New insights
Further research highlights that when employees are financially distressed, the quality of cognitive processing and decision making also declines rapidly. But while it may be sensible to provide employees with financial wellness programmes, four factors appear to complicate the debate:
- How do we know who really needs help if people are reluctant to put up their hands?
- “You can lead a horse to water…”. Financial wellness programmes are often not well-attended.
- Programmes generally lack proper assessments of impact.
- And, finally, often the starting point for many companies is: How do they justify that the expense is worthwhile?
Tackling the problem of financial wellness demands multiple strategies because employees are often at different levels of awareness, acceptance and preparedness for change. This suggests that the common use of direct educational programmes in classrooms is perhaps the least effective. We considered the details in 'Failure to launch'.
