ROI on Financial Wellness

Sponsored by Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America

Though financial wellness programs are increasingly popular, one of the challenges with implementing these programs that plan sponsors raised at PSCA’s recent conference, is how to measure the return on investment. This is generally a concern regarding getting leadership on board with implementing a program and being able to prove that the program is working, effective, worth the investment. This week’s question asked plan sponsors, if you offer a program, do you measure the ROI and if so how?

Half of respondents that have a program stated that they do not measure the return on investment, with some stating that the goal of the program is to help employees feel less financially stressed, which is hard to measure. Forty percent of respondents stated they look for increases in positive participant behavior such as increased participation and savings rates. Comments follow.

• The traditional measures cited above hardly seem relevant in an AE/QDIA environment.  I still find the ROI to be "elusive".
• Communication is key for financial benefits we offer. I have found most employees "just didn't know."
• Data and testimonials are the ways we've convinced leadership of the value.
• going to bring this up at our committee meeting...
• I suppose monitoring the use of/decrease in loans/UEWs can be a way to measure financial wellness programs.
• Inflation, low wages, and other economic challenges has many Americans living paycheck to paycheck and lacking emergency savings to cover unplanned expenses. This daily worry creates financial precarity that manifests in distracted workers who ultimately cost employers sizeable dollars in lost productivity. The true ROI of workplace wellness benefits is less about retirement plan participation and more about helping employees manage day-to-day finances. That's what leadership needs to understand.
• It's difficult to measure very specifically, but indicators we see are attendance at meetings, increase in 403(b) enrollment and employee accounts of impact.
• Management needs to have a continuous improvement mind-set as regards product (or service), process and people.
• Our Advisor really pushes financial wellness education and offers free webinars to our employees.  This helps out tremendously.
• Our program ties into overall wellbeing and stats on how financial stress can cause employees to be less productive so it's beneficial for both the ee and the er to provide financial wellness education.
• We are focused on the employee for the future on their benefit package.
• We are looking at offering but don't have it in place.
• We benchmark (against our historical performance and industry) our participation, deferral rates and "touches" on a monthly basis...but, the truest measurement is if we pass our ADP/ACP testing.  At a high level, our goals are to ensure the shareholders of our small company can defer the most they can...helping employees (thru company match & profit sharing & financial wellness edu) is an amazing side benefit where we all win!  This is also an awesome recruiting tool.
• We do wellness tips including financial through an employee committee, but no measures are taken/observed.
• We have a program but we disagree with the vendor on how the ROI is measured. They want to base it solely on "engagement," which includes merely accessing their website. We would like more data points, such as a change in positive behavior or increase in overall financial wellbeing. But our vendor does not have the tools/resources for this analysis.
• We haven't formally established any targets but do look for input from employees as to what they would like to see and solicit their feedback when we offer programs.
• We look at participant behaviors and turnout to our events.
• we offer workshops and only a handful of employees attend.  We do not have anything to measure.
• What is the KPI that should be measured?