They think:

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

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

Leaders measure ease by what happens after launch.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One People leader shared:

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

Another put it this way:

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

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

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

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

Prefunded debit cards create several predictable issues:

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

Stipends issued directly through paychecks add another structural challenge:

• 100% payout regardless of actual usage

Stop overpaying for underused benefits.

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

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

Calculate your savings

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

One leader evaluating stipend models said:

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

Another emphasized the financial control aspect:

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

A reimbursement-first structure changes that dynamic:

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

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

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

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

A VP of People told us:

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

Another leader put it even more directly:

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

That’s the operational reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Head of Total Rewards said:

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

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

Compt customers consistently value:

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

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

5. Broad category definitions (without sacrificing control)

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

One leader evaluating stipends shared:

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

Another said:

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

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

It allows employees to:

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

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

6. Visibility into participation (not just allocation)

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

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

HR leaders want to see:

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

One Total Rewards leader said it plainly:

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

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

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

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

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

As organizations grow, complexity multiplies.

One Benefits Manager shared:

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

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

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

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

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

8. Embedded discounts (without creating a second portal)

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

Embedded discounts solve that tension.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compt was built specifically to make it easy to:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recognition just got more expressive.

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

Can we add a GIF?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report is live.

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

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

The report answers questions we hear on many customer calls:

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

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

Explore the 2026 Annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report.

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

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

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

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

FAQs: Lifestyle benefits platforms

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

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

Together, these trends point to the next phase of employee experience: consolidated lifestyle benefits that adapt as quickly as the workforce has learned to. 

Our latest product updates build on that momentum. Each enhancement is designed to make lifestyle benefits smarter and simpler — another step toward a benefits experience that runs quietly (and compliantly) in the background and gives HR teams the space to focus on what matters most: their people.

The Company Swag Store + Swag Stipend delivers branded gear without the hassle.

Managing company swag has been too complicated for too long. HR wasn’t built to juggle sizing spreadsheets, storage closets, and shipping logistics. With Compt’s new Company Swag Store + Swag Stipend, you can take swag management off your plate, reduce wasted swag spend, and give your employees a more flexible way to show their company pride. After all, not everybody likes the same things when it comes to company swag and branded merchandise!

How it works after you sign up:

• We’ll brand your store. Your Customer Success Manager can spin up a custom, best-sellers swag shop based on your logo and brand colors. 
• Your employees shop anytime. The Company Swag Store is easy to access from the Compt platform so your team can order what they want, when they want. 
• You set the budget. Add a “Company Swag” stipend to reimburse employees for their purchases. Creating a one-time spot bonus or allocating a recurring $25-100 per employee per year are both reasonable options. 

Fast facts:

• The Company Swag Store is powered by Snappy, with global shipping to 170+ countries in 12-15 days. See the FAQ for information on specific shipping considerations by country.
• Each product is made to order and shipped to your employees’ doors. 
• Your people will gain access to popular brands like Nike, Carhartt, Bella + Canvas, and The North Face. 

Interested? Explore the Company Swag Store or go ahead and request a demo to see it for yourself. 

The redesigned Compt payroll experience saves time for administrators.

We’re rolling out a modernized payroll experience within Compt. The refreshed design brings the same clean, intuitive look and feel you’ll experience in newer areas of the platform, with simpler navigation and better alignment across reports.

Customers’ existing custom payroll reports will stay exactly as they are, with no need for additional setup or migration. We expect this will provide a smoother experience for admins (and one fewer process that feels like work).

Compt integrates with Google Maps to provide faster, more accurate mileage reimbursements. 

Within our Expense Management module, your employees can now leverage our Google Maps integration to easily submit mileage claims. When employees enter their origin and destination, Google Maps auto-calculates the distance, reducing the need to manually upload screenshots.

Welcome to the era of accurate, auditable mileage reimbursements that stay fully IRS-compliant, all within the same tool you use for lifestyle benefits like stipends and Lifestyle Spending Accounts (LSAs), professional development, rewards and recognition, and company swag. Compt does it all! 

Additional Compt product updates make day-to-day benefits administration easier. 

We’re also rolling out: 

• AI-powered live support. Compt’s new Support Assistant uses advanced AI to provide fast, accurate help within the platform. We held off on implementing a support chatbot for a long time because we didn’t want to compromise the employee experience, and we’re seriously impressed by the quality and accuracy of our new Support Assistant. But never fear — a human member of our Support team is always one click away if needed. 
• Detailed expense views. Click any row of the reporting table to view complete expense details in context. 
• New “Client” field for business expenses. Track client-related spending by adding this optional field in your Business Expense Settings. 
• Enabled multiple attachments for professional development. Employees of Compt customers can now add multiple receipts or certificates to a single professional development reimbursement request, which is especially helpful for course bundles or conferences. 

The latest employee benefits data shows that simplicity wins. 

These improvements reflect what we’re seeing across the market: HR and Finance teams are actively streamlining and consolidating their tech stacks to save money and provide tools and benefits that employees will actually like and use.

Recent research underscores this trend. According to HR.com’s State of Today’s HR Tech Stack and Integrations report, 73% of organizations with well-integrated HR technology say those tools have improved overall productivity, and 69% report higher HR efficiency as a result. Meanwhile, 85% of HR leaders say they’re under pressure to consolidate their HR technology and reduce spend. 

Compt’s own data shows the same story in action: As of midyear 2025, average stipend funding increased by more than $170 per employee year over year, and average program participation continues to exceed 90%. When HR tools and benefits programs are easy to use, supportive of employee choice and personalization, comprehensive, and integrated, adoption naturally follows — along with measurable improvements in employee engagement and HR admin efficiency.

Each of these product enhancements helps bring that vision closer: a compliant, automated lifestyle benefits experience that supports both HR and employees. 

Build the future of employee experience with Compt.

Join the growing number of companies shifting to consolidated, choice-driven benefits. Compt helps you manage every stipend, reimbursement, recognition program, and business expense in one streamlined platform that’s simple to use, IRS compliant, and built for how people work today.

Ready to see for yourself? Request a demo.

FAQ: November 2025 Compt product updates

The post What’s New in Compt: Product Updates, November 2025 appeared first on COMPT.

A lot of companies want to offer great learning and development opportunities for their teams. They put a professional development benefit in place, roll out some courses, and hope their team takes advantage of it. 

But too often, that doesn’t happen. The funds don’t get used. The programs are too confusing or irrelevant. The promise of growth gets lost in the shuffle.

At Compt, we’re on a mission to fix that. 

Our latest professional development module, Professional Development Pro™ by Compt, isn’t just for employees. First and foremost, we built this with HR, finance, and managers in mind — the ones who deal with the headaches of approvals, tracking, and keeping things compliant.

We want to make professional development simple, clear, and easy to manage. No confusion, no frustration, just a streamlined way for teams to grow and for leaders to track it.

We built it off of our core product principles — and learned a ton along the way. Here’s a look at what truly went into building our new module. 

Unpacking the professional development frustrations we set out to solve 

One of the most important questions that any product leader should ask themselves on a recurring basis is, “Am I talking to enough customers?” 

For me, the answer is yes, thanks to our incredible customer success team who keep me connected to our customers so I can get a steady stream of what’s happening in the world of people ops and HR.

I learned about everything from low employee awareness to lost requests to unclear budgets and a tedious approval process. 

Low employee awareness of professional development benefits

For starters, a lot of employees don’t even know that learning and development funds are available to them. They might miss the memo during onboarding, or the program details just get lost in the noise of day-to-day work.

Even if companies roll out a solid professional development account within their learning and development (L&D) strategy, employees often end up stuck on the most basic question: “Wait, I have a budget for this?”

Without knowing what’s available or being reminded it exists, they’re unlikely to take action. And that means a big missed opportunity for both the employee and the company.

Lack of guidance on how to spend funds

Even when employees know they have some kind of professional development funds, this doesn’t mean they can actually use them. Many are stuck with a budget but no direction, or, worse, pigeonholed with a one-size-fits-all approach to professional development. 

Should they take a course? Buy a book? Get coaching? How much time are they ‘allowed’ to spend on professional development?

Others grapple with feelings that their employers aren’t invested in their professional development and aren’t given the time to learn new things at work. On top of that, they don’t know what to learn, often turning to their managers or HR for new professional development opportunities.

But the reality is that it’s unrealistic for managers and HR to know the latest and greatest professional development resources for every skill set within the company or what makes sense in an individual contributor role.

Without guidance or time, the status quo takes over, and these funds just sit there, untouched. 

The professional development approval process: Confusing at best, ignored at worst

Another problem is the actual approval process is fragmented, manual, and frustrating for everyone involved. Employees have to ask, “Can I buy this?” and then, once they do, submit receipts and wait for reimbursement. Managers and HR are left to chase approvals, process paperwork, and deal with constant follow-ups.

In fact, it is not uncommon to hear HR managers that I talk to say they are stuck with lengthy 7-10-step approval processes, and many are stuck in long email threads and Google Forms. 

The whole thing is clunky, inefficient, and full of headaches for all involved. No one knows where they stand, and that leads to delays, confusion, and a lot of unnecessary frustration. 

Not to mention, it is the antithesis of employee-focused benefits. Putting hurdles in front of your employees, who want to learn and improve, can inadvertently signal that you say you want to invest in it, but you actually don’t care about their professional development. 

Here’s what reviewing requests looks like with Professional Development Pro by Compt:

Friction between employees and HR

Another problem with having an inefficient approval process is that it forces HR into the role of ‘the bad cop.’ This usually happens when employees buy something they thought was covered, only for HR to deny the reimbursement later. It creates unnecessary tension and leaves the employee paying for something out of pocket.

This leaves HR tired of being the enforcer in a system they didn’t design and have to go along with, and employees frustrated at being told “no” after the fact. It is a lose-lose situation that makes professional development perks more stressful than rewarding.

5 product principles paramount to our professional development module (and everything we do at Compt!) 

I started off as an engineer, but quickly decided it wasn’t for me. I like building, but I kept questioning the ‘why’ and the ‘who.’ Why are we building this? Who actually needs it? 

That’s when product management clicked, and I haven’t looked back. 

It’s not about building the perfect thing. It’s about building the RIGHT thing, which is exactly what we strive to do at Compt.

Here are our core product principles that were critical to building our professional development module, and that we stick to each time we decide ‘what next’ for our customers. 

Build a solid foundation first 

We learned early on that to make a professional development module that actually works, you need to start with first principles. While this holds true for all of our products here at Compt, it was especially important for professional development, which could (and does) quickly become complex without meaning to. 

In this case, establishing a clear and efficient workflow had to come before adding all the fancy features. 

Before designing our minimum viable product (MVP), we started off with a series of flowcharts to show to L&D and HR leaders to see if what we were designing would fit their needs. There were (a lot) of presentations of these flowcharts, potential design screenshots and then from there, interactive and clickable prototypes before we settled on an early-access MVP. 

Along the way, we gathered early customer feedback and took an iterative approach to our build.

It’s easy to assume we know what users want, but nothing beats actually hearing it straight from them.

We made it a priority to involve customers from the start — talking to them, showing them what we were building, and asking for their honest input, with Compt customers and dozens of other teams who are trying to find a better way to deliver professional development.

The more we involved our customers in the process, the better our product became. Their insights kept us grounded and ensured we were solving real problems that made sense for our customers. 

By focusing on getting the core functionality right and iterating based on direct feedback, we avoided building a solution that didn’t solve the pain points our customers had. Instead, we kept it simple, collected feedback, and made sure our foundation was solid before layering on more complexity.

Visibility is key for high levels of utilization

Even the best benefits programs fall flat if employees don’t know they exist. That sounds obvious, but it is easy to overlook.

We knew that making professional development funds and opportunities visible was crucial to getting people to use them. We made it a point to embed professional development where employees were already spending their time.

This means putting it front and center in the same platform they use to access other benefits (since Compt customers are also using a combination of our stipend programs, reward and recognition, or expense management). 

The result we’re hoping to see? No more hidden budgets or forgotten perks.

User experience was also a huge part of our approach. We want employees to not just see their professional development options but to actually feel excited to use them. 

Every employee’s needs and learning styles are different, and what’s valuable to one person might be irrelevant to another. We made it possible for employees to choose the learning resources that worked for them, whether it was a specific course, a local workshop, or something else entirely. 

This flexibility isn’t just a nice-to-have. It meant much higher engagement and utilization rates because it made the professional development options truly useful to each individual.

Reduce manual work for HR and managers through centralization

One of the biggest hurdles we (and so many others) faced was the disjointed approval process. What we found was that everything was scattered across email threads, Slack, Teams, Google Forms, fillable PDFs, etc.

This meant HR was often stuck playing detective to understand what had been approved or needed to be approved. We knew we needed to fix that by centralizing the entire approval workflow into one place.

By putting everything in one system, we cut down on manual follow-ups and eliminated the chaos. For HR, this meant fewer manual tasks and reduced pressure to be the gatekeeper. No more being the “bad guy” telling employees what they can or can’t spend on. 

Managers benefited, too. They now have a clear view of pending approvals without having to chase down colleagues. 

Employees also have a transparent workflow that lets them know exactly where their requests stand, which reduces frustration and confusion. 

Ultimately, centralizing the process makes professional development more approachable for everyone. No more scattered communication or endless back-and-forths. Just a clear, simple way to keep things moving.

Reduce the barrier to entry for new products 

Getting early adopters on board quickly is critical when launching something new and gathering feedback. That’s why we double down on making onboarding as smooth and simple as possible. This also means giving customers a white-glove experience from the start.

From a sales perspective, this could look like the team getting creative with contracts and pricing to remove any friction, but from a product perspective, it’s all about getting as many people using your product at once so that you can iterate as quickly as possible.

The goal is to keep the feedback loop tight and make sure customers feel like true partners as you refine and improve the product together.

Align product features with company culture

The final piece in the puzzle might be the most important but the toughest to crack. Too often, companies treat learning and development as a one-size-fits-all solution—a set course library, standard training library, and a hope that employees will just pick something.

However, we know that real impact comes from offering choices that are meaningful to each individual.

Our approach is different and built to reflect the core values that guide everything we do at Compt. That’s personalization and inclusivity. When I think about building new features, I try to tie everything back to our mission, our values, what’s best for our users, and (of course) our company goals.

I care a lot about making sure this shows up in within all of our products at Compt.

Whether it’s lifestyle benefits that are flexible for varying demographics, reward and recognition options outside of boring gift cards or trinkets collecting dust, or professional development options that empower employees to choose their own learning adventure, we want to make sure they can.

This level of personalization is core to how we designed the entire experience. We want employees to feel like their unique needs are understood and supported.

So, it is no surprise that this same approach carries over to the organizations that see the most success with L&D, which are the ones that adapt in real time, meeting employees where they are today. 

By embedding personalization and inclusivity into our professional development module, we’re confident we’ve aligned our product features with what truly drives growth and well-being. 

Making professional development the norm for companies 

Building this module taught us a lot about what employees and companies truly need to make professional development work. The key is clarity, visibility, personalization, and making the whole process as simple as possible.

After speaking with countless customers and learning what really holds people back, one thing became clear. When companies invest in their employees’ growth, it changes everything.

I want to inspire more HR teams to focus less on the process and compliance and more on the people it’s really for.

My vision is simple: a future where professional development feels natural, accessible, and meaningful, where every employee knows their company is rooting for them. 

Put professional development accessibility front and center with Professional Development Pro by Compt

Offer the ultimate way to support direct reports with professional development with Compt. Professional Development Pro by Compt streamlines requests, approvals, and budget tracking, creating simple workflows in a single location where employees can grow and develop.

With dedicated professional development support through Compt, you can:

• Track budgets and spending with real-time reports
  
• Create employer-approved programs that include a wide variety of courses and platforms
  
• Allow employees to submit and track approval requests through a self-serve portal
  
• See and manage approval requests from a central dashboard
  
• Create custom pre-approval and reimbursement workflows

Schedule a demo to connect with the team at Compt and learn more.

The post Behind the curtain of Professional Development Pro™ by Compt appeared first on COMPT.

No wonder 33% of employees find it hard to stay motivated with the training their companies offer.

It’s easy to want to pass the blame to HR, but it’s not their fault. 

They’re bogged down with clunky systems and laborious workflows that make it next to impossible to deliver the flexible, personalized training that could best serve each employee. Stuck in ongoing cycles of approvals and reimbursements, HR can’t offer the flexible professional development experience that today’s employees want. 

But staying locked into the one-size-fits-all approach creates several problems that can make employees feel unappreciated, prevent them from developing critical skills that lead to becoming unengaged, or worse, make them look for a new job altogether that offers the training they’re after.

As a result, many employees miss out on developing the skills they need to advance their careers and the value that they bring to an organization through a lack of professional development opportunities.

Choosing a one-size-fits all approach to professional development is simply not the answer.

One-Size-Fits-All Problem #1: Each department has different training that’s relevant to them.

Thirty-eight percent of employees say they want training that’s more relevant to what they do on the job. But generic professional development can’t offer that to everyone. Sales has different professional development needs than marketing. Product developers face different challenges than IT managers. And new employees need to start at a different level than seasoned workers with more experience and advanced skills. Everyone needs different professional learning opportunities.

Attempting to meet everyone’s needs with blanket training or a generic learning platform inevitably leaves someone out. And that impacts employee satisfaction: A 2023 Pew Research report showed that 21% of employees are “not too” or “not at all satisfied” with the training opportunities their employers provide.

That means over one-fifth of the workforce feels like they’re getting little to no value out of professional development.

And no wonder. When the information doesn’t address the real-world challenges they face at work every day, training seems pointless, and employees become discouraged and frustrated.

One-Size-Fits-All Problem #2: Diverse learning styles and preferences get ignored.

Most people have a preferred way of learning that helps them understand and retain information. Breaking it down, here are the various types of learners, learning method, and learning process:

• Visual learners: Images, charts, and media
• Auditory learners: Spoken presentations, reading aloud, talking through topics with others
• Kinesthetic learners: Hands-on learning with activities, on-the-job application
• Reading and writing learners: Interacting with text, processing through notes
• Linguistic learners: Conversational media (such as podcasts), discussions with others
• Logical learners: Structured processes with distinct steps
• Social learners: Group discussions and activities
• Solitary learners: Independent work, processing, and reflection

Only offering up certain books for your professional development resources? What about ebooks, or access to presentations, instead? The list goes on, especially if you want to develop a standout professional learning experience. 

A one-size-fits-all professional development program doesn’t account for these diverse approaches, making it much harder for employees to reach their professional learning goals.

For example, if you’re only offering a video-based, solo-learning, online learning platform, you’re ignoring the social learners and the reading and writing learners.  

What’s more, company-provided formal training, job-embedded training, or training found in a course library can often be outdated and unengaging.

It doesn’t enable the more than 70 million Americans with differing abilities to access the same information as their coworkers. Those with visual or auditory impairments may require alternatives to text, images, or videos. And others may benefit from accommodations like shorter lessons to keep their attention or frequent review to reinforce the content.

For these employees, the standard approach to professional development and professional growth is frustrating. The lack of flexibility and continuous growth can make them feel like the company isn’t interested in supporting their advancement — which, according to McKinsey, is one of the main reasons why employees feel disengaged with their jobs.

One-Size-Fits-All Problem #3: Company-provided professional development is underutilized

We spoke with an L&D professional recently who admitted that their Coursera investment was only seeing a 10% utilization. While you don’t have to expect 100% participation rates, we see Compt clients on average getting three times the amount of participation a one-off program merits. And that’s for the same cost of their original one-size-fits-all program.  

But giving employees access to professional development funds is only a part of the problem. When employees don’t know what to do with their budget, or they only have an option that isn’t as appealing to them (hello, course libraries), utilization rate plummets.

On top of that, as we’ve talked about more in this post on broken professional development systems, the process to get approval and reimbursement for their professional development account is clunky and confusing. Here’s a sample approval workflow. For both the administrator and the employee, there’s one thing in common: A massive headache.

As a result, employers are wasting money on under-utilized programs. If employers move that investment to personalized professional development, utilization (and overall satisfaction) will increase. It’s all a part of building a strong learning culture.

The hard truth? This old approach is setting not only your professional development program up to fail, but your people, too. 

Ouch. 

One-Size-Fits-All Problem #4: Employees fail to build the skill level they need to compete in a changing market.

Skill gaps prevent employees from advancing in their careers. Yet employers are placing more and more emphasis on skills that enable companies to compete in a changing market. They’re on the lookout for employees with the technical skills to optimize user experience and user interface design, analyze complex data sets for actionable insights, and develop engaging mobile apps.

Employers aren’t blind to the problem. Forty-three percent of companies say they currently have skill gaps in their workforce, and over half acknowledge that the programs they use to build employees’ capabilities are only effective some of the time.

Artificial Intelligence is one of the most sought-after skills in today’s workplace. Employers want employees who are adept at not only leveraging AI tools but also developing and training the algorithms that power them. As AI becomes more complex and more deeply integrated into everyday workflows, employees will need consistent upskilling opportunities to stay current.

But professional development isn’t rising to the challenge yet. Despite the fact that over 75% of companies are adopting AI, only 35% of talent received AI training in 2024.

And fewer than 4% of workers learn any new skills within their first year on the job, which leaves only one in four highly confident that the skills they do have can help them move forward.

The problem compounds when cross-functional teams try to collaborate, because they have varying skill sets and don’t have a choice in how they’re being upskilled.

One-Size-Fits-All Problem #5: Employee retention suffers.

Look, there is a solution, and it’s right in front of you. Clear opportunities for career advancement would be enough to retain 11% of employees who otherwise leave their jobs. And for 36% of employees in positions that offer those opportunities, training and skills development is the top reason they stick around. This is why a strategic, all-encompassing professional development program is critical to employee and company growth. 

The impact may not be immediately noticeable if only one person leaves their current role because they feel stuck in their job. 

But if employees start to exit en masse, the costs add up. 

And we know that high turnover is expensive: According to Gallup, the price of replacing just one employee can be anywhere from one-half to two times their salary. 

High turnover burdens HR with the responsibility of going through a hiring process, training new employees, and trying to navigate the growing needs of their workforce. Employees who stay have to pick up the slack of those who leave until new hires are brought up to speed. The increased workload can impact productivity and delay work on larger company goals for weeks or months.

Offering another  generic ‘learning platform’ isn’t going to solve these problems. And HR can’t be expected to create flexible professional development programs when all they have are rigid, complex systems.

What if professional development initiatives could look different? What if employees could choose their own paths and professional development plans, learn what they want, and not have to struggle through a million steps to get reimbursed? It would be a dream come true for frustrated employees and overwhelmed HR departments.

Well, friends. You don’t have to keep dreaming. Your magic wand for professional development is here. 

Professional Development Pro™ by Compt — A streamlined solution for personalized professional development.

Compt’s Professional Development Pro™ by Compt gives your company the tools to provide flexible training without burdening employees or HR with a complicated approval process. With dedicated professional development support through Compt, you can:

• Create employer-approved programs that include a wide variety of courses and platforms
• Allow employees to submit and track approval requests through a self-serve portal
• See and manage approval requests from a central dashboard
• Create custom pre-approval and reimbursement workflows
• Track budgets and spending with real-time reports

The streamlined approach to requests, approvals, and reimbursements means employees are free to choose training that meets their needs and aligns with their learning styles.

And for HR? Compt’s centralized platform puts all the important information in one place so no one has to spend hours chasing email threads to determine the status of an approval or answer budget questions. Integrations and automations create a seamless flow that can finally free you from the problems of one-size-fits-all professional development.

Start giving your employees the flexibility they want from professional development. Request a demo and start managing your program with Compt.

The post Why a One-Size-Fits-All Approach to Professional Development Won’t Work (And What to Do About It Instead) appeared first on COMPT.

Nearly 90% of Millennials (who make up 35% of today’s workforce) say professional development opportunities are ‘very important to them’ when evaluating different roles. And according to LinkedIn’s 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 88% of organizations are worried about employee retention.

Study participants’ #1 retention strategy? Providing learning opportunities.

Data from our annual Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report confirms the trend. 1 in 5 Compt users is now using our platform to offer a professional development stipend, and the average annual funding is $1,140 per employee.

Still, just 17% of employees ‘strongly agree’ their current employer is actively investing in the skills they need to advance their careers.

There’s an easy solution for that: Launching a professional development program. The continued focus on professional development is what led us to create a product specifically designed to help make professional development management easy and scalable.

To build Professional Development Pro™ by Compt, my team and I had to sit down and think: What goes into launching a professional development program, anyway?

After talking to tons of program administrators we discovered, well, a lot.

Professional development programs are a great solution to show your employees you care about their future and tackle emerging retention issues. But, before you tack yours onto your list of employee perks and send out a company-wide memo, you have to cover a few bases:

• How you’ll align the program with your budget and business goals
• The specific tactics you’ll use when implementing it
• How you’ll manage the financial aspects, like employee reimbursement and taxes
• How to make it a long-term success

Within these broader considerations, there are 11 critical questions you and your team will need to ask yourselves before launching a professional development program. We like to think of these questions in a set of three: Your Mission Alignment, Administration, and how to Prove Success.

Difficult to remember? For your own path to professional development success, chart the course with your own set of MAAPS. Yes, we thought of that all on our own! Here’s a closer look at the MAAPS framework: 

Mission Alignment: Aligning your program with budget and business goals

Before you even start to design your program, you have to know the basics: how much you can spend and how professional development will fit into your broader company goals. Here are the questions that fit into this category:

1. How can we make sure employees drive career growth in ways that align with the company’s strategic goals? 

When it comes to ANY kind of employee benefit, we’re big proponents of inclusivity through flexibility. You want employees to feel empowered to grow in ways that matter to them. That said, offering a stipend is a strategic initiative — you want to be sure their growth is actually fueling your company’s success.

Before assigning a dollar amount, it’s time to get super clear on the strategic link between employee development and your business goals.

Ask yourself:

• What are our biggest business priorities? (e.g., digital transformation, leadership development, customer experience, operational efficiency)
• What skills and knowledge gaps exist within our teams?
• What future roles will we need to fill internally?

Once you define these, you can map employee career growth to the company’s needs, not by dictating choices but by curating options that serve both their individual and your business goals.

You can also allow for self-proposed learning paths. Rather than make it a free-for-all, employees can request funding for development through a quick and simple justification process (how will this course, conference, or certification help them in their current or future role?).

2. How much can we allocate per employee for professional development? 

There’s no universal ‘right’ amount, but Compt users typically allocate anywhere from $100 to $2,000 per employee per year for professional development. It all depends on your industry, how big your company is, and how much you can realistically afford to put into it.

To calculate a sustainable number:

• Determine your total L&D budget. What percentage of revenue or payroll can you comfortably allocate without straining operations? A common benchmark is 1-5% of payroll costs.
• Estimate participation rates. Not every employee will use the full budget. If only 60% of employees take advantage of training, you can afford to offer more per person. You can get an idea for engagement rates by sending out an interest survey or looking at past participation in professional development programs.
• Consider tiered allocations. High-impact roles (e.g., managers, tech specialists) might receive larger budgets than entry-level employees.

Keep in mind you don’t have to get it perfect from the start. Pilot the program for a year, track utilization, and collect feedback. If most employees aren’t using the budget, find out why — maybe they don’t know about it, or the options aren’t relevant.

Or, if demand is high, you might justify increasing the allocation in the next year.

3. Who will qualify for the stipend, and why?

There are a few approaches to structuring eligibility when launching a professional development program:

• ‘All employees are eligible‘ (best for engagement and companywide learning culture, but requires a higher budget)
• Eligibility based on tenure — e.g., ’employees become eligible after 6 or 12 months.’ (best for retention and ROI control)
• Eligibility based on role or function (best for business-aligned development, but requires alternative low-cost development opportunities for those who don’t qualify)

Ideally, you’ll take a hybrid approach to balance inclusion and strategy, like this:

• All employees get a baseline stipend, say, $500 to use annually.
• New hires become eligible after 6 months or a performance review milestone.
• Key roles or leadership tracks get additional funding for specialized certifications, conferences, or degree programs.

Make sure you’re transparent about the selection criteria. If leadership roles get more funding, frame it as an opportunity, not a restriction — if employees grow into a higher-impact role, they’ll become eligible for more resources.

And whatever you do, make sure each employee in the same role gets the same stipend to avoid bias or discrimination.

4. Which professional development activities or resources will the stipend cover?

What you cover with your stipend will depend on your business goals, the skills gaps you’ve identified, and the allocation you’ve arrived at in Questions 1 and 2.

From a strategic standpoint, we can break professional development activities and resources into two categories, based on those findings: (1) broad coverage for hiring and retention and (2) focused learning for a competitive edge.

If you go the broad coverage route, you’ll offer a flexible stipend for things like:

• Courses and professional certifications (LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, Udemy, university courses)
• Conferences and industry events (travel included)
• Books and educational materials (physical books, eBooks, subscriptions to Harvard Business Review, etc.)
• Coaching and mentorship programs (executive coaching, leadership development)
• Tuition reimbursement (for degrees directly tied to their role or a future role within the company)

We know that professional development can vary by employee, so it’s important to find a program that can cover more than one ‘type’ of professional development. You can take a look at the broad number of categories we found among our own Compt customer base from the data in our 2025 Lifestyle Benefits Benchmark Report:

With Professional Development Pro by Compt, we’ve also included a Recommendations feed so employees can see what others are doing with their funds and get ideas on how best to spend their professional development budget. They can even see peers outside of their company, which is incredibly useful for smaller teams that may not have a comparable role throughout the company. 

But the current state of learning and development also demands focus on specialized skills, like AI and automation. In this case, you may opt for a focused stipend that covers something targeted, like:

• AI and automation training (e.g., OpenAI courses, Google AI certifications)
• Advanced coding and data science programs
• Industry-specific technical certifications
• Workshops or bootcamps on AI-driven business strategies

Keep in mind that with a stipend, you can include both types of resources.

If your goal is company-wide engagement, broad coverage works best. If it’s business growth and specialization, promote using it in areas where the company needs to gain a competitive edge.

5. Will employees need pre-approval for expenses?

Approval processes can either encourage or completely kill participation when launching a professional development program. You want a system that ensures company dollars are spent wisely but doesn’t create unnecessary friction for employees or managers.

A tiered approach can help you maintain flexibility while keeping spending in check:

• No pre-approval required for smaller expenses (e.g., books, online courses under $500). Employees submit receipts and get reimbursed.
• Pre-approval required for larger expenses (e.g., certifications, conferences over $1,000, degree programs).

That way, low-cost items don’t cause too much friction, but bigger investments get the oversight they need.

This is where a platform like Compt can help. With Professional Development Pro by Compt, you can:

• Centralize requests, approvals, reimbursements, audit logs, budgets, and communications.
• Set up custom program guidelines to let employees know what will be automatically approved.
• Customize request forms for both pre-approval and reimbursement.
• Directly integrate with your HRIS for manager approval routing.
• Track spending patterns to refine the program over time.

With Compt, you can also customize approval flows. That means you can add in a primary and secondary approver for each stipend or reimbursement, like this:

6. How can we ensure consistency across departments and teams?

This is a big one because flexibility is great until it leads to inconsistency and frustration. Professional development isn’t supposed to feel like a lottery where it depends on who your manager is.

To ensure consistency, you need to create clear company-wide guidelines for what is and isn’t covered.

• Establish a universal eligibility framework. Every employee should know what’s automatically approved and what needs additional review (no manager discretion required).
• Create pre-approved categories, vendors, and claim amounts Thinking through pre-approvals can save a lot of hassle for HR leaders and their management team. For example, you could make a specific learning vendor that you want everyone to have access to pre-approved, and/or you could pre-approve claim amounts under $50, to automatically approve small claims like professional development books. 
• Make the stipend equitable across teams. Whoever controls the professional development budget needs to understand there is likely to be nuance across the employee base (for example, an engineering team may have larger budgets to allocate for upskilling needs, or one team’s presence may vary in size by location), so this should be considered when defining budgets. 

If one team’s manager is stricter than another’s, employees should have a way to escalate concerns (e.g., an HR review process). And some managers deny requests out of habit or misunderstanding.

That’s why we recommend training managers on your learning or development program and placing the guidelines somewhere easily accessible, like your company intranet.

Psst: Ready to launch? We’re here to help.

Administration: Determine how you’ll pay out professional development stipends

When you offer a learning and development stipend or professional development account, you’re going to need to decide how (and when) you’ll disburse it to your team. You’re also going to need to set up tracking and reporting. And there are unique tax implications, depending on what kinds of expenses you’re covering. Here are some questions to consider in this phase of launching a professional development program:

7. Will we pay the stipend upfront, or have employees submit expenses for reimbursement?

Who is responsible for program funds? Is it employer-paid or does the employee pay and then get reimbursed?

Upfront payments eliminate financial barriers for people who don’t have the means to pay upfront, and they make personalization easy. But they tie up company funds before the benefit is actually used. And you might end up paying for unused benefits or those which aren’t used effectively.

Reimbursements ensure company funds are only spent on actual, verified expenses, and reduce upfront cash flow.​ And since they go through approval, they encourage employees to be selective and intentional about their development choices.

Compt uses a stipend reimbursement model that combines the advantages of both prepayment and reimbursement systems:

• Employees can select vendors and services that best meet their professional development needs, thanks to the ‘stipend’ aspect of our system.
• You only reimburse funds that are actually used, thanks to the ‘reimbursement’ aspect.

So, everything’s flexible and personalized, but you also have more control over your cash flow.

8. How will we handle taxable and non-taxable expenses?

In general, fringe benefits (like stipends) are taxable income. But there are several exceptions, ESPECIALLY when it comes to professional development.

There are three buckets professional development expenses fall into:

1. Tax-free educational assistance (up to $5,250 per employee per year, through 2025 — IRS Section 127)
2. Non-taxable business expenses (work-related training and development — IRS Section 132)
3. Taxable perks (anything that doesn’t fit in #1 or #2)

If you use a benefits software to launch your professional development program, it’ll be able to tell you which of your covered expenses fall into each category so you can handle tax reporting correctly. And by integrating it with your accounting/payroll software, it can adjust an employee’s W-2 earnings to reflect the additional income whenever they use their stipend on a taxable expense.

9. How will we track usage, expenses, and the impact of the stipend?

Your professional development stipend is an investment, not just a perk, so you need to make sure employees are actually using it, track how people spend their funds, and measure whether it’s making a real business impact.

Here’s what you should track:

• Participation rate: What % of employees are using the stipend?
• Utilization rate: How much of the allocated budget is actually being used?
• Spending categories: Are employees choosing online courses, conferences, certifications, books, all of the above?

You can use a stipend management software to auto-track spending by category, integrate reimbursements directly into payroll, and classify taxable vs. non-taxable expenses upfront. You may also want to look into what teams are using the stipend and on what to understand where upskilling gaps may be happening. 

We recommend setting expense reporting rules internally. For example: Set a timeframe (e.g., 30 days) in which employees have to submit receipts. Have managers or HR review high-ticket requests ($1,000+). And then, minimize admin work by creating pre-approved learning categories or even vendors.

Prove Success: How will you make your program a hit?

You can get everything right up to here and still flop if your employees don’t know about your program, don’t use it, or don’t feel they can benefit from it. That’s where communication and effective measurement come in.

10. How will we communicate the stipend program to employees?

Communication is everything when rolling out any kind of benefits program, especially if you have a remote team. If employees don’t fully understand what’s covered, how to use it, and why it matters, participation will be low, and the benefit will go to waste.

When launching a professional development program, your announcement should be loud and visible.

1. Host a kickoff meeting (Zoom, Slack Huddle, or in-person town hall) to introduce the stipend.
2. Follow up with a detailed email & Slack message summarizing everything.
3. Create a one-pager Stipend Guide in your employee handbook or knowledge base (Notion, Confluence, Google Docs, etc.), complete with suggestions for how to use it.
4. Invite everyone to onboard themselves, and set automated reminders for those who haven’t after X number of days.

To drive ongoing engagement, use Slack, emails, or all-hands meetings to showcase employees who have used their stipend well — e.g., “Sarah in marketing used her stipend for an SEO certification and got promoted. Here’s her experience!”

Psst: For real ways that we’re using our professional development stipends at Compt, check out our latest blog.

11. What metrics will we use to evaluate the program’s success?

There are several important metrics you can use to assess the overall impact of your professional development program. Utilization metrics tell you how many employees are actively using their stipend, and there are broader metrics that correlate to employee engagement, retention, and skills development.

Here are a few examples and insights you might get out of them:

• Utilization rate: “70% of employees use their stipend.”
• Popular categories: “33% use it to pay for certifications.”
• Engagement and retention: “Employees who use the stipend have 15% lower turnover.”
• Internal growth and skills development: “40% of stipend users earn a promotion or raise within two years.”
• Performance and productivity: “Sales performance is 20% higher among stipend users.”

Keep in mind that ‘professional development’ is a more niche category than, say, food or health and wellness. You might not have as high utilization compared to those because not everyone has an immediate need.

Make professional development easy and scalable with Professional Development Pro by Compt.

Professional Development Pro by Compt makes it easier than ever to design, launch, and scale professional development benefits across your organization.

Within the centralized platform, you have:

• An intuitive UI for easy submission and tracking
• Customizable forms and approval workflows
• Real-time budget/spend reporting
• Disbursement through payroll
• Tax-compliant processing

We’ve also built a global activity feed, where employees can see everything their colleagues are up to and share their experiences (think: Yelp for Professional Development).

Request a demo to see how it works.

The post Launching a Professional Development Program? 11 Must-Ask Questions appeared first on COMPT.

That’s when we knew we had to build something to make professional development management better. A comprehensive solution to transform the way administrators and employees alike handle professional development. 

And today, we’re announcing the launch of Professional Development Pro™ to do just that.

Our comprehensive solution transforms how organizations manage, track, and optimize their professional development programs. Our product addresses two critical challenges facing organizations today: the burden of scattered, manual program administration and the difficulty of suggesting personalized and relevant learning opportunities for all employees.

Our customers have been helping us build and refine our new product to get it ready for you. Here’s a closer look at Professional Development Pro™ by Compt.

A Centralized Hub for Professional Development Management

Managing professional development programs has traditionally been a labor-intensive process involving multiple spreadsheets, endless email chains, and complex budget tracking across departments and regions. Compt Professional Development Pro™ eliminates these inefficiencies through:

Centralized Program Management

• One single source of truth that brings all of your requests, approvals, reimbursements, communication, audit logs, and budget tracking together.

Flexible Budget Management & Control

• Multiple budgeting approaches: individual, shared department, or case-by-case review
• Multi-level budget segmentation by role, department, region, and other custom parameters
• Multi-currency support for global organizations
• Real-time budget tracking with flexible override capabilities

Automated Approval Workflows

• Direct integration with your HRIS for automatic manager routing
• Optional secondary approvers and backup approver functionality
• Centralized communication with complete audit trails
• Configurable approval expiration settings

Compliant & Streamlined Systems

• Payroll integrations for seamless reimbursements
• Built-in tax compliance categorization for simple payroll processing
• Customizable request forms for both pre-approval and reimbursement
• Comprehensive reporting and analytics

Introducing Recommendations: A new way to learn from your professional community

Beyond streamlining administration, we’re excited to introduce our groundbreaking Recommendations feature, designed to help employees make informed decisions about their professional development investments by:

• Showcasing ratings and reviews of learning experiences based on real spending from people in similar roles
• Providing real user ratings and reviews upon completion
• Highlighting trending courses and programs within your professional community
• Enabling knowledge sharing across departments and regions with the ability to turn on cross-company learning

This social learning component not only helps employees discover valuable learning opportunities but also ensures your organization’s learning investments deliver maximum value.

Built for Scale and Compliance

Professional Development Pro™ is specifically designed for medium to large organizations, offering:

• Flexible architecture to support all types of learning programs, from tuition reimbursement to skill certifications
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance features
• Seamless integration with existing HRIS and payroll systems
• Comprehensive audit trails for all transactions
• Built-in tax compliance support with automatic categorization

Getting Started

Ready to transform your professional development program? Visit Professional Development Pro™ to see an interactive demo or request a personalized walkthrough.

Welcome to a new era of professional development management.

The post Introducing Professional Development Pro™: Transforming How Organizations Manage Learning Programs appeared first on COMPT.

The good news is that most companies say they value professional development and growth and development, and there is some research to back this up. Companies spend an average of $1,207 per employee on L&D, including professional development. 

However, in practice, the systems to support it are falling apart, and here are the main reasons why.  

The approval process? A nightmare of endless manager and HR sign-offs.
The systems in place? Outdated and inefficient.
The resources available? Hard to find, not personalized, and oftentimes mediocre. 

The process is bogged down by tedious manual tasks, budget confusion, and bureaucratic hoops that no one — not employees, not managers, and definitely not HR — has the time to navigate.

Every one of these problems feeds into the next, and it creates a vicious cycle that leaves HR, managers, and employees frustrated and worse off.

But after getting deep into the minds of L&D and professional development leaders, I’ve realized: It doesn’t have to be this way.

I’m passionate about greater access to education and empowering employees at all levels to level up. Prior to joining Compt and leading the Product and Customer Success teams, I was a co-founder of a startup dedicated to making entry-level hiring more inclusive and equitable through a skills-based process. 

When employees understand what’s available to them and find personalized ways to grow and develop, they do better work.

But right now, thanks to no one in particular, the system is broken. HR, managers, finance and employees are just working with what they’ve got. And no one is questioning: Isn’t it time to build a better mousetrap?

A tedious approval process with too much manual work 

Over the last quarter, I’ve spoken to countless  HR leaders who explained their process to me. The typical process? Somewhere between 7 and 10 steps involving multiple approvers and different documents. It’s often so complex that employees are discouraged from even starting the process. Think about it …

You’ve got HR, managers, and employees all slogging through a tedious chain of manual tasks — approvals, red tape, and endless back-and-forths between HR and finance systems, emails, and spreadsheets.

We see this specific situation play out all the time. Why? Because that manager has no idea what budget they have. So they have to go to HR and finance to track down the elusive company policy on L&D. When they get back to the employee, that employee has lost interest (heck, they might’ve even resigned!). 

And if approval is granted? Well, who pays for it? When does the employee get reimbursed? What details are needed to get their claim submitted?

The manager then gets the claim. They have no idea what to do with it so they forward it to finance and it gets lost under the average 120+ emails employees receive daily.

Once that all gets done the employee can finally make their purchase (what did they want again?). They go and learn and then it goes back into approvals for reimbursement.

Tangled, much?

This slow-moving, overly complicated 9 (billion)-step process kills employees’ enthusiasm to learn. Employees who were initially all-in lose interest when faced with the reality of all these administrative hoops. It’s no surprise when they eventually decide it’s just not worth the hassle.

And it’s not just the employees who suffer. Managers and HR teams spend an absurd amount of time stuck in the approval process when they could be coaching their teams or working on something that actually drives value. Instead, they’re buried under emails and yes, even Google forms.

Bottom line? This whole process is flawed, and it’s stalling growth across the board.

It is challenging for employees, managers, and HR to keep track of professional development funds 

Another reason the approval process is a mess? No one — employees, managers, or HR — can keep track of what funds have been used, what’s left, or how to access them in the first place.

In fact, we hear that many teams are still using Google Forms, PDFs, and sometimes unruly email threads to manage professional development requests. When you are managing thousands of dollars in professional development budgets entirely in email threads, it’s no wonder why managers, employees, and HR are left scrambling to figure out how much budget is left. 

This trickles down to your employees, who now can’t make smart decisions about their professional development when they are constantly guessing how much they can spend or have left to spend. And no one wants to be that person pestering HR or their manager for clarity every time they want to sign up for something.

This means that employees like Compliance and Privacy Associate Olivia Singh, either assume there’s too much hassle, are unaware of the budget available or, worse, underestimate what’s left and miss out on training they could have taken.

Professional development funds sit untouched due to lack of time  

If you can get past the confusing approval process, we’ve found that learning funds still go largely untouched. There’s an internal perception in many organizations that learning isn’t prioritized, and no one has time for adequate professional development. 

Think of it like the gym membership you signed up for on a whim because you got a good deal. How many times are you actually going to go if that gym is two towns away and only has limited equipment?  

It’s time for organizations to make learning a priority, starting with how they offer and manage their professional development funds.

When employees aren’t upskilling, reskilling, or taking advantage of all available training, the company loses out big time. They miss the opportunity to have a more skilled, engaged workforce. And let’s face it, employees aren’t sticking around if they don’t feel like the company values them. And when that happens, turnover rates skyrocket. 

In the end, the underutilization of L&D funds has trickle-down effects that hurt engagement, loyalty, and overall company culture.

More employees churn when they don’t think companies value them

This all contributes to one of the biggest reasons employees leave. 

Increasingly, there’s a growing disconnect between what employees want and what employers are actually offering—or at least communicating.

In fact, only 47% of employees feel like companies are investing in the skills they need to grow. While using professional development opportunities that your company offers shouldn’t be viewed as a path to promotion, it can still go a long way in making employees feel valued by their employers. This is particularly true for your top-performing employees, who tend to be more likely to value and use any resources at their disposal to upskill. 

The result is your best-performing employees who are the most driven to learn, improve and grow become unmotivated and start to disengage.

They’re less likely to invest their energy into the company when it feels like the company doesn’t value them enough to invest in their own development. Over time, this lack of direction and support leads to higher employee churn rates.

We know HR and managers are just trying to do the best with what they have. While neither designed this process, both know it is broken. Now, it is time to untangle it and help you find a better way to manage your professional development budgets.

Compt — A one-stop shop for managing stipends, benefits and training 

The good news? There’s a better way. Instead of relying on clunky, outdated approval processes, scattered budgets, and confusing tracking systems, our professional development module offers a one-stop shop for managing everything related to learning and development.

In fact, the average claim on L&D-related stipends from Compt customers in the last six months of 2024 is $423, with the most common claims being: 

• Tuition reimbursement
• Carer coaching
• Conferences
• Books
• Professional certifications

From managing stipends and budgets to handling approvals and requests, this professional development module keeps everything in one place. Employees can easily see what’s available to them and how much of their budget they have left, and they can submit requests without jumping through hoops. Meanwhile, HR and managers can track spending, approvals, and employee development history, all without getting bogged down in manual work or endless email chains.

Ready to ditch the bottlenecks and boost employees’ professional development? Request a demo and make learning a driving force for growth in your company.

The post Your Professional Development Systems Are Broken, and You Might Not Realize It (Yet) appeared first on COMPT.