Stock purchasing options are a great way to sweeten employee benefits, but they're not always within financial reach for every worker. Which is why Ally Financial took a more direct approach: Each employee at the bank receives 100 shares of company stock through the #OwnIt program.
As of 2022, approximately 35% of public companies provided employee discounts on stock-purchase programs, according to SHRM, with one-third of decision makers saying the incentive was to acquire and
"Many companies offer a stock purchase plan, but this was really different," says Gwen Gollmer, Ally's executive director of benefits. "We wanted to build an owner's mindset, and the easiest way to do that is to make sure every employee is an owner. Not only is this great for them, but it drives business results and it also drives shareholder value."
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Those who were working for Ally at the end of the 2019 calendar year were the first group to receive this benefit in 2020, and after a three-year vesting period, they will now get to decide what to do with the approximate $2,900 available to them based on share value and dividends. Moving forward, all employees have their 100 shares put aside the calendar year after they are hired.
For more than half of Ally's 11,600 employees, stock shares vested early this year, and those workers received their first dividend check the first week of February. With this money comes access to
"We have partnered with companies and have tools and resources that focus on financial literacy education," Gollmer says. "One is a learning hub, which is like a living, breathing financial wellness assessment. You can interact with it as much as you like, and it learns every time you do so. We couple that with access to a certified financial planner and a retirement readiness tool that has a lot more data analytics behind it."
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Adding equity to existing benefits allows for an expanded view of financial wellness, which is something employees both seek and appreciate. Ally uses engagement surveys, exit surveys and employee resource groups to gauge how employees feel about the benefits available to them, and the latest feedback revealed what those with vesting stock plan to do with the money.
Some intend to leave their shares untouched to add to their retirement savings, while others will take a payout to pay down debt. For those on hourly wages versus salaries, Gollmer says, there is even the possibility that retirement can be achieved faster than originally expected, depending on an employee's financial needs.
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"These #Ownit shares are on top of [benefits] that are helping our employees attain retirement goals, and can also provide a form of emergency savings," she says. "We have benefits that do the blocking and tackling, and we also focus on the tools and resources that we can give each employee to meet them wherever they are in their wellbeing journey."
