HR trends Archives - Best Money Moves

5 Things Employers Need in a Financial Wellness Program

by daniel@bestmoneymoves.com | Mar 24, 2021 | Blog

5 Things Employers Need in a Financial Wellness Program

Not all financial wellness programs are created equal. How do your options measure up?

Post pandemic, financial wellness programs have seen a sudden rise in popularity. Forty-two percent of employers now offer one or more financial wellness programs, according to data from MassMutual. Those numbers are only expected to grow.

Employers seem increasingly aware that they need to provide a high-quality, broad-based financial wellness program. Even as they invest in a more holistic approach to overall employee wellness. It’s the right move. But not all financial wellness programs are created equal. And, throwing a bunch of point-based solutions at your employees doesn’t count.

Maybe you’re already offering a financial wellness platform loaded with benefits to your employees. Or, perhaps you’re getting ready to take the plunge. Either way, these are the five must-have pieces to successful financial wellness program.

1. Financial wellbeing programs need comprehensive guidance.

Employer financial wellness programs shouldn’t start and stop with a 401k plan or the occasional bonus. Money is at the root of many of the decisions that we make every day in our career and personal lives. Your employees are facing issues as wide-ranging and unique as they are:

Paying off significant student debt
Financing or managing health care costs
Daily budgeting issues
Elder care challenges
Relationship issues, and everything in-between.

In order for a financial wellness program to truly make a difference in a person’s life, it should address financial needs both great and small with a consistent breadth and depth of knowledge.

2. Include customizable financial wellbeing content for employees at any stage.

Similarly, while it’s true that money affects everyone, it affects everyone in different ways. With up to five generations in the workforce, your employees have different financial goals, expectations and circumstances. In order for a financial wellness program to be worth the time and money you’ll invest, it needs to address every individual employee, regardless of their age, financial status, stage of their career, etc. A good financial wellness program will offer the same level of individual assistance to those employees still starting their careers as it does to those raising families or approaching retirement. A great one will make personalized and customizable content available in an easy-to-use, integrateable intuitive platform.

3. Bring financial wellness current with timely insight into real-world issues.

Real-world financial insecurities require real-world advice and realistic solutions. Your financial wellness program needs to acknowledge and validate that external factors like mental health, chronic illness, gender or racial inequality and other inequity play a part in your employees’ financial lives. Reality-based financial tools are more likely to be used and yield tangible results for the employee, and real ROI for HR.

4. Financial wellbeing programs need trustworthy, reliable security.

This one is simple: Money matters are sensitive issues, and nobody should feel like their financial security is at risk. A good financial wellness application is encrypted and secure, even at rest, with no one, not even employers, able to access an individual’s delicate financial information without the user’s permission. Look for a financial wellness program that prioritizes user security.

5. Don’t forget to include a human touch.

It’s easy to get lost in a flurry of statistics and calculations when talking about financial wellbeing, but at the end of the day, financial security is key to emotional and physical wellbeing. It’s time to demystify learning about money: Your financial wellness program should be fun and easy-to-use, run by a team who cares about your employees as much as you do.

Keep these must-haves in mind as you think through program changes. How do the financial wellbeing programs offered to your employees measure up?

Financial Wellbeing Programs Create Opportunities for Employee Engagement

If you’re looking for a stronger solution, talk to us. Best Money Moves is a human-centered program that offers a personalized approach to financial wellbeing. The comprehensive and user friendly-platform provides a plethora of financial resources and educational tools, with nearly 800 articles, videos, and calculators. Employees can measure their level of financial stress in each of 15 categories, and our algorithms will send personalized and customized information, tools, and solutions that help solve the problem and reduce financial stress.

Whether your employees need help saving money, paying their bills, raising their credit scores, getting ready for retirement or buying a house, Best Money Moves is there to support them every step of the way. Best of all, Best Money Moves is portable, so when your employees move on, they can take it with them.

Give your employees the very best financial wellness experience. Reach out for a demo today!

If you want to learn more about how Best Money Moves can bring financial wellness to your company, download our whitepapers.

The Top 5 HR Trends to Look For In 2021

by daniel@bestmoneymoves.com | Mar 3, 2021 | Blog

The Top 5 HR Trends to Look For In 2021. Keep an eye out for these five up-and-coming HR trends as workforces everywhere adjust to a post-COVID world.

It’s no secret that 2020 was a disruptive year. Fallout from the Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of Americans to work from home, and changed the way employers think about employee wellness. The new workforce needs to be adaptable and resilient in the face of uncertainty and leadership must find new ways to keep their teams motivated and healthy.

Here are the top 5 HR trends to look for in 2021, after a year that transformed the way Americans work.

Continued remote work & an emphasis on hybrid work spaces.

A year into the pandemic, workers have had time to reflect on the pros and cons of going remote and, to the surprise of many, there’s reason to believe that work-from-home options may stick around, even after the pandemic has ended. In a recent PwC survey, 83% of employers said their shift to remote work has been successful. According to the same survey, 55% of employees want to work at least three days a week from home, even after concerns of COVID-19 fade. While this doesn’t exactly align with employers — 68% of whom claim they need at least three days in the office a week to maintain company culture — the results do make one thing clear: We are likely heading in the direction of compromise. Look for more offices staying remote or vying for half-remote, half-in-office hybrid models in 2021.

Increased flexibility on work hours.

Some Americans are beginning to feel the restrictive nature of the 9-to-5 daily grind, especially after a year where many working parents lost the support of daytime childcare to the pandemic. Now, it seems employers are exploring alternative ways to structure employee time at work, many of which are paying off. According to Gartner’s 2020 ReimagineHR Employee Survey, while 36% of employees were high-performers in the standard 40-hour workweek, that number rose to 55% when employees had flexibility over their hours and location. Expect this idea to be tested in more and more companies this year.

Increased employer focus on employee wellbeing and mental health support.

According to the CDC, mental illnesses are associated with higher rates of disability and unemployment. These struggles affect more than just productivity and engagement, they can damage physical capabilities and daily functioning. Nearly 41% of adults report symptoms of anxiety or depression in their households, according to a January 2021 report from Kaiser Family Foundation, a massive spike from the 11% reported in June of 2019. With more and more employees experiencing challenges resulting from the collective trauma of the pandemic, employers must adapt. While there’s a long way to go, many companies feel more comfortable having conversations about mental health. As such, employee benefits are trending towards mental health support.

Increased employer focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion among staff.

This trend isn’t based around productivity or output and isn’t about numbers or qualifiers: It’s about morality and equity. A year of social unrest has caused more companies to acknowledge their shortcomings when it comes to diversity and take the first steps toward becoming more inclusive. While diversity describes the make-up of a company, inclusion implies a more active approach. Companies are understanding that you need to be intentional about remaining inclusive.

Emphasis on corporations taking social and political stances.

The United States is undergoing a serious social reckoning and being a bystander to the burning social and political issues of the day is becoming harder to justify. When the leadership of a company aligns itself with the views of its employees, the entire company culture moves towards unity and, in turn, productivity. According to Gartner research, the number of productive and engaged employees jumped from 40% to 60% when their companies acted on the social issues of the times. More and more companies are feeling empowered to voice these opinions to their employees.

If you want to learn more about how Best Money Moves can bring financial wellness to your company, download our whitepapers.

National Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2019: What Employers Need to Know

by LizStevens | Oct 2, 2019 | Blog

National Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2019: what employers need to know. If nothing else, these basic cyber risk safeguards should be in place at your organization.

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. According to the Chubb Cyber Claims Index, there has been a 1,215 percent increase in the number of commercial cyber insurance claims over the past decade.

It’s time for the 60 percent of employers who admit they haven’t implemented the most basic cyber safeguards (according to a recent survey by Chubb) to step up and protect their businesses.

What Employers Need to Know for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2019

If nothing else, these are the three most basic cybersecurity practices employers should adopt to protect their company from cyber risks:

Hold annual employee cybersecurity trainings (only 33 percent of employers currently do this)
Deploy filters for online content (only 40 percent of employers currently do this)
Leverage social media blocks (only 33 percent of employers currently do this)

While putting these strategies into practice affords some cybersecurity (and some is better than none) it’s important to keep in mind that this is the equivalent of doing the bare minimum. When it comes to minimizing cyber risks and protecting your business, the bare minimum doesn’t cut it.

Defining Major Types of Cyber Risks for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2019

When it came to defining cybersecurity terms most Americans were stumped:

Ransomware – a form of malware that restricts access to files unless a ransom is paid. (only 54 percent of employees knew the definition)
Credential stuffing – an attack by cybercriminals to programmatically target a single online user using an email address and multiple password attempts. (only 41 percent of employees knew the definition)
Emotet – a type of malware which is designed to steal financial information and online banking credentials. (only 28 percent of employees knew the definition)
Ryuk – a new strain of ransomware that infects the victim’s main computer systems and hides itself as a legitimate VPN user. (only 26 percent of employees knew the definition)

If an employee can’t define what cyber threats are, how can they spot the red flags for one on the job? This is where an annual employee training can come in handy. According to the report by Chubb,

“As cybercriminals become increasingly sophisticated in their efforts to breach company systems, a general understanding of these common attacks — and how they are enacted — can be extremely valuable. By requiring employees to undergo annual trainings, much of which can be conducted online and limited to an hour, employees may be able to identify breach warning signs before they become full-blown attacks — allowing companies time to potentially intervene before significant losses occur.”

How Much Does a Data Breach Cost?

According to research by IBM, globally, the average total cost of a data breach is $3.92 million. The U.S. has the most expensive data breaches, averaging $8.19 million. Healthcare is the most expensive industry for data breaches, averaging $6.45 million. The average size of a data breach is 25,575 records.

A data breach is only one kind of cyber attack, and all of them come with high costs to protect, identify, respond and remediate. Make the most of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2019 and take steps to further safeguard your business from cyber risks.

More On Employee Training and Management Practices

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Why You Need to Train Employees for Future Tech

Top 10 Employee Benefits for 2020

2 Simple Strategies to Improve Office Culture

Is Rehiring a Former Employee a Good Idea?

How to Improve Gender Diversity in the Workplace

How to Make Traditional Work Better for Freelancers

Office Dress Code Policies in Today’s Workplace

Top 10 Workplace Etiquette Rules for Communication

Building Office Culture with Diversity and Inclusion

Is Your Employee Doing Side Work?

by LizStevens | Sep 25, 2019 | Blog

Is your employee doing side work? Employees work side hustles to earn extra income in their off-time and these are the types of side jobs they’re taking on.

Is Your Employee Doing Side Work?

It’s called a “side hustle.” And, the latest research shows about one-third of U.S. employees, approximately 57 million people, are working side hustles to earn extra income.

Should traditional employers be concerned about an employee doing side work, also known as “moonlighting?” Maybe, and for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the most important: More than 80 percent of Americans who currently have a side hustle are interested in doing it full-time, according to a recent SunTrust survey.

Are your employees doing side work? If so, what job(s) are they doing and how much are they making?

What Work Is Your Employee Doing On the Side?

AppJobs recently analyzed applications for side gigs to determine what the most popular side hustles are and how much they pay. The most popular side hustles are jobs that don’t necessarily require previous work experience, particular skills, or a degree, but still pay fairly well. Here are the top five most popular side gig categories according to the data gathered by Appjobs:

Delivery (105,314 applications) pays an average rate of $17.10 per hour
Freelance (95,866 applications) pays an average rate of $25.33 per hour
Petsitting (21,620 applications) pays an average rate of $13.17 per hour
Cleaning (14,143 applications) pays an average rate of $11.29 per hour
Driving (11,199 applications) pays an average rate of $14.36 per hour

“Hundreds — maybe thousands — of companies are making it easy for Americans to make extra money,” says Kathy Kristof, an award-winning journalist and editor of $idehusl, a website that reviews and rates online platforms that offer ways for people to make money on the side. “We’ve researched, rated and reviewed more than 300 of these online platforms. Where Uber and Lyft get miserable scores with our formula, there are probably 100 platforms that provide engaging, well-paid opportunities that could provide $500 to $2,500 per month in additional income. These opportunities involve teaching, cooking, creating tours, writing, programming and renting out everything from your carpet cleaner to your swimming pool.”

Which Generation Makes the Most Money from Side Work?

The SunTrust survey looked at how much individuals in each generation demographic make working a side hustle and found:

Millennials make an average of $10,972 from working a side hustle each year
Gen Xers make an average of $8,791 from side work each year
Baby Boomers make an average of $5,892 from side work each year

“Millennials often take on side hustles because they’re not earning enough to pay off their student debt and still have a life. Baby Boomers, who are retiring (or near retiring), are in the market because they feel like they’re not quite financially stable enough to leave the working world without some other way to make money,” says Kristof.

Should Employers Worry About an Employee Doing Side Work?

“Smart side hustlers are using their extra income to pay off debts and boost savings. That makes them a bit more confident about their ability to withstand a job loss. So, if their bosses are mean and miserable, they’re in a better position to walk away,” says Kristof.

“That said, what side hustles don’t give you are employee benefits and a work community. If an employer has a great benefits package and a positive, supportive working environment, most people won’t leave that — even if they have a side hustle.”

If you do notice a spike in your turnover rate, however, Kristof advises, “Ask yourself: How is my company faring in this changing workforce? Are we a place where people want to work, or are we just a place to collect a paycheck?”

“If you are nothing but a paycheck, you should worry — or, better, change. Ask yourself if you have tools in place to encourage your best workers to thrive. Are you talking to your workers? Do you know what they want/like/need from you? Are you listening? The freelance economy is bringing a sea change in the workforce. Those who are smart enough to adapt are likely to thrive.”

More On Employees and Management Strategies

Office Dress Code Policies in Today’s Workplace

Top 10 Workplace Etiquette Rules for Communication

Building Office Culture with Diversity and Inclusion

Hiring Trends to Watch in 2020

Why You Need to Train Employees for Future Tech

Top 10 Employee Benefits for 2020

2 Simple Strategies to Improve Office Culture

Is Rehiring a Former Employee a Good Idea?

How to Improve Gender Diversity in the Workplace

How to Make Traditional Work Better for Freelancers

Top 10 Employee Benefits for 2020

by LizStevens | Jul 19, 2019 | Blog

Top 10 employee benefits for 2020. HR trends forecast the most desired employee benefits for 2020 like pet perks, flex work and financial wellness programs.

It’s time to start building your organization’s employee benefits for 2020.

Companies can reduce turnover by nearly 140 percent with the right mix of benefits, according to research from Paycor. The annual employee benefits survey from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) provides data on the prevalence of benefits over time to help employers determine which employee benefits are most in-demand and which ones are phasing out.

Here is our list of the top 10 employee benefits for 2020:

Top 10 Employee Benefits for 2020

#10 Pet-Friendly Employee Benefits

Fifteen percent of companies now offer some form of pet health insurance. Health insurance for pets is a benefit that’s grown 6 percent since 2015 (4 percent of that was just this last year). Some companies have gone as far as offering paid time off or the flexibility to work from home for employees who adopt a pet, referred to affectionately as ‘paw-ternity leave.’

#9 The Benefits of Paid Leave

Almost 80 percent of employees live paycheck to paycheck. Without an emergency savings account to fall back on, employees turn to credit cards to cover unexpected expenses or reduce spending on other things, like necessary healthcare. Ninety-four percent of low-income employees do not have access to paid family leave, and they are the employees who need it most.

Paid leave is on the national legislative agenda in this congressional cycle, as Oregon recently became the eighth state to adopt a paid family and medical leave policy. It’s worth exploring organizational costs and strategies for paid leave benefits as the debate plays out on the national stage.

#8 Transportation Benefits for Employees

Nearly half of workers consider their commute to be the worst part of their day and one in five employees say they are ‘regularly late’ for work due to travel disruptions. Companies like Apple have started to provide commuting reimbursements or company shuttles to help ease the angst over commutes. It’s a smart strategy to attract and retain talent in a tight labor market.

#7 Flexible Scheduling Benefits

More than 10 percent of employees quit because of a poor work-life balance regarding their company’s schedule, commute, flexibility or travel. Flexible scheduling makes a big difference for new parents, caretakers, students, employees with ongoing health issues and employees with long commutes.

Flexible work schedules give employees some sort of control over when and where they work. It establishes a level of trust with their employer and allows them to be there for friends and family when it matters most.

#6 Family Planning Benefits for Employees

More employers are offering family-friendly benefits like paid maternity leave and fertility services to attract and retain employees. It’s not just big corporations either, 10 percent of employers with 50 or fewer employees offer some sort of fertility benefit (up from 4 percent in 2016). Egg harvesting or freezing, in-vitro fertilization treatments, paid paternity leave and emergency/sick childcare are just a few of the family-friendly benefits growing as part of the larger trend to expand work-life balance policies.

#5 Tech Benefits for Employees

SHRM found over 50 percent of employers provide a company-owned business cell phone/smartphone for business and personal use. More than 40 percent offer subsidies for cell phone/smartphone bills for employee-owned devices. Surprisingly, nearly 15 percent of organizations offer free computers for employees’ personal use. Tech benefits ensure that employees have the right equipment to get the work done whether they’re in the office, traveling or working remotely.

#4 Transgender-Inclusive Healthcare Benefits

The International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans (IFEBP) found nearly 30 percent of employers now offer transgender-inclusive benefits, like coverage of sex-reassignment surgery or subsidies for cosmetic procedures, such as electrolysis, mastectomy and Adam’s apple reduction surgery.

“Employers are increasingly recognizing the importance of LGBT benefits,” says Julie Stich, associate vice president, content, for the IFEBP in Brookfield, Wisconsin. “The growing awareness of LGBT rights has made its way into the workplace, and organizations are adjusting the design of their benefits programs and the language of their diversity policies to be inclusive of LGBT employees and their families.”

#3 Student Loan Debt Repayment Programs

There’s no way to ignore the massive student loan debt crisis in America. Employers have been developing solutions to help employees who are struggling to pay down their share of the more than $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. Some companies are allowing workers to transfer up to five days of paid time off for payments against student loan debt. Other programs offer student loan refinancing or allow employers to match employee 401(k) contributions with student loan repayments.

#2 Mental Health Employee Benefits

Nearly a quarter of U.S. workers have been diagnosed with depression and 40 percent of them take an average of 10 days off from work each year because of their mental illness, according to the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates depression and anxiety cost the global economy $1 trillion each year in lost productivity. The good news? WHO also estimates that for every $1 put into scaled up treatment for common mental disorders, there is a return of $4 in improved health and productivity.

Employers can minimize the effects of mental illness in the workplace by identifying work-related risk factors and simplifying access to mental health benefits.

Top 10 Employee Benefits for 2020: Financial Wellness Programs Are #1

Money causes the most stress in the lives of almost 60 percent of employees, according to the latest 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.

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. Research by Paycor found that financial wellness benefits appeal to all age groups.

Financial wellness programs, like Best Money Moves, give employees personalized tools to help them better manage their money, pay off their debts, build their savings and plan for retirement.