If the results of a recent poll are any indication of what business owners may want to include in their wellness programs for workers, stress management may be chief among them, based on the results of a survey from the Society for Human Resource Management.
More than 50 percent of human resources managers say that their employees' financial health is only fair, according to polling data conducted by SHRM. Additionally, respondents noted that the younger their workers are, the more likely they are to be experiencing financial stress. In fact, this form of anxiety has oftentimes been enough for employees to miss work in order to deal with an urgent situation tied to money.
Evren Esen, director of survey programs for SHRM, indicated that financial issues clearly seem to be a problem that employees are having a hard time dealing with on their own. Business owners owners may be able to help them handle this issue.
"Anxiety related to finances could be an increasing source of employee stress that has a direct impact on health care costs, absence and productivity," said Esen. "As a result, money management strategies – including budgeting and investing – may increasingly be considered as a part of workplace stress management and wellness initiatives."
One of the more educational ways organizations can develop financial stress relieving programs into their wellness initiatives is by helping workers improve their comprehension of fiscal matters. Approximately 70 percent of respondents said that they consider their workers to be financially literate, with nearly 1 in 5 saying that their workers could use some help.
Most literacy programs focus on retirement, investment
Of those companies that already have financial literacy training in place, more than 8 in 10 were for retirement planning, according to SHRM's survey. Another common program designed to teach workers is investing, with 42 percent indicating their wellness programs taught workers how to manage risk when putting money toward something that accrues value.
Wellness programs are being offered more frequently in businesses' employee benefit packages to help control health care costs. In order to entice people to join, companies will often offer various perks that they can take advantage of as a worker. While they are mostly all in favor of these, many aren't wild about implementing penalties when benchmarks aren't reached.
In a separate survey, more than three-quarters of employees said that wellness programs that promoted healthy behaviors were a good idea, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. However, less than one quarter – 22 percent – said that they supported workers being dealt a financial consequence if individuals were unable to accomplish a wellness goal.
Business owners may want to keep this in mind when they're considering strategies of how to encourage people to join wellness programs. Close to half of all employees say their workplace has a wellness program, the KFF survey revealed. Roughly 60 percent of respondents said that they participated.
