A holistic, data-driven approach to financial wellness benefits

Founded more than 180 years ago, Pearson has evolved into a global learning company that helps millions of people live their best lives through education. So when Stacey Rodgers, Vice President of Global Benefits at Pearson, started hearing about an increased need for student debt support for employees, she knew her team needed to act.

For years, Pearson’s benefits strategy had operated in silos. “We had traditionally spoken about health, wellness, and retirement benefits in a vacuum,” Stacey explains. “We didn’t connect the dots to what really was hindering people from receiving the full match or even participating in the plan.”

But as employee requests for student debt benefits and gaps in 401(k) participation became more apparent, Stacey’s team started developing a hypothesis: student debt wasn’t a standalone issue — it was directly impacting employees’ ability to save for retirement. And when the SECURE Act 2.0 passed, offering a potential solution through student loan retirement matching, the team became even more eager to act. But without concrete data connecting the dots between student debt and retirement participation, they couldn’t determine the right approach or justify the budget to leadership.

Connecting the dots

That challenge is what led Pearson to leverage the Candidly Impact Assessment to conduct a comprehensive analysis to quantify exactly how student debt was affecting their workforce. The results were stunning: Pearson employees carried twice the student debt of the average American, with their highly educated workforce holding a collective $130 million in student loans.

“The numbers took my breath away,” Stacey recalls. “The data really hit home for us just what our people were dealing with,” and gave the Pearson Global Benefits team the evidence they needed. “Through the feedback and data analysis that we received, it kind of just rubberstamped what we already thought,” says Stacey. “The report really gave us the tools to say [to our] leadership, ‘we knew it, now this proves it’. Here’s the data that says our people need help.”

Data drives action

Once the leadership team was onboard, Stacey knew the program was too important to wait for open enrollment to start, and instead opted to launch with Candidly — including our Student Loan Retirement Match solution — in the middle of the plan year. The rollout proved remarkably smooth. “Candidly made it very easy from our standpoint to launch the benefit,” says Stacey. “[They] took the lift away from my team . . . all we had to do was press a button and get the information out and tell people where to show up.”

Looking ahead, Pearson is focused on educating employees about all the tools available through Candidly. “Our goal is to educate people about the availability of the tools through Candidly,” says Stacey. “This offering can help employees be better prepared, not just for savings or retirement, but for all life stages.”

The program’s universal appeal has made it relevant across Pearson’s multi-generational workforce. “It helps the new graduate who’s coming into the workforce. It helps the parent or the grandparent who has a Parent PLUS loan or who has co-signed a loan for a dependent or relative,” Stacey notes. 

For Pearson, the lesson was clear: data drives action. The Candidly Impact Assessment transformed vague concerns into concrete evidence, enabling the Global Benefits team to connect the dots between student debt, retirement participation, and employee financial wellbeing.