Financial Wellness as Employee Benefit
Encourage healthy changes in employee personal finances • Reduce financial stress for employees • Provide employees an actionable way to improve financial well-being
Two Industry Case Studies
The Price of Financial Precarity in the Trucking Industry
A recent precarity study* found that truck drivers who were stressed about their bills at home did indeed take those worries out on the road. In fact, financial precarity came out as significant predictor of accident rates. For example, each standard deviation of increased driver precarity was linked to about a half-percentage point increase in likelihood of a preventable accident. In dollars and sense, that's a huge increase. Each accident costs the trucking company more than $100,000. That’s an estimated an annual $1.3 million in preventable costs from accidents linked to precarity at the average-sized truck-driving firm.
Quoting the study: "Drivers who worry more about their financial situation are more cognitively taxed and, as a result, are more dangerous on the road.”
The Price of Financial Precarity in Skilled Nursing Facilities
A recent precarity study* found that financial precarity undermined the job performance of certified nursing assistants. For example, although there were high levels of empathy among almost all the aides as a prerequisite to patient safety, the aides who experienced more financial precarity were less likely to notice threats to the safety of the patients on their watch, despite their high levels of empathy.
Quoting the study: “It’s not that they were less motivated, cared less about the patients, or were less skilled at doing the work. Instead, the cognitive tax imposed by persistent financial worry got in the way of their job performance, as their preoccupation with their financial problems compromised their ability to notice changes in patient health.”
* Carrie Leana, “The Cost of Financial Precarity”, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2019.