More and more business-productivity research is showing that employee financial wellness in the workplace is having a profound and direct impact on employee engagement and overall business productivity.
After all, companies are only really as good as their employees. When the employees are at their best, the company is at it's best, and vice versa. Studies on this paint as a pretty clear picture:
Financially stress employees spend almost a 1/3 more time at work worrying about their finances, most of which are distracted at work and are overwhelmingly less likely to say they are fully productive while at work.
For a larger business, this can equate to hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost productivity each year. It's been estimated that one single financially unwell employee earning an average salary of fifty thousand a year can add up to as much as eight thousand dollars in lost productivity.
Multiply this across an entire employee base and lack of financial wellness on the business can be huge to say the least.
The sad part about all of this is its pretty simple root cause. Many of these employees are financially unwell simply due to the lack of resources available to them, especially while at work.
By providing financial education, tools and resources in the workplace, employers can develop positive financial wellness momentum throughout their entire employee base. A key aspect to this is to also foster an open dialogue within the workplace that allows employees to feel comfortable about getting financial help directly from their employer. Many employees are financially unwell simply because they are afraid to ask for help.
Benefi is one of the first companies to address this issue head on. With the Benefi Financial Wellness Platform is place employees are learning to become financially literate, learning about the basics like how to pay bills on time and how to borrow and save money more responsibly, all the way up the chain to how and why to save, invest and plan for retirement. Through Benefi, employees can also take advantage of low interest, salary backed loans that can be paid back directly through payroll deductions, helping them avoid high interest debt and move forward on a plan to better their overall credit standing.
These types of workplace programs not only lead to employees becoming more engaged and productive, they help employers gain a very positive reputation for supporting their employees. All of which can lead to better employee retention and attraction, and a more productive and profitable workplace.