When employees feel financially secure, they can be more engaged, productive, and loyal workers. But simply offering a variety of financial benefits may not be enough to let all members of your workforce actually achieve financial wellness. And that’s especially true today, as employees navigate persistent inflation, elevated borrowing costs, and uncertainty about the future.
So what are you doing right? And what can you improve?
Measuring financial well-being can help you answer those important questions.
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Key Points
• Financial well-being helps enhance employee engagement, focus, productivity, and loyalty.
• Compare employee wages against what’s considered a living wage in the areas where they live.
• Provide a self-assessment survey that analyzes employees’ spending, saving, debt, insurance protection, and future planning.
• Analyzing these metrics can provide insights into how financial well-being initiatives are affecting your workforce and make adjustments as needed.
• Personalized financial planning support is also critical.
Why Measure Financial Wellness and Why Now?
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, financial well-being is defined by a person’s sense of security and freedom of choice, both today and in the future.
However, Bank of America’s 2025 Workplace Benefits Report — which surveyed nearly 1,000 full-time employees and 800 employers — reveals a stark reality:
• Only 47% of employees feel financially well-off.
• 77% are stressed by the current economic climate.
• 85% are carrying personal debt.
• 50% wish they had started saving for retirement earlier.
So, how is your team faring? Measuring your workforce’s financial health allows you to identify specific struggles, understand how those challenges impact business performance, and refine your total rewards strategy to provide meaningful support.
How to Better Understand Your Unique Workforce
Measuring financial well-being will allow you to determine what segments of your workforce are struggling the most. It can also help you figure out what you can provide to help all your employees move forward. For many employers, that’s a two-part process.
1. Wage Assessment
Many employers start this process by assessing wages. No doubt you’ve compared your wage and salary decisions against competitors’ offerings, the local labor market, and industry averages. Indeed, you may be paying above the industry standard. But it’s important to remember that even above-standard wages don’t ensure financial wellness. Your workers may still be struggling.
With that in mind, you may want to compare your company’s wages against what constitutes a local living wage in the areas where your employees work. MIT’s Living Wage Calculator may be able to assist you with this. This tool helps determine how much money a person in a specific area needs to earn to cover basic expenses and how much that person has leftover for disposable income, including saving for the future. This may be a more realistic gauge for all levels of your workforce when assessing wages and determining financial well-being.
Recommended: 3 Ways to Support Your Employees During Times of Uncertainty
2. Self-Assessment Survey
The next phase involves gathering direct input from your workforce. If you haven’t already, design an anonymous online financial wellness survey to get a baseline assessment of your employees’ needs.
An effective assessment evaluates the four pillars of financial security:
• Spending: Determine if employees are living beyond their means due to high living costs or budgeting habits. By asking how long employees think their money would last if they suddenly lost their income, you’ll also collect data on how many of your employees are prepared for an emergency.
• Saving: While retirement participation and 401(k) deferral rates are primary metrics, a survey allows you to look deeper. Assess whether employees are saving for short- and mid-term goals like emergency funds, tuition, or homeownership, especially if your benefits package supports these areas.
• Debt and borrowing: Identify the burden of high-interest credit card debt versus “strategic” debt like mortgages or student loans. Understanding your workforce’s debt-to-income stress is important, as it is often the most significant barrier to long-term financial health.
• Planning: Evaluate employee preparedness by tracking enrollment in life and disability insurance. This section should also assess whether staff have set formal financial goals or are utilizing company planning tools. These insights reveal how effectively your workforce balances long-term stability with immediate needs, while identifying critical gaps in your current benefits communication.
Depending on your workforce and your goals for the assessment, you may also want to include more subjective elements in your research, such as employee interviews or focus groups. This can add human stories to the data collected and help inform new benefits going forward.
Measuring Financial Wellness Empowers Employees
When employees take a smart, well-written, and well-designed assessment survey, they’re not just providing information to their bosses, they’re also thinking through their own financial wellness strategy.
Incorporating an interactive tool that gives immediate feedback can help employees identify their current status and balance their short- and long-term financial goals.
Consider providing a one-on-one meeting with a financial planner or other expert to each employee who completes the survey. This encourages your workers to take action with their newfound knowledge and further enhance their overall financial wellness. (It can also prompt more willingness to take the assessment among employees.)
Recommended: Top 10 Reasons Financial Wellness Is Important in the Workplace
Measuring Provides a Compass for Your Financial Wellness Benefits
It’s also important to analyze your own data on the benefits you’re currently providing to determine how well they’re contributing to employee financial wellness. A comprehensive look at who is using what benefits — including everything from health insurance and 401(k)s to paid parental leave and student loan assistance — and what employees are paying for or contributing to those benefits, can unlock details about access and participation among all levels of your workforce.
A benefit analysis combined with a wage assessment and employee financial wellness survey helps provide a deeper understanding of gaps in your total benefits strategy, areas where employee engagement and education are needed, and what new tools and programs might enhance financial well-being among your workers.
The Takeaway
Measuring your employees’ financial well-being now can lead to the design and implementation of benefits that will enhance financial wellness for all of your employees in the future.
Photo credit: iStock/SDI Productions
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