As benefits become more flexible and companies look for ways to improve the financial wellness of their workers, look for announcements like this more often: a book publishing company has joined the ranks of businesses offering a student loan repayment benefit to their employees.
Penguin Random House has partnered with Gradifi in a program to assist employees in paying off student loan debt.
Currently Americans owe close to $1.3 trillion in student loans, impacting how well they can keep up with their everyday expenses and farther down the line, impeding how well they can save for retirement.
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Not only does this boost financial stress, it has an impact on employers' bottom lines, so increasingly those employers are looking for ways to de-stress their employees and improve their productivity. And while most employers so far have resisted the addition of a student loan benefit to employee benefit packages, the tide may be turning in days ahead.
Benefit News reports the average individual graduating in 2016 had $37,172 in student loans, up 6 percent from last year. Close to 80 percent of millennials, in particular, say in a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey that student loans have a "significant" or "moderate" effect on their ability to meet other financial goals.
Surprisingly, boomers are suffering under student loan debt, too; whether they've been slow to repay their own loans, taken out new loans in the wake of the Great Recession in pursuit of new jobs or have simply indebted themselves on behalf of children's and grandchildren's college educations, many seniors are now seeing their retirement vanish under a load of such debt and even watching Social Security benefits be garnished to pay outstanding balances.
The report says Penguin Random House has approximately 5,000 employees in the U.S., with the majority located in its New York City headquarters. "All full-time and part-time employees scheduled to work at least 20 hours a week with outstanding student loans who have been with the company for at least one year," the report said, "will be eligible for the benefit beginning January 2017."
"We are offering a loan repayment of up to $1,200 annually ($100/month) totaling a maximum of $9,000 over 7.5 years for full-time eligible employees," Vicki Fishman, the company's senior director, people programs, says in the report. Fishman adds, "Regular part-time employees are eligible to receive $75/month for up to 7.5 years adding up to $6,750."
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