Top 8 ways to help employees reach financial wellness

The CFPB defines financial wellness as helping your employees better manage their day to day finances, prepare for the unexpected and achieve their long-term goals.Here are eight ways you can work with your benefits provider to help you understand the needs of your workforce, design solutions that meet those needs and inspire your employees to take action.

Know your workforce's financial needs and benchmark against other employees in your industry.

Use the results from the diagnostics to determine how a financial wellness program can help.

Common behaviors that create roadblocks: – Procrastination – Over optimism that something bad won't happen to them – Making emotional decisions – Underestimating how long they'll live

Help employees use the tools you give them:― Provide financial self assessments ― Encourage direct deposit ― Health, Life, Disability, and other voluntary insurances and benefits― Educate on the retirement plan benefits― Make saving simple and automatic: Consider auto-enrolling your workers in benefits like the retirement plan.

Some ideas: ― Workshops with a certified financial counselor or planner ― Webinars on demand ― Digital communications year-round, especially during open enrollment

Think about: ― Hosting simple, snackable content on topics like managing student debt, budgeting, planning for retirement― Offering intuitive personal finance tools for budgeting, retirement and student loan calculators, insurance needs estimators, etc.

To dos:― Track employee engagement with your financial wellness programs and track actions taken― Spotlight or recognize the progress certain employees or groups of employees have made

People are always looking for something new, so introduce and promote new features to your financial wellness programs over time.