The Financial Wellness Score seeks to make it possible for employers to benchmark and measure the ROI associated with improving employees’ levels of financial wellness (a state of wellbeing where an employee has low financial stress, funds to meet unexpected expenses and a plan in place to meet future goals).

The ROI model provides companies of varying sizes a methodology to set program benchmarks, project cost savings, prioritize target employee populations and track progress and initiatives over time so that human resources and benefits teams can set measurable program goals and measure the impact their financial wellness programs have on the company’s bottom line.

In a special report, the firm categorized employees by their levels of financial wellness with associated costs to the employer. The study identified five key financial wellness levels, ranging from “suffering,” or those employees considered to be in financial crisis, to “secure,” those who are on their way to building and preserving wealth.

The study found that employees in the suffering and struggling categories affect their employers’ bottom line at a disproportionately higher rate, averaging an annual cost to the employer of $198 and $94 per employee, respectively. Employees with higher financial wellness levels, on the other hand, saved their employers money thanks to their sound financial behaviors, as much as $143 per employee in the highest financial wellness category.

So what does that translate to, companywide, in dollars and cents? Financial Finesse said that the national average financial wellness score is 5, and projected the cost savings of an incremental shift in the median workforce financial wellness score from 4 to 6, which it said has the potential to save a large employer of 50,000 employees approximately $5.6 million a year.