A CEO’s Perspective on Financial Wellness: Part 1 – Employee Engagement

Financial wellness is a term that means different things to different people, especially in the workplace. If you ask a business owner, a benefits manager, a broker and an employee what financial wellness means to them, you will likely get a lot of very different answers. If you ask what a financial wellness program should look like, you will really get different answers. And do any of those answers include employee engagement?

Employee Benefit News has a great article on this, Why financial wellness can no longer be an afterthought, where they interviewed the CEO of Money Starts Here—a financial education company. One of the quotes that stuck out for me is this…

"Helping employees with their financial problems leads to better profit margins and loyal employees who make the most of their paycheck and appreciate their benefits."

As the CEO of Integrity Data, this is why we started representing financial wellness solutions and I have the luxury of experiencing it from all angles.

1. As a partner: I hear why fellow employers are looking to offer financial tools to their staff and get to build programs that are getting results.
2. As an employer: My team is not immune to financial pressures, so I offer these tools to my own team to help them work through real-world challenges. I get to see how the solutions we represent really work and how they impact employees both financially and personally.
3. As a user: I use the financial tools we offer myself and know how much time and money I’ve saved my family as a result. When I multiply that by my entire team, it’s a great feeling.

After my many conversations with employers and employees, I feel one reason for the gap is that the “why” behind financial wellness is getting lost. Bridging that gap comes down to two things – employee engagement and education.

• When you are engaged with your employees, you learn WHY they are stressed and HOW you can help them overcome obstacles.
• When employees have tools that educate them on WHY they are struggling, and HOW to make impactful changes, they achieve long-term financial success—not just a short-term fix.

Why should employers get involved?

I hear that a lot. “Why should I get involved?” The answer is simple. As employers, of course we want to differentiate ourselves in a competitive marketplace. Of course we want better profit margins. Who makes that happen? Our people. The face of financial stress is human. Staying engaged directly and indirectly benefits your business in many ways.

Our financial wellness infographic shared a good statistic about this from a PwC survey—95% of employers agree that their financial wellness program has helped the company reach its goals.
If you invest in your employees, they will invest in you.

The return on investment (and employee engagement)

When building a financial wellness program, it is important for employers to look at it as any other investment. What returns can you expect? The pricing structure varies by tool—some are a cost per employee which the employer can cover, some are a pay-per-use which the employee can cover.

At Integrity Data, we experienced an ROI of 5,191% in just a few months with HooPayz alone! These are real dollars saved by the employees and by the company.

Time is money, and the amount of both you can save with a financial wellness program is substantial. Considering the improvements in productivity, morale and employee loyalty, the ROI for financial wellness is significant. Get in touch if you’d like to talk about how to improve employee engagement through financial wellness.

Don’t miss Part 2 of a CEO’s perspective on financial wellness where I discuss an overlooked benefit of our financial solutions – educating employees to achieve long-term financial success. I also share some examples of how each tool impacts employees and you as an employer.