Most everyone knows what wellness programs are designed to do for the body — help you get and stay more physically fit and be more proactive for your personal health. But what about your company and your employees' financial well-being? Do your employees suffer from the financial flu?
A new survey from Consumer Affairs says money worries have become a significant distraction for employees during working hours. Not Facebook, not chain emails, not weight loss — worries about money. Although many U.S. businesses have recovered from the Great Recession, many of the people who work at those businesses haven't. The Society for Human Resource Management says those worries are now a huge drain on employee productivity. Here's what the 2014 SHRM survey Financial Wellness in the Workplace found:
- Seven out of 10 human resource professionals said that personal financial challenges have a large or some impact on their employees' performance.
- More than 40 percent said that difficulty in covering personal expenses is having a workplace impact on employees.
- Almost 40 percent of employees are facing greater personal financial challenges now compared with the onset of the recession in 2007.
- Nearly 25 percent of human resources professionals said employees are experiencing more personal financial challenges now compared with 12 months ago.
And that's just the HR professionals who are attuned to the financial difficulty their employees face. Others could be clueless. The survey also uncovered this alarming fact: employees were 60 percent more likely to tap their retirement account for a loan than in previous years, and 44 percent are more likely to ask for a hardship withdrawal from retirement savings.
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