08 Oct 2019

How to use financial wellbeing to support employees with their future careers

Financial wellness is being seen by more and more employers – and employees – as just as important as physical and mental wellness. This is because financial wellness is a major factor in overall employee wellness – when you’re financially secure, and you know the road ahead is smooth, you’re less stressed. You’re more motivated. And you’re more likely to enjoy life.

It might sound like a rather daunting thing, but financial wellness is essentially defined by four things in life:

The ability to cope with unexpected outgoings
Total control over finances on a monthly basis
Realistic goals, which you’re on track to achieve
The freedom to choose the life you want to live

These four things are inextricably linked to an employee’s career. Whether they’re ambitiously committed to climbing the ladder as quickly as possible, or they’ve found a niche that they’re happy to work hard in for a while, everyone has certain thoughts, desires and fears about the future.

It’s a great idea to make sure you’re promoting good financial wellness to each of these people, so they have resilience and security, and can achieve the goals they set for themselves. Here are a few ways to support employees with their future careers.

Assessments

We don’t mean examinations, or practical tests – simply put, you should make an effort to understand the needs of your employees. What are they looking for from their careers? What are the potential financial pitfalls?

You should be sure to take into account as many things as possible. Demographics, priorities, financial habits. Compare this information with your current financial wellness programme, if one exists. You’ll soon find gaps that you could work on plugging – no one method is perfect, and your people deserve your efforts, here.

Plans

Now that you know what your people might need, it’s time to review how you can help to provide it. You should have complete knowledge of your organisation’s benefits and overall financial wellbeing programme – make sure everyone, from the new starters to the decade-plus veterans, know as much about it as you do. It’s impossible to use a benefit properly if you don’t know it’s there, after all.

This is the point where you ask questions. Everyone will be at a different level of financial wellness, with different goals and different attitudes. While it would be lovely to provide a custom programme for everyone, that’s probably not practical – but you can put together something that works for as many people in the best way possible.

Don’t just ask people what they want once, and then forget about it. Keep regularly updating your plans with fresh information – a monthly set of questions is a good way to do this. Life is unpredictable after all.

Education

This is the most important part of any programme – letting people know what it is. Start by hosting a physical event in your workplace – make a splash, make it bold and unavoidable. Tie it in to career advice – those ambitious employees mentioned earlier will jump at the chance to show you what they want, and the others might just start to think harder about their potential future.

Send out newsletters, write articles and produce webinars communicating the benefits of financial wellness and the ways you’ll help achieve it – all the way to retirement. You want your people to be in this for the long haul, after all.

Provide space for feedback among all this – the most valuable asset to any wellbeing programme is the opinions of those who use it. In this feedback you’ll find countless potential new approaches that you didn’t think of. Monitor, tweak and refine.

Follow this advice, and you’ll be rewarded with hard-working employees who stick with you for life.

This article is provided by Health Assured.