Transforming Paid Time Off with Rob Whalen, BNFT

Every year, millions of vacation days are rendered worthless to the employees who earned them. 

As employees accrue vacation time, the value of that time sits as a liability on a balance sheet and that number can drastically increase over time. 

While the first option for employees should be to use all their paid time off, the next best solution is to gain value from a benefit that would otherwise expire. 

Joining Bill Banham on the show this time is Rob Whalen, CEO & Co-founder at BNFT (formerly PTO Exchange), the first benefits platform that allows employees to self-direct the value of their unused paid time off (PTO) for other needs and causes. 

About Rob Whalen

Rob is a serial entrepreneur who has over 25 years of experience selling and developing software and hardware products.

While building the company, Rob and his co-founder, Todd Lucas, found their mission was to enable flexibility in those benefits that employees earned but could not utilize. They also discovered that by enabling this capability and accountability, BNFT created equity and inclusion for workers to be compensated for their accrued productivity - creating a better benefit.

About BNFT (PTO Exchange)

BNFT is a comprehensive benefits platform for employees to unlock the full flexibility and value of their total rewards while providing HR teams with a low-cost and easy-to-use tool. PTO Exchange and LPA Exchange are powered by BNFT, which brings innovative solutions via one platform. Companies will have the flexibility to design cost-effective benefits while also empowering their employees to choose the benefits that support them through their transitions. BNFT is SOC 2-certified and trusted by Fairway Mortgage, Howard Brown Health, Agile Defense, UCare, Praxis Engineering, STRATACACHE, and others.


We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast and Iceni Media Inc.

Transcript

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Maximizing Unused Paid Time Off

Speaker 1 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show , one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros , talent execs , tech enthusiasts and business leaders . For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work , subscribe to the show , follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom and visit hrgazettecom .

Speaker 2 0:29

Every year , millions of vacation days are rendered worthless to the employees who earned them .

Speaker 2 0:32

As employees accrue vacation time , the value of that time sits as a liability on the balance sheet , and that number can drastically increase over time .

Speaker 2 0:43

While the first option for employees should be to use all of their paid time off , the next best solution is to gain value from a benefit that would otherwise expire . Hey , this is Bill Bannam , the host of this episode of the HR Chat Show , and joining me on the show today is Rob Whelan , ceo and co-founder over at PTO Exchange , the first benefits platform that allows employees to self-direct the value of their unused paid time off for other needs and causes . Rob is a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience selling and developing software and hardware products . While building the company , rob and his co-founder , tobt Lucas , found their mission was to enable flexibility into those benefits that employees earned but could not utilize . They also discovered that , by enabling this capability and accountability , pto Exchange created equity and inclusion for workers to be compensated for their accrued productivity , creating a better benefit . Rob , it's my absolute pleasure to welcome you to the HR Chat Show today . Thanks very much for being my guest .

Speaker 3 1:56

And Bill thanks for having me on it .

Speaker 2 1:59

So let's start , as we usually do on this show , by taking a minute or two and getting to know you a little bit . Can you share a little bit about your career , background and some of your passions ?

Speaker 3 2:10

yeah , um , so my background , education wise , is accounting , um , but almost 30 years in technology , um , selling everything from semiconductors , uh , and then building a software company . I built a distillery company , so vodka , whiskey and then did this company as well . So kind of an entrepreneur really , with a focus on accounting , because that's my background and so I kind of focus in that area on how businesses operate . But I've been . I built this company , started it in 2013, . Took about five years to kind of get it off the ground . You know , working other jobs kind of , uh , moonlighting , and then uh got it off the ground and I've been running it ever since so and , uh , we're making a real impact for corporations out there and employees okay , thank you very much .

Speaker 2 3:16

So , uh , we got here today because , well , I think I was pestering you and your team for a while to do an interview and I met , uh met your colleague , sam Lieberman , over at SHRM SHRM Annual in Chicago just last month . As we record this episode , I always like to give a bit of love to great events , great associations such as SHRM . Why is SHRM a good fit for you guys ?

Speaker 3 3:42

Really , you know SHRM is um , you know it's the association of hrs and um . There's just a lot of things that sherm does for human resource and really the , the um , the , the impact that it has for companies and employees , uh is phenomenal . I mean , they actually are really looking out for new innovative products to deliver to employees and you know , the employee or HR space is ever changing and it's really changing . Understand these different technologies and deliver them in a way that's equitable to the workforce is very important , and so we find ourselves kind of in that vein of innovation and helping employees , and so that event to us is kind of the Super Bowl for us . Us , it's kind of the Super Bowl for us . And I don't know if you were by our booth , but you know we just have a pretty small booth , but the line was out the door and I think we had over .

Speaker 3 4:56

I think we had over a thousand visitors at our booth talking to us about the impact that we're having for employees , the application and the platform and kind of our vision of where we see benefits going .

Speaker 2 5:12

Okay , thank you very much . Now let's get into the mission of PTO Exchange . As employees accrue vacation time , the value of that time sits as a liability on a balance sheet , of course , and that number can drastically increase over time . Can you , can you maybe share some ways that paid time off can cost businesses money ?

Speaker 3 5:36

yeah . So , bill , it's really interesting because that question is really kind of how I got here . I left cisco systems and there was two of us at the dinner party and we both got paid a very large check as we walked out the door . I had 280 hours that they paid me for as I walked out the door . Why couldn't we have used this benefit while we were there ? Why couldn't we have used it to maybe buy a vacation and an experience , that for our families while we were there , instead of just letting it sit on the books and grow ?

Speaker 3 6:16

And as you can imagine , I only accrued 120 hours a year , and so I walked out with 280 , which is three years worth , and the rate of pay when I started with Cisco and the rate of pay when I left Cisco was drastically different grew the longer I was there and the longer I kept those hours on the books , and this one problem is what kept me up at night . It also kept me thinking how much money is sitting on the books on the liability side of this balance sheet , and how can we help a company reduce that at the rate that it was accrued at or discounted whichever way ? Right to both help the company , right to improve its balance sheet , as well as help the employee during these transitions in life that they have . They have . So , as one goes through life , they have different , I'd say , transitions or stations .

Speaker 3 7:33

You're a college kid coming out , you need to pay down student loan . You're 30 years old , you're married , you have children , you want to start saving for college and or your own 401k or buy a house . You get to be 40 and 50 . All all these different transitions , uh , through one's life . The ability to take this benefit that's accrued wages or earned uh , it's an earned benefit and be able to use it during those moments is really really important , critical and very valuable for employees and and companies , by the way .

Speaker 2 8:06

And you guys have been around for a while now , I think since around 2013 . I was on your website earlier as part of my homework . You've got a pretty impressive array of partners . I've got to say the likes of NFP who we've worked with at different district HR events , aon there's a whole bunch . How do your partners help ? You guys spread the word and offer the services to businesses ?

Speaker 3 8:32

Yeah , I think . Let me kind of go back a little bit on that , Bill , because I think that there's a story there to be told . When I started the company in 2013 , we just thought you could do this and there's no problem .

Speaker 3 8:44

What we realized is , there was a lot of regulation around this environment , and so it took us about four years and again got to remember we were working on this in the evenings as we had our day jobs , and so I think back in 2018 is when we launched . 2019 is when we launched the product and really started to sell it . But back to the question . We started to meet with Aon Alight and these and Mercer and Willis Tower Watson very early on to understand the market and what we found was very interesting , which is wow , nobody , you can't do this , nobody's ever done it . And and that whole like they were kind of stuck in a world , because they grew up in it , that it couldn't be done . They weren't coming from the outside , and I think a lot of innovation happens from the outside , not the inside , because we all are kind of stuck in this . These are the rules .

Speaker 3 9:46

You can't paint outside the box , and I think innovators come at it from the outside , and so we met with , we were actually introduced to Aon by Nordstrom , and then we were brought back to Chicago to meet with our lawyers and because we'd spent four and a half years learning about this and knowing about the regulations we knew more than some of the attorneys in the room and at the end of that they were they were really the light bulb came on .

Speaker 3 10:18

They were really surprised and and that's when we started to work with them , and then it was Hewitt at the time and we signed a light with our first partner and then we grew right , we started to grow and as we started to get customers and we started to get more partners , we understood the value of partners and really the fact that they are the trusted partner for these customers , and so we need to educate them so that they could educate their customers on how our platform can really really really make a difference within employers and employees lives and and so over time , obviously what what people thought couldn't be done is being done and innovation occurs . And it's the old Jeffrey Moore right you got to get over the chasm , got to get into the tornado as innovation starts to happen , and I think you see that with every technology or new technology that comes out .

Speaker 2 11:25

Okay . So I just want to pick up on one thing you mentioned there when you said that innovation comes from the outside . Does that view impact how you hire ? Are you guys focused on as much as possible hiring as diverse workforce as possible with different views ? Who can come into PTO Exchange with fresh ideas , fresh , fresh eyes for fresh opinions to to shake things up ?

Embracing Diverse Perspectives for Growth

Speaker 3 11:54

we certainly look at , um , people that have different views , right , we , we have , uh , one of the things that this just comes from me being me , um , I grew up with nine kids in the family and you know , at dinner my parents were always bring an argument to the table , bring an opinion , and , as I even raised my own kids , we have very strong opinions and each one is very different , by the way , and that's okay .

Speaker 3 12:22

It's in fact it's it's . It's really , really okay and I think society today doesn't know that . But it's okay to have very different opinions on the world and the problems that we have in front of us . And I think , through debate and not getting emotional about it . So I look for people that when I talk to sometimes don't agree with me at all . In fact , that's the farthest thing and from doing that I learn and I start changing some of my thought processes or maybe how I do things , and I think we move forward in doing so .

Speaker 3 13:01

So the question that you asked do we hire ? Yes , we looked at . You know , does this person bring an opinion and a difference to the table ? It doesn't have to be skin color or race or gender . It really has to be .

Speaker 3 13:18

Are you a critical thinker and I'm a big believer in mathematics and understanding how things operate to then have an opinion on it . So just to have an emotional opinion is not an opinion . You have to have experience to . I mean , like me , accounting . I have experience in accounting , I know balance sheet , I know income statement , I know depreciation , I know why all this stuff happens on the balance sheet , so I can bring an opinion to that . And my partner , todd , he's a technologist . He brings an opinion to the technology stack . Now , I have a lot of technology experience so I kind of know how things operate there . But really I lean on him to understand where that technology is going and how that's going to benefit us .

Speaker 3 14:10

I do that in customer success with us , someone that has a different engine , that has done it more than I have . So I look for all those types of things within the individuals that I hire , that I talk to , that I interview , if they bring something different to the table , if they bring something different to the table . The other thing is and I think leaders need to know this is that I don't know everything . In fact , I almost know nothing , and so I always try and surround myself with people that are much smarter than me . I like to be the dumbest person in the room , right , but I'm also the most inquisitive , so I'll continue to ask questions , I'll continue to learn , I'll continue to get up on a whiteboard discussion with my employees , because I'm looking for my own answers and sometimes they're bringing them to me and I just need to understand them better .

Speaker 4 15:09

Once in a while , an event series is born that shakes things up , it makes you think differently and it leaves you inspired . That event is Disrupt HR . The format is 14 speakers , 5 minutes each and slides rotate every 15 seconds . If you're an HR professional , a CEO , a technologist or a community leader and you've got something to say about talent , culture or technology , disrupt is the place . It's coming soon to a city near you . Learn more at disrupthrco .

Speaker 2 15:44

So we've recorded , rob , something like 750 episodes on this podcast . Okay , I've been doing this since before I went gray . All too often I interview folks on this show leaders on this show and they say here's our vision , here's our mission , and they don't sound like they want to be taken off . That . I love your response . Just then , come to me with an informed opinion , change my mind , educate me . I'm open to it . I love that . I love that .

Speaker 3 16:12

so yeah , it's true , it's really true . It's , uh , it's , it's . It's really hard to eat at our dinner table when my kids

Revolutionizing Benefits With Mobile Accessibility

Speaker 3 16:21

are home . Now they're all I got 30 28 because they're all very well educated and they all have great opinions and and I really am even in that environment with my children being educated by them my daughter is one of them's , a data scientist , quantitative economics . The other one's got dual engineering degrees around environment , and so when you hear about all this global warming and all this other stuff , she brings to me the reality that , yes , there is changes happening . It's normal , but we can't go to one energy , we can't just be electric . We have to look at everything that we have in front of us and utilize it in a way that benefits us and not get all in on one technology or one solution or one thing , because that does not make a difference in the impact on society .

Speaker 3 17:16

But she brings that to us right ? It ? I wasn't educated that way . She went to school . She's very knowledgeable in that space , did a lot of research . Uh , like I said , double masters and I listen to that , which is something I get to learn , which is different .

Speaker 2 17:33

Well , shout out to all of Rob's family . I hope you're listening to this . He's doing a fine job Now that PTO Exchange is now available on mobile . With employees on the go and navigating busy lives , Rob , making an exchange is now more accessible and easier than ever with your mobile app . Do you want to briefly tell us a bit more about it ?

Speaker 3 17:54

yeah , so as we um grew the business , our users and , as we all know , everyone has mobile devices , but a lot of our customers are healthcare finance , uh kind of disparate workforces and so having they're not always at the computer , and so we felt like getting this on the mobile device and getting it in the hands of the employees .

Speaker 3 18:19

It would be a much easier way for them to receive the benefit and transact on the platform to receive the value that we're trying to deliver and that the corporation or the employer is trying to deliver to their employees .

Speaker 3 18:33

One of the things that we did , though , is we were pretty maniacal in the UX design and how it worked , because simplicity is really , really important to us .

Speaker 3 18:48

We are really about making it like , in and out , like you should be able to get in , you shouldn't have questions , because we don't want to have a lot of support questions coming into us and we really don't and so our website was extremely simple . Every user that came on there said , wow , that was so easy . It took me just a few seconds to exchange my paid time off , and we wanted that same experience on the mobile , so the time it took us to get that out was really around understanding the user and testing a lot of user experiences , so we could have that same experience that we have on the computer on on the mobile device , and , uh , yeah , we launched it , uh , first week in july , and , um , we're going to be launching some new , new products coming out here in the in the near future as well , so we're moving down the path of growing our platform and really growing the value of our platform for our customers .

Speaker 2 19:52

And another way you're doing that is through Benefit , your comprehensive benefits platform for employees to unlock the full flexibility and value of their total rewards , while providing HR teams with low cost and easy to use tools . Why did you create Benefit ? In other words , rob , what's the pain point that you're trying to solve for employers ?

Speaker 3 20:14

So where Benefit came from again was the early days when we were really looking at Benefits and where we felt like the Benefits were going to be going . And you think about PTO as a liability sitting on the books . Most people don't know this , but their benefits are 30% of their compensation and roughly PTO is about 24% of that . And so we looked at it as what if you could disengage benefits from the corporation right , and you could get ownership very similar to what Ted Bennett did with 401k . And so we , you know , we went out and I started to think about it and we started to think the benefits were going to become portable . And so as we started to build the product and to grow , the company PTO Inc , which is the name of the company you know started to kind of pigeonhole us on what we were , what we were looking at doing for the vision of the company . So we changed that to benefit and so now all of our products run on the benefit platform . So PTO Exchange , as we're really known today because it is our flagship product , runs on the benefit platform . We also have something called an LPA exchange , which is a life planning exchange , and that is really most people call them lifestyle accounts , but we have that on the benefit platform . We also have a giving exchange on the benefit platform . So we're building these products on a single platform that together have more value than just single , and we're coming out with again some new products that will be announced here , probably in the next month or two , again on that same platform .

Speaker 3 21:56

And the reason we went this direction , bill , was because we how do I say this ? We invasively integrate to the payroll system . So we do an incredible job Again , shout out to my partner , todd , on this we do an incredible job in integration to our payroll systems in a way that nobody else really does , and so having that type of connection to the HRS , payroll time and attendance , the way we do , being able to deliver value through these products on the platform , is very seamless and very easy for both companies and for users to access different benefits that they have on the platform that they want to access through the system , benefits that they have on the platform that they want to access through the system . Okay , and that'll really show in the next couple of products that we come out with , because we'll be able to deliver them quickly . We'll be able to innovate very quickly and deliver solutions to our customers that they haven't seen before , but the sum of the parts is greater than the single product itself , and that's the .

Speaker 2 23:04

That's the idea around benefit okay , so I'm expecting a cold no as your answer to my next question , but it would be remiss of me not to ask rob , uh , can I get an exclusive here ? Are you able to share any information about about these new platforms , any of the features ? The ? New giving too much away .

Speaker 3 23:22

The new products that are . Well , let's just go down the path of . We're going to be addressing a lot of the secure 2.0 initiatives that are coming out through the new laws , and we believe that the way we're doing it again because of the products we have we can tweak some of the products to deliver a solution that nobody's ever seen before , which will help companies retain employees for a long period of time but also deliver benefits that create the right behavior for for employees , so that they're saving in a way that's long-term and they're doing things in a way that have a financial impact for them personally . That's really what we're looking at doing . So we're looking at trying to create a platform where these this 30 percent of benefits is better utilized than it is today , okay , and so we'll look at products in that vein . But secure 20 is really , uh , where the next products are really going to come in line and we're going to be um solving some of those problems that are out there in the marketplace .

Speaker 2 24:45

Okay , did you get that listeners ? You heard it here first . All right , I love a bit of exclusive . Thank you , rob . Okay , one question . Your PR team were very keen for me to make sure that I asked of you today , so I'm gonna make sure I include it . Compared to other solutions on the market , rob , what , what , what ? A benefit standout differentiators , what , what , what , what . What differentiates you guys ?

Speaker 3 25:06

Well , there's obviously PTO Exchange . We were the first in the marketplace and we really created the space .

Differentiation in HR Technology Solutions

Speaker 3 25:16

We have had a few competitors come in . Most of them really don't address the enterprise which is making sure that your , your security is tight , your code is tight , that you integrate , that you have all the uh , the third party , like sock two and sock one , uh things , and so a lot of times when we run into them , into the space , our competitors , they really don't have the platform that can really do the job as well , as they don't understand the space and all the regulations .

Speaker 3 25:53

We're brought in to actually speak to customers around the regulations , just because there's a lot going on . And then we have another competitor that's out there that touts kind know , touts kind of what we do , but really what they are is they're just a credit card provider . They just provide more loans and they say it's against the value of your PTO , but if you use your PTO you still got to pay the credit card off , and so it's really not . It's almost creating a scenario where the employees become , you know , financially worse than it is financially better , because what they're doing is they're just putting it on a credit card , they're charging them an interest rate and they're saying , hey , you don't have to pay the principal for two years , and then in two years they got a balloon payment and it's really just a credit card . So I think they're approaching the space in a very different way . I believe they did that because of the regulations .

Speaker 3 26:52

They didn't really understand it . And so the difference is really in the details and in how we approach our business , and I think that if customers are out there looking at solutions like this , I say go look at our competitors , go look at other solutions and then come to us and have a conversation and I think that they will see that the difference is really in the experience and what we're delivering .

Speaker 3 27:19

And talk to customers , talk to our customers . I mean we have big customers that love our product , that the integration went really really well , things like that . So that's really important for hr to do as well , so do do your diligence .

Speaker 2 27:35

Uh well in our space well , just on that note , we spoke about some of the partners that you guys have earlier . They're very impressive to partners , but any , any use cases that you'd like to highlight and any particular customers that you guys have been working with for a while that you're very proud of and you wanna just do a bit of a shout out on the back .

Speaker 3 27:53

Oh well , I mean , I'm probably not supposed to talk customers . I know there's a few that I can talk about . So Dayton Children's and IU Health and Honor Health are just a few we have . Amtrak uses our product as well , but all of them really have come to us to solve an employee need and all of them are different needs , bill , they're not solving the same problem . Each one of them . Each one of them is solving a unique problem within their employee base and they're doing it through PTO exchange . One of them could be they want to increase the HSA into their , into the accounts . One of them could be I want to get more students paying down loans , or I want to create an emergency cash out scenario .

Speaker 3 28:45

Those are things that each one of them is doing differently as well , as I want to reduce my liability in a very measured way , so as to make sure that we don't have all this money running off the books , so that's kind of , you know , an answer to your question .

Speaker 2 29:09

So , even though you guys have been around for a while , you're very you're very established , well-known company . What I'm just hearing there is , if there's an organization out there , if there's an HR person at an organization out there right now listening to this episode , interested in learning more about what you guys do , have a conversation with you , because actually you may be able to tailor solutions . You may be able to tailor what right you guys provide based on their needs our platform bill is completely configurable .

Speaker 3 29:38

It is it's crazy configurable , meaning that we understand that every PTO plan is different . We know that every employee community is different . We know that HR this year might be trying to address one piece of the employee experience , but next year they'll be addressing another piece of the employee experience . But next year they'll be addressing another piece of the employee experience and our platform because of the way we built it . You can start with one thing , so you could start with . I'm going to allow employees to take 10 hours and put it in their 401k this year .

Speaker 3 30:17

Next year I'm going to allow them to do the 401k and HSA Next year they can . And all of these times when they turn another plan on or another feature , there's no integration , it's just they're turning on a plan on our side and they're activating for their employees and through this mechanism of the benefit platform , it's very seamless and very simple for companies to walk before they run and to be able to continue to add value to their employees as those needs come up .

Speaker 2 30:51

Rob , I like you , this is a good conversation . I could do this for a lot longer . However , our listeners have a certain attention span . We have learned this over the years , so we are going to wrap this up very shortly , before we do . How can our folks , how can our listeners , connect with you so maybe you might want to share , uh , your linkedin email . The rest of it , how can they learn more about all ?

Speaker 3 31:11

yeah , you can . I mean , obviously you can link in with me , uh , via linkedin , rob whalen , and uh . You can reach us at info at ptoexchangecom , uh . You can go to our website at PTO exchangecom or benefitcom , and you know we have a lot of information there on the website for you to download to read yourself if you want to learn more . But you can also just reach out to us and get a quick demo . Spend 30 minutes with us , learn about us and understand that . We know maybe it's not this year that you're thinking about solving this problem , because HR kind of works in these annual purchasing cycles , but to start this year for next year , and that's really what we look at . So reach out to us , talk to us about the regulations . We're more than happy to share with you our knowledge and what other customers are doing and how what they're doing might be beneficial for you and your employees .

Speaker 2 32:11

Excellent , Thank you . We started this conversation today by giving a shout out to Sherm . If folks want to meet you , touch some skin , look you in the eyes or chat with your team in person . Are there any other events that you guys will be exhib out we're involved at for the rest of 2024 and into 2025 ?

Speaker 3 32:29

yeah , so we'll be at hr tech for sure . So I will be there personally at hr tech . Uh , there'll be a number of us there have a booth there can't remember the number , sam's gonna kill me on that one but um , uh , yeah , we'll , we'll be there . Stop by the booth . Uh , put for money . Uh , you know , learn about what what we do , and have a conversation rock and roll .

Speaker 2 32:53

Well , that just leaves me to say for today , rob , thank you very much for being my guest thank you , bill , for having me and hope it was beneficial for all your uh listeners and listeners always . Until next time , happy working .