PayPal and the Financial Wellness Initiative

Sarah Kalloch

Nov 8, 2022

Abstract

In 2015, PayPal and new CEO Dan Schulman embarked on a new mission: using technology to democratize financial services. But when they assessed the financial wellness of their entry-level and frontline employees, they found that their own employees were struggling financially; 65% of respondents to a survey reported that they ran out of money between paychecks. Over the next six months, PayPal created a comprehensive program to improve employees’ financial health, which included reducing healthcare costs, granting stock awards to all employees regardless of level or tenure, raising wages where appropriate, and providing access to personal financial education. Ensuring employees’ financial health was part of PayPal’s approach to multistakeholder capitalism, with Schulman taking a leading role in advocating for worker financial wellness with CEOs across the US. This case takes a deep dive into how workers are compensated and how that impacts business performance, and examines the wider role of business in society and what multistakeholder capitalism means for business leader decision making.

Learning Objectives

To create awareness on the importance of measuring workers’ financial wellness.
To discuss the difference between market wages and living wages and highlight why benchmarking the market for frontline workers often results in high turnover, inability to focus on the job, low productivity and poor service.
To understand how leaders make important investment decisions when they are not able to accurately quantify the NPV ahead of time
To discuss the role of companies in society.

Appropriate for the Following Course(s)

strategy; service operations; operations management; human capital; ethics/leadership