Learning Your Way to a Better Financial Life
With all their advantages and ability to help, financial wellness programs are needed more than ever. While they’re considered supplemental offerings, there’s nothing supplemental about the positive influence they can have. The key is to offer a wide choice of subjects that reach a diverse employee base with varying financial acumen and different financial needs.
In choosing what programs to offer, it could be helpful to query employees on their topics of interest, which can improve engagement. Older employees, for example, may appreciate topics like how to take retirement income and understanding long-term health insurance, while younger workers are possibly more interested in deciphering credit scores, managing debt and budgeting. Saving for a child’s college costs and considering when to pick a financial advisor would likely spark wider interest.
On average, financial wellness program participants tend to skew white and male with higher incomes. This underscores the opportunity and need (i.e., lack of accessibility) among financially at-risk workers, who are mostly women, people of color and lower earners. These demographics tightly align with comfort and trust levels in the employers providing such programs, according to the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association. That is, the people who trust their employers the least are the ones who need financial wellness help the most. Based on this, financial wellness programs need to speak to a broader employee population, but also stay relevant to different and underserved segments within it.
Roadmap to Financial Wellness Starts at Solid Engagement
An employee’s interest in a topic and comfort with how the program is delivered—and who is offering it—can set the tone and engagement too. So, employers must appreciate even small nuances among their audiences.
Effective financial wellness programs identify and fill knowledge gaps across all employee segments. Knowing participants and what they want can really help, and workplace surveys are a good place to start.
Offering programs across different media helps drive engagement too, because not all employees like to learn the same way. For example, employees may be uncomfortable sharing their financial challenges, like reducing debt, openly in a group session, but they would more likely benefit from a virtual webinar watched in private or a one-on-one experience with a financial expert.
Over the many years we have surveyed plan participants, we’ve seen workers continue to struggle with financial wellness. Our findings this year are especially profound and shed even more light on those most affected and the topics most needed. But now it’s up to plan sponsors to take the next steps to build a higher level of financial savviness that workers can take all the way to retirement.
