Advantages of Offering Retirement and Financial Wellness Benefits

If you’ve noticed your employees seem a little frazzled, you’re not alone. The normal pressures of life and work combined with the emotional toll of the pandemic, national, and world events and financial problems are leaving many workers feeling stressed and burned out. A recent survey found that 72% of survey participants said stress was a significant issue. This number rose to 85% for those with debt. Six out of ten participants worry about their finances.

The first half of Proverbs 12:25 says, “Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down.” I think we all know the truth of this Proverb. These anxieties come with your employees to work. As a business owner, stressed out employees can have numerous negative impacts on your business.

• Morale drops as stressed employees interact with each other.
• Customer service can suffer.
• Productivity decreases and absenteeism can become a problem.
• Employee retention can be difficult.
• Higher-paid, employees may not retire if they have not adequately saved for retirement.

The bottom line is that stressed employees hurt your business. As an employer, you cannot solve all your employees’ problems, but you can offer them the resources and education to gain confidence to better manage their personal finances and save for retirement. Financial wellness and retirement plan services are a hot top in employee benefit circles – and for good reason, 89% of workers surveyed want their employer to provide these benefits. Let’s take a look at them.

Retirement plan benefits

You are probably most familiar with this benefit. It is the plan that allows employees to put aside money from their paycheck for retirement. The most familiar vehicles for this are the 401(k) and 403(b) but there are other options that may be more suitable depending on the goals and structure of the company.

Retirement plans may have features that are specifically targeted toward helping employees save, and save more, for retirement. Auto-enrolment and auto-escalation features help get employees into the plan and increasing their savings over time without having to do any extra work.

Because this is the primary way most Americans will save for retirement, the government has taken a very active role in protecting savers from mismanaged plans or plans that are not in the employees’ best interest. Unless they have officially delegated that responsibility to a 3(38) fiduciary, the company or owner assumes the full liability for this compliance.

Financial wellness benefits

Financial wellness is a more recent development and focuses on providing education to employees on the many other financial areas beyond retirement. Financial wellness education focuses on areas such as reducing debt, establishing an emergency fund, paying off student loans, and other personal finance topics.

A solid retirement plan with participant-centric features coupled with financial wellness resources can be a powerful one-two punch to help your employees deal with their current financial worries and increase their savings for the future.

This can be fantastic news for your employees, but it also has great benefits for the company too!

Advantages of offering a retirement plan and financial wellness benefits

As mentioned before, decreasing worker stress about finances can help:

• Boost morale and job satisfaction. This bubbles over into how employees treat teammates and customers.
• Increase productivity and focus and decrease absenteeism.
• Retain employees and attract new talent.
• Higher paid, older employees retire on time, creating opportunities for younger employees.

Beyond these, a well-structured and managed retirement plan might help the company reduce taxes and increase contributions.

Additional Benefits of Values Alignment

As mentioned in a previous post, Christians can experience stress knowing that their investments are not aligned with their values. Personally, I was sick to my stomach when I discovered that some of my personal investments profited from companies involved in pornography, abortion, and other exploitive industries. I knew I could not continue to be invested this way and be able to sleep well at night. Including faith-based investment options within the retirement plan gives employees to opportunity to align their investments with their values, bringing further peace of mind.

We started this post with the first half of Proverbs 12:25. The full Proverb says, “Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.” Committing to help your employees with a quality retirement plan and financial wellness resources is truly a “good word” many of your employees will love to hear!

Anxiety in a man's heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad. - Proverbs 12:25

Beacon Wealth Consultants can be the 3(38) fiduciary investment manager for your 401(k) or 403(b) plan. We help employers identify their goals and take on the management and much of liability for the plan. What’s more, our LightPoint Kingdom(k) and Kingdom(b) plans include several faith-based options that give you and your employees the option of aligning your retirement investments with your values.

If you’d like to find out more about our retirement plan services or request a complimentary plan analysis, please schedule a call!

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