If there is one lesson to be taken from such a volatile year it is that financial wellness represents a key concern for businesses and employees alike. While many companies agree with that proposition including feeling directly responsible for their workforce's development in the same, many also believe practical obstacles still exist which prevent making financial wellness an attainable goal. Three of the leading roadblocks include the following:
1) Manpower: Human Resource (HR) departments already juggle enough tasks on an ongoing basis. Beyond keeping up to date on new regulations and tracking critical elements of each worker's employment records, adding financial wellness to the mix complicates HR's endeavors even further.;
2) Tailored Education: The general concept of financial wellness is understood by directors and employees alike. Yet, how does a company standardize financial wellness throughout its workforce when the needs, goals, and resources destined towards that end vary on an individual basis? Moreover, how do you differentiate between those workers who welcome such education when others may not for different reasons?; and
3) Cost: Employers may well recognize the importance of a certain idea or practice; however, if implementing it negatively affects the company's bottom line, then the measure will not happen. To a certain extent, employers can reasonably fear that retraining or adding HR professionals, acquiring informative materials, and storing the cycle of information generated by each employee's financial wellness activities will come at a high cost most companies do not wish to face, especially now during an ongoing health crisis.
Solutions do exist. Involving a company's external financial advisors, for example, may focus efforts on the most pressing needs of its employees in a targeted, cost-effective manner. Nevertheless, whether these particular roadblocks or others seemingly make financial wellness more of a corporate want than a corporate need, the fact remains doing nothing could potentially be worse.