Helping Employees to Pursue Financial Wellness

In the paper “Financial Stress Is a Predictor of Financial Wellness,” Joshua Dietch, head of Retirement Thought Leadership for T. Rowe Price, offers some suggestions for steps an employer can take to encourage employees to build and enhance their financial wellness. These include: 

• choosing plan design features that encourage plan participation and saving among the employee populations least likely to engage in such behaviors and nudge them toward them;
• considering innovations such as matching student loan debt repayments or establishing an emergency savings program, which can be offered along with the retirement plan; and
• offering programs that help employees assess their financial health and prioritize financial goals, such as targeted, personalized communications to encourage employees to take financially healthy actions like increasing savings or paying down high interest rate debt.