Financial education is the teaching of various financial skills to achieve financial literacy. In other words, it’s about understanding what it takes to manage your personal finances, how to budget effectively, and what it means to invest your money.
If your employees are financially literate, they’ll have a “good” relationship with money. Financial education doesn’t mean they’ll become rich overnight, but it does equip your team with the knowledge to make better financial decisions, leading to more stability in their personal lives, and therefore their work lives.
Especially in our current cost of living crisis, we believe that providing your employees with the tools to become financially literate is more important than ever.
Why financial education is important for employees
Poor levels of financial education have frightening consequences, both at small and large-scale levels.
When you have a solid level of financial education, you can make responsible choices when faced with questions like:
- What kind of holiday can I take this year? Can I even take one?
- Which mortgage should I get?
- How much money can I afford to spend each month?
- How can I plan for my retirement?
The problem is that due to poor financial education, many people do not have this level of control over their expenses. This leaves them unaware of financial risks and are not able to fully prepare or grasp for emergencies. With global events such as pandemics and recessions leading to mass layoffs and a huge dive in income, poor financial management can lead to crippling debt, poor credit, and loss of assets.
Put simply, financial education can give your employees the tools to provide for themselves with a soft cushion in the case of an emergency.
How employee financial educations helps businesses
Offering financial education can be a great benefit to not only your employees, but to your company as well.
Employees will get professional advice on how to better manage their money, so they’ll feel like their pay is going further, improving their satisfaction with their compensation. On top of that, financial stress at home can have a direct impact on work performance–so taking care of their financial worries can help boost productivity, too.
Also, free professional financial advice is not a common employee benefit, so offering it will offer a competitive advantage when attracting the best possible talent.
Offering financial advice through Ben gives you unmatched support at every step of the process. Book a demo with one of our benefits consultants to help you design the perfect benefits package for your team and get access to our handpicked network of providers.
The top 5 financial education employee benefit providers
Octopus MoneyCoach
With 8 in 10 employees bringing their money worries to work and 89% of them wanting someone to talk to about money, Octopus MoneyCoach offers a listening ear and financial coaching to your employees.
They are on a mission to make it easy to give every employee their own personal money coach and a plan to craft the life they really want– all the way to retirement.
Nudge Global
Nudge is a global platform that offers impartial financial education for everyone. Drawing on behavioural psychology and data, their platform offers personalised, engaging financial skills and knowledge to educate and delight.
Fidelity
Fidelity Investments offers financial planning and advice, retirement plans, wealth management services, trading and brokerage services, and a wide range of investment products including mutual funds, ETFs, fixed-income bonds, CDs and much more.
If your employees are anxiously looking for a more long-term financial education platform to plan for retirement, Fidelity is a great place to start.
Finimize
Finimize believes no generation has ever been in a better position to solve the challenges ahead.
It was created to give their readers the information and tools they need to make informed financial decisions, and ultimately empower them to become their financial advisers.
All Finimize content is available in audio or text and written by experts who previously worked at the likes of Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, and Barclays. Their analysts know all too well how inaccessible traditional financial material can be: that’s why every story is easy to understand, easy to read, and easy to act on. You’ll be able to hear from them – as well as other industry insiders.
Female Invest
Female Invest is committed to educating and empowering women to take control of their finances and to live life on their own terms. They welcome anyone and everyone and aim to demystify the world of money once and for all. They do this by providing a one-stop universe for financial knowledge and learning through investment education, personal finance advice, and financial wellbeing knowledge.
Final thoughts
Especially in the tough climate we’re in, offering financial education to your employees is as good as offering a torch in a dark, dingy tunnel.
You can improve the financial literacy of your employees and empower them to take control of their finances.
Want to learn more about how financial education employee benefits can work for you? Speak to someone from our team here.