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Financial Well-Being Playbook Step 1: Assess the Current State

Start by evaluating your organization’s needs and your employees' unique challenges.

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Employers

The first step in building a financial well-being plan is to understand the needs of your team. To do this, you need to learn about the specific challenges your employees face. While some issues are common, the problems can differ depending on your company’s size, industry, and other employee characteristics. 
 
Statistics show that most Americans have only about $400 saved for an emergency. But that doesn’t necessarily mean emergency savings is the main issue to address. Try to collect as much information as you can about your employees. Below are resources to help your company understand its needs and create better solutions. When you’re unsure, just ask them.

Employees

Individual financial well-being checks can help employees understand where they stand financially.

 

Employers

  • Create an employee survey using an online tool or your preferred internal program.
  • Ask specific questions about emergency savings, debt, student loans, financial hardship, investment knowledge, and retirement plans. 
  • Consider adding demographic questions, such as location and whether they’re paid hourly or salary. This can help you understand your team's different needs.
  • Find out how employees feel about their financial situation. For example, ask if they feel confident, okay, but wanting improvement, or overwhelmed.
  • Ask employees how prepared they feel for retirement and what financial topics they want to learn about. The Financial Health Network offers an assessment that can give you a deeper look into your employees’ financial needs, valuable data, and benchmarking.
  • Work with your Marsh McLennan Agency team can assist with developing a survey or finding an assessment.

  • If you offer a retirement plan, talk with your recordkeeper to see how ready your employees are for retirement. 
  • Gather data like your plan’s participation rate, average contribution, average account balance, and how often employees use their matching funds.
  • Find out how many employees use your online financial tools and resources.
  • Here is a list of retirement recordkeepers, organized by the size of their assets and the number of participants. 

  • Talk with your retirement plan recordkeeper to see how your plan compares to others in your industry and of similar size.
  • Reach out to your dedicated Marsh McLennan Agency Retirement Service team for help with benchmarking your retirement plan data.

Many organizations focus on financial well-being. Their insights may help you understand how financial health affects employees as you develop and approach your plans. Some helpful sources include:

Employees

Your plan’s recordkeeper may provide extra educational materials and planning tools.  

Financial Well-Being Playbook steps

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Assess the current state.
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Implement a plan.
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Build awareness and engage employees.
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Monitor, assess, and repeat.

Well-being Playbooks

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Well-being Foundations Playbook
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Mental Health Playbook
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Social Well-being Playbook
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Financial Well-being Playbook
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Physical Well-being Playbook
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Social determinants of health

Social Determinants of Health