In early 2021, about one in four (25%) Canadian adults showed symptoms of depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder, compared with 21% only months earlier.1 Pressures over money and financial security undoubtedly contributed to declines in mental wellness.
Strong financial wellness programs from employers can help alleviate workers’ emotional and financial health, leading to greater happiness and productivity. Perhaps more important, a strong offering to support money and financial security concerns is essential to ensuring a quality employee experience (QEX).
A QEX approach entails fashioning the experience employees will have with compensation and benefits, and workers who have quality experiences are far more likely to be loyal to their organization and create an organization that is highly attractive to potential employees.
In several ways, money and financial security is at the center of QEX. It’s not just the fact employees need to feel secure financially through adequate and appropriate compensation, but that they often need help for things that go beyond a wage and health benefits. That’s where money and security, financial wellness and QEX intersect.
The need for financial wellness
Financial stress comes in many forms: credit card and other personal debt; failing to save for a home, education or retirement; taking care of older family members; unexpected medical expenses; student loan debt; and many other situations.
In addition, escalating inflation and interest rates have caused financial stress that can overwhelm employees who may otherwise feel secure.
Employer-sponsored financial wellness programs are key to a QEX approach. Money and financial wellbeing is the biggest source of stress among Canadians,2 and employees dealing with financial stress are twice as likely to report poor overall health.3
Best practices for financial wellness
While financial wellness programs are becoming essential benefits, there are important best practices organizations should follow, especially as financial wellness integrates with QEX:
- There’s no silver bullet. A financial wellness strategy should be built atop multiple layers of solutions. What employees want is their employers’ guidance, real or implied, on solutions that will help them achieve financial security. Understanding individuals’ needs (through tools like HUB’s Workforce Persona Analysis) will enable organizations to target solutions for individual employees.
- Evaluate current financial solutions. This evaluation should measure engagement with current benefits. For instance, the use of auto-enrollment and auto-escalation features to optimize the employer match will drive greater participation in and engagement with a pension plan or RRSP.
- Customization counts. The personal situations, goals and motivations of each individual will be different, making the success of financial wellness programs and benefits dependent on customization. Using tools such as HUB’s Workforce Persona Analysis can identify micro-segments, such as single parents with university-age children or young employees with student loan debt, allowing employers to customize financial benefits to create a quality experience.
- Let employees know about financial wellness. High engagement with benefits depends on strong communications. Employees need education regarding how financial wellness programs work and how it will benefit them. And by tailoring messaging and delivery channels for individual employees, engagement with benefits will increase — as will the quality of experiences employees have with the organization.
HUB International’s employee benefit specialists consult with employers of all sizes and in all industries on every aspect of employee benefits program planning and management.
1 Statistics Canada, “Survey on COVID-19 and Mental Health, February to May 2021,” September 27, 2021.
2 FP Canada, “FP Canada™ 2022 Financial Stress Index”, September 9, 2022.
3 Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, “Why your employees’ financial well-being matters”, January 15, 2019.