When your employees enjoy financial stability, your entire business can thrive.
When your employees enjoy financial stability, your entire business can thrive. Fiscal insecurity is one of the main anxieties plaguing the workforce today, and when your employees suffer, so does their performance and productivity, as well as your bottom line. So, supporting their health and wellbeing through benefits which promote financial wellness can give your business a competitive advantage.
The first step in cultivating better financial literacy and proliferation among your employee base is to get a sense of where they are within their finances, as well as their monetary needs and goals. And it’s easy to do: your organization can leverage a comprehensive financial wellness survey to gain actionable insight into these critical employee circumstances.
You access surveys all the time to check up on your workforce and get a sense of the changes your company may need to implement for better business stats.
Employee satisfaction surveys ask general questions about the worker’s experience to give leadership a read on workforce engagement, as well as an opportunity to address any trending pain points.
Exit surveys allow insight into why employees are leaving your workforce, providing similar opportunities wherein your company may mitigate problems which might be contributing to turnover.
Financial wellness surveys poll employees on their current fiscal reality, including factors like financial literacy, current ability to functionally manage their finances, as well as – and most importantly – how they feel about their financial state.
When individuals experience financial wellness, this means that they are empowered through skills, understanding, and resources to access, manage, and plan their money and investments to facilitate financial stability and security.
Financial wellness denotes having the means to make ends meet, save for the future, and address emergency expenditures easily and without stress to expected expenses. This also means having access to sound financial direction, planning resources, and support.
The terms “financial wellness” and “financial well-being” may be used interchangeably, although “well-being” in this context is sometimes used to describe a consistent state of financial surplus.
We alluded to this fact in our introduction: businesses benefit when their employees feel confident in their finances.
One survey revealed that 67% of all employees who reported financial stress struggle to pay off their basic expenses each month, and nearly half experience a severe impact to their mental health due to financial instability. And the consequence to your business is lowered retention, engagement, and productivity, higher rates of absenteeism, and greater expenditure on healthcare benefits.
But these stats are reversed when organizations support financial wellness among their employee base. Not only this, but providing financial wellness benefits makes companies who do so more desirable to top talent: 72% of workers surveyed said they would leave their current company if a competitor offered financial wellness benefits.
Financial wellness surveys should be administered regularly to give you critical insight into your employee’s monetary wellbeing. The answers given provide actionable qualitative data that allows you to drive productivity and organizational acceleration through workforce prosperity.
There exist plenty of already-written survey template resources online which you can use as the base of your company’s financial wellness review. However it’s important to customize your survey to meet the unique needs and goals of your organization, so it will be to your best advantage to write your own.
Your first step should always be to create an objective, and determine the exact motivation for administering this survey. Are you updating employee benefits? Creating a new retention strategy? Making payroll adjustments? Answering these questions can help you to determine the exact content you need to include in your survey.
For a broad perspective on employee financial wellness, you should include questions which procure both qualitative and quantitative data.
Quantitative questions include inquiries about employee debt levels, retirement funds, and how much they are able to allocate towards savings each month. Qualitative questions may ask about stress levels related to financial concerns, how your employees feel about current financial benefits, and what resources they would like you to provide which might support improved financial wellness.
You should always structure your survey to give you actionable answers which will help you take steps towards your ultimate objective.
A financial well-being survey can be leveraged to help you meet a variety of objectives related to both employee wellbeing and organizational health. Goals you might set to follow your analysis include:
Your financial wellbeing questionnaire can be as detailed or as succinct as is functional to your ultimate objective. Here we have provided an example of a quick but effective survey format which will give you critical insight into your employee’s fiscal well-being.
At the top, ask them to include their name – or give them the option to remain anonymous if they wish – as well as a job title and the length of time they’ve spent at your company.
Question 1: How do you feel about the current state of your finances? Please rate. 1 = desperately stressed, 5 = completely satisfied.
Question 2: What is your current level of debt? 0 - 1000, 1000 - 10k, 10k - 50k, 50k - 100k, etc.
Question 3: What are you most worried about in regards to your finances? Answer as an essay question, or give employees options to choose from - ex. debt repayment, loss of home, retirement, etc.
Question 4: What resources would help you to feel more financially secure? Answer as an essay question, or give employees options to choose from - ex. financial literacy programs, 401K matching programs, accessible money management solutions, etc.
Question 5: What perks would help you to feel engaged in financial wellness programming provided by the company? Answer as an essay question, or give employees options to choose from - ex. competitive challenges, clear programming with palpable financial benefits, regular communication with a professional advisor, etc.
These are examples of important and insightful questions you can include in your survey. Remember to customize yours to gain the best understanding that will help you to reach your goals.
The answers your employees give you should help you to construct better programming that will support workforce financial wellness. Your survey ideally will be built with an action plan already in mind, and the insights you gain will provide you with the best direction for your path to go in.
Origin is a comprehensive financial wellness solution that helps both employees and employers to thrive. It’s easy to implement, and empowers your workforce to build a more supportive financial future for themselves with an engaging and personalized platform that takes a holistic approach to financial well-being.
Sign up for a free demo today to see how Origin can support your workforce.
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