Guide to Employee Financial Wellness
Step 3. Determine the Right Financial Wellness Solution(s) for Your Company
Inventory Your Benefits
The benefits audit that you completed in step one is about to pay off. Now that you have an idea of what type of program might be useful for your employees, take a look at your existing benefits offerings — you may be offering benefits that already address some of their needs. If you find that current benefits address the needs showing up in survey results, you might consider how to better communicate those benefits offerings to your employees. For example, your employees might have said they need access to emergency funds when you already offer an emergency grant program.
If you find that current benefits are underutilized, make sure you understand why. Maybe there are barriers that can be rather easily addressed, such as a complicated sign-up process. If it is an awareness problem, consider publicizing these benefits more, and be sure to advertise them in a way that demonstrates how they fulfill employees’ stated financial wellness needs. If employees can easily see how these benefits fit with the needs they highlighted in the survey, they may be more likely to use the benefits you are already offering.
Match Needs to Program Type
Between your survey results and current benefits inventory, you should now have a clearer idea of what kinds of financial wellness programs could best support your employees. The Employee Financial Wellness Programs Glossary can help you get a better understanding of the various options.
DATA SPOTLIGHT: SAVINGS PROGRAMS$400 Savings programs for parents can have a big impact for kids! Children from lower-income households with a college savings account are more likely to make it to college and graduate, even with accounts with as little as $400. |
Different financial wellness programs impact the four areas of financial wellness — spend, save, borrow, plan — either directly or indirectly and to different degrees. The matrix below summarizes how different programs can address the four areas and shows the degree of influence each program has on financial well-being.
What you’ll have in the end:
- An understanding of how your current benefits offerings and new financial wellness program complement one another
- An understanding of the types of financial wellness programs that match your employees’ financial lives and needs