Employee financial wellness has been on the agenda of employers for a while now. Financial wellness refers to a person’s overall financial health and the absence of money-related stress.
According to SHRM, financial stress results in a 34% increase in absenteeism and tardiness. Employees who worry about their finances also miss almost twice as many days per year compared to their colleagues who are money-worry-free.
The current covid situation isn’t always helping people’s financial wellness either. Some of us may have a partner who’s lost their job, or perhaps the company we work for is struggling financially and unable to increase pay or make bonus payments.
All in all, companies lose a lot of money due to their employees’ financial stress. In the US alone, businesses miss out on $500 billion a year because of this. So why not implement benefits that help relieve this stress?
What do financial wellness benefits look like?
Financial wellness benefits can go from a couple of standalone perks to a complete financial wellness program, or anything in-between. Here are some examples:
- Workshops. A simple and relatively low-cost way to create a basic financial wellness program. You can invite regular guest speakers to run a workshop on topics such as budget planning, reducing (student) debt, or savings tactics. If you’re in a larger organization, you can also ask someone from your finance department to do a session.
- Dedicated partnerships. Build a partnership with a company that specializes in employee financial planning.
- Financial wellness tools. Options go from tools that provide on-demand financial advising to custom training and e-learning to improve people’s financial knowledge and much more. LearnLux and MySecureAdvantage are just two examples of these kinds of tools.
- Perks. Tuition fee reimbursements, contributions to employees’ student loan debt, fertility assistance, anything is possible here.
