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How Does Financial Wellness Affect Health?

How Does Financial Wellness Affect Health?

by | Jul 10, 2019 | Blog

How does financial wellness affect health? Recent research looks at the link between financial stress, health and how financial wellness programs can help.

Several recent studies ask how finances affect the health of employees and some researchers took it a step further to examine how financial wellness programs correlate with better health outcomes.

According to a new survey by Bankrate, money worries are the biggest cause of sleep loss and it’s getting worse. Seventy-eight percent of U.S. adults are losing sleep worrying about everyday expenses, saving for retirement and healthcare costs. 

“Sleep greatly impacts mental health and physical health, and mental health also impacts sleep,” Dr. Gail Saltz, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical College, “Not getting enough sleep can impact mood, increase depression and increase anxiety.”

Financial Stress Affects the Health of Employees

Money causes the most stress in the lives of almost 60 percent of employees, according to a report by PwC. It was the top choice for life stressor across all generations, well ahead of issues with jobs, relationships, and health. More than 30 percent of employees say their health has been impacted by their financial worries.

Merrill Edge looked at how Americans with significant investable assets feel about their finances for their recent report. The majority of these relatively financially secure Americans say managing their finances impacts their mental and physical health (59 percent and 56 percent, respectively). Roughly 40 percent of mass affluent Americans would give up all social media platforms forever or cut carbs, sugar and/or alcohol if they never have to manage their personal finances again. 

Financial Wellness Programs for Better Health

When PwC asked respondents what employer benefit they don’t currently have but would like, one in four employees said they want a financial wellness program with an unbiased counselor. Financial wellness programs are in high demand but the one thing employers want to know is if they work and recent research suggests they do. 

Close to 30 percent of employees without access to financial wellness benefits say they worry a lot about current and future finances, according to research by Prudential. Among those with access to financial wellness, worries about current and future finances drop to less than 20 percent. Nearly 60 percent of workers who use financial wellness programs consider their overall mental health  “good,” and those numbers fall to 55 percent for those who don’t use financial wellness programs. 

According to the Prudential report, “These findings add to the body of literature that suggests that financial and physical health are often intertwined, and that employers who help their employees on both fronts stand the best chance of achieving the benefits that wellness programs can offer: healthier, happier, more productive employees whose physical and emotional health may lead to lower rates of absenteeism, fewer delayed retirements, and reduced levels of employee turnover, healthcare costs and employee disability.”

More on Financial Wellness and Employee Health

5 Fast Financial Stress Statistics

How Can Financial Wellness Be Improved?

What Tops Financial Stress for Employees?

How to Support Mental Health at Work

Financial Wellbeing & Its Role in a Complete Employee Wellbeing Program

Financial Wellbeing & Its Role in a Complete Employee Wellbeing Program

Financial Wellbeing & Its Role in a Complete Employee Wellbeing Program

by | Jun 6, 2019 | Blog

Financial wellbeing and its role in a complete employee wellbeing program. In this guest post, DHS Group‘s VP of Employer Solutions, Rich Siegenthaler, recommends four ways your employee wellness program can keep up with changes in the benefits industry. The opinions expressed in this blog belong to the author and DHS Group.

It’s getting more and more common to see employers focusing on strategies to assist their employee population in managing their complete wellbeing rather than one single area. They’re accomplishing this by adding programs that benefit the financial wellbeing and mental health of employees. This is a step in the right direction that’s quickly leading to healthier employees in every sense of the word.

Maybe you’re already putting some of these strategies to work or maybe you’re hoping to in the near future. Wherever you are in the journey, DHS Group’s VP of Employer Solutions and experienced employee wellbeing professional, Rich Siegenthaler, has a few recommendations to get you started and make sure you’re on the right path to complete employee wellbeing.

Expand Beyond Traditional Wellness Programs

Traditional wellness programs put surface programs at the forefront – think: step challenges – while these are important, the industry is changing and what employees are looking for is changing.

Integrate Mental Health Programs

For years, mental health has been something that both employees and employers have strayed away from discussing with each other. However, as mental health conditions are spreading rapidly – with issues like anxiety, depression and worry being dealt with by people everywhere – employers can’t afford to not offer these types of programs as part of their wellbeing plans.

Provide Financial Wellness Programming

The number one stressors in American households today are financial. While employees do need to understand how to invest their resources in traditional ways (like 401Ks), the new trend is to provide tools for employees to manage their day-to-day and month-to-month budgets. 

Many times, employees say they understand they need to put more into their 401K, but know that if they do, they will not be able to pay their bills.  Financial wellness programming helps people look at their earnings, bills and expenses, and learn how to manage them more effectively. It is a day-to-day management strategy that helps employees lead a more comfortable and accountable lifestyle when it comes to their financial health. 

Improve Communication

However you decide to start expanding your wellbeing program to a more complete package – communication is key. There will be growing pains, but in order to help lessen those, remember that your employees are people too. Open up the lines of communication to hear from your employees about what they’re looking for overall and what they are looking for in their wellbeing programs.

Before you do anything, the ultimate first step is to look at your workforce, your employee demographics and how your very own organization operates. Then, with these details in mind, alongside Rich’s recommendations above, you’ll be well on your way to a complete wellbeing program that benefits the employee AND the employer.

Learn more about bringing complete wellbeing to your employees with DHS Group’s HealthSpective Engage program here.

More on Employee Wellbeing and Wellness Programs:

From Employee Wellness to Wellbeing: Transforming Your Workforce

4 Big Employee Benefits Trends for Family Planning

How to Support Mental Health at Work

Employee Benefits Success is All About Communication

What’s Wrong With Wellness Program Incentives?

What Benefits Do Employees Want in 2019?

5 Fast Financial Stress Statistics

5 Fast Financial Stress Statistics

by | Jun 3, 2019 | Blog

5 fast financial stress statistics. Americans opened up about debt, housing and spending habits in a survey from Freedom Debt Relief and the results underscore a desperate need for financial wellness.

More than 20 percent of Americans would rather go to the dentist or the DMV than talk about their finances, according to research by Freedom Debt Relief, which got people to open up about debt, housing and financial habits in their latest survey.

Nearly 80 percent of Americans said they have debt. More than 45 percent of them have debt over $10,000 and 5 percent of them are more than $250,000 in debt.

When asked about their financial habits, these are the five statistics that best highlight mounting financial stress for Americans:

5 Fast Financial Stress Statistics

  1. 41% don’t set aside any money for their household retirement plan.
  2. 25% have charged their credit card for groceries/food and not been able to pay it off right away.
  3. 33% said it would take more than 3 years to pay their credit card debt.
  4. 29% said if they needed $2,000 for an emergency, they would use a credit card.
  5. 20% of those with children in childcare said the cost is as expensive as, or more expensive than, their monthly rent or mortgage payment.

How Debt Impacts Personal and Professional Life

Most Americans carrying debt are suffering in silence. More than 40 percent of Americans said they find it difficult to talk about debt with friends and families, and as we mentioned earlier more than 20 percent would prefer a date with the dentist or the DMV over a discussion about debts and finances.

Americans bring their financial stress with them to work. Nearly 20 percent say the amount of their debt impacts their productivity. Research by PwC found more than 40 percent of employees who are distracted by financial stress spend 3 hours or more at work thinking about or dealing with issues related to their personal finances each week.

Financial wellness programs, like Best Money Moves, give employees an opportunity to privately learn how to better manage their debt, spending and saving. It empowers employees to resolve their financial stress, without having to talk about it.

More on Financial Stress and Financial Wellness

How Can Financial Wellness Be Improved?

What Tops Financial Stress for Employees?

What Percentage of Americans Spend More Than They Earn?

Reduce Financial Stress with This Type of Insurance

How Bad is the Student Loan Crisis?

What is Financial Literacy and Why is it Important?

Retirement Concerns: Is Financial Literacy the Solution?

Retirement Concerns: Is Financial Literacy the Solution?

by | Apr 17, 2019 | Blog

Retirement concerns: is financial literacy the solution? Those workers that do have a 401k aren’t saving enough to cover expenses in retirement, even when employers match contributions.

Retirement is a far-off goal most Americans don’t even think about while they’re paying down debts, struggling to pay for childcare and taking care of aging parents. It’s become so disconnected from reality that 20 percent of Americans are actually basing their retirement plans on winning the lottery, according to research by Stash.

Americans Are Not Saving Enough for Retirement

Not saving enough for retirement is the number one fear among middle-income earners, and with good reason. Four researchers at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University recently found three-fourths of American workers with defined contribution plans like 401(k)s aren’t saving enough to maintain their standard of living later in life.

Can Financial Literacy Solve Retirement Concerns?

Nearly half of U.S. adults failed to correctly answer basic financial literacy questions in a recent annual assessment.

The P-Fin Index by the TIAA Institute asks 28 questions across eight functional areas of finance including: earning, consuming, saving, investing, borrowing/managing debt, insuring, comprehending risk and go-to information sources. American adults scored highest in the area of borrowing/managing debt and lowest in comprehending risk.

This year, the P-Fin Index included several new questions indicative of financial wellness. According to the report by TIAA Institute, “Greater financial literacy is positively associated with the capacity to handle a financial shock, saving for retirement on a regular basis, being unconstrained by debt and other indicators of financial well-being.”

Financial Wellness Programs and Financial Literacy

Financial literacy is indicative of financial wellness and high school curriculums across the country are adding personal finance courses as a requirement for high school graduation to start addressing the widespread lack of financial literacy.

What about the half of U.S. adults who couldn’t answer basic financial literacy questions? How can they learn the skills they need when they don’t know where to begin?

Financial wellness programs help workers improve financial literacy, pay down debt and save for retirement. They are a valuable employee benefit and with the right financial wellness program, like Best Money Moves, employees are given the tools and resources to help them attain financial literacy while they better their financial wellness.  

More on Retirement:

How to Help Employees Save More for Retirement

Financial Support Limits Retirement Readiness for Parents

Revealing Research on Financial Stress and Productivity

What Does Financial Wellness Look Like for Women?

What Tops Financial Stress for Employees?

What Is Financial Literacy and Why Is It Important?

What Is Financial Literacy and Why Is It Important?

by | Mar 25, 2019 | Blog

What is financial literacy and why is it important? It’s knowledge employees need to reduce financial stress and financial wellness programs can help them improve it.

Over 40 percent of employees are too worried about their financial situation today to think about the future, according to a survey by BlackRock.

Despite mounting financial stress, many prioritize convenience over savings. A third of employees would choose to take $1,000 now rather than wait a year for $3,000 and two-fifths of employees would quadruple their transportation costs to save 20 minutes, according to new research by PurePoint Financial.

“Our survey found that 1 in 3 people in the U.S. don’t feel in control of their finances and half are too embarrassed to talk about their savings with their friends,” said Pierre Habis, president of PurePoint Financial.

Habis continued, “We understand how important financial security is to all of us and that saving may seem daunting, but it just takes minor adjustments, such as creating financial goals, setting aside whatever you can manage from each paycheck or searching for better interest rates for your savings account.”

Habis makes it sound easy, but most Americans don’t know where to begin when it comes to improving their financial wellness. What he refers to as minor adjustments could feel like major fundamental changes to a family that lacks financial literacy.

What is Financial Literacy?

Financial literacy is an understanding of the skills and knowledge that allows an individual to make informed and effective decisions with all of their financial resources. It encompasses budgeting, saving, investing, and includes anything and everything that deals with money management.

Why is Financial Literacy Important?

Financial literacy is important because it can help people with high levels of debt correct course and better prepare themselves for retirement.

Three years after implementing a financial education mandate for high-schoolers in Georgia, Idaho, and Texas, all three states saw increased credit scores and lower delinquency rates on credit accounts, according to a FINRA Investor Education Foundation-funded study.  

What Are Financial Wellness Programs?

Financial wellness programs are employer-sponsored programs that help employees regain control of their personal finances. It’s become a popular employee benefit in recent years as the effects of financial stress on employee performance have become more clear. The 2018 Employee Financial Wellness Survey by PwC found:

  • 25% of employees report that issues with personal finances have been a distraction at work
  • 43% of employees of those distracted by finances at work spend 3 hours or more at work each week thinking about or dealing with issues related to their personal finances
  • 11% of employees occasionally miss work due to financial stress

Employees were also asked to complete the sentence “My employer financial wellness program has helped me…” and here’s what financial wellness programs helped them accomplish:

  • 41% got their spending under control
  • 39% prepared for retirement
  • 31% paid off debt
  • 27% saved for major goals (home, education)
  • 23% better managed their investments/asset allocation
  • 12% better managed healthcare expenses or saved for future healthcare expenses

Once employees have the financial literacy they need they can reduce financial stress, start reaching their savings goals and spend less time worrying about money at work.