How to Support Your Global Workforce with Lifestyle Spending Accounts

The modern workplace has no borders. With remote work reshaping how companies build teams, 77% of executives report difficulty finding skilled talent in their local markets. The natural response? Casting a wider net and hiring internationally, building diverse teams that span continents, time zones, and cultures.

But here’s where many companies hit a wall: Once you’ve assembled this globally distributed team, how do you deliver global employee benefits that actually matter to employees regardless of where they live? Traditional benefit programs buckle under the weight of regional differences, leaving international employees feeling like second-class citizens while HR teams drown in administrative complexity.

This is where global lifestyle spending accounts emerge as a game-changer. These flexible benefit programs allow employers to provide meaningful, equitable perks to every employee, anywhere in the world, without the logistical nightmare of managing dozens of regional providers and programs.

What is a lifestyle spending account?

A lifestyle spending account (LSA) is an employer-funded benefit that gives employees a set amount to spend on items and services in support of their well-being.  LSAs can be designed around a variety of spending categories based on your company’s priorities and employee needs.

Companies have flexibility in how they structure their LSAs. Some organizations offer general purpose LSAs that cover a wide range of categories including wellness, fitness, mental health support, professional development, childcare, and nutrition. Others design targeted LSAs focused on specific benefit areas, like a dedicated wellness LSA for fitness and mental health expenses, or a professional development LSA exclusively for learning and growth. Many companies layer multiple category-specific LSAs to create a comprehensive benefits package tailored to their workforce.

The magic of a well-designed LSA for global teams lies in this flexibility. When Daphne in Paris uses her wellness LSA for a Headspace subscription, Joe in Chicago taps his fitness LSA for an Equinox membership, and Jackie in Austin uses her family care LSA to subsidize daycare, they’re accessing benefits designed to adjust to their local contexts. This is essential for global workforces where needs, available services, and cost structures vary dramatically from one location to another.

Why traditional global employee benefits programs fall short

Many organizations struggle to create equitable benefits packages for international employees. The traditional approach to global employee benefits creates more problems than it solves.

Limited provider networks create geographic barriers

Point solutions that work brilliantly in one country often don’t exist elsewhere. An employee in Israel can’t benefit from a U.S.-only gym chain membership. A team member in Singapore can’t access mental health resources designed exclusively for American providers. These geographic limitations don’t just reduce benefit value; they send a message that international employees are an afterthought.

Currency complications drain administrative resources

Managing benefit reimbursements across multiple currencies creates significant overhead. Finance teams struggle with exchange rate fluctuations, employees get confused about their actual purchasing power, and reconciliation becomes a monthly headache. What should be a simple benefit distribution turns into a complex accounting exercise.

Fragmented experiences breed inequity

When your U.S. team gets comprehensive wellness benefits while your international employees receive a completely different set of perks (or worse, nothing at all) it creates visible inequity. This disparity doesn’t go unnoticed. It affects morale, engagement, and ultimately retention, particularly among your most valued international contributors.

Multiple vendor relationships multiply complexity

The typical workaround involves contracting with different benefits providers in each region where you have employees. This approach rapidly becomes unmanageable as your team grows. Each vendor has different systems, reporting formats, and compliance requirements. Your HR team ends up spending more time managing vendors than supporting employees.

How Benepass supports global employee benefits programs

Rather than forcing companies to choose between equity and simplicity, a properly designed global LSA should deliver both. 

Benepass has built a comprehensive employee benefits platform specifically designed to scale with global workforces. Over half of Benepass clients have employees in more than one country, with the platform supporting users in more than 100 countries worldwide. Global support is core infrastructure, developed and maintained in-house rather than through third-party partnerships or regional vendors.

Below is an overview of Benepass’s global capabilities and how the platform delivers international benefits. 

Universal card acceptance powered by Visa’s global network

When your LSA is powered by a Visa card, it works anywhere that Visa is accepted worldwide, which means virtually everywhere. Benepass has processed 3 million global transactions, with over 80% of transactions completed using the Benepass card, highlighting the card’s reliability. No need to worry about whether your global employees have the same purchasing freedom as your U.S. team—everyone has the power to choose what works for them in their local context. 

This card-first approach stands in stark contrast to marketplace-based solutions that limit employees to a predetermined set of vendors. The problem with marketplace models becomes even more pronounced globally. A marketplace that works reasonably well in the U.S. often has minimal relevant options in other countries. A card that works everywhere gives employees true flexibility, whether they’re paying for a gym membership in Berlin, a spa visit in Toronto, or a professional certification course online.

Employees can access their card details immediately through the Benepass app, available on both web and mobile platforms. They can add the virtual card to mobile wallets for contactless payments, request a physical card if preferred, or use the card details for online purchases. This flexibility ensures every employee can access their benefits in whatever way makes sense for their spending patterns.

Automatic currency conversion with transparent pricing

Your employees shouldn’t need a calculator every time they check their benefit balance. With balances and transactions automatically displayed in local currencies for users outside the U.S., everyone understands exactly what they can spend. Currency conversion happens at the point of sale, with no foreign transaction fees eating into benefit value.

From an employee perspective, this creates a native experience regardless of location. From an administrative perspective, it eliminates the reconciliation nightmares that plague traditional multi-currency programs.

Single funding currency simplifies administration

While employees experience benefits in their local currency, administrators fund accounts in USD. This approach gives you the best of both worlds: simplified back-office operations with one program and one set of rules, combined with a localized employee experience. You’re not managing multiple regional variations that create complexity and potential inequity.

Consistent experience across geographies

The Benepass app provides the same high-quality experience regardless of location, with real-time balance updates, transaction history, and program details at employees’ fingertips. The unified account management interface displays consolidated transaction history and real-time balances across all programs, along with updated claim and transaction statuses.

The mobile-first design philosophy recognizes that global employees are often on the move. More than 70% of monthly account activity happens through the mobile app, reflecting how people actually want to interact with their benefits. Whether someone is booking a fitness class between meetings, purchasing professional development materials during their commute, or paying for childcare services during pickup, they can manage everything from their phone.

Proprietary financial infrastructure for real-time control

Unlike platforms that stitch together third-party vendors, Benepass builds and maintains its own financial infrastructure with full visibility into all activity and money movement. This architecture enables real-time reporting for both members and administrators. Balances update immediately after transactions, and reports generate instantly without batch processing delays.

When issues arise across global programs, the Benepass team can diagnose and resolve them quickly because they control the entire stack. The platform can also evolve rapidly based on customer needs.

Proven customer support and satisfaction

Benepass achieves a 4.8 out of 5 G2 rating with specific scores of 9.7/10 for quality of support, 9.7/10 for meeting requirements, and 9.6/10 for ease of use. Customer satisfaction metrics show 97% CSAT and an NPS of 73. 

Every client works with a dedicated customer success manager who proactively monitors program performance. The support team maintains less than 5% turnover with an average tenure over two years, and more than half of all Benepass employees focus on support functions. This stability means your team actually knows your program.

Integration with your existing systems reduces manual work

Global employee benefits programs shouldn’t mean global administrative burden. Benepass routinely accepts data from HRIS, payroll, and benefit administration systems via various integration methods, including file feed, API, or EDI, depending on your vendor’s capabilities. These integrations accommodate different pay schedules by region and automatically sync employee data, reducing manual work and minimizing errors.

Real-time reporting tools give HR teams actionable insights, helping them understand program utilization across different geographies and make data-driven decisions about benefit design.

Enterprise-grade security across borders

Benepass maintains SOC 2 Type 2 + HITRUST certification with bank-level encryption, ensuring consistent security standards whether employees are in Germany or California. These certifications require rigorous third-party audits of security controls, data handling practices, and operational procedures.

Real companies solving global employee benefits challenges

The difference between theory and practice matters. Take Talkspace, a virtual behavioral healthcare company with over 500 employees distributed across the U.S. and Israel. Talkspace’s previous benefits vendor required employees to choose from a catalog of preset spending options when they wanted to use their benefits. This provided limited options for their Israel-based team, creating an inequitable experience that didn’t align with the company’s values. 

“Does the catalog know about the local yoga store in Israel? I don’t know,” said Hallie Griffin, Virtual Office Manager. “I liked that Benepass was uniquely able to support our global team.”

After switching to a flexible program through Benepass, Talkspace employees now receive pre-funded Visa cards they can use directly for wellness, family, mental health, and professional development expenses, regardless of their location. Read the full customer story to learn more about Talkspace’s experience building a global wellness program with Benepass. 

How to design and implement your global employee benefits program

If you’re ready to implement a global LSA that actually works for your distributed workforce, consider these strategic elements.

Start with universally relevant spending categories

Choose benefit categories that resonate across cultures and geographies while acknowledging that how people meet these needs varies by location. Wellness, mental health support, professional development, and family care are universal needs, even if the specific services employees access differ dramatically between countries.

The beauty of an LSA is that you don’t need to predict which specific vendors or services employees will use. You set the categories, and employees make the choices that work for their lives.

Consider regional cost variations thoughtfully

While maintaining program consistency is important, acknowledge that cost structures differ significantly between countries. An annual allocation of $1,000 might provide substantial wellness benefits in some locations while covering just a few months of services elsewhere.

Think strategically about whether you want to adjust allocations based on regional purchasing power to ensure truly equitable value, or whether a consistent dollar amount across all employees aligns better with your compensation philosophy.

Leverage analytics to optimize your program

With the right platform, you gain visibility into how different employee populations use their benefits. Are your European employees spending more on mental health services? Is your APAC team prioritizing professional development? These insights help you refine your program over time and ensure you’re meeting diverse needs effectively.

Why flexible global employee benefits drive higher engagement

Global LSAs don’t just solve administrative challenges. They also drive significantly higher engagement than traditional benefits programs. When employees have genuine choice in how they use their benefits, they actually use them. This matters because unused benefits deliver zero value to employees and zero ROI to your organization.

Benepass LSAs average 85% annual member engagement, compared to typical benefits programs where 30% to 40% utilization is considered good. By meeting employees where they are, you create a benefits experience that feels personal and relevant, even at a global scale. That relevance translates into higher utilization, better well-being outcomes, and improved retention across your entire workforce.

Organizations that provide flexible, choice-driven benefits see measurably higher engagement rates and employee satisfaction scores. This isn’t surprising: Benefits that people can actually use in their real lives deliver more value than benefits that sound good on paper but don’t translate to their context.

The evolution of global employee benefits programs

As companies continue to embrace distributed teams and international hiring, the need for truly global employee benefits solutions will only intensify. The organizations that win top talent will be those that can offer equitable, meaningful benefits to every employee, everywhere, without creating unsustainable administrative complexity in the process.

A well-designed global LSA is a statement about how you value your people, regardless of where they live. It’s an operational advantage that simplifies your HR team’s work while scaling effortlessly with your growth. And it’s a competitive differentiator in the increasingly global war for talent.

The future of work is global. Your benefits strategy should be, too. With the right approach and the right platform partner, supporting employees across 100+ countries can be just as straightforward as supporting employees in a single location, while delivering even more impact through genuine flexibility and choice.

Ready to explore how a global LSA could work for your distributed team? The best programs start with understanding your unique workforce needs and building benefits that genuinely support them, wherever they’re based. Reach out to our team at sales@getbenepass.com or book a demo to learn more.