As part of BlackRock’s Emergency Savings Initiative (ESI), GXO and Commonwealth have partnered to support employee financial security by providing access to a high-quality emergency savings benefit and promoting emergency savings throughout GXO.
A growing number of employers recognize the connection between workplace emergency savings programs and employee financial wellness—and enable access to high-quality emergency savings benefits. Benefits leaders often report that new benefit engagement can be particularly challenging when trying to reach a diverseworkforce. GXO, a global leader in supply chain and warehousing solutions, launched an emergency savings benefit for their workforce as part of BlackRock’s Emergency Savings Initiative—successfully deploying creative solutions to drive awareness and signups for the new benefit.
Non-wired workers (employees who do not work in an office setting with a computer and access to email) represent an estimated 60-70% of the total U.S. workforce, and over 90% of U.S. companies employ non-wired workers in some capacity. Since becoming a standalone company in 2021, GXO has prioritized supporting the financial security of its more than 21,000 U.S.-based employees in 37 states while growing rapidly.
Through a U.S. company-wide survey, GXO assessed its employees’ benefits needs. The survey revealed that covering an unexpected expense was a significant concern for employees, highlighting the need for an emergency savings benefit to support all employees. Additionally, it elevated the need to deploy creative communications tactics to improve awareness of benefits, especially for non-wired employees. To address these needs, GXO’s Human Resources and Benefits team prioritized the development of an emergency savings program focusing on:
- Offering accessible emergency savings solutions through existing GXO benefits vendors and providing incentives to encourage employee participation, fostering financial resilience and long-term security.
- Prioritizing communication of the emergency savings benefits, especially to hourly and non-wired employees.
Leveraging the expertise of the Emergency Savings Initiative and Commonwealth, GXO developed three key strategies to deploy a new emergency savings benefit program.
Go Offline: Print and Onsite Marketing
Reaching GXO’s diverse, non-wired workforce required thinking beyond traditional digital communication—emails, intranet, or webinars—to ensure employees had multiple engagement points with emergency savings information. Printed flyers and posters were displayed in break rooms, and information was posted on digital signage around the site.
These materials addressed four key goals:
- Introduce the emergency savings benefits available at GXO and its key features
- Illustrate the value of emergency savings in building financial security
- Promote incentives for setting up recurring deposits
- Provide a QR code for quick signup
GXO’s Benefits team socialized the new emergency savings benefit in regularly scheduled meetings with all leadership levels, from onsite HR managers to senior executives. The team also sent informational materials to distribution centers to post onsite.
Personal Connections
GXO and its retirement consultant, Compass Financial Partners, conducted in-person financial wellness events at four distribution centers. These presentations highlighted retirement basics for the GXO 401(k) Plan, tackling debt, and emergency savings. Employees could also ask questions about these topics in a 1-on-1 setting before and after the presentations.
New benefits, particularly those related to finances, can be intimidating. While informational materials provide valuable resources, they cannot address every individual’s concerns. Combining these materials with personalized assistance significantly increased awareness of the benefits of emergency savings. Three distribution centers that hosted in-person events emerged as top emergency savings enrollment locations, with one surpassing the company-wide average sign-up rate by a factor of ten. Human Resources managers at distribution centers played a key role in facilitating the in-person events and answered employees’ questions about the emergency savings benefit.
Signing up was easy… HR helped me. She explained the [benefit]: how you apply, how you use the card, how you get the app, and how you can change what you want to put in every week.”
– GXO Employee
Broaden Language Access
Keeping its diverse workforce in mind, GXO created marketing materials in Spanish, which increased employees’ confidence in signing up and ultimately led to higher participation. These translated materials made information about the emergency savings benefit accessible to more employees. Compass Financial Partners offered financial wellness sessions at in-person benefits events led by a Spanish speaker, allowing Spanish speakers to learn and ask questions in their native language.
In post-campaign interviews conducted by Commonwealth, Spanish-speaking employees expressed gratitude for the increased language accessibility. The translated materials and Spanish-speaking sessions facilitated a better understanding of the emergency savings benefit.
Outcome
GXO’s initial survey findings highlighted a challenge faced by many employers: reaching non-wired employees with employee benefits information. Not only did GXO reach these employees, but data indicates that non-wired workers chose to participate in the emergency savings benefit, accounting for approximately 70% of signups. GXO’s experience offers valuable insights for HR and benefits professionals who are introducing emergency savings benefits.
To learn more about GXO, visit GXO.com.
About BlackRock’s Emergency Savings Initiative
In 2019, BlackRock announced a $50 million philanthropic commitment to help millions of people living on low -to moderate-income gain access to and increase usage of proven savings strategies and tools – ultimately helping them establish an important safety net. BlackRock’s support of this initiative was provided through grants from The BlackRock Foundation and The BlackRock Charitable Gift Fund. The size and scale of the savings problem require the knowledge and expertise of established industry experts who are recognized leaders in savings research and interventions on an individual and corporate level. Led by its Social Impact team, BlackRock is partnering with innovative industry experts like Commonwealth in the US and Nest Insight in the UK, giving the initiative a comprehensive and multilayered approach to address the savings crisis.
Visit savingsproject.org for more information.
