Develop a Business Case

A robust approach to diagnosing your employees’ needs is the most critical step in building the business case (see the Diagnose Needs section of this Toolkit). When senior leaders are presented with clear and compelling evidence that their employees are struggling financially, they are often persuaded to make resources available to help solve those challenges.

Combining data on employee outcomes with important business metrics like retention, turnover, and productivity can help to build a business case for investing in your employees’ financial health.

Some other less common metrics can also be useful. For example:

• For the portion of your workforce that is customer-facing, as in storefronts or call centers, consider correlating customer satisfaction scores with data on the financial stress of workers in a given location. It’s hard for employees to provide top-notch customer care when they are distracted by money worries.¹⁶
• For employees in caregiving settings, look at the relationship between employees’ financial worries and patient outcomes. One study estimated that a 10% increase in the minimum wage would prevent at least 15,000 deaths in long-term residential care facilities.¹⁷
• In industries where employee health and safety is a critical metric, you might find evidence that financial stress is making your workers less safe. One study found that financial worries are associated with an increase in the likelihood of preventable accidents for short-haul truck drivers.¹⁸

Showing the human side of your employees’ financial health challenges can also have a big impact. For example, consider gathering anonymous quotes or anecdotes from employees through focus groups, open-ended survey questions, or one-on-one conversations. These qualitative insights can bring the issues to life for executives and move them to act in a way that data often can’t.