6 Must-haves for a Holistic Financial Wellness Program

To be holistic, a financial wellness program should address the needs of your workforce.

In today’s diverse workplace, employees have unique needs based on their stage of life.

For instance, according to the 2018 PWC Employee Wellness Survey¹, millennials are most concerned about having enough emergency savings (48%), while baby boomers are most concerned with retirement (46%).  

Unfortunately, financial stress is a big problem.

In the same PWC survey, we learn that 47% of employees are stressed about a financial situation, with 41% saying the stress is increasing year over year.

And this problem is concerning to more than just the employees.

Financial stress can hurt the bottom line of your corporation as well.

• 25% of employees find financial issues to be a distraction at work.
• 18% say their productivity is impacted
• 11% miss work

For more compelling stats, see the whitepaper entitled “The State of Workplace Financial Wellness.”

This is why it is important to have a holistic financial wellness program for your employees. Such a program will have these six important components.

Interactive Budgeting Tool

Budgeting is central to financial wellness.

It is the plan that helps your employees know where to spend their money and how to prioritize financial aspects that are important to them.

An interactive tool is one that guides the employee creating their budget.

The Enrich “Budget” tool helps your employees determine where they are spending their money and allows them to see what happens to savings as they reduce their current spending.

Employees are guided to include all types of income and expenses and can add goals and investments.

Best of all, the budgeting tool saves all the information so the employee can continue to use and make adjustments to their budget.  

Student Loan Tool

Among all demographics and age groups, student loan debt is now the second highest consumer debt category.

It is even higher than auto loans and credit card debt.

Make Lemonade² consolidated statistics from The New York Federal Reserve Credit Panel/Equifax, The Institute For College Access and Success, National Student Loan Data System, Mark Kantrowitz, Federal Student Aid, and FedLoan Servicing and found the following:

• 44.2 million borrowers have student loan debt
• Student loan debt is now $1.52 trillion in the US
• The average student has nearly $40,000 in student debt when graduating
•  The current default rate is 10.7%

Based on these numbers, a holistic financial wellness program should include student loan information.

Enrich’s Student Loan Snapshot Tool will help employees understand how much they owe and the best way to repay the loans.

In addition, Enrich offers an optional integrated student loan benefit program for employers which want to assist employees with their loan payments and offer student loan consolidations.

Gamification

Gamification is simply the application of game features to non-game activities. These features include things such as:

• Badges
• Monthly challenges
• Interactive games

Games have been shown to be a powerful motivator.

In fact, 51% of consumers say that gamifying everyday activities would make them pay more attention to them.

And statistics show that gamification increases engagement metrics by 100% or more³.

Enrich uses gamification to provide employees with rewards based on their participation and activity.

We have integrated a Rewards API into or platform, which allows employers to reward users for completing exercises and scoring high on assessments.

In addition to actual financial wellness games, we include several layers of gamification on our platform including:

• Monthly challenges which enter users into a contest to win a $250 gift card
• Rewards system which gives points for actions on the platform, enabling the users to advance levels and win rewards

By gamifying financial wellness goals, Enrich helps employees make better financial choices.  

Social or Peer-to-Peer Tools

Social and peer-to-peer learning is effective because your employees share similar experiences.

Because they understand one another’s issues, they can often provide answers to immediate financial wellness questions.

In many cases, your employees will trust a peer who has had the same issue before trusting someone in HR or as part of a financial team.

In general, your employees will be more comfortable with peer and social learning situations than traditional environments.   

Additionally, social and peer-to-peer tools are rooted in social cognitive theory, which states that people change more readily when engaging in social interaction.

The Enrich Community Section allows employees to ask and answer common questions posed by their peers.

They can ask questions, anonymously if they choose, about things like getting out of debt, finding the right student loans, or saving for retirement.

Enrich data has shown that users who engaged with the community peer-to-peer tool:

• Came back at a rate 400% higher than other users
• Consumed content at a rate 800% higher than other users
• Scored 3 to 6% higher on assessments than other users

Live Counselors

In the 2018 PWC Employee Wellness Survey, we learn that 25% of employees would like to have access to unbiased counselors as part of their financial wellness benefit.

A financial counselor can help your employees asses their needs and achieve their goals such as:

• Retirement planning
• Investing
• Taxes
• Stock options
• Handling major life events
• And more

Enrich’s team of Certified Personal Finance Counselors are all in-house experts.

Because they are not part of a branded financial product, your employees can rest assured that all information is based on employee needs and not advisor bias.

Interactive Educational Courses

Finally, a holistic plan should offer interactive educational courses.

These courses can cover a broad range of topics that appeal to the unique needs of your employees and employ the idea of stages of change by helping people transition from change to action in small steps.  

Enrich offers courses in home buying and mortgages, credit scores, student loan borrowing, financing healthcare, protecting yourself from identity theft, retirement planning, and more.

Each course results in a personalized action plan for the user, detailing specific steps they can take to improve their situation in the area of the course topic.

To see everything the Enrich Financial Wellness Program offers, check out our demo video here.

1 - https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industries/private-company-services/library/financial-well-being-retirement-survey.html

2 - https://www.makelemonade.co/student-loan-debt-statistics/

3 - https://www.snipp.com/blog/2017-06-21/the-power-of-gamification-participation-engagement-loyalty/