Wellness programs and financial education aren’t new to the workplace. But some employers have seen the connection between employee well-being and the stress created by the current economic situation and have married the two concepts in an effort to reach more employees and help ease their growing personal financial pressures.
Rather than do the typical one-time financial educational session, technology company Dimension Data Americas decided to focus on both health and wealth by hosting a monthly financial wellness seminar and regularly distributing materials that would fall under the firm’s two-year-old wellness campaign, Think Wellness. After all, the point of wellness programs is to help employees feel better. When Dimension Data Americas looked at the different things that might cause employees to be less productive, stress over personal finances was a factor.
Bringing the concept of financial health into a wellness campaign can help employers reduce health care costs, which is a primary goal of these initiatives, consultants say. For example, smokers might not be interested in attending a smoking cessation program because they aren’t ready to quit. But if that person attends a program on their financial health that discusses the costs of cigarettes and the potential health care costs associated with smoking, that information might get them to participate in a smoking cessation program.
Also, by integrating financial education with wellness programs, employers can help employees make better decisions about how they spend their health care dollars. For example, more employees may realize that it makes sense to invest more of their paychecks into their flexible spending accounts.
The University of Iowa began adding a financial component to its wellness program, LiveWell, over the past two years. For several years, the university has offered a referral for a free financial consultant, but decided to increase its focus on financial wellness as part of its LiveWell campaign in response to employee demand. Through the program, the university’s internal employee assistance provider offers seminars on financial topics for the 15,000 benefits-eligible employees. The university also promotes the financial counseling through its health fair events as well as in newsletters. They see this as part of lifestyle management, knowing financial stress can impede people from having an overall healthy lifestyle.
One major challenge that many employers face in adding financial education to their wellness programs is that in many instances these two initiatives are handled by separate vendors, and often these vendors don’t interact with each other. Employers need to make sure that the vendors communicate with one another and that their message is consistent.
Many studies show that stress leads to poor health, and it’s a reasonable assumption that many employees are feeling financial stress these days. Taking this more holistic approach to wellness is catching on at many forward-thinking companies, though it hasn’t quite hit the mainstream yet.
—“Employers Add Financial Components to Wellness Programs,” by Jessica Marquez, Workforce Management Online, May 2009.
