Financial Wellness is NOT retirement planning.
We keep hearing financial stress is the number one concern of HR teams this year.
However, to combat this, HR teams have made the mistake of confusing financial wellness programs with retirement planning.
Financial stress is a daily, in the moment, issue that impacts employees lives today, tomorrow, and right up to the day they get paid. They get paid and it starts all over again. Their stress is dervived from
the feeling or the reality that they don’t have enough at the end of the month to save, invest, or achieve their mid- to long- term goals. It is personal, impacted by family, and often affected by financial knowledge and habits. It cannot be solved by 401ks or EAP.
401ks solve the financial stress of people in 20 to 30 years. It does not put food on the table of employees today.
EAPs are important emergency resources that can cover a crisis in mental health, family, addition, etc. They are experts in emergencies and mental health support - very few strategically focus on improving the daily financial stress of employees.
Financial wellness is not 401ks or EAP, but it IS services like Nav.it that meet employees where they are right now. Are they spending more than they earn? Let’s review and control expenses to incentivize them to spend less and build a savings habit. Are they maximizing all the amazing benefits HR teams spend a lot of time choosing and managing for them? Let’s help match their current expenses with reimbursements and paid subscriptions from their employer (hello, Spotify and Peloton). Do they have bad credit that significantly increases their cost of living or prohibits them from safe housing access? Let’s get them signed up to a credit builder that could increase their credit by 30 to 90 points within a few months.
Financial wellness is not a 401k or EAP, it is a program like Nav.it that actually improves the finances of employees TODAY, so they can stop living in stress and actually afford to put money into their 401k future.
#financialwellness #financialhealth #hr #humanresources #benefits Maia Monell Heidi Peterson Horan Victoria Kenyon Diana Butler Buxton Dan Colarchik