3 Successful Financial Wellness Benefits Employers Offer Today

Stress from home often bleeds into the workplace, which is just one reason you should be concerned with your employee’s life outside of the office. However, solving employee struggles outside of the workplace is difficult. One area where many employees struggle is their personal finances and financial wellness programs are a great remedy for common financial challenges.

2018 Workplace Benefits report found 95% of employers who offer financial wellness benefits see tangible results in terms of employee satisfaction, lower turnover, increased productivity, and lower healthcare costs. Follow along to learn about successful financial wellness benefits you can offer your employees today to improve their lives in the workplace and beyond.

Timely access to earned wages

If an employee works the first half of their pay period and rent is due, they may feel a serious struggle to cover the bills while waiting for payday. But with hours already earned and sitting on employer balance sheets as a liability, there is no harm in giving employees access to those funds before payday arrives if needed.

The senior living sector is prime for this benefit, as it attracts many hourly workers including resident care, food service, and facility maintenance staff that could benefit greatly from early access to earned pay.

Chris Hyatt, partner & COO at New Perspective Senior Living, told industry publication McNight’s Senior Living that he expects early access to pay will help with everything from attracting new team members to increase retention. Both of those goals are important in any industry.

Learn more about offering this benefit to your employees.

Answers to pressing money questions

If an employee does find him or herself in the scenario above struggling to make rent, that stress can follow them to all corners of their life. While early access to paychecks can solve the problem with a few taps on a phone screen, there is more to do to prevent this situation from taking place in the beginning.

Because most schools don’t offer any formal personal finance education, it is up to parents and employers to make sure their families and teams plan for their financial future and make the best decisions today. While you can’t make your employee’s parents teach them about money, you can absolutely fill in that role for your staff.

I recently visited the Los Angeles campus of Oath, the media division of Verizon that includes Yahoo, The Huffington Post, and Aol among other brands, for a training session on investment basics. Employees left excited, engaged, and knowing their employer cares about their financial well being.

Learn how McDonald’s helps employees better understand their money to improve their lives while growing employee retention.

Flexible time off and schedules

Time off policies may not feel like a financial benefit in some ways, but they can be great for employees with competing demands from work, kids, aging parents, and other responsibilities. Offering employees the ability to take paid and unpaid time off when needed can help them avoid big costs elsewhere.

For example, a single parent may need to pay for childcare if they can’t get home every day by 3pm when their kids finish school. Giving them an ability to come in earlier and leave earlier may not cost your business anything but offers huge cost savings to the employee.

Gig economy businesses like Uber, Lyft, Taskrabbit, Grubhub, and Amazon Mechanical Turk allow workers to effectively set their own schedules. While competing with the gig economy for scheduling can be tough for traditional businesses, bringing this attitude to employee schedules can lead to improved retention and engagement.

Companies like Trader Joe’s, Starbucks, and Wegman’s are three food-related businesses that rank highly for work-life balance in part thanks to how they handle employee schedules.

Learn more about attracting hourly workers in a gig economy labor market

Offer your employees holistic financial support for the best results

With so many competing priorities, it is easy to let employee benefit programs slip to the backburner. But they shouldn’t! Early access to earned wages for your employees can be enabled in as little as 48 hours. A range of companies offer personal finance training classes. As a matter of fact, PayActiv holistic financial wellness platform includes 1-1 financial counseling for users. And to offer schedules that accommodate employee needs may be within your current setup.

Your employees are a vital resource to your company and they should feel valued every day when they show up at work. With PayActiv and other resources available, you can quickly reduce costs while improving retention, productivity, and improving your employees’ lives. That’s a big win-win scenario that every employer should be excited about!