Dillon Consulting Ltd. is supporting employees’ financial well-being through a student debt repayment program.
The program allows employees to repay student debt by using employer contributions to the company’s deferred profit-sharing plan that match employee contributions to the group registered retirement savings plan, says Tanya Cross, a partner at Dillon Consulting.
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“We wondered how we could maybe modify that to help out and that’s how we came up with [this program]. They can contribute to their RRSP and then take the DPSP match and put it towards paying down their student debt.”
She notes a 2021 internal survey found 40 per cent of employees have student debt and were interested in a debt repayment program. “We just implemented it in January. At Dillon we have early career development groups, new grads [who could be up to four years out of school], so there’s about 286 of them . . . and we’ve had 40 employees sign up so far.”
Cross notes one employee who recently graduated said their student loan repayment time is forecasted to be reduced by half because of the repayment program.
She believes this program is especially beneficial for employee attraction and retention. “We all know student debt can be really hard to pay down. I would have definitely been attracted as a young person to have that kind of help from my job.”
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