Employee benefits are increasingly being designed around the realities of modern life — from mental health and family planning to student debt and financial flexibility. Kimley-Horn’s fourth appearance on the 2026 PEOPLE Companies that Care list highlights how employers are using broader benefits, community programmes and sustainability initiatives to compete for talent.

For employers competing for engineers, planners, architects and other highly skilled professionals, salary is only one part of the talent equation.

Employees increasingly expect employers to support the broader circumstances of their lives — including family responsibilities, mental health, financial pressure and personal development.

Kimley-Horn’s recognition on PEOPLE magazine and Great Place To Work’s 2026 Companies that Care list illustrates that shift.

The engineering and infrastructure consulting firm has earned a place on the list for the fourth time. The recognition is based on employee survey data and company submissions covering workplace practices related to employees, communities and sustainability.

This year’s list drew on more than 1.3 million employee survey responses and data representing the experiences of more than 7.3 million employees, according to Great Place To Work.

For HR leaders, the significance goes beyond one employer ranking. The benefits Kimley-Horn highlights reflect a broader evolution in total rewards: companies are increasingly competing for talent by addressing the financial, family and wellbeing issues employees encounter outside the traditional workplace.

Benefits are becoming more personalized

Kimley-Horn has expanded a range of employee support programmes, including mental health resources, healthcare coverage and family-focused benefits.

Its offering includes adoption and surrogacy assistance, fertility support and an enhanced New Parent Leave programme that increased from two weeks to six weeks.

That reflects a fundamental change in how employee benefits are designed.

Traditional benefits packages tend to be relatively standardized. Newer approaches increasingly recognize that employees have different financial obligations, family structures and life stages.

For HR technology vendors, that creates demand for systems capable of supporting more personalized benefits experiences.

Benefits administration platforms now increasingly need to accommodate different eligibility rules, voluntary benefits, personalized communications and digital decision support.

The challenge is making that complexity invisible to employees.

A benefits programme can be generous on paper but ineffective if employees cannot understand it, access it or determine which offerings are relevant to them.

Financial wellbeing becomes part of total rewards

Kimley-Horn’s retirement and financial benefits also illustrate how employers are responding to changing employee financial pressures.

The firm’s 401(k) programme includes a 2-to-1 employer match, while a student-loan provision allows eligible employees to address education debt while continuing to receive the full employer match.

Student debt has become an increasingly important consideration for younger workers, making benefits that connect retirement planning with debt management particularly relevant.

The firm’s KH My Way Dollars programme takes personalization a step further by giving employees financial rewards they can use according to their individual priorities.

That approach fits into a wider movement toward flexible compensation and personalized total rewards.

Instead of assuming every employee values the same benefit equally, employers are increasingly looking for ways to give workers greater control over where benefits or financial incentives create value.

HR technology plays a crucial role here because individualized benefits require more sophisticated eligibility, payroll, communication and reporting infrastructure.

Community impact becomes part of employer brand

The company’s employee proposition also extends beyond workplace benefits.

Through the Kimley-Horn Foundation, the firm donated nearly $2 million to nonprofit organizations in 2025, supporting causes including environmental conservation and disaster relief.

That matters in a labour market where employees increasingly evaluate employers according to values as well as compensation.

Community involvement can also strengthen employee engagement when workers have meaningful opportunities to participate in causes they care about.

But there is an important distinction between corporate philanthropy and employee experience.

Writing a large cheque does not automatically produce engagement. The more strategic opportunity lies in connecting corporate giving with employee participation and the communities where organizations operate.

For large employers, HR, corporate social responsibility and employee engagement teams are consequently becoming more interconnected.

Sustainability enters the talent conversation

Kimley-Horn’s sustainability positioning is also closely connected to its business.

As an engineering and infrastructure consultancy, the company’s projects influence transportation, development, water systems and other physical infrastructure.

That creates a direct link between sustainability commitments and the work employees perform.

For professional-services organizations, this can be particularly powerful.

Employees can see sustainability not simply as an internal corporate policy but as an outcome of their professional expertise.

The dynamic is part of a larger shift in employer branding. Companies increasingly want employees to understand how their work contributes to broader environmental or social objectives.

That can influence recruitment, particularly for younger professionals evaluating employers based on mission and impact.

HR technology has to catch up with the benefits strategy

The more personalized employee benefits become, the more difficult they are to administer manually.

Employers need technology capable of handling complex benefit eligibility, employee communications, payroll integration, retirement contributions, leave administration and personalized recommendations.

That is where the broader HCM ecosystem — including platforms from Workday, UKG, ADP, SAP and Oracle — is evolving.

Artificial intelligence could add another layer by helping employees navigate benefits or allowing HR teams to identify patterns in utilization and employee needs.

But personalization creates its own risks.

Employee financial and family information is sensitive, and HR organizations must maintain clear boundaries around how data is collected, analyzed and used.

The strongest employee experience platforms will therefore need to combine convenience with transparency and privacy.

The new definition of a caring employer

Kimley-Horn’s recognition reflects a broader shift in the definition of workplace quality.

Being a good employer increasingly means more than offering competitive salaries and healthcare.

It can mean helping employees manage parenthood, mental health, student debt, retirement, family planning and personal priorities while creating opportunities to contribute to their communities.

That does not make every benefit equally valuable for every employee. In fact, it reinforces the need for flexibility.

For HR leaders, the strategic question is becoming less “What benefits should we add?” and more “How can we give employees meaningful support across different stages of life?”

That shift could reshape the next generation of HR technology.

Benefits platforms will increasingly be expected to operate less like administrative databases and more like personalized employee experience systems.

Kimley-Horn’s fourth appearance on the Companies that Care list is therefore part of a larger trend: employers are competing for talent by investing not just in the workplace, but in the lives employees lead around it.

Market Landscape

The employee benefits market is moving toward personalization, financial wellbeing and life-stage support.

Traditional HCM platforms increasingly connect benefits administration with payroll, talent management, employee engagement and workforce analytics. At the same time, specialized benefits technology companies are building platforms focused on areas such as fertility, family benefits, financial wellbeing, mental health and personalized benefits navigation.

The broader economic context helps explain the shift. KFF’s 2025 Employer Health Benefits Survey found that average annual premiums for employer-sponsored family coverage reached $26,993, putting continued pressure on employers to balance benefits competitiveness with cost management.

Meanwhile, the financial wellbeing component of benefits is expanding beyond retirement plans. Student debt assistance, flexible financial rewards and personalized benefits are becoming part of total-rewards strategies.

For HR leaders, the competitive advantage increasingly comes from making complex benefits understandable and useful rather than simply adding more programmes.

AI may help by personalizing benefits recommendations, answering employee questions and identifying utilization patterns. But employee trust, data privacy and human oversight will remain essential.

Top Insights

• Kimley-Horn’s fourth Companies that Care recognition highlights a broader HR shift, with employers expanding benefits around mental health, families, finances and different employee life stages.
• Personalized benefits are becoming a talent strategy, as flexible rewards allow employees to direct employer support toward retirement, family needs, education debt or personal priorities.
• Financial wellbeing is moving beyond retirement planning, with student-loan assistance and flexible financial rewards becoming increasingly relevant components of enterprise total-rewards programmes.
• Community impact and sustainability are strengthening employer brands, particularly for professional-services organizations whose employees can directly connect their work with social and environmental outcomes.
• HR technology must support greater benefits complexity, combining personalization, employee experience, analytics and privacy while keeping increasingly diverse programmes easy to navigate.

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