Why Financial Wellness is an Essential Component of an Impactful ESG-Social Strategy

It is no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically altered the way we live and work. That is obvious even if you are not spending hours on zoom from your home office, intermittently being interrupted by kids and/or pets.

What is less obvious is the impact on people’s finances and financial wellbeing. We know that many people, especially women, either lost their jobs or resigned to care for family members, but we don’t see the impact on their bank accounts. We see those who remained employed during but pandemic, but it’s not obvious that their financial stress is on the rise, with 63% of employees?surveyed by PwC ?saying their “financial stress has increased since the start of the pandemic1 . We may know individuals who took part in the “Great Resignation”2 in the hopes of finding more fulfilling work or recovering a work-life balance that was lost, but we don’t see their worries about retirement plans that are now off track.

Given the current situation, it's no longer possible to ignore the impact financial strain has on an individual’s overall wellness. This has implications for how businesses approach the well-being of their employees. The Harvard Business Review predicts “wellness” will replace employee engagement as the new measure organisations will use to capture the “financial health, mental health, and physical health of their employees to more accurately predict employee performance and retention”3 . Neglecting the financial aspect of wellness when creating a Social sustainability program for ESG can have a very detrimental effect on both employees' and the employers’ bottom line.1 ?

This is starting to paint a very bleak picture, but there is a silver lining to the clouds. Morningstar research completed a study that revealed the importance of financial empowerment to a person’s overall emotional well-being.?The graph below depicts the findings and shows that people can feel empowered and have a positive emotional experience with money regardless of income level. Samantha Lamas writes “A sense of personal power—not money itself—may be the key to emotional well-being in our financial lives.”4??This is an exciting finding for companies large and small because it means that no matter an employee’s income range, companies can create programs that empower employees financially and that can have a real impact on their emotional sense of well-being.

The goal then, of an impactful ESG-Social program, is to help employees come to feel empowered in their financial lives. One definition of ‘empowerment’ in the Oxford English Dictionary starts “the process of becoming stronger and more confident…”5 This confidence piece is especially important for women. “Research by JPMorgan Asset Management found that women could have as much as €200 billion (￡180 billion) in savings which could be invested, but don't feel confident enough to put their money in the market.”6 ?Lack of confidence has serious implications for women’s future financial well-being. The average gender pension gap across European Union Member States in 2019 was 29%; meaning that women over 65 received a 29% smaller pension than men over 65.7 This puts 17% of female pensioners at risk of poverty7 so if women aren’t given the confidence to invest now, it’s very possible this number will be realised.

How can a company’s financial wellness program help employees feel more confident? By arming them with knowledge, tools, and support. Programs should include an educational component to ensure employees are getting the right financial information; critical when so much misinformation is online. Presenting employees with useful tools will give them experience, and as they take action and use the tools, they will build confidence that they can affect real change in their financial situation.?Support is the final, but not least, essential component. Not only can support encourage people to get started, but a supportive community is key to helping people sustain new behaviours needed to reach their goals.

Here are some examples of what an empowering financial wellness program might look like in practice:

Knowledge

·?????Hosted lunch-time financial education seminars targeted at specific employee needs

·?????Exclusive Access to reputable education resources (blogs, videos, etc.) online

Tools

·?????Online tools that track spending, saving, and progress towards retirement goals

·?????Availability of peer-comparison databases to help people see if they are on track

Support

·?????Incentives to employees for meeting with a company-sponsored finical advisor

·?????Membership in an online community that supports positive financial decisions

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At PACEUPinvest we are here to help. Do contact us if you are interested in our coaching or advisory services to help build your wealth or the wealth of your employees.

References

1.???PwC's 10th annual Employee Financial Wellness Survey, PwC US, 2021 , https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/workforce-of-the-future/library/employee-financial-wellness-survey.html .

2.???World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2022. Geneva: International Labour Office, 2022. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_834081.pdf .

3.???Brian Kropp & Emily Rose McRae, “11 Trends that Will Shape Work in 2022 and Beyond,” Harvard Business Review, last modified January 13, 2022, https://hbr.org/2022/01/11-trends-that-will-shape-work-in-2022-and-beyond .

4.???Samantha Lamas, “Why Is Financial Empowerment Important?” Morningstar, last modified February 13, 2020, https://www.morningstar.com/insights/2020/02/13/financial-empowerment .

5.???Oxford English Dictionary Online. December 2021. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/11125 .

6.???Annalisa Esposito, “What’s Stopping Women from Investing?” Morningstar, last modified October 9, 2019, https://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/news/196296/whats-stopping-women-from-investing.aspx .

7.???“Closing the Gender Pension Gap?” Eurostat, last modified February 3, 2021, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/ddn-20210203-1 .