047 Financial Wellness is the Missing Link

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, Grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey there. Welcome to this episode, the affluent entrepreneur show. This one's a cool one, but they all are. This one's different. I'm speaking directly to those of you that have teams, employees and people that working for you. Listen, we're in this whole thing about the great resignation and all this stuff and people not wanting to come back to work, back to their businesses or they're quitting, they're going into other careers or they're getting out because they are looking for something different. And you know what? It's not money. It's not just money. It's not about the salary. And in this episode, I'm going to give you the recipe of what it's going to take to attract, retain. Okay. And reward your employees the right way so it improves your bottom line. So I look forward to seeing you in the episode. Cheers. See you soon.

This is the absolute entrepreneur show for entreprene that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom because that's what it really means to be an athlete entrepreneur.

Hey there. Welcome to this episode of the affluent entrepreneur show. And in this episode, like I said, this is going to be a. I don't know that it's a different episode. The fact of the matter is that we deal with everything from money, wealth and business, entrepreneurship and business. And so this one, this one, I really want to focus on some of those that are in business, corporations and businesses that are trying to scale, that have teams that have. Have people that are helping them create their profits, create their solutions and take it to market. Because here's the thing that we all know, we have heard it in the news We've heard it in the media that there's this whole idea of the great resignation going on and people leaving their jobs and what feels like droves. And whether the stats are correct or not isn't the issue. There is a clear pattern that people are either not coming back to work for whatever reason and, or they're leaving their jobs for either a better job, a different career or something else. And so why does that happen? Why do people quit their job and what can we do? Because let's face it, if we are in business and we're trying to scale a business, we need to have a team. I sit on a board of directors of a company that was actually founded in the late 1800s. And so we have a lot of employees. And one of the key questions as a board is always around how do we make sure that our employees are cared for? How do we make sure that they are supported? How do we create a culture that leads to their connection with the business, the business's mission, and ultimately what drives our profit, but more importantly, what drives their life? And so in this episode, I want to kind of talk about some of the things and something that I think that is low hanging fruit, if you will, for organizations to help their teams, their employees to do some things that give them more security, that give them the opportunity to feel cared for in more ways. And so here's the thing. Stress levels are on the rise. Stress levels are driven, they drive our health. Because when stress goes up, there's physical manifestations of stress. It's blood pressure, it's lack of sleep, and all kinds of manifestations of stress. In fact, it's just a representative, we call it stress, but it's really our body, our well being, being in distress. And can you imagine that you have an organization of employees which have a whole lot of employees that are in distress. How effective do you think they would be? How effective and efficient do you think they'll be? How focused do you think they'll be if they're in distress? So one of the things that we look at in this is how do we fix that? Now there's been a lot of conversation in the media and in companies these days about how do we lift our employee wellness, how do we talk about mental wellness, mental state and giving programs that support them? And then how do we create programs that allow them to have good physical wellness, if you will. And I've got one company, one client of mine that I know that we, they've got a gym on, on site, they do yoga Classes and stretching classes. They have, they even have a hairstylist that comes in regularly throughout. So I mean, they do things to create a wellness level for their employees because they know that that translates to a couple things. It translates to higher recruitment because you stand out. It translates to higher retention because they feel cared for. It translates to more focus and more productivity, which then translates into, to a bigger bottom line. So here's the other side of that then. If what we're trying to do is help our employees figure out how to reduce their stress, too often we come and this is going to sound judgmental, and maybe it is. But the fact of the matter is we come off, we come to this sometimes with an industrial age thought process. In other words, everything's this assembly line and that person, that employee, is part of an assembly line. Do your job, be productive, you'll get your paycheck, you can go home and then you come back and do it again the next day. Now, when you hear that, it doesn't sound appealing, does it? Well, of course not. It's not. And so if we're truly going to attract top talent, keep top talent, and at the same time improve our bottom line, what we need to look at is how do we improve the quality of life, the quality of the conditions, the quality of the culture in our organization. And so I want to just touch on what I call the five dimensions of wellness, because I think that you'll start to see how this starts to play out. Now, those of you that are listening on itunes, Spotify or wherever the audio is, you're not going to see these graphics, but we'll make sure that the graphic is in the show notes so you can download this. The five dimensions are of wellness. Because here's what, what we look at is. I think that the very base level of wellness that we try to, to bring into the game is this idea of mental wellness. And that's great. We're talking about mental wellness. How do we raise them? How do we give them tools, tactics and strategies to raise their mental wellness? Along with that is we want to bring about their physical wellness. And a lot of organizations, we stop with these two. How do we give them mental wellness and physical wellness? In other words, how do we reduce the mental stress and distress? How do we reduce the physical stress or distress? How do we do that? You do it with different benefit programs. You have hotlines for stressed out workers that get a chance to have these conversations. You give them incentives to join a gym and go to a gym. You create those I mean, there's a lot of benefit programs and employee benefits organizations are doing that. That's not what this is about. But there's three other wellness elements, dimensions of wellness that I think we need to think about. The next one is this professional, or you could call it career. How do we allow our employees, our team members, to feel good about their career or about their professional wellness, their professional development, their ability to grow? And then there's this other piece, relational. Now we may not have impact directly on their relationships outside of work, but we impact them indirectly because many of them will bring the work home, they'll bring the stress of work home if that's where the stress is coming from. And so those four dimensions and what we want to do is try to reduce the mental stress, the physical stress, the professional stress, and the relational stress. But statistics, let's just look at some statistics because statistics show what's the biggest stressor in people's lives. 54%, over half of employees say that financial matters or financial challenges or financial issues are, are their largest stressor. We've seen statistics where they say that financial challenges are one of the biggest contributors to divorce and problems and fights in marriages and relationships. And I just saw a statistic that was by salary Finance and they said that cash strapped employees are 5.8, almost 6 times more likely to miss deadlines and 4.9 times, almost 5 times more likely to produce lower quality work. Now I'm not. This is not.

An episode that has anything to do with oh, give them more money. Because throwing more money at the problem may not be the solution. Okay. And realizing that the stress itself leads to other things in your organization, in your business. Because stress, like I said, manifests itself in physical symptoms. Blood pressure, digestive issues, sleep issues, migraines, muscle tension, which leads to more sick time, PTO distractions, lack of focus, poor work quality. Financial issues will impact their ability to work, their desire work, and the way they work. When we look at it from that perspective. So if financial stress is one of the largest stressors in people's lives, in people's relationships, here's what I believe. Every organization, every corporation should give a pathway for what we call financial wellness. Because that's the fifth dimension. It is actually the missing link to de stressing all the other dimensions of wellness. Because think about it. If we have financial stress, how can we have mental wellness? If we have financial stress that's causing physical manifestations, high blood pressure, lack of sleep, distractions, digestive issues. How can we have physical wellness? If we have financial stress.

How does that translate to my professional wellness? And if we have financial stress, what does that do to my relational wellness? And so the missing link is really around this whole idea of financial wellness and giving. And like I said, this is not about more money. In fact, the answer isn't more money. Rather, it's about giving your team, your employees, the people that work for you, an avenue. The knowledge, the tools, the tactics, the strategies to do the right thing with the money they have. It's called financial security. And when we give them financial security, we start to dissipate the stress. We start to give them peace of mind. If they by chance look at it and say, wait a second, I'm in an organization that's now shown me that the way they compensate me, if I do these things, I will be okay, I will be financially secure and my family's taken care of. What do you think that does to their loyalty? What do you think that does to your retention? What do you think that does for their willingness to stay on? See, because when employees.

Are more financially secure, when they feel more financially secure, they feel like they have control of their financial future, their less distracted, they're more productive, they work with greater dedication and efficiency. And so one of the things that I think all organizations need to think about as part of their benefits, and there's a study that was put out by Employee Benefit News that as one of their men, they called IT Employee Benefits 2.0, is that we need to think about how we can care for our employees or create a culture of caring for our employees at a far greater level. And I think when we do this, it affects your company at four different levels. And so when we look at it from that perspective, here's the four levels that I think and why doing this will affect those four levels. The first level is it's actually going to affect your ability to recruit. When we look at recruiting, the same study by Employee Benefit News said employers who make their employees lives better will contributing to settling the great resignation. That's what they called Employee Benefits 2.0. In other words, when you create a reputation for improving life's conditions of your team members of your employees, that is an attractive, attractive thing. So if we're trying to stand out in a marketplace of reluctant workers, then one of the things that we need to do is make sure that they feel cared about because they're more likely to join an organization that gives them the pathway to peace in the future, the pathway to a good life in the future, a pathway where they feel like they are not there just collecting a check and putting in time, but they're there on a mission, on a movement, doing something that not only serves the organization and the solutions that, that you provide, but serves their life in the process. So that's number one. The other thing that this will help you with is retention, which is directly tied to this great resignation. You know, that study was out there that said 81%, 81% of millennials, okay, 75% of Jet Xers and over 50% of boomers said they would change companies if they found a company that cared more. They didn't say they would change because of the money. That's why I'm saying this has nothing to do with more money. They said they would change if they found a company that cared more. And one of the ways you can care more is to give them a pathway to a financial secure future. And the way you do that is to give them the tools, the tactics and the strategies to secure their future on their own, to give them control with what they are being paid. Okay? That then leads to number three on this, and that is, believe it or not, their reasoning. When you educate, when you educate your team members, your employees, your management from a financial standpoint, to help them understand financial literacy, financial security and the financial decisions, interestingly enough, what you do is you make them smarter about your business. They now see the business decisions that they're making through the eyes of financial literacy. And what it does is it impacts, according to a Harvard Business School survey, they said that that actually impacts their actions on the broader organization because they're thinking down the line towards your bottom line towards profits. And how does this affect, and what is the cash impact of doing this? They get to make more informed decisions because they have a better understanding of the financial implications of the things that they're doing. They better have a better understanding of the business parameters of what they're doing. Which then leads to this last part of this. That's your returns. This is all about your bottom line. This is all about your profits. Think about this. If we can facilitate them feeling cared for more, them feeling more focused, getting rid of the distractions, reducing the stress, they get smarter. From a financial standpoint, they'll be more productive, they'll have higher quality of work, they'll be more focused. Your retention goes up, you'll have less PTO and sick time. And indirectly, the result of that is it improves your bottom line. The reality is that the World Health Organization estimates that stress is a health epidemic. And that it's costing American businesses up to 300 billion with a B a year. So when we have the opportunity to reduce stress on our employees and let them feel cared about, we're going to attract more, we're going to retain more, we're going to have smarter employees, and we're going to prove the bottom line. And the reality is, is that without helping them with the financial wellness, they'll never have mental wellness, they'll never have physical wellness, because the stress, we're not solving the biggest stressor in their life and in their relationships. Let's solve the biggest stressor in their life by giving the tools, the tactics and the strategies to do the right things with what they're getting paid, with what they have so they feel cared for. They can be more focused, less distracted, more productive, and more loyal to the mission of the organization and the bottom line. I hope that you found this helpful to you. We can go deeper into all of what do they need to know, that type of thing. But I think the most important thing is to realize that as an organization, we need to show up differently. As an organization, we need to think about it from the quality of the culture we create. And we don't necessarily solve that just by throwing more money at them. We can solve it with qualitative things, with training and development and giving them the tools and tactics to see their life through a different set of eyes. And so I hope that this serves you and I look forward to chatting with you in another episode. If you have questions or you want to go deeper on any of this, do me a favor, reach out to me, let me know in the comments or anything like that, and I'll be happy to help out. All right. Until I see you in the next episode or the next show. Remember, always, always to strive to live a life that outlives you. Cheers. Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneur show with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group Now by going to melabraham.com group and I'll see you.

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