You might be exceptional in managing your personal finances. But what about your employees? Here is how to teach your employees on how to have a solid personal finances through better expense, debt and savings management.
Financially Stable Employees Are More Dependable
Should you have a financially unstable employee, that individual will represent a weak link in the chain of your business. Ultimately, they’re more likely to have an issue which will impact your business. Sometimes it’s hard to tell such employees are actually the weak link. They work hard, they work well, and they log plenty of overtime.
However, if that overtime in conjunction with their regular paycheck is barely helping them tread financial water, it could mean when they crash, suddenly you lose your investment in that individual.
There are a lot of ways finances can end up undermining a job. A good solution is education. Help your employees understand their situation, and what to do about it. You may even be able to help them get out of debt. This will foster loyalty to your business.
Designing Education Sessions
Give out basic information pertaining to money management. You might make this mandatory, but that also may not be the best idea. A better solution would be to hold a weekend seminar in a conference room somewhere; cater it, bring in a guest speaker—make it an enjoyable social event.
Conversely, you could do the meeting during regular working hours, and ask employees to bring a lunch. They’ll likely be ready to pay attention when they are getting paid just to sit through a seminar, or accept some financial information. What you want to do from there is teach basic things—financial goal setting, debt elimination technique, how to obtain the right kind of credit and expand savings; you may even dabble into the techniques which define investment.
Be sure to give employees tangible options, along with the caveats with each. For example, if they’re looking for quick loan options to pay back debt, you need to explain that on the upside, such loans are quickly provisioned, and easy to quality. Providers like Swoosh.com online loans from $2,100 to $4,600 with flexible repayment options. On the downside, online loans are quite costly. The bottom line, these loans could help them consolidate, cutting multiple instances of interest and ultimately saving them money while helping them escape debt more quickly. But before they take on the loans, they should know the math first and see whether it’s the right solution for them or not.
Another solution would be seeking out for professional help. A site like DebtBusters.com.au can help your empoyees to get out of debt and improve their financial situation. If you’re looking for practical tips and solutions, you can find more here.
Remember, as you are not a professional financial planner, avoid giving ‘surefire’ advice; it’s better to refer them to personal finance experts or, better yet, invite a no-nonsense personal finance trainer to talk with your employees. Let your employees consider the pros and cons and let them decide what’s best.
Allow Work Schedules That Are Flexible
Fuel is expensive. Kids need attention—that often means daycare for many commuters. You know what’s a way to make employees happy and help save them money while increasing your own business’s profitability? Give them a four-day week filled with ten hour shifts—or even a three day week with twelve to thirteen hour shifts, if it’s legal in your area.
When employees are freed up and have more time off in a consolidated chunk, they’re generally more productive and save money, both of which items help them to stay out of debt. Collaterally, this is good for your business.
Cut The Dress Code
It’s expensive for employees to buy business formal wear, and it’s a waste of time if your business never puts those employees in face-to-face contact with individuals who aren’t employed in your organization. Let them dress casual unless there’s a special event. If you want to instill a camaraderie/discipline motif, provide uniforms.
Get Rid Of Debt
Did you know that Australian debt in 2016 was around $2 trillion, and that the average Australian household owes $250,000 in debt? That’s bad! As a matter of fact, that’s outdoing Americans, who are approximately $132,500 in debt on average; though that country’s total debt is more than five times that of Oz, so at least the land down under has an edge there.
Maybe it’s time for your business to help your employees get a jump on tax season through some spring cleaning of the debt variety.