How Employers Can Stimulate Financial Literacy

by | 07/13/14 | Commentary, Uncategorized

With the continued interest in effective financial literacy solutions quickly rising, financial education professionals are asserting that now is a great time for employers to roll out initiatives that can promote greater levels of financial literacy among their employees.  Financial education enthusiasts have long held that employers are among the best positioned and most influential groups that can plan a meaningful role in teaching individuals about personal finance and money management.

One of the strongest rationales for employers to devise and launch financial education programs in the workplace is to help eliminate financial stress and money-related issues that employees are having outside the workplace.  Without the distraction of personal finance problems or concerns at home, workers tend to miss fewer workdays, be more relaxed and productive at work, and exhibit higher levels of morale and confidence.

While employers have developed an expansive range of workplace financial literacy initiatives over time, here are just a few examples that employers may consider launching in the months ahead:

1.  Leverage Email, Intranet and Other Internal Communications Channels

Employees tend to spend an inordinate amount of time reading and communicating via internal channels, such as company email and intranets.  Employers focused on financial education have often used these internal platforms to provide financial-related information to make their employees more aware of important financial literacy concepts, such as budgeting, saving, investing and other topics that enable the workforce to become more empowered with respect to their personal financial affairs.  One example might be a daily or weekly email to all employees with financial-related information, encouraging employees to ask questions, and creating a dialogue around those concepts.

2.  Lunch Sessions for Financial Education

One of the most successful types of financial literacy programs in the workplace is lunch sessions that employees are encouraged to attend to learn about different personal finance topics.  Often these lunchtime programs are set up in a series of weekly or monthly workshops that vary in topic.  Holding the sessions during lunch further encourages employees to attend since they are not losing non-work or personal time, while they’re gaining valuable insight and information to help them make better informed financial decisions.

3.  Host a Financial Literacy Seminar for Families of Employees

Another highly successful employer-sponsored initiative historically has been seminars that are held for employees and their families.  By including members of the employee’s family, the information sessions emphasize collaboration and team work in a family’s personal finance efforts.  In addition, someone else in an employee’s household may be responsible for handling the family’s financial matters and, therefore, a family-focused financial literacy seminar would enable employees to share the seminar with those responsible for making the primary personal finance decisions in that employee’s household. 

4.  Financial Competition to Spark Engagement

Financial literacy competitions in the workplace tend to take many forms, each with its own advantages.  Some examples that have worked well in stimulating engagement among employees have been structured as a competition, with the winner selected based on having the greatest knowledge of financial literacy information.  Other competitions have been structured less around what employees know, and more around what employees do.  For example, some good case studies exist with respect to competitions around how much money employees can save, or how much debt they can reduce, in a given amount of time. 

Employers know best what might work most successfully given the nature of their own workforces and, therefore, programs often are tailored to meet the needs of respective groups.  But whatever the program may be, employers should consider Financial Literacy Month as a great time to roll out financial education programs in the workplace, as more financial literate employees can also be more effective employees.

Become a Member

Join financialcorps today to get access to exclusive content, networking community, and inside information to the world of financial literacy.

Subscribe

to the top financial literacy news from the world’s leading financial education funders, news sources, analysts and commentators, e-mailed to you FREE.