(00:00:05) - Welcome to The HR Tech Spotlight podcast. I'm Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. The HR technology market is crowded, and we know it can be hard to find the best software solutions for your business in the sea of sameness. On this podcast, we shine a spotlight on some of the best up-and-coming technology options out there. Check it out if you are interested in learning about new, innovative solutions available in the market. And if you are with an HR tech company and interested in being considered for a guest spot. Stay tuned for details at the end of the show.
(00:00:45) - Hi everybody. On this episode of the HR Tech Spotlight, we're exploring E4E relief relief, a tech-enabled service that partners with organizations to deliver financial relief to workers around the globe during times of crisis, disaster and hardship. Here to talk about E4E relief is president and CEO Holly Welch Stubbing. Welcome, Holly. It's great to have you on the show.
(00:01:07) - Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate being here.
(00:01:11) - So, Holly, tell us about your background in the HR tech space.
(00:01:16) - Well, I'm. I have to say I am new-ish to the HR tech space, but not necessarily new to supporting the wellbeing of workers. I, um, I came to the space from, um, maybe an unusual spot, and that is many years in philanthropy and in supporting, um, very, you know, various grant opportunities for corporations, families and non-profit organizations over the years and through working in that sector, developed a product that has really, um, taken off and become, you know, a necessary part of how corporations think about supporting the wellbeing of the workforce.
(00:01:59) - Let's talk a bit about E4E Relief. Um, tell us more about what your organization does.
(00:02:06) - E4E Relief is a social enterprise that provides grants to individuals who experience an unexpected crisis. Um, that manifests itself in the form of direct cash grant awards to persons who might experience a climate event. Um, they might have impact from a geopolitical event.
(00:02:29) - They might be in a position to not be able to withstand financially an unexpected event, like a medical issue or some other, um, some other unexpected crisis. And so the, the opportunity is that a company puts this program in place and the employee or others contractors, other extended workforce members can apply for a grant, um, based on this event, and we will review the application and determine whether or not, um, a grant should be awarded. And then we award grants directly to the individual, uh, in the form of a payment. To them and E4E was formed out of 9/11. So we've been around a while. Um, and what happened was there were financial service institutions in our community where we operate very large companies that experienced, um, a loss on that tragic day. And we set up programs to support the families of those that were lost at 9/11 and those, uh, that learning and those relationships of working with the families ultimately had us form, I think, some of the first employee relief programs that existed.
(00:03:44) - And in doing that, we began supporting employees across the country or these companies. And then other companies came to us and said, well, you do this. And we started getting contacted from companies all over the country who wanted to set up these programs. And so, you know, flash forward, um, some 20, 23 years later and we are still in the business, but now operating, uh, for 155 companies and 6 million people across the globe. So around 1.5 million of those are outside the United States now. So the vast majority are in the US. But there are also, uh, workforce members that people are supporting, um, supporting all literally all over the world. We've made grants in over 120 countries.
(00:04:31) - So obviously you're supporting organizations, doing a lot of really good things to support people in communities where disasters are happening or employees that are going through situations. Tell us a little bit about the technology that is powering or enabling all of this to happen for organizations.
(00:04:50) - Yeah. So just so we have some wrapper around it.
(00:04:54) - We are a grantmaker only to individuals, not to institutions or organizations, only to individuals. And so the reason that we need the technology is because this has to be done at scale. And it's about volume. When there is a major of crisis that happens in the world, a lot of people are typically impacted by it. When we think about Ukraine, when we think about Israel and the Middle East, right now, we have lots of people that might be working for, uh, US-based or US operating companies where a, a C level group wants to support that group of people. So the technology is a platform. It's a multi-tenant platform that we launched this past year. But we've had we've been working on it for many years. Um, but we did we launched it in June. And the the idea of it is to verify the population, um, apply and decide and pay digitally across the globe. And so we've built the technology to know that you work for GrowthMode Marketing, whether or not you have an event, the qualification of that event, and what types of expenses that we should we would pay you for.
(00:06:01) - And then. You know, on onto the onto the pavement, if that makes sense.
(00:06:11) - Absolutely. When you look at the market and the options that may be out there for organizations who are looking at implementing these type of programs, what would you say is E for Relief's unique point of view or differentiation in the market?
(00:06:29) - Yeah. So a couple of things about the product. Then I'll talk about it for relief. So I think what makes this highly relevant right now is you have a set of climate conditions operating in the world. You have macro trends that are making employees face unexpected hardships more frequently. So you have hurricanes and typhoons and heat waves and earthquakes and all of those types of things that are drivers of unexpected events. You have geopolitics, which I mentioned a couple of examples of, and then you have these sort of economic financial hardships that drive a set of, um, needs that employees, contractors and key supply chain members have. And so what every is built is an end-to-end turnkey solution, um, that delivers the people, process and technology to outsource this offering, um, for a company.
(00:07:25) - And so how we're thinking about E3 relief in terms of differentiation and or what do we offer in the market that's unique? One of the things that we launched last year is impact stack. And impact stack is an outcomes-based tool that's embedded in the platform that allows a company to measure the results of these grants, the emotional and financial well-being and financial stability of their workforce, and the retention, productivity and engagement scores of those who receive the grants. And so there's research done kind of at event and research done 45 days after. And then we are taking that research, turning it around and embedding it in the platform for the um. The company to see. And so that has been, um, very, uh, received very well by the companies that we're working with. Uh, the statistics in those 81% of those who've received a grant regained financial stability, 54%, um, improved their mental and emotional well-being as a result of of getting them. And the productivity scores are very high. People are able to make sense, return back to work more quickly as a result of having some support.
(00:08:39) - In many instances, we're trying to evacuate, you know, help with their evacuation expenses. So the idea of being able to return to work is actually directly connected to the grant funding. Um, but the idea about impact stack is that for the largest companies out there, they're able to use, um, this for their ESG sustainability reporting, for their corporate citizenship reporting and for other things that they want to both say. These are things that we're doing, uh, for our own workforce that we're proud of and that we believe in, but then also report kind of back to their own workforce, if you will, on what how they're using it. So that would be one differentiating feature for us of the technology.
(00:09:21) - And I'm curious, are organizations using effort relief just for large scale type of situations, or are they using them off of the like? Let's say an employee has a house fire, you know, and it's it's isolated to a small population of your employment.
(00:09:39) - It's a terrific question. Um, it's actually we have about 70 events that a company can cover, including economic hardship or personal disaster.
(00:09:48) - So hearts of house fire would be sort of a personal disaster. Um, an economic hardship would be, um, a short-term medical issue that you can't you for some reason, you can't pay. So let's say it's a substantial, uh, medical expense. And the company has put in place this kind of gap coverage, if you will. It's not really gap coverage, but it serves a purpose for a low to moderate-income population. So it is both traditional economic hardships as we think about them and catastrophic disaster and personal disaster. And we've mapped the product back to back to, um, IRS requirements around what is charitable. So the nice thing about the product is that you notice I opened by saying we're a social enterprise. And the reason for that is because we we need the philanthropy element in order for that to be for a person or a company to be able to donate in and for a grant to be able to come out without, um, being included in adjusted gross income of the individual.
(00:10:49) - So that sort of helps. Um, the, the, um, you know, the, the impact of the grant be higher because there's no income tax, um, coming out, but it has to meet a set of IRS requirements in order for that to be true. And so that is really what we've built. The platform contains skip logic and other algorithms that are built to spec around the IRS requirements, so that those who meet those requirements will get a grant, and those who don't will not.
(00:11:21) - So I imagine there are situations where an organization doesn't have a solution like this. And then some type of disaster happens in a community where they have a location, let's say there's flooding or tornado that impacts a lot of their employees, and suddenly they're like, we want to do something to help these employees. Is it possible to set this up quickly in those type of instances, or what's the process look like?
(00:11:50) - Yeah. No, it absolutely does happen that way. Exactly. And, um, it is possible to set it up at the time of event, and we do it all the time.
(00:11:59) - And that's probably our most active time during, during a business development process. So think about something like the Maui wildfires we had. We have a lot of hospitality clients. So we have several people think working in those hotels who were dramatically impacted by the Maui wildfires. And the um, leadership and air leadership of the company wants to do something immediately. And so having the program is a readiness response for something like that. However, there were those who did not have the program who contacted us and said, I need a program, and I need it now because of the severity of what happened on the ground in Maui. And we have several stories related to Hurricane Dora that are, gosh, they're so hard to read and they're so hard to hear about where in the blink of an eye, a family lost everything they had. And not only did they lose everything they had, they almost lost their lives because they were. They couldn't move fast enough to get out of the way, you know? So because in that particular case, not a lot of warning there.
(00:13:04) - Right. Um, in terms of what was to happen. And then, you know, you have the stories around, um, domestic violence or places where, um, the fund just helps re evacuate a person and get them out of harm's way. Um, and, you know, we do that for a low to moderate income population when that is happening. And the reason for that is because the product has to map to those income requirements. So those are two examples. You know, house fire is a great example that you mentioned earlier. Um, but a lot of activity around climate related events, um, hurricanes and typhoons, you know, the severity of those seems to be ticking up. And the, you know, what happens on the ground is we lose internet access, we lose phone, we lose a lot of things for a while, you know, and, um, sometimes we lose a lot of property, you know, and we don't have anywhere for folks to live. We lose restaurants and bank branches.
(00:14:03) - And so if we're serving a corporate audience that has those things, you know, those those workers can't even go to work because there's nowhere to go to work, you know? So I think that's the part that people are grappling with in a, in a way that certainly we've had for centuries. But the severity and the number, the frequency is going up.
(00:14:26) - What type of companies are really the best fit for E4E solutions?
(00:14:33) - We serve companies of 1000 to north of 850,000 employees. So the solution works across the board and the way the technology has been built. It does allow us to scale in the event of a major crisis. Um, our ideal corporate size, you know, is probably north of 2500, but truly, anything between 2500 and something very large that the technology works. But just as well, um, I think the what, what changes is not so much the technology there, but the financial model. So if I'm a large company, I'm going to probably have consistent use of the program once it's announced, because I have enough people where something is always going on.
(00:15:19) - If I'm a small firm, I might only have 1 or 2 people a year, but when I have those 1 or 2 people, it's very visible and people know and it's and it's a way of, um, having something in place for the next time something happens.
(00:15:35) - You've already mentioned, you know, a few stories about the impact that you've seen organizations have that work with your company. Are there any other pieces of information that you'd add to that? For someone that's considering whether this is the right investment for their organization?
(00:15:53) - Yeah, I would say, um. Some of the things that we're seeing a lot of in the workforce, you know, people are talking about not only these macro macroeconomic trends I've mentioned, but also, um, the mental health and well-being of the workforce. And so if I were to talk about examples there, there are, um. A number of different, um. Events that are driving people to look at the program. But we did just recently put in place a mental health and wellbeing set of events so that a company can add that and provide, um, behavioral therapy, counseling, you know, other things that can support the, um, the recommendations of physicians, you know, to implement.
(00:16:40) - And a lot of times, um, mental health and well-being is covered differently at different firms. Some have deep offerings there, some have less so. And so that's another example. I would say that where we are helping people, um, move through a myriad of benefits and options and providing another space for them to have support.
(00:17:04) - Kind of piggybacking off of that, you know, what is the future vision for E4 e relief?
(00:17:11) - We are. You know, we've made this investment in the platform and we're going to continue to, to, um, enhance our customer and applicant experience. We offer this globally. And so we need to be, uh, really constantly looking and journey mapping, if you will, the experience of an applicant worldwide. The program, um, operates in, uh, 120 countries, but it's the platform is now in 12 native languages. And we made the investment in native languages instead of machine translation, because the uniqueness of talking about difficult things in multiple languages around, um, death or domestic violence or, um, topics that culturally change in language and they can be misconstrued easily.
(00:18:00) - Uh, so we made a very strategic decision to invest there. So I guess I would say if we're talking in the future of the, of the of the platform and the company, we are doing a few things. One, we're, we're continuing to make investments in that experience. Two, we are going deep into impact stack. We've got, um, a standard set of availability in the platform today. We'd like to continue to develop that and offer more about, um, things that companies want to know about how their people are feeling and thinking in these difficult moments. Um, so that would be another element. And then the other is just the adjacent the adjacent areas where relief is, is becoming more of interest. So we've we've had reach out from a lot of different audiences about, um, providing these types of grants more. Most recently, we closed a tenant relief program for a publicly traded REIT, um, where they're offering relief, uh, payments to tenants who experience a disaster or hardship.
(00:19:04) - And it is entirely to better support the key stakeholder of a real estate investment trust. So that's an example of kind of an extension, if you will, of the existing product to a new audience. And, but for a similar reason.
Speaker 4 (00:19:23) - What type of things.
(00:19:24) - Would you recommend someone that is considering purchasing or working with this type of service? Take into account as they evaluate their options.
(00:19:35) - Well, a lot of times, um, companies are coming to this from a couple of different vantage points. One one is maybe a sea level required response in a major disaster where they're constantly, you know, adjudicating a disaster across the world and what they're going to do. And then the other is a stream of hardships that HR departments regularly see and are quietly handling, but are looking for a way to create equity and inclusion across the workforce and treat people similarly. Because what happens is, you know, I know, I know Suzy and Suzy gets a bunch of folks to throw $5 or $20 in a hat, and then we give Suzy the the money because she had a house fire.
(00:20:17) - Where, you know, Jane over here, nobody knows. She just got there. Nobody does anything. You know, and particularly in a post-Covid world where we've got hybrid workforces and people know each other, maybe a little bit less than they used to. This idea of creating equity and readiness is. Kind of what people are thinking about. So when people think about whether or not they want to do this, a lot of times they are facing the pain, if you will, is both the next disaster or the next hardship for the HR department. And sometimes companies have both at the same time, and they've woven those two things together, and sometimes they're independent things. But as people think about it, they need to think about how they're going to fund the program a lot these programs, the nice thing is they can be funded with either corporate dollars or foundation-type dollars, philanthropy dollars. So it can come from both places. And it does. Um, so they need to think about funding. They need to think about the types of events and how many and what they want to cover, which is going to be a cost driver of the program.
(00:21:18) - Over time, they want to think about how aware they want people to be about it. Some companies are quietly setting it up and they quietly offer it, and other companies have it in flashing lights, and they want everybody to know because they want it used, you know. So I think it totally, they're just a set of factors to say, am I ready, you know, for this conversation. And the readiness is typically coming from some pain somewhere. But and if they don't have the pain then it seems like a nice thing to do. But it typically takes longer to move through a process. Does that make sense?
(00:21:56) - That makes sense and that's great advice. What final thoughts do you want to leave our audience with?
(00:22:03) - Well, I think, as you know, we have a changing world among us right now. We have the use of technology proliferating, and we have a scenario where technology can be applied to a workforce and lots of different ways to improve the outcome of an organization.
(00:22:20) - And I think this is just another example of a lot of times people are running these programs, like off Google Forms or very quietly like there's a selection committee that's a narrow band of characters. So a lot of times there are companies that have had to form these habits and organizations around things like this that happen and, and this solution professionalize that and allows them to get out of, you know, the, the administration of it and back into the role that they're supposed to play for the company that they're offering. So I would just say, you know, we sort of stand ready to, um, serve and be ready for the next crisis to help support the well-being of the workforce in general, both, to your point, earlier through hardships and disasters, but also professionalizing and putting capital investments into the technology to allow this to continue to grow, because without it, it tends to be, um, very hard on an HR or a CSR team during crisis because they are then having to manage. It's kind of a well-being issue for them, right, because they're constantly having to, um, address, you know, what's going on in this place or that place.
(00:23:32) - And some of the companies are so large that they've got entire teams set up for that. A lot of companies that we work with are in that 5 to 25,000 person space, and they don't have the teams to, to manage that. Um, and so this can really help them, you know, the well-being of that team, but also just professionalize the solution.
(00:23:54) - Where can our listeners go to learn more about E4E relief?
(00:23:59) - We have a website that we're really proud of, and it's freerelief.org. And hope that everybody will take a look at both our offering and the technology we've built to support doing something, doing well by doing good. As we say that that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to do the right thing for the workforce across the globe.
(00:24:25) - Awesome. Thanks for joining me today to shine a spotlight on your company. Holly, it was great to have you on the show and learn about how your organization is helping other companies support their employees through difficult times.
(00:24:38) - I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. I loved being with you this afternoon.
(00:24:44) - Thank you.
(00:24:51) - Thanks for listening to this episode of The HR Tech Spotlight podcast, where we showcase some of the best up-and-coming HR technology options in the market. If you are an HR tech company leader who would like to be considered for a guest spot on this program, please contact me via GrowthMode Marketing.
(00:25:11) - Or reach out to me, Deanna Shimota, on LinkedIn. And if you found this show informative, subscribe. Connect with us on social media and leave a review.
(00:25:21) - This is Deanna with GrowthMode Marketing signing off. Thanks for listening. We hope you'll tune in again next time.