A person’s financial wellness directly relates to their ability to focus and excel at work. Someone who is stressed about paying the bills will be distracted, irritable, and likely make stress-related mistakes. They may have trouble getting passionate about projects and deadlines because worrying about money overrides all other priorities. This is why financial wellness is a critical concern for employers, and the focus of a new wave of optimized employee benefits. The best way to keep your team focused and keep morale high is to help each individual achieve financial wellness.
Which are the best financial benefits to offer? Financial wellness is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Each person needs a different combination of services and support to keep their finances in good shape and prepare for unknown futures. Therefore, the best financial wellness features for any team are a combination of universally useful safety-nets and a collection they can choose from to suit each individual financial need.
Let’s take a closer look at the top financial wellness benefits to strengthen your team and keep your staff happily focused on the work at hand.
Insuring Wage Earnings
Insurance is essential to financial wellness of individuals and their families. Even employees who have their finances locked-down from month to month may still lack a safety net if they are ever unable to work. Over 70% of households with children under 18 would struggle financially without the primary wage earner, and you can remove that stress with a few insurance benefits. There are several types of insurance that you can offer your entire team that cover various reasons why a person might lose access to their wages. Each type of insurance ensures that your employee and their family remains financially secure in times of hardship or uncertainty.
– Short-Term and Long-Term Disability Insurance
Disability insurance provides a percentage of a person’s normal monthly wages when they are unable to work due to a physical injury or deformation. Short-term disability covers a temporary loss of work while recovering from an injury or illness that prevents work from being done. Long-term disability covers wages for someone who is permanently disabled or who may be in recovery for years after an accident. Both are essential to providing financial security in homes where there is a primary wage earner.
– Critical Illness Insurance
Many standard health insurance policies exclude or have ways to exclude the treatment of a critical illness. If a staff member comes down with something serious like cancer, multiple sclerosis, or organ failure, insurance your company offers can take care of them and their family.
– Life Insurance
Life insurance is something that most professionals with families care deeply about. Life insurance ensures that if one of your employees should die in your employ, their family would be taken care of with a final settlement. Life insurance is the ultimate safety net and the way for a professional to make absolutely certain that their family had time and funds to make a financial transition if their primary wage-earning was taken out of the picture.
– Accidental Injury Insurance
Worker’s comp, the mandatory accident insurance for employees, does not cover accidents outside the workplace. A kind and assuring benefit to offer is accident insurance, which would cover the cost of medical treatment and property repairs in the event of an accidental injury that is not work-related.
Building a Financial Future
Another important type of financial wellness is preparing for the future. Where insuring wages is a safety-net, good financial planning and cleverly built savings accounts are the ultimate way to create financial security. Employers are in the ideal position to improve their employees’ long-term financial wellness by offering long-view financial benefits.
– Retirement Contribution Matching
One of the oldest financial wellness practices is retirement contribution matching. A company investing in their employee’s future financial stability will often put a little extra each year into the employee’s retirement account. Some have a standard yearly contribution, some match (double) or percentage-match the employee’s own contributions. This is a great way to help employees build a stronger future.
– College Fund Programs
Your staff could also use assistance saving for those big life expenses. Sending the kids to college, for example, takes a lot of savings and not everyone knows how to do this efficiently. Put together a financial wellness benefit that helps employees save for their children’s college, or even their own degrees in the future. This strategy can also be used for other big savings goals like buying a house or even planning a wedding.
– Subsidizing Professional Education
Professional development is another way that employers can provide long-term financial wellness. By subsidizing further training and certifications, you are building a more valuable internal workforce and ensuring each employee continues to earn more throughout their career. You are also lifting the financial burden of classes, training, and testing as your employees seek to improve their skills.
– Savings, Stock Funds, and Trusts
Most hard-working professionals know how to open a savings account, but they don’t all know about the other smart long-term ways to turn saved money into more money. Stock funds, bonds, and trusts, and specialty savings accounts are something you can make available to employees and teach them how to use to their own long-term financial benefit.
Financial Management Services
Last but not least, you can offer your employees financial management services. A little advice from an experienced financial professional can sometimes turn a family’s entire finances around for the better. Professionals earning a respectable salary could be putting that money to more efficient use with greater benefits in the long-term. Unfortunately, most people don’t have time to visit a local bank branch and consult on their finances. But you, as an employer, can connect each of your staff members to advanced financial services and empower them to build long-term financial health.
– Financial Advisor Services
Partner with a bank or local financial professional to offer financial management advice. Make them available through scheduled meetings or live online and include email question answering as part of the benefit. Having a single financial advisor “as a service” for your employees and encouraging each team member to check in from time to time can make a long-term subtle difference in your team’s overall financial security.
– Financial Management Platform Tools
Sometimes, all someone needs is a little visibility to better manage their money and maintain financial wellness. Connect your team to free tools like Mint or custom tools through your financial benefits that lay it all out. Track cards, accounts, and expenses through a single platform and many people who struggle with money management will suddenly get the grip they need.
– Retirement Fund Management
One of the greatest traditional financial benefits offered by employers is apt management of retirement accounts. This is a perk few professionals fully understand. A well-managed retirement fund can make money off itself through investments and interest, and it’s often worth rolling all previous retirement program funds to a new employer if the accounts are managed beneficially.
– Stock Account Management
Finally, employees in the echelon to receive stock options often don’t know what to do with them or have much clue as to managing their finances with stock elements. Guidance in investment, portfolio balancing, and how to use company stocks can contribute to higher levels of financial wellness.
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Providing financial wellness services and options to your employees is essential to a productive work environment When your team is financially secure, both today and for the unknown future, they can focus their talents completely on the projects and tasks at hand. For more guidance on the best financial wellness benefits for your staff, contact us today!