Welcome to the new Workology Go Podcast. In just under five minutes, we get you the HR and workplace news you need before you start your day. Get ready, get set and go with the Workology Go Podcast.
Here are today’s HR and workplace news headlines from Workology Go Podcast. I’m Jessica Miller-Merrell. The Workology Go Podcast is sponsored by HSA Bank.
Ep 36 – How to Help Your Employee with Their Money Problems
Employees with financial worries are 8.8 times more likely to have sleepless nights, 7.6 times more likely not to finish their daily tasks and almost 5 times more likely to be depressed. Depression and stress impacts productivity, engagement, and increases healthcare costs by those employees and their families. The Employer’s Guide to Financial Wellbeing 2018-19 statistics demonstrate just how important financial wellbeing is, and how much of an impact it can have in the workplace.
There are a lot of ways as leaders we can help support your employees who have financial stress and challenges. I’m personally an advocate of providing training for our employees on how to save money and budget. Not everyone learns these skills and as employers, it’s something we can provide in the form of free lunch and learns or by offering online training and budgeting classes. Maybe it’s bringing in a financial coach to help with budgeting and planning or credit assistance and repair support for families.
Today’s featured story is from HR News and is titled, “Want to support your employee’s financial wellbeing?”
A lot of companies are offering work perks and benefits in this area too. There are technologies and companies that are focused on helping employees pay off their student loans and debt, but financial stress isn’t just limited to the young or college grads. Financial challenges are inclusive to us all. They impact young, old, new parents, part-time, full-time workers, blue collar workers and white collar employees. Financial programs don’t have to be limited to budgeting classes like I recommended above.
They could be reimbursing employees for gas and commuter expenses or offering catered lunch one time a week at the office. These little perks and benefits can make a difference for your workforce. In fact, many of you might have programs and benefits already like this in place. I’d encourage you to look at your usage and adoption rates for these. And take a hard look to see is there anything more you can do to improve the marketing or communication of these for your employees. Can you do a special promotion campaign for employees or add some additional communication for your managers or as part of your new hire training programs?
Creating a holistic culture that helps identify and support employees is really at the heart of any type of supporting work perk. At Zappos, they call this their culture of service. Here’s what creating a culture of service is about:
Our culture overall is to provide the best service and that definitely goes to the employees as well if we aren’t able to provide a great environment for our employees. We couldn’t expect them to provide a great experience for our customers. So there definitely go hand-in-hand. And it’s one of our main objectives. From a human resources or people operations standpoint to work to really provide the best environment we can for our employees.
How does this involve the business leaders? I mean, I know employees are responsible for culture and H.R. 2, but what about the other managers and leaders within the organization?
So all of our departments in any area, the business or they’re guided by our 10 core values and we really live and breathe this 10 core values in within those 10 core values. If you look at look them up and read through them and what they mean, what they’re about. It really is about people in general and providing the best environment we can and that transcends through all of the different areas. So having really that formalized standard idea and guidelines of who we are and who we want to be and giving that out there for everybody and having the expectation that it is everybody’s job, not one person’s job, to make that happen, I think has solidified some of the foundational aspects that we have around culture and bringing that culture across the organization from the frontline employee to leadership.
The American Psychological Association says that financial stress for Americans is at the highest during the holiday season which probably doesn’t surprise you. Chances are that you are experiencing financial stress just like your employees are during these times too. Supporting your employees could be as simple as adding some financial planning books to the office lending library or recommending a financial planning podcast, or by encouraging your employees to take time off and find outlets to help work out their stress. These are all great ways to help support your employees in small but meaningful ways.
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Featured Story
Want to support your employees’ financial wellbeing?
More Great Resource
The 6 Best Financial Perks and Benefits You Can Provide Employees
Ep 15 – Why You Need to Think About Financial Wellness Now
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