Liliana Hall at Money wrote about workers who want help managing their money and whether employers should step in. The data is lopsided: 85% of employees say their company needs to do a better job helping them understand and use the benefits they already have, and only about 30% say they have access to a financial planning benefit at work. She asked me why employers are starting to move.
Employers are not stepping into financial education because they are altruistic. They are doing it because financial stress is showing up at work. Productivity slips, benefits go unused and turnover climbs when employees are drowning in debt or cannot cover an unexpected expense. The employer's business case is real, and it is measured in the same spreadsheet as everything else.
On why so many programs fail to get traction, my answer was about where the help lives. Employees do want guidance, but they want it delivered where they already are. The problem is most people do not walk into a financial planner's office until a crisis forces them. Putting resources at work lowers that activation barrier. A 20-minute session during open enrollment reaches people who would never book an appointment on their own.
The programs that work are specific, not generic. Not a webinar about budgeting, but a person who can look at your 401(k) election, your HSA and your debt and tell you what to do this month. That is the version employees use, and it is the version that pays the employer back.
Read the full article at Money →
