Emergency Savings is one of the easiest benefits to roll out, here’s why.
There’s no denying it – money is on the top of your employees’ minds. You are talking about money with your staff, almost every single day. From requests for salary increases, to resignations for more pay, to not showing up at work because of mental health issues, money stress is all around us and impacts our organizations daily.
You are working hard to improve financial wellness in your organization. An emergency savings benefit is key to your employees’ financial security. Emergency savings will help your employee if they have a car accident, a crisis tied to a natural disaster, a spouse who lost their job, and many other financial emergencies.
Study after study shows that employers who offer an emergency savings benefit find that their employees are less distracted and less stressed at work. Less distraction and less stress mean more productivity for your company. Did you know your employees are also more likely to stay with your organization, too?
Setting up an emergency cash benefit is easy, here are 5 simple steps you’ll take.
Step 1: Decide on Your Budget
Your budget will fluctuate depending on the number of active participants, your eligibility criteria, and your matching contributions. On average, employers match 10% of employee’s savings, up to a max of $100 per year.
You can assume that out of the number of employees you offer the program to, about 30% of them will actively participate. You will be charged a monthly fee based on the number of active employees. This fee is a fractional cost of your match contributions, so you can rest assured that most of your budget goes directly towards your employees’ emergency fund.
Step 2: Choose Your Plan
How much per year would you like your employees to put away for an emergency;
What percent of their savings are you willing to match;
At what saving milestones would you like your employees to earn their match;
Will the match contributions be available immediately or based on specific criteria (passing probation, at the end of each year, etc).
Our Client Success Team will help you determine what’s right for your organization.
Step 3: Select who is Eligible
Based on our experience, employees of all income levels will benefit from this program. However, sometimes due to budget constraints, especially in large organizations, the employer would like to limit the program to employees who are under a certain income threshold. We do optional income testing as part of the eligibility check for your organization.
Other common ways to check eligibility is using a unique employee identifier such as employee ID or email address. You provide us a list of eligible employees and we’ll confirm their eligibility prior to joining the program.
Step 4: Send out Communications
Once we have loaded the employees in our system and configured your program, you send out communications to staff letting them know about the new benefit program and how to get setup. We’ll supply you with all the communication material you need.
Step 5: Fund the Matched-Incentives Account
You’ll fund the matched-incentives account via bank deposit or cheque. We’ll give you monthly reports detailing your match contributions.
You could be helping your employees cover their emergency expenses in less than a month.
If you are ready to get started or would like more information, our Client Success Team is ready to help. We are proud to be offering our program to Levi’s, KFC, Dockers, Beyond Yoga, IDrive, and many other organizations in US and Canada. We can’t wait to help employees at your company start building their rainy-day fund, too.