A Las Vegas buffet is a glorious feeding frenzy. Who doesn’t want a lobster tail with a side of waffles? But having too many choices can be overwhelming, and workplace benefits are no different.

As employees have grown increasingly concerned about inflation, many employers have listened, rolling out new financial wellness programs. Some companies in the healthcare and financial sector introduced or expanded student loan reimbursement, while companies such as Tyson Foods and Starbucks rolled out new financial education efforts (although the latter plans to withhold this benefit from unionized employees). But, while it may seem counterintuitive, HR leaders may want to pump the breaks before adding new financial benefits to their roster in the new year.

Money talks. Against the backdrop of a potential recession and inflation, 39% of millennials and Gen Z don’t have any emergency savings, and many report losing sleep over financial stress, according to a November report from Prudential. So, it’s no wonder that 84% of employers say that financial wellness tools help reduce attrition, per Bank of America.

Employees are looking for financial guidance, with 52% preferring digital finance tracking, according to Bank of America. They’re also looking for access to financial advisors (52%) and retirement planning tools (46%), according to Morgan Stanley’s State of the Workplace financial benefits study.

Wait before piling on. The State of the Workplace study found that the majority of HR leaders will reevaluate their current financial offerings in 2023. But more isn’t always better. Some 96% of US HR leaders think they need to do a better job educating employees on the financial benefits that are available to them.

When reevaluating benefits, Friedrich told HR Brew that people pros should consider how their current offerings are being used before adding anything new. Keep reading here.—KP

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On Tuesdays, we get into the weeds with the founders of HR tech startups. Want to tell us about your company? Get in touch here.

Oscar Mattsson is the founder and CEO of Allwhere, a company that couples an employee life-cycle management platform with the hardware-procurement services remote teams need to do business. Since its founding in 2021, the company has raised $9.5 million in seed funding from venture capital studio DESCOvery. HR Brew spoke to Mattsson about Allwhere’s logistical services—including how it helps companies retrieve devices when employees leave, in order to lessen the financial burden of lost equipment—and the future of HR tech.

What product or service does your company offer? Let’s say we were to launch at Morning Brew. Your head of IT and HR would have what we call an Amazon-like internal platform. It would be filled with the curated selection of products that your company or employee base might need to do their job…When it ships from us, it’s preloaded with your [company’s] software…It’s all the things related to work, but all in one place…We handle the procurement, the management, the storage or retrieval of these assets that I described, and we deliver them anywhere.

How does the service work? When it’s time for an onboarding, [HR and IT] just click a button, or you can trigger it from your HRS, and that’s when it comes to Allwhere, and then we fulfill the kit. We coordinate with the employee and make sure that that’s an amazing first experience…it enables HR and IT to outsource and automate the logistics that are associated with getting people set up.

What specific issue in HR does your company attempt to solve? Keep reading here.

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Employee surveillance has surged in popularity since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. As Emerging Tech Brew’s Hayden Field recently reported, the hundreds of millions of dollars that venture capitalists are investing in monitoring tech suggest that it’s not slowing down.

VCs invested a total of $180.5 million in the space in 2020, and in 2021, VCs invested more than $243 million, according to PitchBook data pulled for Emerging Tech Brew. In the first three quarters of 2022, the sector’s total VC investment has surpassed $394 million—62% more than 2021’s full-year total, even though the year is not yet over.

The sector’s growth in usage and funding comes alongside the rise of fully or semi-remote work, which could make employers more nervous about workforce productivity. It also comes despite misgivings from some privacy experts and from workers themselves.

“Employers see this as a treasure trove, like…‘There are so many technologies now for me to capture all of this data about my workers, and it’s going to help me make better decisions, increase productivity, [and] have that ideal worker,” Jessica Vitak, an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies, said. “It’s so much more complicated than that.”

Keep reading on Emerging Tech Brew.—HF

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Just 32% of employees believe they are being paid fairly. (Gartner)

Quote: “You cannot over-invest in communication skills…If you cannot simplify a message and communicate it compellingly, believe me, you cannot get the masses to follow you.”—Indra Nooyi, former Pepsi CEO and current Amazon board member, on the importance of communication skills for leaders (Harvard Business Review)

Read: Employees are using job offers as leverage to get raises, and it’s creating recruitment challenges for the HR leaders trying to hire them. (Insider)

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