Often the best ideas come when you listen to your team – and act on what they tell you.

Our employees in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto are brilliant, energetic, fun, and hard-working people. Like other agencies, our employees typically skew younger than on the corporate side. And their needs are different.

To attract and keep the best and brightest, we’ve cultivated an award-winning workplace and culture. We’ve invested in experience grants, themed weekly social events, flexible Weber Days, and brought in guest speakers to help employees grow.

So when our Gen Y and Z team members pointed out a gap in our RRSP matching program, we listened.

As it turns out, younger employees don’t contribute as much to their retirement because they still have to pay off their student debt. I was shocked to learn the average graduate today has more than $26,000 of student debt, much higher than it was even 10 years ago.

As we began to consider solves, two employees forwarded this article about a new pilot program that matches a portion of an employee’s student loan repayments with a payment to her retirement plan.

Could Weber Shandwick enter this program, they asked?

Fast forward to this month: our new Student Debt Savings Program is live. Now our employees don’t need to choose between planning for the future and paying off the education that got them here.

We made this a priority because we want to be the destination for the best people.

The best people do the best work. The best work attracts the best clients. The best work also gets better results, which keeps our clients with us. That leads to growth, and the need to bring on more great people, which helps all of us grow.