Ilyce Glink

This week, we are highlighting Best Money Moves’ founder and CEO, Ilyce Glink. She is an award-winning television and radio personality, a nationally-syndicated columnist, an innovator in content marketing and is the author of more than a dozen books with nearly 1 million in print.

Her latest ebook/webinar offering is Intentional Investor: How to be Wildly Successful in Real Estate. In 2018, she will publish the fourth edition of her bestselling first-time homebuyer book.

More than 15 years ago, Glink started Think Glink Media, a digital communications agency producing award-winning work, profitable campaigns and loyal customers. TGM’s clients include Fortune 1000 companies in the financial services, real estate, and health sectors as well as start-ups and nonprofits.

I was able to sit down with Ilyce and asked her to answer a few questions about why she started Best Money Moves:

Q: What made you focus on financial wellness?

A: I’ve always believed that consumers should be able to (and can) make 95% of their best money moves on their own, without a paid professional. So, I’ve dedicated my career to helping people to make smarter decisions with their money. In the early years, I focused more on real estate, which is why I wrote 100 Questions Every First-Time Home Buyer Should Ask, but as I learned more about personal finances and how integrated it is, I focused on holistic financial wellness.

Five years ago, I was hired by some Fortune 500 companies to design financial wellness programs but they wanted them to be selling machines for products and services. Given that  we were in the aftermath of the Great Recession, I didn’t think that would work. And, it didn’t.

Q: Is that when you decided to start Best Money Moves?

A: Yes. I started it because I knew there was a better way to help people and employees.

Q: What would you say were the drivers behind the design of the product?

A: It had to be based in the cloud, so you’d get real-time reporting and features. We wanted it to be mobile-first, because folks need to be able to use it anywhere. We wanted to make it simple to use, easy to understand, yet provide great depth of knowledge. And, we wanted to use machine learning so it would be smart enough to be extremely personalized and relevant. Lastly, we wanted employers to get the same real-time experience that they were providing to their employees.

Q: There’s a lot of noise around financial wellness now. What are the key differentiators for your business?

A: Wherever we go, CEOs, CHROs, and CFOs are fascinated by our Stressometer(™), which we use to measure someone’s financial stress. We break down financial stress into 15 categories and use machine learning algorithms to delve deeper and identify the root causes of the stress.

Q: Where did the idea for the Stressometer™ come from?

A: From my years of being a radio talk show host. It sounds kind of funny, but when I would take people’s questions on WSB Radio or WGN Radio, they’d say they wanted one answer – but if I dug a bit deeper, I’d realize that there was another issue that had to be solved first. For example, if they said, “I want to refinance,” I’d ask why. And I might get an answer like, “Well, I’m getting divorced.” And, that would require a completely different set of questions to get to the right solution.

Q: What’s your favorite part of Best Money Moves?

A: That we’re helping people. That we seem to have figured out how to make individuals understand their finances and we are helping  people get out of debt.

https://bestmoneymoves.com/leadership/

Will cloud computing improve employee productivity?

More businesses are finding that by moving key processes to the cloud, they’re able to operate more efficiently – especially since the option to work remotely has become increasingly popular among employees. By moving documents to a central location online, and automating certain aspects of a team’s workflow, employees are able to complete assignments wherever they are.

Many cloud-based platforms allow groups of people to contribute to the same project at different times, and some of the latest platforms even measure how productive each team and each individual on the team are.

Since online solutions take less time to learn, according to e-commerce company Meylah, companies that switch to the cloud can reach a higher level of productivity sooner. Here are some other ways cloud computing could help your people work smarter.

A lot of things have changed since 1996. In its 2016 Employee Benefits Research Report, the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) looked back at some of the changes in employee benefits and the companies that help facilitate these benefits since the organization started issuing these reports. See what‘s new.

Updating your employee benefits could help you keep your best employees. Whether you go for more traditional perks, such as a 401(k) match, or think outside the box with options such as free intern housing, your team will thank you for it. Learn what innovative employee benefits these 10 top companies are providing.

Your employees are leaving and it’s costing you money. Retention is a growing problem for employers as the economy heats up and unemployment drops. The latest Gallup report found that a record 47 percent of the workforce says now is a good time to find a quality job and more than half of employees are searching for new jobs or watching for openings. Why are your employees seeking greener pastures?

Is your HR department performing at its best? In order to support a company’s business model and goals, HR professionals need to focus on efficiency and delivering real value where it counts. Start with these five essential practices.

Your employees probably aren’t engaged at work.  According to Gallup’s most recent State of the Global Workplace report, 51 percent of workers said they weren’t engaged and 17 percent said they were actively disengaged on the job. Here’s what you can do to fix it.

Many young adult workers are ignoring or rejecting their health insurance options. We’re in the heart of open enrollment season and millennials are 82 percent less likely to have health insurance. Unfortunately,  25 percent of millennials are more likely to have past-due medical debt. Here’s how to engage millennials and use open enrollment season to your advantage.

Should you be offering more ambitious perks? In today’s tight labor market, many companies are using unique benefits to attract and retain top talent. Learn from these six examples.

Does your startup offer the right benefits? While young companies might not want to spend big bucks on extravagant employee perks like weekly breakfasts or a ping-pong table, businesses are still finding plenty of inexpensive ways to make their teams feel valued. Check out these ideas.  

How can HR leverage HCM technology? They have to do what they do best: blend the characteristics of their business and their workforce. Here are three things that could help make up the ideal HCM tech framework.

Have something to add? Email info@bestmoneymoves.com.