COMP NEWS – Nearly 80% of surveyed employees report that they are financially stressed, while scarcely 28% of employers offer tools and financial wellness programs to manage financial stress, according to a 2022 survey.

According to a 2022 survey by the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE), 35% of U.S. adults say they are “just getting by financially” and worry that their money won’t last. Money worries have become so distracting, says benefits consulting firm Financial Finesse, that 80% of U.S. employees queried between 2021 and 2022 report at least “some level of financial stress,” with 27% experiencing “high or overwhelming” stress.

All that stress is not only harmful to your employees’ mental and physical health; it can be lethal to your bottom line. A 2023 report by the TIAA Institute and the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center (GFLEC) found that employees spend an average of eight hours a week dealing with financial issues — with four of those hours occurring at work.

“Employee financial stress is at the greatest level it’s been since the Great Recession,” says Financial Finesse founder and CEO Liz Davidson. Employer-sponsored financial wellness programs are no longer simply nice to have, she says. They’ve become an “imperative.”

Financial education and workplace flexibility can be game-changers for employers seeking to boost their workers’ productivity.

If you want to support your employees to achieve better financial health, then considering their overarching personal finance ecosystem can be a game changer. Acknowledging your employees’ unique experiences and lifestyles lets you take a more nuanced and tailored approach to identifying benefits that would best serve them.

For example, offering more financial education can help your employees to choose among health care plans, but they may also need the flexibility of hybrid work or no-meeting Mondays to manage a stressful situation they are dealing with. Taking an ecosystem approach, explains Hensley, means trusting your employees to “own their work and manage their schedules in a way that works better for their lifestyles and their families.” That way, if something major does happen — they lose their house in a fire, their child is struggling and they need to be home for a period of time, or they have eldercare responsibilities — they can trust you will continue giving them that sense of financial well-being, and you can trust they’ll remain accountable for the work you’re paying them to do.

To read more about financial wellness programs and how they can help your employees, click here.

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