Pwc has been surveying full-time employed adults in the U.S. nationwide about their financial well being for several years.
The 2015 survey analysis and report was published in April and it’s a fascinating read.
If you, like I, believe that dealing with employees as complete humans – not just 9-to-5 skill resources – is a foundational cultural value, then you’ll find real insight in Employee Financial Wellness Survey 2015 results.
There are a number of interesting findings to which we should pay attention:
- Fewer employees are having difficulty meeting household expenses.
- Fewer employees are carrying balances on credit cards but it’s still high at almost 50 percent.
- Of those who carry balances, 26 percent still find it difficult to meet their minimum payments each month.
Good news, or financial stress?
This looks like a whole lot of financial stress to me. And while progress has been reported between 2012 and 2015, it’s hard to imagine that we’re getting the best from our employees when burdened by these concerns for their families and their futures.
And sure enough, one in five employees report that their work is impacted by their personal financial situations and 37 percent report that they spend three (3) hours or more at work each week dealing with their personal finances.
Employers focused on creating more human cultures are starting to pay attention to this dynamic.
Certainly it started to gain traction during and immediately following the recent Great Recession as the personal financial stress of most employees rose through the roof. Employers began providing more personal financial education and expanding services offered through their EAPs.
Financial issues can really impact your employees
These, together with a slowly improving economy, have resulted in some stress reduction as noted above, however, we ought to watch those Baby Boomer numbers closely in the coming years.
This report will give you some interesting and potentially actionable insights about the pressure your employees are feeling about their personal finances.
It doesn’t take a Ph.D. data scientist to draw the conclusion that personal financial pressures impact the productivity of our employees.
This originally appeared on China Gorman’s blog at ChinaGorman.com.