Human Resources Issues for Senior Management
Issue link: https://digital.hrreporter.com/i/747024
CANADIAN HR STRATEGY/11 FEATURE/roundtable Industry experts agree that nancial wellness is an important area for employers to support their employees. For Canadian employers, nancial wellness is just starting to really gain attention alongside other areas of wellness. Sun Life Financial sees health as multifaceted and integrative of physical, psychological and nancial wellness and is proud to have spon- sored the Canadian HR Reporter roundtable that brought together employers and consul- tants to discuss nancial wellness and how it affects Canadian employees. In the discussion, it was established that nancial wellness is linked to — and may be just as important as — the physical and mental wellness of employees; therefore, meaningful focus needs to be paid to this area of employee health. Research has shown that nancial stress has been surveyed to be one of the top stressors among Canadians, according to the 2014 Sun Life Canadian Health Index. Recognizing this, employers are looking for more effective ways to further increase employees' nancial literacy and their ability to manage their nances. There already exists a wealth of knowledge in the marketplace available to anyone looking for it, and the opportunity resides in driving be- havioural change: getting individuals to access that material to learn how to help themselves. A barrier that employers run into when creating customized solutions is that they are bound by privacy regulations, which prevent them from using employee data unless consent was obtained at the time of collection. Engag- ing third parties to run seminars can help make the tools available that an employee might need. The challenge still remains for employ- ees to attend these sessions and take action in managing their nances when they walk away. Some inaction is attributed to a lack of awareness or knowledge, but it is also attrib- uted to people being hesitant to put their hand up to admit they could use more knowledge or even con rm they are on the right path. In the same way that recent efforts have destigma- tized discussion of mental health, work needs to continue to destigmatize public discussion of nancial health. Canadian employers already seem to be shifting their own methods, recognizing the im- portance of nancial wellness and how it can affect their employees and, ultimately, their organiza- tion. Innovative companies leverage technology and mobile applications to connect employees to the information that they want instantaneously and via anonymous channels, such as webinars which often impacts behaviours. Sun Life sponsored this roundtable to discuss how we can help organizations get more of their employees to a state of nancial wellbeing. Our Integrated Health Solutions team understands that all states of wellness come as part of health and learning how we can support Canadians with understand- ing their nances will help them take a step towards their overall wellness. Group Bene ts are offered by Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada, a member of the Sun Life Fi- nancial group of companies. What is fi nancial wellness and how do we get there? EMPLOYER'S ROLE But there's a healthy discussion to be had around the degree of involvement employers feel they should have in an employee's life cycle, says Briant. "They have full lives that we know very little about outside and lots of different family circumstances. And so I think that the starting conversation shouldn't be 'It's the right thing to do' but 'What's the level of involvement that is appropriate?'" she says. "There's an endless list of items that you could help em- ployees with and... you need to make those choices." Companies de nitely have a role to play in helping employ- ees reach that end goal, says Daniels. "We know that nancial stress is one of the stressors out there that affects people from a mental wellness standpoint. So it's de nitely a component that we feel is important." Employers have a role to play — but it's just one component, says Rubenyan. "At the very least, I think as sponsors and employers, you should have a very clear strategy and say, 'This is what we're going to do, this is our plan,'" he says. "It's really around pro- viding the right information, the right education and helping employees know where to go if they need information." "I know in the U.S. they've attempted programs like this where they'll analyze an individual's statement and indicate a green, a red or a yellow light to indicate where they need to pay a little bit more attention," he says. "I would love to bring something like that to our population or create a questionnaire that really assesses somebody's overall nancial wellness." As one solution, Wiginton cited an eight-question scale by the Personal Financial Employee Education Foundation in the U.S. "It doesn't really focus on how much money you have, it doesn't focus on wealth and that kind of stuff; it focuses on 'How do you feel about money?' and… 'Does this stress you out in this type of situation?'; 'Are you able to do it or are you not able to do it?'" he says. "Because it's such a quick, short, simple survey, it gets a high completion rate, it gets really high standards and marks." And on the data analytics side, providers can give employers lots of breakout data, says Briant. "If you look at the categories that people are accessing help for, that's a great guide for you as an organization to think about where you want to put your resources. Because if it's 30 per cent on nancial distress, then that's quite a signal."