LizStevens, Author at Best Money Moves

Employee Financial Wellness Statistics 2019

by LizStevens | Sep 9, 2019 | Blog

Employee financial wellness statistics 2019. New research looks at the spillover effect financial stress has on employee productivity.

Greetings,

New research by Morgan Stanley highlights the impact financial wellness has on employee productivity.

Nearly four in five employees (78 percent) with high financial stress say that they are distracted by financial stress at work and it’s not just workers with lower incomes. More than half of employees with household incomes greater than $100,000 say debt and unexpected expenses are still sources of stress. More than 40 percent of them stress about having inadequate savings.

The statistics on how employee stress impacts productivity are important, but the most surprising finding was the demand for financial wellness programs and how they could increase job satisfaction and retention.

Employee Financial Wellness Statistics 2019

Here are the three most startling statistics about the financial stress employees experience:

50 percent of employees spend more than they earn each month.
37 percent of workers say they have more debt than they can manage.
41 percent of them say they don’t have enough savings to cover three months of living expenses.

According to the report, “Debt, unexpected expenses and inadequate savings are among the most significant sources of financial stress for employees.”

“While long-term savings and planning are the most often-cited needs, employees also need help with short-term goals like budgeting, managing debt and emergency savings.”

Employees Ask for Financial Wellness Benefits

Fewer than one-third of workers have access to financial wellness, but the third that do are putting them to good use. Forty to 60 percent of those with financial wellness benefits have used them in the last three years. Here are the two big takeaways from employees without access to financial wellness benefits:

60 percent of employees would be more likely to stay at a job if their employer offered financial wellness benefits.
71 percent of workers would be comfortable discussing financial matters at work with a financial professional unaffiliated with their employer.

Communication is key for any benefits offering, but more than 40 percent of employees don’t feel adequately informed about the benefits and programs their employees offer. How can employees better communicate benefits? Employees cited a clear explanation and easy access as the two most important factors that would make them more likely to use a benefit.

Financial wellness programs that give employees direct access to the personalized tools they need to dial down their financial stress, like Best Money Moves, can help organizations improve their productivity, retention and job satisfaction.

More on Financial Wellness Statistics 2019

5 Fast Financial Stress Statistics

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How Can Financial Wellness Be Improved?

5 Must-Have Benefits for Millennial Employees

How Does Financial Wellness Affect Health?

Hiring Trends to Watch in 2020

What Is Financial Literacy and Why Is It Important?

4 Big Employee Benefit Trends for Family Planning

Retirement Concerns Aren’t Boosting Contributions

by LizStevens | Sep 4, 2019 | Blog

Retirement concerns aren’t boosting contributions. Americans can expect to outlive their retirement savings by anywhere from eight to 20 years.

Retirees in the U.S. can expect to outlive their savings by anywhere from eight to 20 years, according to research by the World Economic Forum. Women have it worst and will outlive their retirement savings for at least two years longer than men.

Not saving enough for retirement is Americans’ biggest financial regret, yet less than 30 percent of workers have increased their retirement savings contributions rate this year. Over 20 percent of employees are saving less or not contributing to a retirement fund at all.

Why Aren’t Employees Boosting Retirement Contributions?

“The reasons Americans cite for not increasing retirement contributions indicate a continued lackadaisical approach to retirement savings – whether it’s complacency with current contributions, focus on other financial priorities, rising household expenses or just not getting around to it,” says Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.

Nearly 25 percent of employees didn’t raise retirement savings because they’re comfortable with their current contribution. Considering the $400 trillion global retirement savings gap, it’s worth wondering if those who are comfortable really have enough set aside to get them through retirement. Life expectancy for senior citizens has never been better, which means most Americans’ will need more money saved than they once thought, and that’s before factoring in costs for long-term healthcare.

Stagnant or declining income is the reason more than 20 percent of employees gave for failing to increase contributions to retirement funds in 2019. Over 15 percent of workers focused on another financial priority, like paying down credit card debt, before boosting retirement savings. More than 10 percent of employees blame rising household expenses for their failing to increase retirement contributions. Unexpected financial emergencies kept almost 10 percent of them from boosting retirement savings.

The most concerning response came from the more than 10 percent of workers who just haven’t gotten around to it. It was a more popular response for younger Millennials (16 percent) and households with lower-than-average income (16 percent) than for other groups.

“Saving for retirement needs to be made a bigger priority for the millions of Americans that aren’t saving, got started late, or are behind on their retirement savings,” McBride says.

More on Retirement, Savings and Financial Stress

How to Help Employees Save More for Retirement

Retirement Concerns: Is Financial Literacy the Solution?

How Do Employees Pay for Unexpected Expenses?

5 Fast Financial Stress Statistics

How Bad is the Student Loan Crisis?

5 Must-Have Benefits for Millennial Employees

How Do You Retain Employees?

by LizStevens | Aug 20, 2019 | Blog

How do you retain employees? Forty-three percent of workers will look for a new job in the next year, putting employer focus on retention strategies.

More than 80 percent of employers are concerned about retaining employees — and with good reason. Almost half (43%) plan to look for a new job in the next 12 months, according to research from global staffing firm Robert Half.

“In a tight employment market, workers have more options, and the grass may look greener somewhere else,” said Paul McDonald, senior executive director for Robert Half. “Employers can help prevent turnover by learning what motivates their most valued employees and customizing their retention strategies. While money is an important motivator, benefits or growth opportunities are also strong enticements.”

How Do You Retain Employees Looking for a New Job?

Robert Half asked respondents if there was one thing their employers could do that would convince them to stay at their current jobs. The top answer was what you’d expect: more than 40 percent of workers would stay if their employer offered them more money.

Access to more time off or better benefits would retain 20 percent of employees looking for new jobs. Nineteen percent of workers would be happy to stay at their current job if they were given a promotion. A new boss would retain only 8 percent of employees. Lastly, 10 percent of employees said there was nothing their employer could do to convince them to stay.

What Employee Retention Strategies are Companies Using?

Forty-six percent of employers are increasing communication with employees through town hall meetings and employee engagement surveys in an effort to retain more employees. Just over 40 percent of employers are improving employee recognition programs and providing professional development to improve employee retention.

Enhancing compensation and benefits is the retention strategy 40 percent of employers are using, which makes sense since more than 60 percent of respondents said more money, time off or benefits would keep them at their current job.

Other employers are providing reimbursement for ongoing education, facilitating mentorship programs or working with interim staff to prevent full-time employees from becoming burnt out.

Surprisingly, 7 percent of employers aren’t using any employee retention strategies. If they knew nearly half of their employees would be looking elsewhere within the next year, we bet they’d reconsider.

More on How to Retain Employees

How High is Work-Related Stress and What’s Causing it?

Choosing the Most Important Benefits to Employees in 2020

Is Rehiring a Former Employee a Good Idea?

How to Retain Hourly Employees

2 Simple Strategies to Improve Office Culture

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How Does Remote Working Work?

by LizStevens | Aug 14, 2019 | Blog

How does remote working work? The best remote work policies give employees flexibility and a better work-life balance without sacrificing productivity.

Remote work, or telecommuting, increased significantly (159 percent) between 2005 and 2017, according to a report by FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics.

“Talent shortages are fueling the growth of workplace flexibility right now because not only is it one of the most sought-after benefits among job seekers today, it also expands the talent pool by allowing employers to hire the best and brightest from around the world,” said Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics.

How Does Remote Working Work?

The rules of remote work vary at each organization. Remote work typically offers employees some measure of flexibility regarding when and where they get their work done. And it’s not just employees who benefit—organizations that allow employees to work remotely on a full-time basis expand their candidate pool well beyond the region they operate in. Other organizations permit employees to work remotely in certain situations. For instance, some companies let employees work remotely if they or their child is sick or on certain days, like work from home Fridays.

Setting employees up for remote work used to be a lengthy process. Now, it can be as simple as approving them to log into work from their desktop or laptop at home. Some companies even provide equipment for employees to use when they need to work remotely.

Cybersecurity is something organizations need to take into account when developing remote work policies. Protecting company information is critical when giving employees access to systems and documents outside of the workplace.

The Future of Remote Working

“Remote work has grown steadily since 2005, as companies of all types—private, public, nonprofit, or startup—continue to recognize the bottom-line benefits of integrating remote work into their business strategies,” said Sara Sutton, founder and CEO of FlexJobs. “With improvements to technology, and increasing demands from employees in a tight labor market, we fully expect to see the momentum around this important workplace continue to grow,” said Sutton.

There are five industries that FlexJob’s predicts will have continued growth in remote working:

Computer and IT
Medical and Health
Sales
Education and Training
Customer Service

The explosion in remote work doesn’t show signs of slowing down any time soon. Over the last five years, remote working has grown more than 40 percent. Nearly 5 million people in the U.S. currently telecommute, up from almost 4 million in 2015. Remote work is a win-win for employers having a hard time sourcing talent and employees who desire more flexibility and a better work-life balance.

More on Remote Work and Flexible Scheduling:

Why You Need a Remote Work Strategy

Top 10 Employee Benefits for 2020

Do Flexible Work Schedules Work?

5 Must-Have Benefits for Millennial Employees

How to Make Traditional Work Better for Freelancers

4 Big Employee Benefits Trends for Family Planning

Choosing the Most Important Benefits to Employees in 2020

by LizStevens | Aug 7, 2019 | Blog

Choosing the most important benefits to employees in 2020. Increase employee benefits participation and engagement with our three-step strategy.

Best Money Moves recently forecast the top 10 employee benefits for 2020 and we’ve developed a simple, three-step strategy to help you identify the benefits your employees want most and formulate a communications plan to increase participation and engagement.

How to Choose the Most Important Benefits to Employees in 2020

Step #1 Audit Your Current Employee Benefits

Conduct an audit of your current employee benefits package. You’ll want to know which benefits are used most frequently and which benefits are underutilized. If there isn’t an annual report for benefits utilization, work with HR to create a process for it going forward. Historical data comes in handy whenever you’re making benefits decisions.

If a benefit is underutilized, it doesn’t necessarily mean that benefit should be scrapped. Nearly half of employees don’t understand all the benefits their organization offers. The next step helps you determine whether it’s a benefit that employees don’t value a benefit that needs to be restrategized.

Step #2 Survey Employees and HR

A short employee survey gives you insight into what benefits are the most important benefits to employees in 2020. Make sure to include questions about benefits that appear to be undervalued and benefits you’re thinking of introducing. Multiple-choice questions quickly determine which benefits are most sought after, and, if you include open-ended questions, they’ll tell you why those benefits matter most.

While you’re at it, survey your human resources team. What questions do they get about benefits? Are there any benefits employees have asked about that the organization doesn’t offer? What do they think about the current benefits engagement process? Is there any way they think benefits communication can be improved? How? Including HR in the planning process gives you a better understanding of how benefits are managed day-to-day and where improvements can be made.

How to Increase Employee Benefits Participation and Engagement

Step #3 Improve Benefits Communication

Employee benefits participation and engagement comes down to one thing: communication. Traditional meetings or emails that give employees large amounts of information are no longer an effective way to educate employees. Shorter, bite-sized benefits information sent over a longer period of time is a better way to improve employee understanding.

“Releasing “bite-sized” bits of information on different benefits every quarter could vastly improve employees’ understanding of benefits selection and enrollment,” said Misty Guinn, director of benefits and wellness at cloud-based benefits platform provider Benefitfocus.

This does mean more work for HR, but the good news is that most of it can be automated with minimal updates once templates are written. Test different methods of communication, like text messaging, phone calls and instant messenger in addition to emails or meetings. Track participation, open and click rates to see which method is the best way to reach your employees.

Employee benefits and perks are the battlegrounds where employers are fighting the war for talent in a tight job market where unemployment hovers at a nearly 50-year low (3.7%). Moreover, employee benefits account for more than 30 percent of total employee compensation. It’s worth developing a better benefits process and improved engagement strategies to make sure your organization offers the most important benefits to employees in 2020.