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A Benefit to Consider: Assisting Your Employees With Financial Wellness
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Organizations have every reason to want their employees to be financially sound. An effectively designed employee financial wellness program can help employers:
- Bolster productivity, because employees aren’t distracted by financial worries.
- Drive more predictable workforce flow throughout the organization.
- Result in improved physical health (people with high levels of financial stress are more prone to sickness).
- Increase employee engagement and retention.
- Create more affordable retirement opportunities for all employees and enable career advancement opportunities for younger employees.
Having a clear understanding of the business benefits of financial wellness, integrated within the overall wellness and HR talent/acquisition strategy ensures corporate commitment and is key to a successful financial wellness program.
As a business leader, it may be worth exploring how you can create and offer your employees the benefit of a financial wellness program.
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Questions to Consider When Exploring Workplace Financial Wellness Services
1. Do any of our current benefit providers offer financial wellness services?
2. What free resources on personal finance are already available?
3. How can we combine individual financial wellness services to create a robust program for my employees?
4. Which financial wellness services are helpful to low and moderate wage employees?
5. How do we avoid predator services?
6. What compensation policies and other business practices can promote employee financial wellness?
7. How will we measure success?
Source: Centre for Social Development/Prosperity Now
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TIPS FOR EMPLOYERS
When selecting a financial counselling or coaching
service, consider whether employees are likely experiencing financial crises that need immediate resolution, or are financially stable but looking to improve their situation.
Financial counselling services are more appropriate for individuals in financial crisis as counsellors are trained to offer specific advice on how to resolve the crisis.
Financial coaching services are more appropriate
for employees who want to set goals and implement actions to gradually improve their current financial situation
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Source: HSBC survey,The Future of Retirement, April 2015
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Offer Your Pre-Retirement Employees the Benefit of a Dedicated Career Coach
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One of the greatest benefits an employer can offer loyal, long-term employees is the opportunity to make a smooth transition to retirement. To facilitate this, consider enlisting the services of a career coach.
What can a career coach offer that your HR team probably can’t? Typically, career coaches can assist employees with in-depth retirement self-assessments designed to surface unique requirement motivators and critical considerations. Career coaches are a critical component to thinking outside of the retirement box. The more customized and creative the strategy, the more beneficial to the individuals and the employer.
For employees to get the most out of a career coach, leverage coaches who are experts in the employee’s field or future field. The coach should also maintain an open mindset and the ability to think beyond the scope of “normal” retirement. As mature-age employees consider alternative options like serving on a board of directors, entering the gig economy or volunteering their time, a career coach can bridge the gap by focusing in on helping employees carry their applicable skills from their current job to their next venture.
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Consider a Work Perk Points Reward System for Your Employees
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Low employee motivation is a common issue that many businesses face at some point. In fact, some business owners identify low employee morale as a chronic issue for their workplace. If you’re looking for a solution to low employee motivation, a rewards points system may do the trick. More and more organizations are going this route, and the availability of third party, web-based platforms are growing. To ensure that a workplace incentive program does wonders for employee morale, here are a few tips that will help you set up a program that works for you.
Points and Prize Variety for Your Rewards Points System
To get your employees on board when it comes to your reward points system, it is necessary to be as creative as possible with the prizes. Without a doubt, the prize offerings will be the main motivator for your employees to boost their performance.
Prize variety will ensure that all of your employees have multiple prizes to look forward to earning. You should also offer prizes of varying point values to cater to the differing spending habits of your employees. Some will redeem their points for small gift cards while others will want to save their earned points for electronics, time off, or even vacations.
Use a Point Accumulation System
Unless you have an incredibly unique idea in mind that you can make work, you are far better off using a point accumulation system. While points may sound boring and unoriginal, a point system is a tried-and-true method that will make things easier for you. Also, most of your employees should be familiar with the concept of earning points for rewards; so, you won’t have to spend as much time clarifying misconceptions about your new workplace incentives program.
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Yes! Pet Benefits Really Are a Thing!
Pet friendly benefits like pet leave, pet bereavement and pet health insurance are growing in popularity, according to Steven Feldman, an executive director at Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI). "It's a "signal you're looking at the employee's entire family," he adds. It's also a way to entice young workers, the largest pet-owning generation.
Staffers can be weary of companies that offer perks which mostly keep them at the office, such as free lunches or post-work dinners. Benefits that acknowledge staff needs outside the workplace can have more meaning.
Recent data seems to agree. In fact, 90 percent of staffers in pet friendly workplaces say they feel connected to their company's mission, according to a survey conducted by Nationwide Insurance and HABRI. Those with pet-friendly workplaces, the survey found, were more likely to want to stay at their employer for the long-term and even reported more positive relationships with their bosses.
Check out these three "pawternity" benefits that companies are already offering.
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Organizations looking to implement similar policies can start with a three-month pilot program, McMenimen suggests, which details what the company is providing and what it needs from employees to make it permanent. "That way, you're setting up clear expectations," says McMenimen. "And at the end of those three months, you'll know what worked well and what aspects need to be tweaked."
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adapted from www.cnbc.com
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