According to Pew Research Center: Social and Demographic Trends, 53% of employers are likely to stay at their current job with SLP, 64% of employees are likely to recommend their company to a friend for employment opportunity, and 74% of employees report being happy at their place of employment with SLP(2016). Since this launch, many other companies such as Aetna, Fidelity, and New York Life Insurance offer a student loan repayment program as well. New York Life Insurance gives their employees $170 a month for up to five years. However, not all employees take advantage of this. Staples decided to offer this with a different approach. Student loan repayment has to be earned if you’re a Staples employees. Staples only offer employees of “top performance” with the benefits.
New employee to PricewaterhouseCoopers Elaine Florentino, shares her experience with student loan debt. Ms. Florentino was recently hired as an accountant for PcW after graduation. However, as with most recent college graduates she has to deal with the sudden onset of expensive student loans. She used $57,000 in student loans and in order to make loan payments regularly, roughly around 20% of her paycheck goes to loan payments. Many graduates deal with the ongoing struggle of student loan debt. However, Ms. Florentino has been fortunate enough to work for a company that recently launched a “Student Loan Paydown”.
What “Student Loan Paydown” does is offer employees with student loan debt $100 a month in addition to their salaries for six years. Chief people officer, Mike Fenlon, said that this was to help strengthen their company brand by recruiting and keeping good hard-working employees.
The companies offer counseling services for these employees to help them decide what is best for their student loan situation. Student loan debt is a major societal issue. The current state of student loans is troubling—$1.3 trillion of outstanding student loans, a $35,000 average loan balance for the class of 2015, and 40 million Americans with student debt—companies need to start somewhere to help lessen this burden.