For business owners and management, there is a clear link between the financial literacy of their workforce and the financial health of their employees, which in turn promotes workplace productivity. In the past few years, numerous studies have found a connection between employee comprehension of retirement and investment benefits and their productivity in the workplace.
This is not a huge leap for us to understand: when an employee clearly understands their benefits and investment choices, they are empowered to make wiser, more informed decisions about what to do with their money. This in turn promotes the feeling that they are in control of their financial health, creating happier, less stressed employees. Guess what can contribute to a person’s productivity? Happiness and reduced stress.
At MGO, we believe that businesses who want to promote happy and productive employees should be proactively educating their staff. Recent studies have suggested that one-on-one financial education in the workplace helps employees become much more involved in their financial affairs and retirement planning.
Unfortunately, many businesses have the same lackluster approach: on the date of a new hire, they give the new employee stacks of enrollment packets, expecting the employee navigate the materials and choose their options. These packets contain a huge amount of information, which can be overwhelming even to people who are well-versed in investing – for the average person, it can be completely intimidating.
As an alternative, MGO promotes financial literacy in the workforce by delivering presentations and one-on-one meetings to retirement and investment plan participants.
We asked MGO owner Paul Orchosky to weigh in on the benefits of one-on-one consultations:
“A one-on-one meeting provides the opportunity for a participant to hear about the plan in a simple, personalized basis. The question I get most frequently when I meet with participants is ‘What should I do?’ An enrollment packet can’t answer that question. With a one-on-one meeting, we have the opportunity to help guide participants to set up a savings plan specific to their needs and goals.”
A one-size-fits-all approach to retirement benefits is not nearly as helpful, or transparent to the employee, as it should be. With personalized consultations, employees are much more likely to be set up for success.
This is why MGO promotes customized financial education for retirement plan participants – the benefits extended to the plan participants can, in turn, add to the overall health of the business.For business owners and management, there is a clear link between the financial literacy of their workforce and the financial health of their employees, which in turn promotes workplace productivity.
