Financial Stress Hurting Worker Productivity

USA Today had a big spread yesterday on how much effect it's having on workers and their productivity to have so much financial stress in their lives suddenly.  It's like any other kind of trauma… it creates deep disorientation and confusion. 

Here are a couple of quotes from the article:

Major employee-assistance counselors serving Fortune 500 companies are reporting a surge in calls from employees worried about mortgages and finances. Ceridian, a Minneapolis-based provider of employee counseling services, typically gets several hundred calls a month from employees seeking financial counseling. From June to July, it saw a 50% increase in calls for financial advice."

Much of our recent research into this issue has borne these findings out again and again.  It's something employers don't like to think about, because they are from the old school of business… they keep thinking if they just "keep their workers' nose to the grindstone" they'll get productivity out of them.

It just doesn't work that way.  Business productivity is based on a whole range of human factors, not the least of which is financial literacy and the ability to handle personal finances.

We'll have more to say on this topic in upcoming blog posts, but we wanted to turn your attention to the fact that a major newspaper is FINALLY reporting on this vastly underreported phenomenon: the impact of personal finances on worker productivity.

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