One Size Doesn't Fit All: Customizing Perks for Every Generation

Today's workforce spans multiple generations, each with its own unique set of values, priorities, and expectations—especially when it comes to employee benefits. What appeals to a Gen Z employee might not resonate with a Baby Boomer, and vice versa. So how can employers meet the diverse needs of their teams without creating an overly complex benefits package?

This session explores how moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach and embracing personalized benefits can create a more inclusive, flexible, and effective strategy. Learn how tailored offerings can empower employees to choose the benefits that matter most to them—leading to higher satisfaction, better engagement, and a stronger overall culture.

Transcription:
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.

Ed Ligonde (00:09):
Thank you everybody for joining us today. Again, I'm Ed Ligonde, partner market director with Nava Benefits. I was just joking around with my panel before we got up here because I was trying to figure out how to frame today's session around personalizing benefits. So I figured, hey, I'm just going to use ChatGPT and figure out how to do this, right? I mean, how many of us are using that on a daily basis anyways? And I said, "Hey, I've been doing this about 16 years. Can you work that into my intro?" And it said that I've been doing benefits so long that I've just been faxing before I started using cell phones and email. I'm like, what shade is that? That's so rude. I haven't been in the business that long, but I guess it's all good. But really excited to be here and to have this discussion.

(00:52):
These four individuals are fantastic. I had an opportunity of knowing some of them before and meeting them in our prep call. So really excited to dive into today's session. As Eric mentioned, one size doesn't fit all as it comes to building a benefits package and building your corporate culture. And obviously, as we have multiple different generations in the workforce, how do we make them all happy? How do we afford that? One of the things that I've noticed about benefits year over year is that people in the HR role and the people operations role are having to satisfy so many different people across different cultures and generations. So we're going to talk about exactly how to do that. We're also going to talk about what not to do and what to avoid as well. Let's learn a little bit. First question, I'm curious to get your thoughts—and maybe Liz, I can start with you—just starting with the title itself: "One Size Doesn't Fit All." What does that mean to you as far as personalizing the benefit experience?

Liz Thomas (01:54):
Yeah, thanks for the question. What I have found in my work is that people want customization. The things that are going to work for Gen X are not going to work for Gen Z or millennials. People want different things. And so we at Handshake have tried to tailor our benefits program to be more of a "choose your own adventure" type model where we have an LSA (lifestyle spending account). We allow employees to decide how they use those funds. I really mean—not to jump the gun here too much—but I think that is the direction that healthcare and benefits is going. But it really is true, the things that matter to Gen Z. I'm from Handshake, so we care a lot about what Gen Z wants and cares about, and they care a lot about financial wellness and taking care of themselves. A lot of them don't have families yet, some do, but I think making it customizable and putting it in the hands of the employee is really critical.

Ed Ligonde (02:58):
Absolutely. I totally agree. And Joanne, you've been in the people space for time and trying to build custom benefit packages yourself. I'm curious how that resonates with you as well.

Joanne Homa (03:08):
Well, I think much like what you just said about customization and making sure that we're meeting the needs of the workforce, it's even implementing things such as telehealth and virtual care. We have a lot of our workforce that is remote or traveling, so they may also have families that they're just starting out with. They need that instant visit that you can't get at a normal primary care establishment. And then from a retirement standpoint, we need to make sure that we're able to educate those just entering the workforce about what a 401k is, what a Roth is, and how to use them. We also need to make sure that we have enough in an investment portfolio to really compensate for those that are transitioning to that retirement stage.

Ed Ligonde (04:02):
Absolutely. And as we're talking about those different types of benefits, you mentioned LSA and 401k, which will appeal to different generations. Guinevere, I know you've worked with a lot of startup organizations and helped them figure out their corporate culture throughout time. Can you walk me through some of the conversations you have with those business owners and people teams and how you build those strategies together?

Gwenevere Crary (04:29):
Yeah, I think it's really about what your business goals are. I think you alluded to it earlier: it's what you can afford. You don't have unlimited funds and you don't have a capability to be able to have everything. So you have to really think about what you can afford and what's going to really fit in your company culture, your goals, and where you're taking the business. As I said, I work primarily with startups and small-sized businesses. We're not going to be able to afford a ginormous amount of opportunity for different types of benefits. So it's really about what core ones we want to get that will help us find the right talent and bring them in. And then what are some of the one-offs we might be able to add, for example, fringe benefits. Giving people the chance to have an opportunity to use that money for flying, or wellness, or maybe they want to use it on their pets. I think it depends on your company, your size, where you're going, and really focusing on that.

Ed Ligonde (05:24):
Absolutely. And Chris, I know you mentioned something that relates to what Liz was talking about from an LSA standpoint and providing choice. Would you say that that's part of the personalization process, or what's your take on that particular aspect?

Chris Ellis (05:41):
Yeah, absolutely. First, I have to say the job of a benefits leader is so hard because it's like trying to find one pair of shoes—the right brand and the right size—that fits a hundred people. Some people like Nike, some people like Adidas, some people like OnCloud. It's just a very difficult job. It's been remarkable how good of a job people have done with that challenge in front of them. One of the things that's really interesting is if you actually rewind the clock 40 years, we have this exact same trend play out in retirement. Companies actively managed pension plans and they were on the hook for deciding the retirement strategy for all their employees. Lo and behold, it was very hard to manage them and some of those plans went underwater. 401ks entered and we shifted from defined benefit to defined contribution.

(06:31):
An employee in their twenties is going to have a different retirement strategy than an employee in their fifties, and we haven't seen that same shift happen in healthcare and benefits yet. But we're starting to see signs it might. What we do at Thatch is help companies offer a defined contribution where they can get money to buy their own insurance. If they have money left over, they can spend it on perks like therapy or their kids' braces. What we found is when you put the dollars in front of people and you give them that choice, suddenly the onus of trying to find the perfect thing for everyone is no longer on your shoulders and everyone can choose the pair of shoes that works well for them.

Ed Ligonde (07:15):
Yeah, I think that's a really great point. Especially as we look at multiple different generations, it's easy to stereotype what you think each market segment wants from a benefits perspective. I can see it being an easy "hit the reset button" each year: I'm going to offer this set of group benefits. Maybe they're into family planning, maybe these are into more retirement planning. But I'm curious, and this can go to the group here, from a research perspective: does it match what you're seeing in reality with your own teams? Is retirement more for the older population? Are you seeing younger generations more involved in that?

Liz Thomas (07:58):
One thing that is interesting—so at Handshake, our target audience is early career talent. We're the premier job board for early career talent, which is primarily Gen Z. Our workforce, though, is made up of all generations. What we're finding with our candidates internally is that people care about the things that you think they would care about. The millennials are caring about family planning right now—and this is all very broad swaths, so take it with a grain of salt—boomers and Gen X are caring more about retirement. Gen Z is caring more about financial wellness. But what's interesting is I would expect that Gen Z cares less about the 401k or financial compatibility. Gen Z is a really interesting generation because they want it all. And I think that's great. That's not a knock; I'm not saying that they're entitled. I don't think they are. I'm not Gen Z, so I feel like I can say that they are holding the workplace to a really high standard and they are not taking any BS.

(09:17):
I think they're a very cool generation. I think they're working really hard. I think they don't expect the perks that Meta and Google give out all the time. I think that's great. I don't think they're just entitled and want free lunch, free snacks, and gaming consoles. I think they really are smart and they're thinking about their futures from a financial perspective and a family planning perspective. Before coming to Handshake, I didn't really appreciate that. I think I probably felt they were entitled because I'm a millennial and I can say that about the next generation, but I really think they're great. I think that they care a lot more than we give them credit for.

Ed Ligonde (10:01):
I'll take a gaming console any day for the record. My son is about 10 years old, but he has to consistently remind me that he's not Gen Z; he's Gen Alpha, which I actually learned recently. Anyways, I'm curious, Joanne, Chris, or Guinevere, if you had anything to add to that.

Joanne Homa (10:20):
Yeah, I would agree. I do think at least in our organization that they do want to look forward to their retirement. They just don't have all the knowledge yet on how to establish that. That's one of the things we need to work on: trying to give them the tools so that they understand how to set themselves up for retirement. And then as far as on the medical side or even a total rewards perspective, it's that instant gratification or instant knowledge for an answer to a question they may have. I think it's just putting those tools in front of them to be able to do that. We've even looked at our PTO program and our bereavement policies to help with that as well.

Ed Ligonde (11:08):
I know I promised no curveballs, but I've got one for you. Can you walk me through some of those examples? Do you have any particular programs or tools that you're able to provide—and this can go to anybody—that provide that transparency and those resources for your employees?

Joanne Homa (11:26):
One thing that we are working on at our organization is trying to develop a benefits AI chatbot. It's just going to live on our intranet site and be available through the app that our organization has. It's focused just on our benefits; we feed it our summary plan descriptions and benefit summaries. So when a team member goes out there to ask questions, it'll pull our specific information—not employee-specific information, just what we have as our package—so they can get those questions answered. We have a team available during the day, but we have a lot of team members that work odd hours. Sometimes they're working 12 or 15-hour days, and we're not always available to answer those questions. So we'd like to develop something that will help them, especially if they're done at the end of the day and they realize they may have a sinus infection and don't know what to do or need care, they can just type in a quick question and get that answer.

Gwenevere Crary (12:35):
I like to add, you also can use your vendors, your resources, your benefits brokers, and your 401k advisors. I use and abuse them! I love Ed and I use them all the time. He can tell you—use them because you might be a benefits team of one. You might have a bigger team, but at the end of the day, there's so much that we need to accomplish and not enough time. So use the resources you have, especially when it comes to things that you might not necessarily be as savvy as you'd like to be to present to your organization. I use my 401k advisors all the time. I make sure they're coming in quarterly at a minimum to educate. Maybe only 10% of the population shows up, but it's recorded. Now we have that to give to our new hires and for the employees that couldn't make it, especially if they're working international hours or traveling. I would definitely highly recommend that you look at your contracts and see what you could be getting for free that you might not be benefiting from yet.

Chris Ellis (13:37):
Absolutely. One of the things that's really interesting is even though you might be providing the same health benefits package to a 22-year-old or a 55-year-old, the reality is that utilization of the healthcare system goes up with age. That without a doubt happens, but you're paying the same amount for each individual. You end up getting this very strange effect where folks who are taking advantage of the health plan are really excited about it—it's covering my sick kid or my wife is going through this—and then you have a big portion of the workforce, like at the Silicon Valley startups we work with, that has a workforce of 25 to 30-year-olds. One of the biggest things we hear is they don't even understand how much we're paying for health insurance and they're not using it.

(14:30):
We're spending all of this money on something that a big portion of our workforce is not perceiving any value in. The thing that becomes really interesting when you take the benefit out of the equation and instead say, "Hey, here are tax-free dollars for you to choose the benefit that you want," people end up self-selecting into the thing they get more value from and they see that there's a numerical figure attached to it. A good example is folks in their twenties: a lot of people are choosing very limited health insurance packages so they can spend more on things that are preventative like an Oura ring, exercise equipment, or things like that. In my case, I have an 11-month-old at home, so I'm getting some sleep out here in Vegas, which is amazing. When my wife got pregnant, she looked for the very best OB-GYN in Austin where we live. She came home one day crestfallen because this very specific OB-GYN was not covered by her company's insurance plan. That was the one thing that she really wanted. I told her, "Christina, there's this amazing product I have to tell you about called Thatch where you can actually punch in your doctor and choose the plans that are covered by them." The point I'm trying to get across is that whether you're a 30-year-old compared to another 30-year-old that has kids versus doesn't, or you're 22 versus 50, what you want out of your benefits package changes dramatically as you go through life.

(16:18):
When people are forced to have the same package across their whole journey, it's almost inevitable that some people will feel like what you chose wasn't sufficient. That's why, coming back to supporting generations, the more we can actually empower them to have choice and more options, the more they can get the value and see the value of what you're paying for. Whereas today, half of people don't go to the doctor in a year and they don't even realize their company's paying 800 bucks a month for their health plan. It's super interesting.

Gwenevere Crary (16:57):
You probably all know about the total rewards sheet, where an employee understands it's not just base pay—it's the taxes we also pay, the benefits we pay, the things we gave you, time off, and your bonus. I remember the first time in my career that I got one and it was like, I'll just use easy math, I was making $50,000, but it showed my company was spending 120 grand on me. I was blown away. If you're not doing that, that's a really easy win to get your employees to understand how much more value the company sees in them from a financial perspective. Well said.

Ed Ligonde (17:32):
Absolutely. And what you were talking about reminds me that healthcare means totally different things to different people depending on their journey and life stages—getting married, having children, or going through an illness. Offering benefits that give them choice and tools to get ready-made answers is pretty key. That reminds me that the term "employee benefits" has equaled the word "insurance" for so long, but it's not that, right? It's the benefit of being an employee. As an employer, you have the incredible opportunity to enhance the lives of your number one asset—your employees. I've found that inclusivity is pretty impactful when employers are in conversations with you all. We're talking about different generations and how to personalize things, but how do you make it feel inclusive, especially on a limited budget? Gwen, do you mind if I start with you on that one?

Gwenevere Crary (18:45):
Yeah, that's a great question. It is a can of worms. Being inclusive means even focusing on one generation because they have different needs—some focus on family and some have decided not to yet. I think it's really about making sure the plan is as robust and broad as possible so that people can take advantage of fertility usage or maybe they don't need it. Giving a sense of knowledge is also important. Educating them. People might not actually know what's in their benefits, and I love the fact that you're making an AI. For those that want to go cheap, you could also use a Notion notebook or Google Notebook; just put all your documents in there and you're good to go. Make a podcast out of it and educate people as they come through the door. I think the education piece is really important. I've been at a business with older employees and they're like, "Oh, well we need hearing aids." I'm like, "Yeah, you've got coverage for that." "We do?" "Yes." So helping them understand what they have without making assumptions—obviously you don't want to say, "Oh, you're old, you need hearing aids"—but just helping people understand where to go. I certainly have never read my entire document for benefits; I usually try to search it or I'll call you. I know, sacrilege! Making sure they understand how to find the answers and that there is more than just seeing a doctor is where that inclusivity comes in. There's no way we're going to be one-size-fits-all in the sense of one plan working for everybody, but if you give that creativity, education, and the capability of being able to create your own path, I think that's really cool.

Liz Thomas (20:36):
One thing I'll say is we have a very wonderful executive team who tries to support people as much as possible. Sometimes that means coming to me with ideas for very piecemeal solutions—"Hey, this group of five employees is having this problem, let's implement this $60,000 system to solve that." When I think about benefits, it's always "Thank you so much for the suggestion, I'll look into it," but when I'm rolling out something new or replacing something, I'm always considering how it's going to touch as many people as possible. I don't want to spend the dollars if it's going to impact only a small subset of the population, within reason. We do have a family forming benefit; not many people need it, but I think in our world it makes sense to have it. How is something new going to touch as many people as possible? It does need to be robust, for sure, but we must consider the target audience.

Chris Ellis (21:37):
To that point, because you have to give every benefit to every employee in the current construct, you have to optimize for what impacts most people. I think about it like this: I am sure y'all have been to Vegas before, and I was thinking as I was walking over here about that buffet you walk by—it's like 60 bucks for a full buffet. You look around at the different restaurants in Vegas and there's actually really specialized restaurants like a Latin American restaurant or French cuisine. Right now, the way we do benefits is a buffet where we choose all the items that are in it—mental health, family planning, fertility—and hope it works for everyone. But then you have the 22-year-old who's like, "I just want tacos." With personalization, if you really want to get more value out of it, sometimes that comes with a trade-off where you have all of these different options and you have to choose which menu you want to go with this year. A good example is GLP-1s. Who here has had an employee ask for GLP-1s or express any interest in it? Definitely. And how many people actually offer GLP-1s in their health plan? Every time I do this I see more hands, so they're getting the cost down! But for so many companies, it's very difficult to fully cover GLP-1s because it will blow up the cost of the health plan, especially if you have a large population. We're already seeing the medical trend due to specialty drugs and GLP-1s giving people renewals like they've never seen before. But when you move to a construct where people can get money and decide how they want to allocate it towards their benefits, a rational employee might say, "I can maybe spend less of my budget on a super rich insurance plan because my main goal is actually getting this GLP-1 and I want to pay for it on a cash pay basis." I think part of the customization question is not just how can we be all things to all people, but how do we actually equip people to make the choice about what's best for them and give them that education, which is not easy because they're used to just having everything and figuring it out.

Ed Ligonde (24:23):
Yeah, I love what you just mentioned because one of the things I've been thinking about is providing choice. At some point, it could be easy to just say, "Here's some money, feel free to do with it as you please." It's like walking through a mall—unless you're winning big in Vegas, you've got finite funds to work with. Do you have any tangible ideas on how you can actually guide people into making decisions that might be more beneficial for them, whether it's for their life stage, demographic, or budget?

Joanne Homa (25:06):
I think like we've all talked about, it's obviously communication and education. What we've started to see within our organization is the use of videos—short snippet videos that can help them understand the difference between an urgent care, an ER, and your PCP, or let's talk about your retirement plan again and what a Roth is. Very small, snack-sized chunks of information that are easy to digest seem to help the best.

Ed Ligonde (25:40):
And who's doing those videos? Is that coming from internally or working with a third party?

Joanne Homa (25:46):
Both. We have some that we use from our various partners like our broker, or we create some internally.

Gwenevere Crary (25:57):
I'm sure you could probably put some things in and start creating some too. I always think about how I can do things quickly and simply when it's just me and I've got other things besides benefits—I do HR and IT as well. How can I do this quickly while still giving value? I definitely lean heavy on AI to create a space where they can start having conversations like, "Hey, I'm this and I'm looking for this, what would be the best thing for me?" And then have your plans, designs, and options—your "buffet"—be able to say, "Okay, well this probably fits you well and maybe you consider these three things that will fit within your budget."

Chris Ellis (26:38):
I totally agree. That's the role where software has to play in personalization. One of the things that blows my mind is about one out of every hundred dollars spent in the world is spent on advertising, and about 66% of those dollars are spent on digital advertising. That market houses Google, Meta, and Amazon, and they have very sophisticated algorithms that could take all of your data and serve you up the perfect ad. And yet in healthcare—which isn't one out of a hundred, but one out of twenty dollars spent in the world—the tools we have to personalize the healthcare experience are light years behind what you have in the worlds of social media. I actually get really excited because the next wave of great technology companies are not going to be serving up ads to kids; they're going to be building in healthcare. It's a market that's so big and important right now because healthcare costs are going up faster than they have in 20 years. It's a shared responsibility between the HR team and the contract the employer has with their employee, but you also need technology to deliver the right solution for each person because you can't just be expected to say, "Here's a hundred bucks, go have fun." People would hate that.

Gwenevere Crary (28:16):
And let's add into the mix: how many of your employees actually are having their spouse make the decision? Now the spouse is coming into the picture and needing to educate themselves on the employer that they're not working for.

Chris Ellis (28:34):
Half our product roadmap is driven by my wife, she keeps bugging me about it!

Ed Ligonde (28:44):
Exactly. What I appreciate is that we're focused really heavily on the education aspect. Creating that personalization comes with the actual end solution, but also the guiding path to getting those employees there. Your organization is very Gen Z heavy; I work with another organization that wanted to change the way they educated employees. I've been working with them on creating social media assets—Instagram and TikTok reels. I've never been on TikTok more in my life! It was just a really fun way to reach them, and they realized that was one of the best ways for their employees to actually digest that information rather than just reading a postcard. I'm curious to get your thoughts on how you actually get people to digest that so they get proper utilization of these benefits.

Liz Thomas (29:47):
I think there's some tension. I think there's some tension because someone yesterday in a session from a law firm said her lawyers bill in six-minute increments and she doesn't want them spending six minutes on figuring out what a network is or what a deductible is. There is some "time is money" element to this. At Handshake, we have a lot of initiatives we're trying to do, and there's just a lot of work to do. I don't want them spending half an hour figuring out who's in-network or out-of-network and what co-insurance is. It took me years to figure out what the heck co-insurance was! I think there's got to be a technology aspect and short videos, but it has to be digestible. There's got to be some tension between "just make this work and make it easy" and "actually make sure you're enrolling in the right things" because we don't want you to come back later and say you made a mistake. Carriers don't love that. I don't want my workforce to spend a ton of time on benefits.

Joanne Homa (31:21):
I don't know if you can for sure actually make somebody digest the information, but hopefully they will continue to ask those questions. One of the other things we've done is a benefits survey. We were able to ask various questions on all of our plans. Just seeing some of those responses, you'll be able to see if they understand what this is or they don't. A lot of what we saw was related to FSA plans. Not a lot of people understand FSA plans because some of the responses were, "Well, I don't want to lose it." Unfortunately, we don't have a choice—if you don't use it, you will lose it because the IRS says so. That was very helpful for us to understand.

Gwenevere Crary (32:11):
Full disclosure, I haven't tried this, but how can you actually make your benefits enrollment period dynamic? Maybe bake a day or two into the due date for the employee versus the due date you need to get all that information to the carriers. Maybe you could say, "Okay, here's the batch that's enrolled in FSA," and send an email just to say, "Hey, this is what this means. You've enrolled in this, just double-checking that you're good to go." Maybe there's a way where you can have a dynamic email template based off of the enrollment that reconfirms what they've actually chosen. And then continue education after enrollment. I don't know about you, but if it's not right in my face, I don't think about it. So we forget. Especially on the FSA, it's just a reminder, maybe a quarterly check-in: "Hey, you have another three quarters left to use the benefits. Here's some things that you might not be realizing you can use it on, like over-the-counter stuff or massages." I always tell people, if it's your first time using a benefit like that, don't go crazy. Put a hundred bucks in and see how you use it. We all hopefully go to doctors once a year for a physical, right? Put that much in to cover your prescription, see what it's like, and then you can increase as you go along.

Ed Ligonde (33:38):
Yeah, I think what's lacking sometimes in personalization is filling that gap. People might not know a benefit exists—whether it's mental health or family planning—during open enrollment. How many times do you think people actually listen to a hundred percent of what they hear at open enrollment? Typically, they're only listening to 15 to 20% and only grasping what's important to them in that moment. How are we making sure the tools we're giving them make that process ten times easier for them at the end of the day?

Liz Thomas (34:33):
It's soul-crushing that they don't listen! I think it's short, digestible on-demand content. If they don't want to come to my 45-minute talk-a-thon, they don't have to, but they can watch snippets of it later. And then I think it's the TL;DR: What is actually happening with this plan? Are we switching medical carriers? Does this mean I have to enroll in something? What is going on with women's health right now? I think it has to be quick, digestible, and accessible on their time.

Joanne Homa (35:18):
I would agree 100%. Last year we rolled out a change to our vision carrier, and in order to make sure everyone understood what that was and how it was going to impact them, we did a live webinar but recorded it and made it available later for those that weren't able to attend.

Gwenevere Crary (35:43):
Did you also turn on the transcript? Then you can throw that into AI, create your Q&A right from that, and create your summary of what you actually talked about. Then, again, make it like a "tip of the day" on Teams or Slack—some way that you communicate outside of email, because email is the last thing I look at when I'm working.

Chris Ellis (36:10):
It's really interesting to think about how difficult it is to educate employees, but people don't like to lose money. One of the really interesting things we've seen with any kind of defined contribution where you have a set amount and you're going to lose it at the end of the year: people will actually do that research because they're like, "Oh my gosh, I better figure out what I want to actually buy with that." There is a psychological element around saying, "Here's a thousand bucks, here are the things you can choose. Figure out how you want to allocate those dollars." When it's expressed in dollar form, the incentives are a little bit different for employees as well.

Ed Ligonde (37:29):
I wanted to ask you all really quickly for some quick tidbits on what to avoid. When you're looking at building that custom benefits package, what would you recommend avoiding?

Gwenevere Crary (37:44):
I'd love to start with that: don't over-choose. Don't go out and say, "Oh, I have $10,000 this year to spend," and then people get used to having that offer, and all of a sudden something happens and the business can't give you that $10,000. Be careful. We get used to perks being a minimum foundation. The airline industry used to have salads with tomatoes and cucumbers, and they took the tomatoes off and there was an uproar because everyone got used to them. Just be cognizant of what your business is going through. I work with a lot of startups and fundraising is a key thing. I'm not going to put $50,000 towards a benefit that might get yanked next year because we didn't get enough funding.

Joanne Homa (38:43):
I would say don't just look at the emerging trends. There's a lot of things out there, but make sure that whatever you're deciding to implement really is what your workforce needs, not just because it's a trend.

Liz Thomas (38:58):
And also that it's aligned to your company values—the way in which you operate and how you expect people to operate. Also, I would say just be transparent as much as possible. I wear my decisions on my sleeve and I'm transparent, and I think people really appreciate that.

Gwenevere Crary (39:17):
Yeah, let me just piggyback off of that. I think that is so key. It's okay for you to say, "This is not what we're doing and why," or even, "This is not what we're able to offer you." Acknowledging what's being asked of you helps employees know they've been heard.

Ed Ligonde (39:38):
I'd add: don't over-stereotype specific demographics and what you believe they need. It's good to get that feedback directly from the source. Also, don't be shy about challenging your employees' thinking. You've got those young, bulletproof 25-year-olds who think they don't need to save for retirement—maybe they should! Focus on things like long-term care because they may have family members to take care of as well. I believe our job in personalizing is challenging your employees on what they should be focused on every year. Any last little parting thoughts before we exit the stage?

Gwenevere Crary (40:22):
Have fun with it. One thing I was researching in preparation—curious if anyone here has experienced it—is the new "pawternity" leave?

Ed Ligonde (40:36):
Pawternity, right?

Gwenevere Crary (40:37):
Yeah. So I'm like, okay, that's interesting. It was fertility and now it's coming and it's like, "Okay, well we want to include our fur babies too." I'm sure something new is going to come our way, but have fun with it. Be creative. If you're offering to have people bring their dogs in, I'm sure the pawternity leave is going to be really popular for you.

Ed Ligonde (41:02):
A unique one. Be creative. I love it. Anything else? All right, cool. Well thanks everybody. Appreciate your time.