We are not going to solve every problem your HR team faces. At least, not alone! And I think that is an honest place to start.
SideUp was created to help people navigate the rising cost of living at a time when inflation and salaries are not always moving together. In contrast, employers are spending more to attract and retain talent. When expenses rise faster than income, the relationship between employers and employees needs to be rethought, right?
Strengthening that relationship in a difficult economic environment is not always obvious. Benefits can help, but a benefits platform cannot solve problems of culture, leadership, development or compensation on its own. What it can do is give companies a concrete way to show that they understand an employee’s life does not end when they close their laptop.
And feeling valued matters!
Recent research shows that financial stress is affecting both employees and the businesses they work for. In PwC’s 2026 Employee Financial Wellness Survey, 59% of respondents said they were currently stressed about their finances. Among Gen Z respondents, 85% said financial stress affects their mental health and 71% reported reduced productivity. Almost half (49%) also said their compensation is not keeping up with rising costs. [1]
This pressure does not stay at home. According to data reported by SHRM, employees lose more than seven hours of productivity per week, on average, because of financial stress — a problem estimated to cost U.S. employers $183 billion annually. [2]
When employees are given support that is relevant to their lives, whether that means help with everyday spending, wellness, transport, education or family needs, companies can make their investment more tangible and useful.
I often describe SideUp as a solution to a three-part challenge: cost efficiency, talent retention and financial wellness.
A good benefits platform can help a company use its budget more effectively, strengthen the employee experience and give people more freedom to choose what actually fits their lives.
When benefits are relevant and easy to use, they have a better chance of supporting engagement, belonging, attraction and retention.
Gallup’s meta-analysis of more than 112,000 work units and 2.7 million employees found that teams in the top engagement quartile had 18% to 43% lower turnover than teams in the bottom quartile, depending on the organization’s baseline turnover rate. The same research connected engagement with productivity, profitability, customer loyalty and wellbeing.
But there is an important question: what happens when a company implements a benefits solution but does not take care of its culture? When it does not invest in employee development and upskilling? When it does not encourage a healthy life inside and outside the workplace? Or when it does not give people the freedom to choose the extras that best fit their needs and the needs of their loved ones?
The benefit may exist, but it will not necessarily be experienced as value
A huge catalogue is not necessarily a relevant one. Having dozens of options does not mean people will use their benefits. Sometimes what is missing is not supply, is connection.
An employee needs to look at a benefit and think: “Okay, this could genuinely help me.” It might support student loan repayment, food, fitness, family care, essential bills, education or another part of life that normally sits outside the corporate conversation.
So the real question is not just whether a company offers benefits. It is whether employees will actually use them — and whether that investment will create value beyond the benefits budget.
Will it help someone manage the rising cost of living? Will it fit into their lifestyle? Will it be easy to access and trustworthy? And can it also support the businesses, providers and communities connected to that employee’s everyday life?
These are not questions a company can answer alone. A benefit reaches its full potential when the right providers, brokers, local businesses, HR systems and technology partners are involved.
That is why we believe a benefits platform should not operate like an island. It needs to be connected to a network of partners that understands different needs, contexts and moments in people’s lives.
In International Relations, which is proudly my formal field of study, we learn that relationships between different parties do not always have to be understood as a competition where one side’s gain is the other side’s loss. Game theory helps us look at these relationships differently: the outcome depends not only on what each party does individually, but also on how their decisions interact.
In business strategy, Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff developed a similar idea in Co-opetition: companies can cooperate and compete at the same time to create more value. They call this coopetition — a combination of cooperation and competition.
In the benefits ecosystem, this dynamic is everywhere.
The employer wants to control costs and offer a better experience. The employee wants benefits that fit their reality. The broker needs to recommend reliable solutions. The benefit provider wants to reach a qualified audience. And the platform needs to connect these interests in a simple, measurable and sustainable way.
These interests are not identical. And that is okay. A good partnership does not require everyone to have the exact same objective, it requires enough shared interest for everyone to have a reason to make the relationship work.
When that alignment is missing, the experience becomes fragmented. The employer offers a benefit employees do not use. The provider struggles to reach the right audience. The broker does not get the support needed to deliver value.
But a true partnership is not about one side winning at the expense of another. It is about creating a situation where both sides can win — and no one has to lose for the other to benefit.
Good intentions are not enough to build a sustainable ecosystem. Partnerships also need focus, process and continuous learning.
That is where the principles of Predictable Revenue, by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler, can help. Growth should not depend only on occasional opportunities; it needs a repeatable process for identifying, qualifying and supporting the right partners.
For SideUp, that means defining the problem we want to solve, targeting partners who share our values and audience, and measuring what happens after the partnership begins — from onboarding and partner activity to benefits utilization and employee impact.
A signed agreement is only the beginning. A partnership becomes strategic when it can be repeated, improved and scaled without losing quality.
SideUp has developed different ways to connect with the market because no single player can solve this entire equation alone.
Brokers, consultants, benefit providers, insurers, HR systems, accountants, local businesses. All kinds of businesses can bring something different to the table. Each one has its own expertise, audience, or layer of trust.
Wellness, insurance and perk brands for example, can join as benefit providers, reaching employees at companies already on the platform and allowing them to use their benefits directly with these partners.
A shout-out to companies such as The Electric Car Scheme, SeniorCare by Lottie, GoodPaye, Smart Pension and EGYM Hussle, among many others, which are already recommended to our users!
There is also the local marketplace, with shops, gyms, restaurants and other services that can be discovered by people looking for ways to use their benefits close to where they live and work. And if you are a local business or simply know a great coffee shop, gym, restaurant or service that should be part of the network please let us know here and help us make employee benefits more useful in everyday life.
HR consultancies, accounting firms and HR systems can recommend SideUp to their clients, offering a ready-made solution to simplify benefits administration and complement their existing services.
Brokers, consultants and agencies can act as resellers, adding the platform to their portfolio while receiving sales, onboarding and support from our team.
What connects all of these paths is the same question: how can we go further together than we ever could alone?
Partnerships are not automatically good just because they look good on paper.
They can fail when the partner has no real connection with the audience, when communication is confusing, when no one knows who owns support or when incentives are misaligned. They can also fail when a company measure signed contracts but not usage or builds a marketplace full of options but empty of relevance.
That is why choosing a partner requires more than looking at brand recognition, reach, or price. We need to understand whether there is complementarity, trust, operational capacity, service quality, integration, compliance, and a willingness to learn together.
In the end, the most important question may be: does this partner make the employee experience better, or does it simply make the ecosystem bigger?
SideUp is not going to solve every HR challenge on its own. And it should not promise to.
But with the right partners, we can help companies build a benefits experience that is more efficient, more human and more connected to real life.
And at a time when the cost of living, retention and financial wellbeing are increasingly connected, perhaps this is exactly how the future of benefits begins: not with one company trying to do everything, but with a network of partners willing to share what they do best.
This is why partner initiatives, events, industry gatherings, joint content and local activations matter so much. They help SideUp listen to the market, understand new needs and turn a partnership into something alive, not a contract that gets forgotten after it is signed.
Our upcoming initiatives include:
Are you a broker, consultant, HR platform, wellness provider, insurer, local business or benefits brand looking to reach more people and create more value?
Let’s talk. Email us at partnerships@sideup.com and tell us what you do, who you serve and how you think we could work together.
[1] PwC. 2026 Employee Financial Wellness Survey.
[2] SHRM. Employees’ Financial Stress Is Costing Employers Billions.
[3] Gallup. The Benefits of Employee Engagement.
[4] Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff. Co-opetition.
[5] Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler. 15-Minute Summary of Predictable Revenue.
[6] Predictable Revenue. The Sales Development Methodology.
[7] SideUp. Partner with SideUp.
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