How AT&T allocates benefits across a 160,000-person workforce

Designing a comprehensive benefits plan these days can seem a bit like navigating a complex maze. And the challenges grow as the workforce does. That’s the case at AT&T, the nation’s largest telecommunications company. As of January, AT&T had 160,700 employees based across the world, including in all 50 US states. AT&T benefits cover 1 million employees, retirees, and eligible dependents.

“That diversity is a source of strength, but also creates this layer of complexity that we have to think about when we are trying to design our benefits,” said Jeff Tzeng, AT&T’s SVP of health and well-being, who joined the company in a newly created role last year.

Tzeng and Julianne Galloway, AT&T’s VP of global benefits, told HR Brew that the company recently rolled out a number of new benefits as part of a broader focus on holistic well-being.

Why AT&T expanded benefits. AT&T seeks to prioritize “holistic well-being by encouraging healthy behaviors and creating space for employees to dedicate time to their wellness,” according to its human capital management report, whether that’s social, physical, emotional, or financial.

As part of its well-being push, AT&T started offering its management employees up to 15 calendar days of caregiver leave annually in 2021. The benefit is meant to support employees who are caring for members of their immediate family, such as a spouse, parent, or sibling. Galloway said the company rolled out this benefit for management employees after hearing that employees were getting burned out caring for loved ones in the early days of the pandemic.

“The HR team has been thinking about…how do we acknowledge that our generation of employees have to not just manage family members down a generation,” but also elderly parents and loved ones, given the aging population, Tzeng said.

Management employees at AT&T also have access to a “well-being choice account,” through which they can receive up to $750 a year for expenses like gym memberships or a financial advisor. “That allows you to reinvest in yourself,” Galloway said of the account, which was rolled out in January. 

Zoom out. Wellness programs are less prevalent today than they were prior to the pandemic, per a 2023 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, with 44% of respondents reporting their organizations offered them, compared to 59% in 2019. Still, other telecommunications companies have similar offerings to AT&T. Verizon started offering Gympass, a platform with exercise classes and well-being apps, to management employees in January. T-Mobile offers wellness coaching as part of its health plan, as well as fitness discounts.