In our previous post, “How Little Data Yield Big Results,” we highlighted Commonwealth’s involvement in the Consumer Insights Collaborative (CIC). Our work emphasizes the CIC’s position that short-term financial security and stability is key to helping financially vulnerable people achieve long-term financial opportunity and prosperity. 

In this post, we share what employers of lower-wage workers can do to ensure their employees’ financial security.

Commonwealth’s prior work has explored the impact of employee financial insecurity on the workplace. Through our research, we have found that the effects of financial insecurity on lower-wage workers are pervasive, intense, and distracting. As many as 75% of workers we surveyed worry about covering everyday expenses, having enough money to pay for health care or retirement, and affording healthy food for their families. 

These worries can exacerbate workers’ stress levels and hinder engagement at work, which can reduce attendance, loyalty, and productivity, resulting in a negative impact on business revenue.

The good news is that employers can take tangible steps to improve worker financial security by leveraging our research, which provides insights to better understand the financial challenges lower-wage workers face so employers and other stakeholders can appropriately tailor solutions to their workforce. Our report Short-Term Financial Stability: A Foundation For Security and Well-Being, developed in collaboration with the CIC, has clear research-based arguments and examples of how financial instability impacts lower-wage workers and the range of strategies corporations employ to try and make a positive impact on their employees’ financial security.

Commonwealth and its employer partners work together to learn more about employees’ financial challenges and to pilot and implement solutions that help employees build financial security — including surprisingly straightforward interventions. Some of our solutions and strategies include:

• Easy access to savings products
• Health benefits that support physical, mental, and financial wellness
• Communication, savings tools, and other strategies to make savings easy, fun, and more accessible during opportune moments such as the onboarding process, at the time of a raise, or other windfall moments (periods of additional cashflow) such as tax refunds. 

To explore how you can partner with Commonwealth to improve your employees’ financial security and reap the business benefits, contact Keyarash Jahanian at info@buildcommonwealth.org.

Watch this space for additional, practical steps that employers, financial services firms, and fintechs can take at the intersection of their business interest and social impact.