Laika Studios, a Portland, Ore.-based movie studio that has produced animated movies such as Coraline, already had a variety of robust and enviable benefits — from comprehensive health and fertility benefits to a suite of onsite services including health care services, massages, yoga, a gym, and a fully subsidized coffee shop.
But Beverley Menillo, director of total rewards and employee experience at the animation studio, realized there was a “glaring hole” in Laika’s total rewards package. “We didn’t have anything that really addressed the financial needs of our employees,” Meniilo said April 20 at the WorldatWork Total Rewards Conference in San Antonio.
“We have a very creative group of employees that we want to support. But we knew that a lot didn’t understand benefits,” she said. “We wanted to create a benefits package where they can have customized one-on-one guidance.”
In addition to financial tools and guidance, Laika was looking for a benefit that would help employees with tax filing, as that was a big employee ask.
“When our employees came to us asking for help with their tax filing or what they needed to do for their taxes, our response would be, ‘You should speak to a tax adviser or financial professional. We cannot provide you with guidance there,’” she explained. “We hated not being able to give people a real resource for that. It felt like they were being left afloat.”
So about four years ago, Laika started to look for a financial wellness vendor to partner with to provide employees with tailored employee financial guidance and counseling — including tax filing assistance. They landed on Addition Wealth, a New York City-based financial wellness platform.
“We don’t want [employees] to be stressed about what they’re doing with their finances, and we don’t want them stressed about filing their taxes. And we didn’t want there to be a cost to our employees,” Menillo said. “We wanted to cover this so that our employees are focusing on what we need them to focus on, which is trying to get a film that takes five years to make.”
Ensuring that employees have a robust total rewards package isn’t just an important way to meet employees’ needs, she said, it is a vital lever for keeping talent in a competitive field.
“We are up against Disney, we’re up against Pixar, and from a technology perspective, we’re up against Google. And we are a very, very small studio,” Menillo said, noting that they have anywhere between 500-800 employees at any given time, given where they are in production. “So we have to make our benefits extremely attractive to people who are used to these large, sweeping organizations.”
Promoting Financial Benefits
Laika isn’t the only employer looking at financial wellness programs. According to SHRM data, a third of organizations offer non-retirement financial advice to their workers. Many experts say it’s an especially important focus right now, given that financial stress is rising significantly for employees as inflation is on the uptick and financial confidence is the lowest it’s been in years.
Still, offering financial wellness benefits is only part of the equation, said Madeleine Butler, client success manager at Addition Wealth. “You actually have to get your employees to use it,” she said during the panel discussion with Menillo.
Some strategies that can help drive engagement and make employees aware of their benefits include offering opportunities for in-person connection, such as benefits fairs or having a financial adviser on site occasionally so employees can learn about any offerings; integrating financial wellness into employee onboarding; and regularly communicating with employees through a variety of methods, such as email campaigns, webinars, or internal communications channels such as Slack.
“Making the barrier to entry a lot easier and making it a lot easier for employees to receive financial advice” is vital, Butler said.
That’s a big strategy embraced by Laika, Menillo said, with the company regularly touting their offerings to employees through a variety of in-person and virtual mediums. They also regularly host webinars for their employees about financial topics that are top of mind, including tips on boosting savings or budgeting.
Impact of Financial Help
Many organizations are seeing that financial wellness benefits aren’t just important for the impact they can have on employees, but also how they can improve business outcomes. Various research shows that employee financial stress has an outsized impact on workplaces, so making efforts to reduce it can boost productivity and engagement.
For Laika Studios employees, the impact has been “significant” Menillo said. “We get so much good feedback from our employees. Now we have this pillar of financial wellness benefits where we are meeting them where they are. It supports them through all of their life changes. It’s really made a big difference.” In the past year, about 35% of employees filed their taxes through Laika’s tax filing benefit.
Offering financial wellness benefits has also helped employees’ retirement situations: There has been an increase in the company’s 401(k) plan participation, and more employees have increased their contribution rates because they feel like they have a better handle on their day-to-day finances, Menillo said.
“It’s been a very big positive,” she said. “It makes us feel more confident that our employees are on the right route to planning and saving for their retirement.”
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