Helping Retail Employees Get Beyond Living Paycheck to Paycheck
By Chris Whitlow, Edukate
Nearly a third of all American workers bring their personal financial stresses to the workplace. For retail sales workers in particular, many are living paycheck to paycheck.
This unique challenge creates an opportunity for employers to offer personalized solutions to address employees’ short-term financial stressors, to not only reduce absenteeism and lower turnover rates but also increase employee health and happiness.
Understand Employee Demographics And Stresses
To better address the financial stresses of retail employees, we first have to understand its origins. For many retail sales employees, low wages are common. In fact, the average hourly wage for a retail employee hovers near $10. Based on surveys from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this puts retail sales employees in the lowest 10% of income earners in the country and makes utilizing traditional financial benefits like retirement plans and tax-deferred savings accounts even harder. In fact, nearly 90% of low-wage workers don’t have access to or don’t participate in a retirement plan.
Additionally, the ages of retail workers are often varied. This means that while some employees may be gearing up for retirement, some are still trying to pay down student loan debt. For employers, this means that the tools and plans they implement to address employee stress need to address each employee’s needs differently, because there isn’t a single one-size-fits-all solution.
Financial Wellness
Financial wellness is the combination of education and resources that can help employees learn about and manage their own personal financial stressors. Financial wellness tools give employers the opportunity to give their employees personalized guidance and boost their financial literacy in the areas most relevant to them.
As mentioned earlier, this could mean younger employees take the time to learn how to better pay down their student loans and manage their paychecks to start saving for retirement. For employees getting ready to retire, they may learn about how best to withdraw or manage their retirement savings.
Financial wellness platforms also help employers communicate with employees in different ways. While some employees may only want to know about changes to their benefits when open enrollment is around the corner, others want continued education and reminders about their personal finances.
A well-executed financial wellness platform can help retail employees better handle their personal financial stress and can help employers reduce turnover rates, directly impact annual revenues, and boost employee happiness and engagement in the workplace.
Chris Whitlow is the founder and CEO of Edukate, a workplace financial wellness provider with a mission to give every person access to expert financial guidance. Whitlow works with the Edukate team to solve problems that ease the financial stress most Americans experience each day. Edukate helps employers provide the best financial wellness benefits, thus helping employees manage their financial stress, increase their productivity and live happier, healthier lives.