Financial Stress & Employee Productivity – Time for organization to wake up and smell the coffee
“Financial wellness means freedom from financial stress and debt, enjoying life and being prepared for emergencies.”
In a fast paced business world, organizations and their employees are being stretched to overachieve their business goals. In the process employees face huge amount of stress that affects their health and longevity which could be attributed to work related stress. One of the other stress that is much ignored is the ‘financial stress’ faced by employees. Employees may be stressed over organizational shifts, market conditions, personal life events, or changes in benefits.
It has been proven that one of the many reasons for bad health & low productivity among employees in any organization is “financial stress” due to lack of, and/or, bad financial planning. This aspect has a big impact on the productivity of employees as they carry this stress to workplace. In fact, financial stress leads to mental stress which impacts health and not the other way around as many believe.
How does it impact your organization?
Employees who are stressed about their personal finances are both less productive and in a worse financial shape than other employees. Some of the differences include being nearly five times more likely to be distracted by their finances at work, twice as likely to spend three hours or more at work dealing with financial matters and three times more likely to spend five hours or more. Stressed employees are also twice as likely to miss work on account of their personal financial issues and more inclined to cite health issues caused by financial stress. Not surprisingly, financial stress also has a dramatic impact on retirement savings and credit card debt. (Source: PWC Financial Wellness Survey, 2017, USA)
ArthaYantra’s Research has proven that financial stress impacts productivity of at least 40% of the employees and the financial preparedness levels are very low. It has also shown that 58% of employees are unable to meet their monthly expenses and 3 out of 4 employees are not prepared for a loss of job. In a world where retirement age is fast shrinking these factors will only add to the existing stress. Organizations across the world are now waking up to this new age reality. It would be prudent for organizations to focus on this aspect to enable their employees be financially secure and stable. A happy and stable employee is a productive employee.
How can we help?
Our goal is to empower employees to make educated decisions to improve their financial well-being.
AY’s has developed a unique program called the “ArthaYantra Financial Wellness” program that helps corporate employees deal with this stress. This program aims to help employees plan their personal finances using technology and human interface to enable them to meet their financial goals. This program is designed from months of experience of having delivered financial wellness to many corporates such as TVS Motors, Polaris, Aegon and many others. We have the capability to deliver to both white and blue collared workers. This program is delivered at the workplace with the cooperation of the management and the HR teams.
How does the organization benefit?
For employees: We have seen financial wellness score of these employees improve over a period of time thereby leading to reduction of stress. A financially stable employee is always a productive employee. Having taken care of one of the key elements of an employee’s life, he remains engaged at work and remains free of stress.
For employers: The impact of this program is multifold when the management sponsors the wellness program on behalf of the employees. This is an excellent tool to demonstrate the honest intent of the organization to show their employees that they are concerned for their well-being. This improves the stickiness of the employees and enables a strong bonding with the organization. An engaged employee is always a productive employee. This has a direct impact on the bottom lines giving an immeasurable ROI in the long run.
