Financial Wellness is a Part of Health Wellness
Corporate wellness plans have been one of the most significant innovations to the health insurance industry over the last 15 years. 75% of employers now offer a wellness program to help employees improve health and reduce costs. Programming of wellness has evolved greatly from early FYI models that really only informed employees about health, to the robust programs of today — comprehensive programs that are engaging, interactive, data driven and incentive fueled …the full monty! As new aspects of lifestyle or health threat appear, wellness programs have adapted to offer new solutions. Remarkably, one health threat has seemed to evade proper attention and remains largely missing from wellness program strategy.
Financial stress is reported to be the leading factor for more than ⅔ of survey respondents. Stress is one of the health risk factors that contributes to high bp, depression and obesity. These health conditions are the basic elements to severe health problems. Employers suffer a financial impact related to employee stress and financial unwellness, estimated to be as high as 300B. So, how is it that most wellness programs do not offer the same kind of engaging, interactive, incentive solutions to assess, educate, track and improve financial health?
Possibly, one explanation is wellness practitioners have struggled to define financial health or explain financial wellness. Studies and relevant data of recent years have helped offer greater clarity. Another consideration might be that employee wallets and financial decisions have been impacted dramatically by health spend. Employers used to absorb the lion’s share of health related spend. Not so much anymore! Employees more than ever before need to have financial smarts in making health related decisions. Likely as well, nobody was tracking trend or information about financial health . Data is now available with technology to assess loss and financial impact to employers in areas such as productivity, work-comp, retirement that simply weren’t apparent previously. So, is it time to do something? And, what does that look like?
There are plenty of opinions and offered solutions emerging in the marketplace. Whatever one employer or advisor’s view of how to offer programming — get started doing something! An information only program- lots of great content out there from providers and non-profit orgs, in-person training or classes- many benefits and advisors offer small scale programs, comprehensive web application solutions or even product solutions like Student Loan Genius or Kashable that address particular financial challenges; all can help to influence improvement of financial health. And, likely not far away is a time when this type of programming can be integrated to health wellness programming, truly delivering a comprehensive solution with engagement, accountability and action that helps people address financial distress the biggest contributor to health stress.
