. This built-in logic reduces the need for manual receipt review.  While such automation helps lighten the administrative load, some companies may still prefer more flexible, vendor-free models for niche use cases or global reimbursement. 

Benepass currently has more limited global support compared to other platforms, which isn’t ideal for organizations with international teams. For those seeking broader geographic coverage, tax automation, or reimbursement-based flexibility, Compt offers a more scalable alternative. 

3. Espresa: A modern choice for well-being–focused lifestyle spending accounts

Espresa specializes in lifestyle spending accounts (LSAs) with a strong emphasis on employee well-being and engagement. Their mobile-first, globally inclusive platform is built to support distributed teams — whether in-office, remote, or hybrid — with features like wellness challenges, rewards and recognition, and employee communities. This makes Espresa a good fit for companies looking to boost culture and engagement alongside benefits.

That said, Espresa’s focus is more narrowly tailored to well-being and LSA-type benefits, which means it lacks some of the broader stipend program capabilities that larger or more complex companies might need. If your goal is a unified platform that consolidates all types of personalized employee stipends across professional development, rewards, family benefits, and beyond, Espresa might feel a bit limited.

Ultimately, Espresa is a solid option if you want to create an engaging, culture-driven employee experience centered on well-being. But for organizations seeking a more comprehensive, vendor-free reimbursement platform that scales globally and automates tax compliance, Compt’s broader scope and Finance-friendly design make it the better all-around solution.

4. Bonusly: A go-to for recognition-driven employee engagement

Bonusly stands out as a user-friendly platform focused on peer-to-peer recognition and micro-bonuses. It’s built to help companies boost morale, strengthen team bonds, and reinforce company values through frequent, meaningful shout-outs and rewards. The gamification features make celebrating wins fun and visible, which helps create a positive and connected culture across teams.

That said, Bonusly’s strength lies mainly in recognition programs rather than comprehensive stipend or benefits administration. It doesn’t offer the full suite of personalized employee stipends or lifestyle spending accounts that companies might need for broader employee benefits management. So, if you’re looking for a platform that handles everything from professional development reimbursements to global tax compliance, Bonusly isn’t quite built for that level of complexity.

In short, Bonusly is a solid choice for organizations wanting to ramp up engagement through recognition. But for teams needing a unified, scalable platform to manage personalized stipends with zero transaction failures and seamless compliance, Compt offers a more complete and flexible solution.

Choose Compt, the stipend platform built for modern HR

When evaluating Forma alternatives, the best choice becomes clear. While traditional point solutions restrict benefits to narrow marketplaces or apps, limiting employee choice and leading to low participation, wasted budget, and poor ROI, Compt delivers a fundamentally different approach.

Compt is the only platform that delivers: 

• True all-in-one consolidation of stipends, LSAs, professional development, and rewards and recognition
• Guaranteed tax compliance with automated classification and payroll-ready reporting 
• Seamless global scalability across 75+ countries 
• Complete vendor-free flexibility without merchant code restrictions
• Zero declined transactions through reimbursement-based processing 
• 100% of your benefits budget going directly to employees

Don’t let another year pass managing multiple tools, cleaning up tax compliance issues, and dealing with employee complaints about declined cards or restricted vendors.

Ready to see how Compt can transform your employee benefits program? Request a demo today and discover why leading HR teams choose Compt over Forma and other traditional stipend platforms.

The post Top 4 Forma Alternatives for Personalized Employee Stipends in 2026 appeared first on COMPT.

During my time at HubSpot, I co-created the HubSpot Academy division.

I helped build and scale education that trained millions of people around the world in a completely different way of working: inbound marketing. 

What made it unique was that we weren’t just training our customers. We were also training prospects, agency partners, students, and new employees inside HubSpot.

Our goal was to help people learn how to use the internet to grow their business.

And our challenge was behavior change at scale.

Today, HR teams are facing something eerily similar: AI is changing the rules. And from my conversations with HR executives, practitioners, L&D professionals, and more a general sentiment has popped up: most people have a general sense of the starting point of AI adoption through clear HR policies, they often don’t know where to go from there.

And I get it, why would they what’s expected since it’s still so new.

But the thing is, we’re also seeing is that AI usage is quickly becoming a baseline expectation inside companies.

A recent Gallup study found the number of employees using AI at work nearly doubled in two years, with weekly use jumping from 11% to 19%.

And while more people are using it, people are still unsure about its role in the future.

According to Ernst & Young, 71% of U.S. workers are concerned about AI in the workplace, and 75% fear tech-driven job loss. It’s what they’re calling “AI Anxiety.” So yes, there is enthusiasm, but there’s also real fear.

That’s where HR comes in.

This isn’t just an IT problem. This is a people opportunity. And we believe that HR is uniquely positioned to lead it.

Why HR? Because HR owns the employee experience. If people feel unsupported, afraid, or unprepared to engage with AI, the return on even the most ambitious tech investments will fall flat. Gartner and McKinsey both cite lack of employee readiness as a top blocker to AI success.

And enabling readiness isn’t new territory for HR, it’s what you already do.

AI enablement is ultimately a matter of change management, talent development, and psychological safety — all core HR competencies. You know how to help people grow, adapt, and feel safe while doing it. That’s why HR isn’t an adjacent player in this transition. You’re essential to making it work.

As Amy Spurling, Compt’s founder and CEO, put it:

“If AI is your biggest investment this year, your second should be helping your team adapt to it. AI is already reshaping work. Your benefits better help your people keep up or they’ll find an employer who does.”

To help companies adopt AI responsibly and successfully, HR teams need to master what we’re calling the AI Adoption Trifecta: three foundational pillars that make or break your organization’s AI adoption success. They’re simple and people-first.

Let’s break them down.

1. Clear policy → So employees know what’s encouraged, what’s off-limits, and how to use AI responsibly

Setting expectations builds confidence. And it reduces risk. Clear AI policies help employees:

• Understand when, where, and how they should use AI
• Know what’s prohibited (e.g., uploading confidential data into ChatGPT)
• Follow internal guardrails around data privacy, intellectual property, and bias mitigation

Good policy doesn’t mean restriction. It means clarity. It gives employees the psychological safety to try without fear of doing it “wrong.”

Need a place to start? Even a lightweight acceptable-use policy can help build guardrails. Encourage teams to treat AI like a powerful intern: useful, imperfect, and requiring fact-checking and human judgment.

2. Practical support → So people aren’t left guessing

As Kim Rohrer, longtime people leader, explains:

“The important thing is not just to give your employees money to spend on AI tools, but to help them understand ways to integrate it into their work. … Even deciding where to spend their budget might seem overwhelming or intimidating.”

Don’t assume your team knows how to start. Most don’t.

Support means more than a single training or a Slack channel of AI enthusiasts. It means:

• On-demand learning and trusted resources
• Encouraging experimentation with sandbox sessions
• Role-specific guidance and examples
• Making space to learn together

This is where L&D and HR shine. They create inclusive learning environments where people can safely build fluency, curiosity, and trust in new tools.

Or consider doing as a recent piece in HRD suggests:

“Consider creating AI champions within each department — employees who receive extended training and serve as peer mentors during the transition. These champions can provide real-time support and feedback, making the learning process more collaborative and less intimidating. 

The investment in training pays dividends through improved user adoption, reduced errors, and maximum value extraction from AI tools. Organizations that skimp on training often find their expensive AI implementations underutilized or misapplied.”

And there’s clear demand: McKinsey reports that 94% of employees are aware of generative AI, but only 48% say their company offers formal training. 

If you’re looking for others who are creating formal training, consider reading up on the World Economic Forum’s AI Literacy Framework, or Zapier’s AI Fluency Assessment in interviewing.

Closing that gap is one of the most powerful levers HR can pull.

3. Flexible funding → through a stipend, so everyone can explore what works for their role

One-size-fits-all tools no longer work. Teams need the freedom to explore AI in ways that make sense for their work. That means budget, flexibility, and transparency.

AI stipends are the modern way to do this.

Instead of centrally choosing one tool, progressive companies are offering AI stipends through Compt’s Professional Development Pro™. It’s a centralized, tax-compliant way to:

• Fund AI upskilling on demand
• Support personalized AI adoption without losing visibility or compliance
• Track adoption trends and reimbursement patterns with zero guesswork

Employees using AI stipends today say:

• “I used my AI stipend to upgrade to ChatGPT Pro. It’s been a game-changer for my productivity.”
• “It made me feel supported to try new tools without asking for approval every time.”

At Compt, we’ve rolled out three unique AI stipends for customers just this quarter.

And we’re not alone. Buffer recently announced a $250 per year AI Tools Stipend to support their team’s exploration and skill-building in this space.

Why the AI Adoption Trifecta Matters

If you’re missing any one of these elements, your AI adoption efforts will stall. You’ll see increased AI Anxiety (as named above in the Ernst & Young piece), misuse, or confusion.

But when you combine:

• Clear expectations
• Practical, people-first training & support
• Flexible funding

… you create a culture where AI is safe to try, supported at every step, and customized to each person’s job. It’s about empowering your people to take on an AI-curious mindset, which is what many of today’s teams need.

As the HR Brew cited Todd Blaskowitz, senior client partner on the AI strategy and transformation team at consulting firm Korn Ferry, HR can start encouraging employees to embrace an AI mindset. By asking questions, like:

“Help your people rethink their work, rethink the outcomes that they’re trying to do with a mindset of, ‘How might AI improve this?’” Blaskowitz said. “How might AI enhance the overall experience, the overall quality, my overall productivity?”

And my personal favorite that I’ve asked my team, “What can we do now with AI that we couldn’t do before?” The ideas, opportunities, and innovations are leading us in incredibly fascinating journeys that (hopefully) add more value to our customers and interested HR leaders.

That’s how real adoption happens. And with stipends, it’s adoption you can actually measure and tie to ROI.

Closing thoughts

The good news? You’re here now. You’re right on time.

And the even better news? HR is built for this moment.

Driving AI adoption isn’t just about policies and tools — it’s about trust, communication, learning, and change management. HR already owns all of that. You’re the stewards of culture, capability-building, and inclusive growth.

You’re the function that:
– Builds companywide clarity from ambiguity
– Champions learning across levels and roles
– Understands how change really happens — through people

That’s why this isn’t just a tech rollout. It’s a human one. And HR is already holding the keys to success.

Let’s make AI adoption real.

Schedule a demo of Compt today.

The post HR’s AI Playbook: A 3-Part Framework for Company-Wide Adoption appeared first on COMPT.