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Benefits April 22, 2026
Employers Can ‘Bend or Lose’ on Flexible Work Arrangements
According to retirement experts, the employer-first mentality is a thing of the past.
Reported by
Emily Boyle
Employers, beware: Offering flexibility may be essential to keep pace with the future of benefits and the changing workforce.
“It’s always been ‘employer first,’” says Marcia Mantell, president of Mantell Retirement Consulting Inc. “The employer [sets] the lay of the land and the rules of the road, and you play by them or you leave.”
Mantell says that since the COVID-19 pandemic, in contrast, that mentality has turned upside down. In response to employee demands for hybrid, remote and other flexible work, “employers have largely had to bend or lose,” she says.
According to research in the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans’ “Flexible Work and Part-Time Benefits: 2025 Survey Report,” hybrid and fully remote work ranked among surveyed employers’ most frequently offered workplace schedules, at 80% and 53%, respectively.
In addition to most employers reporting that they offered hybrid schedules—defined as “working in the office with designated remote days”—respondents shared several other flexible arrangements that feature on their benefits lists:
- Flexible work hours/flextime, meaning alternative starting and ending times of the workday within a definitive time frame (62%);
- Fully remote work (53%);
- Part-time schedules (43%); and
- Compressed work schedules, characterized as working a traditional 40-hour workweek in fewer than five workdays (25%).
“Will we ever go back to a pre-COVID world?” asks Dawn Carpenter, the Milken Institute’s director of financial longevity. “My understanding and expectation is: ‘No.’”
Family Matters
Among Millennials, who made up the largest share of the workforce last year, 79% were likely to be caregivers of children, according to Principal’s Work and Worth Survey, published this month. The same share, 79%, also were likely to have access to paid parental, family and/or medical leave, and 70% reported being likely to have access to flexible work arrangements, including remote and hybrid work or flexible hours.
During a recent conversation Mantell had with a Millennial who intended to soon start a family, Mantell says she learned the young woman would be highly inclined to find a new job if her company were to slash the generosity of its parental leave policy. To the aspiring mother, the policy was non-negotiable.
“Once you become responsible for a child, the game is completely different,” Mantell says.
Despite that sentiment, Deloitte announced this month cuts to parental leave, annual paid time off, and in-vitro fertilization funding, as well as pension benefit freezes, effective January 2027, as first reported by Business Insider. The cuts would apply to employees in Deloitte’s “Center” talent model, which includes information technology and finance roles. Earlier this year, Zoom also scaled back its parental leave benefits, a spokesperson for the company confirmed: Birth parents now receive 18 weeks of paid parental leave, down from 22 to 24, and non-birth parents get 10 weeks, down from 16.
A spokesperson from Deloitte told Business Insider that benefits “will be tailored for a small subset of professionals to better align with the marketplace.” Meanwhile, Deloitte reported U.S. revenue of $35.7 billion for the year ending May 2025—an 8% increase on the previous year—so cost-cutting may not be the only part of the equation.
Deloitte did not respond to a request for comment.
Other family-oriented benefits are likely be top of mind for parents and future parents, as well.
“If you’re not getting what you feel are good enough benefits at your company, you go look for a company that has particularly better health care—more affordable insurance—for you and your new family,” Mantell adds.
Bank of America Workplace Benefits’ “2025 Workplace Benefits Report” revealed that 24% of employees surveyed said they recently left—or considered leaving—their company because their workplace benefits were lacking, up from 15% who said the same in 2023.
While parental leave and family health insurance prices may be important to a crowd in its prime childbearing and child-caring phases, Mantell says older employees’ loyalty is likely driven by the retirement benefits an employer provides. While a 60-year-old may not benefit from a paid parental leave policy, a higher 401(k) contribution match and an option to stay home from work once per week would be attractive to any employee.
“When we have four or five generations in the workforce, the benefits need to be tied better to age cohorts,” Mantell says. “There’s a way to do this on a much more equitable level, but you’d have to be creative and willing to restructure [your benefits] a bit.”
Benefits Driving Loyalty
Benefits are not only attractive perks in the eyes of employees—they are also tools for employers to attract and retain both talent and institutional knowledge.
“Benefits are one of those tools that companies use that engender loyalty and trust within a business,” Carpenter says.
Employees with access to retirement, health and wellness benefits—including health insurance, employee wellness support programs and wellness or fitness stipends, regardless of their utilization of them—were 22% more loyal to their employers, Principal’s survey found. Paid family care options, including financial assistance for caregiving and paid parental leave lasting longer than six weeks, followed closely, at 20%. Principal defined loyalty as the degree to which a respondent was interested in leaving their job.
Caregivers with access to financial caregiving assistance were 2.5 times more likely to report feeling their employer-sponsored benefits were tailored to their current life situation, according to the survey.
“While raises and benefits like health insurance are expected, the ‘rare’ benefits (like financial assistance for care) are outsize drivers of loyalty and wellbeing for caregiver employees,” the survey report stated.
Phasing Out
Phased retirement is also becoming a more popular workplace benefit. Mantell says the option to scale down work before fully retiring tends to be a significant motivator for workers well into their 60s, who may be trying to work until they reach age 67 to claim full Social Security benefits or to 70 for delayed retirement credits that can increase their Social Security payments.
According to Fidelity International’s Global Sentiment Survey 2024, 76% of employees surveyed around the world considered phased retirement options as important or very important workplace benefits when deciding whether to stay with an organization.
Mantell says she often sees employers offer a three-year phased retirement option: employees work full-time for one final year, then 75% of a full-time year, and finally half-time during the third year, after which they retire. She says employers may offer employees incentives such as the ability to stay on the company health plan after they retire and until they are eligible for Medicare, typically at age 65.
The other phased retirement model is more abrupt, Mantell says. At the end of a large project, typically one involving technological advancements that make some workers’ jobs more obsolete, an employer might offer workers a buyout to retire between three and six months from the time of the offer, typically with a much larger incentive than the phased option. While employees might not have been considering retirement before the buyout offer, the offer may be too good to refuse, especially if employees believe a layoff might be coming in the not-so-distant future, she says.
Mantell does not believe the more abrupt model was as popular 10 to 12 years ago, when members of the youngest cohort of Baby Boomers—now reaching age 62 and closer to retirement—was only in its 50s. Employees in that group could be optimal candidates for phased retirement options, as employers may also eye bringing in a new generation of workers they expect to be more technologically advanced.
Phased retirement policies help employers by allowing them to keep, develop or institutionalize core knowledge, Carpenter says. She sees it as a “bridge,” rather than an abrupt “cliff” of mandatory retirement at a specific age.
Aside from offering phased retirement options, companies can also create mentorship programs so that older, more tenured employees can “create systems or knowledge time capsules” for younger workers, Carpenter says, an option that leans toward Mantell’s idea of effectively supporting multiple age cohorts.
“The speed of technology has forced employers to find more creative ways to address the very real issue of balance,” Mantell says. “You need some experience, but you really need the influx of the new kids on the block.”
Fidelity’s Global Sentiment Survey was conducted among more than 37,000 working adults across 34 international markets between June and September 2024.
Principal’s Work and Worth Survey was conducted in November 2025 among 2,001 U.S. employees.
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