Moderator:
Vicki Henn
PNC Chief Human Resources Officer
Speaker:
Kaley Keeley, Head of PNC Organizational Financial Wellness
Webcast Transcript:
Speaker: Hello everyone, and welcome to our 14th Annual Women in Business Week event: Supporting Employee Financial Wellness. The ON24 room you are in allows you to adjust and resize all panels that appear on your screen. To resize any of these panels, just click on the lower right corner and drag to adjust. To move a panel, click the top title bar and drag it anywhere within the console. Closed captioning is available by clicking on the CC button on the bottom of your media player. You can then resize the media player to any size you'd like in order to read these captions easier.
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Now, without further delay, let's begin today's Women in Business event: Supporting Employee Financial Wellness. It is my pleasure to hand things over to Vicki Henn, EVP, Chief Human Resources Officer for the PNC Financial Services Group. Vicki, you have the floor.
Vicki Henn: Hi, my name is Vicki Henn and I'm the CHRO here at PNC. That sounds really important. Chief Human Resources Officer. It is important and I'm thrilled to be here with Kaley Keeley today to celebrate Women in Business Week by talking about financial wellness. And given what we all do for a living, whether we're running a business, whether we own a business, or you're like me and you're accountable for colleague benefits in the business, this discussion aims to highlight the really important role of employers in providing colleagues with mental, physical, and financial benefits. This session is one of three sessions that PNC is offering during this week's Women in Business Week, and we are thrilled that you're joining us for the session today.
So before I introduce Kaley, just a little bit of background on me. I mentioned CHRO sound super impressive, right? It's more - it's Chief Human Resources Officer. People say what's CHRO? It's being accountable for everything in the life cycle of all of us as employees. That's the easiest way. It's not as impressive as it sounds, but it's impressive in that, frankly, it touches on all of us. Every single one of us is an employee. Even if you're the owner of a company, we're all accountable for someone, and thinking about the full life cycle of what it's like to be an employee, whether it's beginning to attract people to your company, hiring people, what that onboarding is like, how you develop the talent you have, how you compensate, how you reward, the benefits that you offer, how you deal with any friction in the workplace, risk in the workplace. All of that falls into the purview of human resources.
And all kidding aside, I make jokes about the title, I am very, very honored to be in the role I'm in. I consider it a huge responsibility, one I take really, really seriously. One that I think for owners of businesses, for sure, you sort of wear many hats, probably this one as well. And particularly as it relates to benefits, I would say, I've - myself with PNC, have relied on the benefits that we actually offer.
So I think about - I had a friend who passed away and I didn't know I was the executrix of her estate. I didn't know a thing about what that was going to entail. And so as an example with PNC, we have some concierge benefits that help us when we find ourselves in these life situations. Some resources that help explain to us, hey, you need an attorney. Here's some attorneys in your area. Here are some things to think about in terms of whether you're taking care of an elderly relative, how you unwind things. I mean, just - so that's a benefit that I used in addition to as the mother of four, a lot of our parental benefits that we have here in the organization.
So I'm not only someone who helps to construct the benefits of the organization, but I'm a user of them, and I take that, again, that responsibility super seriously. Because for many, for all of our colleagues, really the benefits that we offer is part of what keeps them engaged, what keeps them wanting to be part of the PNC organization. And that's a really, really important differentiator and an important edge when you're talking about the war for talent that's out there. So really important, making sure that we're listening to the voice of our colleagues and all of that goes into the work that we do around benefits planning.
So with that, I am really thrilled to be joined here today by another person I call sort of an expert in this area. She heads our organizational financial wellness business, a really important business, and one that I think takes a lot of the learnings from our own organization and uses them to help all of you, by Kaley Keeley. And so, Kaley, do you want to introduce yourself?
Kaley Keeley: Yeah. Thanks, Vicki. And again, excited to be here to have this conversation with you and certainly with the audience today. But as you mentioned, I lead our organizational financial wellness business here at PNC. So we work to bring those great employee benefits to our business clients that help improve the financial life and health of their employees. So some of the things that you just mentioned.
I've been a lifer here at PNC, it's the one and only organization that I have worked for in my career. So I'm blessed to have you as our CHRO. Certainly, and certainly the great benefits that PNC provides. And as you mentioned, taking what I've learned through here at PNC and sharing that out, certainly with all of our clients is critically important. I've been in our financial wellness division for the last ten years. So ten of the 20 years here at PNC really working to champion to bring new financial wellness solutions to our clients as well as just sharing ideas and insights that we've learned through the course of time to help everyone get better in this space.
Vicki Henn: It's really great work. And Kaley mentioned she's a lifer. I should have mentioned that as well, I'm a lifer also, 30 plus years. So you could see, so Kaley and I are representative of our colleagues. And again I think Kaley can speak to this other folks at - our colleagues at PNC can speak to this if any of you know any of our colleagues. But part of what really keeps all of us engaged is certainly the work that we're doing, but also by how the organization supports us and really thinks about financial wellness, mental wellness, physical wellness in the workplace. And that's a lot of what organizational financial wellness is all about in terms of providing that support to all of you.
So, Kaley, for those who are on the line with us and listening, and they're not as familiar with PNC Organizational Financial Wellness, can you provide a brief overview of the program?
Kaley Keeley: Sure. I mean, it's a series of benefits, so it's certainly not a one size fits all approach when we go out and talk to our clients. But we have a variety of solutions inside our programs, starting with kind of your everyday banking and investing solutions. So how do we get folks off on the right foot from a health care perspective, helping employees navigate health care expenses more stably through our health savings accounts, as well as other benefit spending accounts. We just started to do some work in the student debt space. Understanding that this is a large issue facing many of the business clients that we work with and certainly their employees. So helping to - them to address the mounting student debt.
We also work in the retirement plan services space, advising our clients to ensure that they're putting the best investment lineup in front of their employees and best preparing them for retirement. And then we continue to look at bringing new solutions to the table. So this certainly is an industry I will say is growing. We've seen that through COVID and the years post-COVID. Financial wellness itself, I felt was a very trendy buzzword a few years ago. And now there is a whole industry built around financial wellness, PNC included.
I think one of the things that I really like to see across our business clients is just the adoption of these services and solutions. 94% of the employers that we work with today feel that sense of responsibility to bring these financial wellness benefits to their employees. We did our inaugural Financial Wellness in the workplace study last year and got some really great insights, both from the employer and the employee. But again, the resounding theme there was that employers understand that the - that this is an issue and feel that sense of responsibility to help address it within their own workplaces.
Vicki Henn: For sure. And actually, that's a great segue to one of my next questions. But you mentioned the survey last year that resulted in our Financial Wellness in the Workplace Report. But I believe it summarized all the data, all the interviews. We had over 1,000 employees as well as 600 employers participate in that. But can you share some of the key findings that were in that report? Because I remember I found a lot of it very interesting and actually tracked a lot with what we hear, even from our colleagues here in the organization.
Kaley Keeley: Yeah, I mean, we learned a ton. I think it's important to know and to highlight that we did want to capture both the employer's perspective regarding financial wellness and getting their pulse, not only for their own organizations and how they were shaping up financially, but certainly getting their viewpoints on how they think and feel their employees are doing. But then we also wanted to capture that employee perspective directly. And it was our inaugural study. I'll say the good news is, last year was kind of the first one out the gate, but we are already underway for our study here in 2024. We're starting to get some key insights that we'll share this fall. So excited for that.
But for the 2023 work, I think some of the things were surprising in a way, but other I think I knew. Having been in this business, like for example, on the employee side, we saw that seven in ten. So 70% of employees are financially stressed. And they're bringing that to work and it's impacting their productivity. I think what I found more surprising is just how they're dealing with that stress. 45% feel really unprepared for their financial futures. And probably the most concerning is that only 22% had met with a financial professional within the last three years.
So while they're all - there's all this stress and anxiety around their finances, they're a little bit of a stalemate in terms of, well, what do I do? How do I get help? How do I improve my financial situation? And certainly, how organization - how their organization can help support that.
And then from the employer side, as I mentioned, there are - we know there's this strong sense of responsibility. Gosh, I've got to help my employees in this space. We also - they're also directing - correlating that to the dot that says, hey, this is also going to help me retain and attract more employees. With 96% saying, yes, this will help me keep more employees here and will certainly help me in this competitive job market. Go out and find new employees as well. And they also recognize how this is impacting their employees productivity at work. So that - all of those themes showed up really nicely together.
But I think the overarching theme that we saw was that it's about finding balance. So while employers are aware that this is an issue, they have a sense of responsibility to fix that. They also have to balance that with the - their own financial realities within their organizations. There's not endless budgets, there's not endless dollars to go out and solve these issues. So how do they get really at that? And that's where our teams come into place to offer up some ideas.
Vicki Henn: Yeah. It's interesting because so we work for a financial services organization. So I think people assume that if you're working in a financial services company, those employees might be more apt to take advantage of financial wellness benefits and spend time, talk to advisors. I will tell you, we see even in our own organization, we have some of those resources. They're not always utilized.
So back to that, I think you mentioned 20 or so percent had met with a financial professional in the last three years, similar to what we see. I think that meeting with a financial professional is not something people are thinking about as they're living their everyday life, even though they're feeling that stress. So anything we can do to continue to keep that benefit in front of them, or at least even talking about it, to address the fact that we know it's stressful, we know it has an impact on our colleagues. And so it's really, really important point.
But to that point, benefits really have a significant impact on how you attract and retain employees into an organization. So we've really noticed the shift. So the financial wellness is a big part. But we've over the last few years, at least the PNC, we've noticed a shift in people - our colleagues paying a lot more attention to the value of the benefits that we offer and how it relates to them personally, how it's helping them to build a really fulfilling life outside of work.
So we've really had to invest in fertility benefits as an example, dependent care spending accounts. Things that are more about the totality of their life, not just about them, perhaps at a - in a particular moment. Are you seeing this as well? Is does that track with some of what you've learned, either in the research or what you're hearing from your clients?
Kaley Keeley: Yeah. I think what we're seeing at PNC is absolutely representative of what we're seeing on a larger scale with our business clients. As you said, employee talent attraction and retention have been a top priority through the last few years. The labor market has just been stubbornly tight. And this has driven salaries and wages up significantly. We saw 2023 brought to bear some of the highest salary increases in over 20 years. And this has been really tough on our business clients. And it's not sustainable to solely compete on wages. It's just not [inaudible].
So the good news is that, as you were saying, our employees aren't necessarily asking us to. While salary and wages are still important, directly to your comment, we are seeing expectations shifting, particularly in our younger generation. So, for example, while most employees say that additional benefits would make them more likely to stay at their employer, you're seeing that appeal increase in your younger generations by 20% to 25%. So I think some of the benefits that you mentioned, we're starting to see that and then certainly, the employer not having to solely compete on wages and salaries is important.
Vicki Henn: It is complex because when you have so many generations in the workforce, and I think we have more than ever before, that makes it complex in terms of what speaks to or what's most important. Because, again, people's stage of life has a lot of bearing on what benefits matter to them. But I'm just - I'm curious, have you heard from any of our clients who have experienced an actual improvement in how they're able to either attract talent or retain talent through the services, and - that we offer or their work with OFW?
Kaley Keeley: Yeah. I mean, we have a couple of different examples. I think one that we talk about a lot is Sandridge Foods. They're a food retailer that we work with. As I mentioned, the competitive labor market is out there. But for this industry in particular, they also just typically see higher turnover rates. So they had contacted PNC because many of their employees were asking to get their paychecks either by check or debit card because they didn't have access to banking accounts.
So certainly, banks can help with both the underbanked as well as unbanked employees getting them access to accounts and putting them on that right foot going forward, but more importantly was just those consultations. As I mentioned, 22% have not met with a financial professional in the last three years. So Sandridge in particular was wanting PNC to come out and to talk to their employees one-on-one to better understand what it is that they want to achieve from a financial perspective, and how can we help get them there.
Their sense across their employee base was that many of them were living paycheck to paycheck. We know 63% of employees, through our own research, do live paycheck to paycheck. And there's a misnomer out there that it's only employees that are your lower income earners. And that is not true. We know that this spans the gamut of wages and ages. So having folks out on site at Sandridge Foods to talk to their employees directly certainly made an impact.
Their numbers, because we want to understand their strategic outcomes when they have us in to come in and talk to their employees and help them in this space. So they wanted to reduce that turnover rate, and they were able to do that across their production workers by 20% and across their total employee population by 5%. So again, a few years into that relationship, but already starting to have a meaningful impact.
Vicki Henn: That's great. And so from a retention perspective, super important. We at PNC, as you know, spend a lot of time also paying attention to employee engagement. How engaged are our colleagues across the organization in many aspects. But certainly our total rewards and the benefits that we offer is a big part of that, and whether or not they're feeling that there's a change in their quality of life that then helps them to be more engaged, which impacts how they work. Are you seeing any other examples of clients that are experiencing those same kind of benefits on the engagement side more so?
Kaley Keeley: Yeah, I would - and again, a lot of it, to your point is it's anecdotal feedback. We have ways to go out and kind of measure that more succinctly, but getting that anecdotal feedback. I know we have one awesome women-owned business, hopefully she's listening in, in Columbus, that we work with today. She employs a lot of veterans, military spouses, those living with disabilities, as well as in your economically challenged areas. And so she didn't have a broad survey, smaller organization, but she certainly heard from her employees that there was a lot of pain points around building just an emergency savings accounts, having those rainy day funds, as well as just financial literacy.
I think part of the reason we see so few people reach out to financial professionals is they're just fearful. They don't know what questions to ask. They think that maybe this isn't the right path for me. I'm not the type of person that should go talk to a financial professional. I don't have enough money. All of those things start to come to surface. And she was hearing that from her employees.
So again, bought PNC and through our Bank at Work program to have those one-on-one conversations. And again, anecdotal feedback, helping one to be able to afford to go back to college, helping another employee to be able to buy their first home. That is the work that we get really excited about, that we're helping inside these organizations every single day.
Beyond Bank at Work, I would say the other opportunity we have is just in the health care space. We know that health care expenses are continuing to increase. A lot of that burden is shouldered by your employer or some of it, I should say. But often sometimes the employee is often bearing that burden themselves. So how are we helping them to get better at saving for those medical expenses?
So we do work with a Fortune 500 company who is in the automotive retailer space. They have offered an HSA to their employees for years, but they were not happy with the adoption and the utilization of that particular benefit, despite the fact that they were already giving employer contributions. And as they went out and talked to their employees, it was just awareness. One was awareness, letting folks know that we have a health savings account. We contribute up to X dollars per year to help you pay for those qualified medical expenses.
But then the education, like what is the health savings account? It's still a relatively new product. It's been around for 20 years. Adoption was slow in the beginning and has certainly increased through the last few years. But just educating employees on how to fully take advantage of a health savings account helped them to increase their adoption rates from 55% to over 65%.
Vicki Henn: It's interesting, you said something earlier about this notion of financial literacy, financial education, whatever you want to call it. I mean, I will tell you one of the I think mistakes sometimes are the misses that we make as employers is we do make those assumptions that at certain levels in the organization. I like to be very open and transparent. I mean, I didn't meet with a financial professional until just a few years ago. It was just not something I was never taught, that it never kind of occurred to me. It didn't - and by the way, I've been working for 30 plus years, never in the continuum, even though I work at a financial services company, even though I'd be the first person to say to someone else, you have to be paying attention. You should know and understand how to manage finances, manage a budget, set a budget. I wasn't doing it.
So I do think that there's this assumption about who would benefit. My bet is that there's many people in your organization who would benefit from financial education to help them feel a better understanding of their finances, feel more in control. And sometimes I think that the stress, at least at PNC, that we hear from employees comes down to they just don't feel in control, they don't understand.
And when you kind of give them that support and make sure they know that that support is there and don't assume that, well, they know it. So if they're not taking advantage of it, they must not need it, it makes a big difference. It makes a - it really makes a big difference. And that's large company. I don't know, Kaley, your advice for smaller companies that have limited budgets that might not have some of those same benefits, that might not have really rigorous financial education, are not paying attention to it, although hopefully this conversation's getting people interested in that. But anything that you - any advice that you'd share so that you can offer some of those same benefits as larger counterparts.
Kaley Keeley: Yeah, I - well, I - coming from a family where I worked, my dad is a small business owner. So had his own business. So through my own experience in working in his real estate office growing up, but then working in small business here at PNC as well, I mean, I think for most small business owners, I would say lean into the fact that you're a small business. I think one of the advantages that you have is that you're wearing multiple hats. Often you're wearing that HR hat, probably some of the time, whether you like it or not, you're wearing it.
But that overall work environment can seem more intimate, more personal for the employees. And so getting that feedback, you probably don't have to go out and do a broad scale survey. You could just walk around the corner and talk to your employees and figure out kind of what the financial challenges that they're facing and what would be most important to them.
I will say that regardless of company size, I do like some sort of employee survey. Really because they can be done anonymously. I know as we've talked about, money can be taboo. People don't want to necessarily open up and share that, Hey, I'm struggling to make ends meet, or I have this specific financial challenge that I really need to address. So it's important to give your employees that outlet, that opportunity to share those opinions anonymously to make sure that you are capturing true - the true feedback and consensus of your team.
I will say that for small employers, it's just also important to research your competitors to ensure that you have the right benchmarks when it comes to employee benefits. So what benefits are like-sized companies providing, but also looking at companies within your specific geography to see what types of benefits they're offering, your industry. All of these angles are really important.
And my team, we do this every day as we're out talking to clients. And you can glean a lot from your competitors' companies’ website. People are proud of the benefits that they're offering their employees. You can typically see them online. And then we also look at job posting sites. So your Indeed's or ZipRecruiter, you can go out there and typically get a good sense as to what the - what your competitors are doing in this space.
A couple of other tips I would give the audience would just be to leverage your network, whether that's your chamber of commerce, your CPA, your bank, insurance brokers, you likely have people around you that have the knowledge and insights on how to overcome the limited budget. In particular, we see insurance brokers being a really great place to start because they could give you more buying power in specific areas.
And then just lastly, regardless of size, I see this across small, midsize, and large organizations is that you just got to prioritize your budget. So all companies really start to tighten their belts. Especially last year when it came to budgets overall, we're seeing the same thing this year. So you've got to prioritize, and that's where that employee feedback becomes critically important.
Vicki Henn: I think that's so important because even if you're a large organization, everyone has what's of interest to them. There's hundreds of different benefits that you can offer. So I couldn't agree with you more on that. You have to prioritize. And there's lots of great ideas, but you can't do all of them. And you got to look at what's going to be most impactful. And that's whether you're a large organization or whether you're a small organization or anywhere in between, I agree completely on that.
And if you could just give one piece of advice to an organization that's looking to enhance its benefit offerings to its employees, what would that be? Just, again, based on all of your knowledge.
Kaley Keeley: I think as we discussed, I would just be - ensure that you incorporate that voice of your employees and that you have a way to capture their feedback going forward, keeping that pulse over the course of time. As we've talked, there are a ton of different benefits and strategies that you could deploy. And some of them can be expensive. Not all. I think that's also another misnomer. Not all benefits need to come at significant cost. There are small things that you can do inside your businesses to help with these things.
But our research overall indicated that there is just - there's this disconnect between what employers and what their employees think are the most desirable benefits. So, again, figuring out a way to capture that feedback, include their voice is just so critically important.
Vicki Henn: I will tell you, I couldn't agree with more of that point either, because it's always interesting to me. So same thing we are - we try and stay very connected, but there's always something every year. Even as we go through and do the surveys internally here at PNC, we think we know exactly what the sentiment is, and then there's always something where we're like, wow, didn't realize this was all of a sudden spiking. So it is so important to stay connected. Whatever the venue is that you're going to use to do that, I think that's really, really critical. I agree with you.
We have some questions that have come in, so I want to make sure we also get to those questions if that's okay. I'm going to start with the first one, and I'll actually kick off and give some of my thoughts on this. But then Kaley would love for you also to join in. So someone asked what advice we would give to a small business who's just starting out and hiring their first employees.
So now this is going to sound a little bit shameless coming from me. So Chief HR Officer, I'm also a lawyer, so this is going to sound like I'm leading the witness here. But honestly, it's money well spent to make sure that if you're a small business, you're just starting out, you're hiring your first folk - first employees, first people, consult with a lawyer upfront. Particularly, I'd say, an employment attorney or an ERISA attorney to make sure that you understand all the foundational or required benefits that every employer must have.
So I'd say research, maybe even consider whether it's a consultant or you bring somebody in, a benefits person to help you because it's complex. And I have to tell you, the state by state legislation that's occurring right now, requirements that are coming out from pay to leave, everything in between, it's not slowing down. So it's really, really important to understand broadly what's required just generally, but also at a state local level where businesses are operating. I think that's foundational. And so that would be the first thing I'd say.
I'd also say just stay focused on finding, as Kaley said, what's really meaningful to your employees and also to the goals of the organization, because I think that's also important, and that gets lost sometimes. Our CEO, Bill Demchak, says pretty regularly, we are a bank. So we're trying - our mission is to help people succeed in their financial wellness, whatever that is. So we tend to focus on and take on issues that are related to that.
So also be clear about what you're about. What your goals are about as a business, what your vision is as a business. And then lean into that because there's lots of different benefit offerings, as I said. And it's easy to get caught up just trying - chasing the next shiny object that goes by you. But if you stay really, really true to what you're about, what your business is about, what the values of your organization is about, I think that goes a long way as you're just starting out. Kaley, any other thoughts that you would add to that?
Kaley Keeley: I was going to say I was going to pivot widely, and then you kind of went there because I think that that's for me beyond the legal setup and everything that you need to do there is just finding the right folks that are the right fit. That have that shared sense of purpose that your small business is out there doing and having the right mindset. That winning mindset. Someone that jives well with you, especially in a small business with a small team, it's really important that you get folks in the door early that have that shared - again shared sense of purpose and mission alongside you.
Vicki Henn: Great. Another question was around - and Kaley, this is for you, of the benefits that are offered through OFW. What so far has been most popular? Which ones have been the most popular based on your - what's coming to you?
Kaley Keeley: Yeah, well, I think what's most popular is probably our Bank at Work program because it's been foundational to who we are and what we do. We've been going out and talking to organizations inside that program for over 30 years. And just from what we see our competitors doing, a lot of folks are focused on educating and providing services in that retirement space. And that's wonderful. And that is very much needed.
I think where we have been focused is on those other life stages. Helping folks build that emergency savings account, get ready for those unexpected medical expenses, establishing that budget, sticking to that budget, and kind of, again, moving through the earlier life stages that come before retirement. So we continue to see a lot of interest across that with our clients.
The other I would have to mention is just the health savings accounts. I think even for myself here at PNC, you kick yourself sometimes and you're like, why didn't I do this earlier? I think about it from a retirement perspective and where my journey was with that, but I think about it more so in terms of our health savings account. It wasn't until we started offering that to our business clients four years ago that I really understood the triple tax advantages of a health savings account and how it can be utilized by myself and my family. Not only today in terms of helping to pay for our medical expenses now, but more so in the future when likely it's going to be needed.
So I kicked myself. I was like, gosh, why didn't I pay attention earlier and take advantage of this earlier? But happy that I - finally someone came knocking and I listened. And now taking full advantage of that.
Vicki Henn: I kick myself a lot, too. There's a lot of kicking going on here at PNC. So same sort of thing. It wasn't until I actually was responsible for the benefits organization where I was like, hey, wait a second, I'm not taking advantage of that. I didn't even know we had that. So same thing.
Someone asked of the benefits offered by PNC here, what are the most popular? So it's interesting because typically the most popular benefits have a lot to do with where someone's at in their personal life. So if you talk - back to Kaley's point earlier about the different - depending on where you're at, what stage in your life. So our leave policies are really popular, but they tend to be really popular with more of our early career talent colleagues, because they're thinking about family planning. Or they're popular with people - our colleagues that are more my age. And because there's parental or caregiver leave that you can use to help with - frankly, for me, as I'm thinking about taking care of my mother, that's really important.
So leave is a big one, but it tends to be pretty specific to where someone's at in their life. The one that has crossed all different demographics in our workforce has been Guild. And Guild is a partnership that we have to essentially offer the opportunity for all of us to work on our skill development, to develop new knowledge that are going to - that's going to help us to either do what we do today better, to learn new skills that can help us think about careers that we've never thought about before. You can go to college and take college courses. So accredited courses. Or you can go and get certificates of learning.
But the opportunity for everyone without the barrier of having to come up with the money up front and lay it out, which many people can't do. We front that money essentially. So there's no upfront cost. No cost to our employees if they're participating in a Guild partner program. And it has been wildly popular with our colleagues across the organization. And I think that's because no matter what stage you're at, frankly, in our workforce, we have people - frankly, I have many colleagues at the stage that I'm at in our career who are saying, you know what? I want to learn about technology. I don't know anything about technology. I want to learn about cyber.
I might be done doing what I'm doing here and retire from here someday, but I want to work another ten, 15 years. And so I'm going to build a skill or a knowledge base that I don't have. And they're taking advantage of the Guild offering. And we have the same thing through all the different demographics in our population.
So the ability to build skills, to get knowledge, to get education, to help to further somebody's career or further what opportunities are ahead of them because of how rapidly changing the workforce is and the skills needed and the available opportunities, that has been the most popular over the course of the last two years. We're really, really proud of that program.
Okay. Another question, Kaley, for you. What changes for the program, if any, do you expect over the next year? Is there anything that's next? Anything that isn't already part of the program that you think could be added to the program?
Kaley Keeley: Absolutely. I mean, my head's swirling because there's a couple of things that are new to us that this year. So this year in terms of our solutions, we've added lifestyle spending accounts. So these are a post-tax advantage benefit accounts that employees - employers contribute to. And then employees can utilize and have more freedom and choice in terms of how to utilize those employer contributions, whether that's through some of their physical needs. So your gym memberships, it could be mental needs as well and/or your financial needs. So paying to meet with a financial advisor, things like that. So it kind of meets all of those buckets. It's new to the market. They've been around, I think, for a few years, but we're certainly seeing a surge in them here in 2024.
The other thing that I would mention is just on the student loan funds. Through recent legislation, through the Secure Act 2.0, it did open the door for employers to help their employees get their retirement started by matching their student loan payments. So what we have historically seen is that individuals that have student loan debt will make less contributions to their retirement plan, as well as have less retirement dollars saved if they have student loan debt. So again, this is a way for employers to help those employees get their retirement started by matching, doing that same matching contribution but across their student loan payment.
So again, this is something that just started here January 1st of 2024. Again, I think from most of our business clients' perspective, it's just creating awareness that this benefit is now available. And a lot of them are mulling it over and considering it and certainly curious to see kind of what impact this could make on their employees and their businesses.
Vicki Henn: Wonderful. Well, we've talked about a lot. We've covered a lot in the conversation. I hope you all have found it useful in terms of just sharing what we've seen. Certainly, Kaley sharing what she's seen from our clients and just what we know from the results of the survey. There's a couple of themes I would just stress in terms of what we just heard.
I think listening and really figuring out the best way to hear from the employees in your organization is really insightful. So listen to them. Be transparent. Don't be afraid to ask and have conversations. I actually, in my experience, have found that when people feel like they're a part of something, even if you don't offer exactly what they ask for, or if not, everything goes their way, being part of something, having that transparency and open conversations as best you can, in ways that make sense for you and your organization are really impactful. And I think it really does a lot to help with buy-in and engagement from your employees. So don't be afraid to have those conversations and really lean hard into listening to what your employees will value.
Also, stay true to the values of your organization and what you do, what your organization is all about. I think that's really important too, because you're never going to be able to be all things to all people, and that doesn't matter how large of an organization you are. Like I said, we have some of those same conversations here at PNC where there's about 60,000 of us. So you won't be all things to all people, but be really clear about what you are about and then be great at that. And be a bit relentless then about how you're going to offer any kind of whether it's financial, mental, physical benefits that are going to help your employees really in service of what your organization is about. I think that's really important.
And then lean into the resources that you have. There are great resources. Again, whether it's OFW and the resources we have or some of what Kaley said earlier, your local chamber of commerce. Just whatever resources you have, even in terms of each other and other business owners that you might be part of or connected to, lean into those resources also. Because we're all, whether we're a company that's starting out or whether we're a large Fortune 500 organization, when you strip all of that away, a lot of the same issues, a lot of the same concerns, particularly as it relates to our employees. And what matters to them and what's going to attract them to us as employers? What's going to keep them with us as employers? What's going to have them engaged, that they'll continue to grow and develop and perform and be additive to your business? So there's a lot that is similar regardless of the size of the organization. So use those resources.
Before I turn it over to Kaley, first I just want to say thank you. I'm thrilled to have been part of the conversation today. I hope you can tell I love what I do. I feel really passionately about the role of human resources, and more specifically, the role that all of us play. Business owners, whether you're just leading a business and a company, whether you're working in human resources. But the role that we can play in making a difference for our colleagues, it's pretty monumental. And it's real blessing to be in a position where you can do that. So thank you for the opportunity to be with all of you. Thank you for what you all do every day for your employees.
I do want to remind everyone to tune in tomorrow. We have another session tomorrow, Planning for Succession. And Carole Brown, who is the Head of Asset Management here at PNC, and some of her leaders are going to be participating in that session. And knowing Carole and knowing the leaders that are going to be with her, that's going to be a great conversation as well. So make sure if you don't have that on your calendar, please add that on your calendar.
And then, as always, you can visit PNC.com/women for more on our support of financial education and how you can use that. And then I'm going to turn it over to Kaley for any last words that Kaley has and any last words about OFW and how that could be supportive to you as well.
Kaley Keeley: Yeah. Thanks, Vicki. And again, I too am just grateful to be here and to have this conversation with everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm hopeful that you took away something valuable that you can take back to your own organizations to further the lives of your employees financially. I'm certainly here to assist in any way possible. From a PNC organizational financial wellness perspective, I'm happy to help continue these conversations for you, for your organizations, and certainly for your employees. But thanks again for tuning in.
