According to WHO statistics, an estimated 12 billion working days are lost to anxiety and depression annually. This translates to $1 Trillion productivity loss in an year which is the main reason why employers are taking effective actions to prevent mental health risks at work. However, one aspect of physical and mental wellbeing that is often overlooked is the employee’s financial health. More than 73% of the Americans say that finances are the main cause of stress, with 80% of millennials and Gen Zers’ saying that managing their finances is increasingly stressful. Though, a lot can improve by easily offering your employees financial wellness tips for their financial wellbeing. At this point, we will list and explain five financial wellness tips for employees that will substantially improve their financial wellbeing.
Financial wellness programs
Willis Towers Watson in his 2018 study revealed that organizations can reap the competitive advantage of higher employee engagement by easily addressing their financial wellbeing. The top leading ways of promoting employee’s financial wellbeing is by launching effective financial wellness program for your employees. Need help launching a financial wellness program for your employees? Here are some actionable ideas for financial wellness activities and programs that support employee’s financial wellbeing.
- Serious investment in Tax Education
- Contribute to employee’s health savings accounts
- Helpful retirement plans
Financial wellness Training
Another helpful way of promoting employees financial wellbeing is by bringing in tax experts periodically. This will help the employees face less anxiety when facing the tax time. It is easier to say that stress in ta season can increase anxiety and depression.
Provide discounted car and home insurance programs
Providing car and home insurance programs to your employees can help them hang onto more cash. You can take this a step further by offering a voluntary employees purchase program. Such a program helps your employees purchase educational services and home improvement items through a payroll deduction hence making them take more control of their finances.
Encourage employee investments
We all know employees can buy shares in a company, but this is not the only way to keep them invested. Employers can encourage employees to join platforms that constantly search for SMEs in different industries to invest in. Smart Money invest platform can offer investment opportunities to employees and other players in the market.
Encourage a Merit-based Pay
As an employer, you can encourage meritocracy. This is a merit-based pay-salary, vacation, bonuses and benefits based on employee performance. This is one of the best ways of aligning the business goals with the financial goals of the best performing employees in the company. The idea here is that there’s a positive correlation between productivity and stress and for that reason, the most productive employees might need a stress-relieving vacation.
The financial health checklist is endless and therefore you should constantly be looking for useful resources to share with the employees to help them become financially fit. It can help them with establishing an emergency fund, setting monthly budgets and cancelling unused services.
