Your employees’ money management tactics are impacted by how they and their partners manage their financial decisions. These financial decisions thereby directly impact employees’ work productivity, engagement, and even loyalty to your company.
Will employees and their partners agree to set up automatic withdrawal into your company’s 401k plan(s)? And if so, will it be only a minimum amount needed to receive any employer match or will it be closer to maxing the saving dollars? Will they contribute to Roth IRA plan(s)? And if so, how much? The same goes with any HSA savings plan, will employees and partners just barely contribute or save the annual max allowable. That’s just with savings. Your employees and their partners also get to negotiate how much they are willing to pay for rent/mortgage payments. And will they have a car payment or save and use cash to buy a car? Will they carry a credit card balance(s), etc.? Each dollar your employee and their partner spend somewhere is assigned to something and cannot be re-spent. Much like their time, once they have used it, it is gone.
As a little background, each of your employees have incorporated one set of financial values into their lives, while their partners have incorporated their own set of financial values into their own lives. These financial values are undoubtedly markedly different from one another. To some degree, these differences are inevitable as each individual is raised in different families, thereby incorporating the financial values of those who raised them. These values are literally infused into their lives as each person grows up within their environment. Some of those financial values serve your employees and their partners well, others not so well. Regardless, your employees and their partners find themselves a product of all these infused financial values in a committed relationship with someone else, who is also a product of their own infused financial values. Spoiler alert. There is rarely immediate harmony in differing viewpoints, especially when it comes to financial values.
It is beneficial to remember the influence your employees’ partners have on their financial decisions, which thereby also impact your employees’ productivity and engagement levels at work. It is important to consider these needs when selecting benefits for your employees. Look for programs that offer ongoing support to your employees and their partners to navigate the tricky process of using the income you are paying them in order to accomplish their joint financial goals together.
This process involves far more than just offering your employees 401k plans and HSA plans. What employees need before they can even really use these plans effectively is support and guidance in formulating individual and partnered/family financial goals of what they hope to accomplish. Employees and their partners need help identifying what their individual financial goals have been and now what their new blended shared financial goals have become. Then together they need help establishing bite sized steps that take them toward their newly identified goals. To be clear, this is a long process of repeated check-ins to help course correct and re-align to relevant and often changing goals. However, as you provide opportunities for your employees and their partners to engage in this process, you will find your employees will be more grounded and feel more content financially. This in turn translates into more productive, engaged, and loyal employees for you.
We’ve got your back,
No comments:
Post a Comment