Due to changing employee demands, employers are searching for new ways to attract and retain workers. While more traditional benefits like health insurance and retirement plans remain excellent options for your employee benefits package, priorities for job candidates have changed.
In recent years education benefits have become one of the most in-demand benefits options alongside wellness programs, commuter benefits, and remote work.
With education benefits in high demand, there are many options for offering them, each with its own pros and cons.
This article will explore which education benefits you should offer your employees and how to ensure that your education benefits program is successful.
Education benefits are employee perks that help your workers enrich or learn new skills. They can also help employees go back to school to earn their degrees, earn their GEDs, or assist employees with paying back their student loans.
The goal of any education benefits program is to improve your organization’s overall skill set, which boosts productivity and autonomy. It can also help you attract top talent for your open positions.
First, let’s consider the importance of education for employers and employees. Employees who receive higher education or learn new skills due to workplace benefits tend to have better overall health, an improved sense of self-worth, and more opportunities to grow in their careers, including at your organization.
Providing training and education resources to employees improves employee retention, mainly when those new skills help them move up in your organization. According to LinkedIn's Workplace Learning Report1, companies that excel at internal mobility keep their employees for nearly twice as long as organizations that don't.
Your organization gains knowledge when employees are cross-trained and upskilled in areas that support your business goals. According to the Lumina Foundation2, education reimbursement programs result in a 129% return on investment.
Educated employees also reduce acquisition costs for specialized roles because you can hire from within to fill these roles.
When it comes time to hire, offering education benefits helps your organization attract top talent. This is especially important if you want to hire younger workers looking to finish their degrees or learn additional skills to support their future in the workforce.
Education benefits aren’t uncommon, especially for larger organizations. According to the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans3, more than 92% of the organizations that responded to their survey offered an educational benefit.
Many organizations specifically offer tuition reimbursement programs. According to Statista4, 56% of employers offer an undergraduate or graduate tuition assistance program, while 8% provide student loan repayment assistance. An additional 13% of employers offer a 529 plan—a tax-advantaged account used to save for higher education.
Companies with educational programs and perks include:
While many organizations opt to reimburse employees for their tuition costs for courses taken while they are employed, it isn’t the only option. Your organization can offer many different types of education benefits and programs.
These are the most common employee education benefits:
We've expanded on a few of the options in the following sections.
While not a formal education benefit, providing employees with on-the-job and in-house training is a great way to teach them new skills or improve their current skills.
You can also provide group skills training for leadership, communication, and other topics to ensure that your entire organization is successful.
On-the-job training programs are the most cost-effective approach to education benefits, though they may not be enough to improve recruitment and retainment on their own.
In addition to or instead of college education benefits, many employers offer continuing education and personal development perks. This is an excellent way to enable your employees to learn new skills while still rewarding them for their efforts.
It also allows you to fill positions quicker by hiring capable talent who need some additional skills or resources to become your ideal employee. This is often cheaper than waiting to fill a vacant position for a few months in extremely tight markets.
Some common ways to promote personal development are through:
This is a great option for organizations that aren’t ready to offer tuition reimbursement or student loan repayment but still want to provide their employees with valuable training and educational opportunities.
Tuition assistance programs are the most common employee educational benefit offered. This benefit promotes continuing college education for employees by providing an allowance or reimbursement for tuition costs undertaken while the employee works for your organization. It doesn't cover prior student loans or tuition expenses for employees.
A tuition assistance benefit generally reimburses employees for some or all of their tuition costs, provided they pass their courses or complete their degrees.
Helping employees pay for their tuition is a significant investment. So, what happens if an employee leaves after completing their courses? Many organizations require employees who leave within a year of obtaining their education to pay back some or all of the reimbursed education.
If you’re interested in offering an education benefit, there's no better time to offer tuition reimbursement. Through the 2025 tax year, you can contribute up to $5,250 per employee toward tuition tax-free.
A 529 plan5 is a tuition program run by your state that allows employees to save money for tuition or use a prepaid plan. This is done by investing in mutual funds or other investments similar to a Roth 401(k).
Qualified withdrawals from the fund are tax-free, such as to pay for tuition, textbooks, materials, or room and board. The IRS has imposed an annual limit of $10,000 for qualified K-12 education withdrawals and a $10,000 lifetime limit for student loan repayments.
There are no federal 529 plan contribution limits, but some states have aggregate contribution limits.
A 529 plan can put funds away for your education or help pay education costs for your family.
You might be eligible for state income tax deductions depending on your state.
Most 529 plans are contributed to by the employee only, but employers can contribute to an employee’s 529 plan by making matching contributions similar to a health savings account (HSA).
While these are popular benefits, with around 10% of organizations offering a 529 plan for employees, they are often difficult to manage. If your organization and employees can navigate the plan administration, it can be a rewarding benefit.
With the average student loan debt in the United States at $37,113, according to Education Data6, offering a student loan repayment benefit to your employees can help you attract college-educated talent.
Despite the rising tuition costs at many colleges and universities across the country, student loan repayment remains a relatively uncommon employee perk. However, more employers are beginning to introduce student loan repayment programs. According to the Society for Human Resource Management7 (SHRM), 8% of employers offered the benefit in 2020, up from previous years.
A major reason for the growth in student loan repayment is to attract younger workers, namely Millennials and Gen Zers, who have current student loan debt. Many of these younger workers don’t contribute to a 401(k) plan because of their student loan debt, making this benefit enticing to these workers.
Our 2022 Employee Benefits Survey Report found that 26% of Gen Zers and 27% of Millennials said student loan repayment assistance was very or extremely important to them.
However, student loan assistance can be challenging to administer. Any payments toward student loans above $5,250 are taxable for both the employer and the employee, and you must report them as a bonus on employees’ W-2s.
You’ll need to consider your workforce’s diverse needs when choosing which education benefits to offer. Your employees are of different generations and have different wants and needs.
According to our 2022 Employee Benefits Survey Report, 72% of Gen Zers and 73% of Millennials said professional development benefits were very or extremely important to them. However, only 40% of Baby Boomers agreed.
This shows that while certain benefits are valuable to some employees, others may not use them. A one-size-fits-all method won’t work for most of your employees. Instead, you’ll want to offer something flexible that works for everyone.
You can combine many of the above benefits into a single program, for example, where you provide student loan repayment up to a set amount, tuition reimbursement up to a set allowance, and other education perks such as free in-office skills training.
Another way to empower your employees to use their education benefits the way they want to is by offering an education employee stipend. This allows you to provide a monthly allowance for reimbursement toward education expenses such as tuition, textbooks, courses, certifications, and more. That way, you don’t need to establish a tuition agreement with a particular college or program.
This helps you reduce the overall cost of your program while giving your employees more freedom to choose what classes and programs they want to participate in.
Education benefits are an essential piece of any compensation package. Without a robust benefits package, you’ll have a more challenging time attracting and retaining your employees. An educational assistance benefit is one of the best ways to ensure your workforce is equipped for the future.
Many educational benefits are available for employers, such as on-the-job training, professional development courses and certificates, tuition assistance, 529 plans, and student loan repayment plans.
With PeopleKeep’s WorkPerks employee stipend administration platform, you can easily set up and manage stipends for expenses related to employee development, health, wellness, transportation, and education.
Schedule a call with a personalized benefits advisor to start offering stipends to your workers
This blog article was originally published on May 18, 2022. It was last updated on February 28, 2023.
1. https://learning.linkedin.com/resources/workplace-learning-report
2. https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/resources/talent-investments-pay-off-cigna-full.pdf
3. https://blog.ifebp.org/education-benefits-student-loan-repayment
4. https://www.statista.com/statistics/554081/percent-of-us-employers-offering-education-benefits/
5. https://www.sec.gov/reportspubs/investor-publications/investorpubsintro529htm.html
6. https://educationdata.org/student-loan-debt-statistics