By MyPerfectFinancialAdvisor
Over the past several years there has been a growing convergence in the level of importance of financial fitness and physical fitness on behalf of both employees and employers. Many fin-tech companies have started that provide a unique solution aimed at some component of personal finance. Some are brand new, some have been around for a number of years, but only now they are getting the attention of the public. They range from companies like www.unison.com which offer a very unique and beneficial way to either get your first home faster or access existing home equity more safely, to firms like www.payactiv.com which enable workers to access their pay immediately instead of relying on payday loans or delaying critical bills in times of need.
It behooves every person working to get more familiar with these services, not only for you own well-being, but for others as well, including co-workers, friends and family. Bringing up these types of services to your employer, for example, is not only doing yourself a favor, but your fellow employees will be better off, and the circle of benefit continues as your employer improves and adds in more of these services for all in your company.
So, what has changed? Why this new move? For many decades most employers offered health plans which are now assumed as table-stakes for any company that has employees. The additional focus on financial fitness, is partly due to the efforts of Human Resources professionals whose jobs include looking out for the well-being of employees, but recent research such as https://www.plansponsor.com/physical-mental-financial-wellness-viewed-equally-important/ prove out that employees view financial fitness equal to physical fitness. It is also intuitive, as if one thinks like a CEO and ponders how to improve your company, anything that can improve employees’ lives ought to be considered, of course weighing the budgetary constraints that have stopped this line of thinking in the past. But technology has driven costs down to enable programs to significant degree, so benefits that before were out of reach financially are now feasible for senior management to consider.
This convergence of helping employees in all manner financial and physical is called Wellness or in some companies Total Wellness. Over the past two years discussions on financial wellness topics have greatly increased among executives of larger companies across manufacturing, software, service and transportation and the feedback from these executives matches the recent research and is uniform: financial wellness is viewed equally important to physical wellness by employees. Some of these companies have fascinating ways of tying the two together, for example, some companies have events where the employees go through a 401k “obstacle course” and those that got the questions correct at each “obstacle” get cash deposited in their health savings account.
The big takeaway is that if you are an employee, your employer is now much more likely to embrace novel solutions to help you and your fellow employee. Be sure to make your voice heard and tell your manager that these programs are a welcome and appreciated benefit.
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