BrightPlan Launches New Workforce Financial Wellness Gauge, Delivering Data-Driven Insights For Organizations To Uncover Key Workforce Strengths and Gaps

New capability provides real-time, anonymized and aggregated employee data, enabling employers to boost employee retirement and emergency savings, retain talent, and drive informed business decisions

SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 2, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- BrightPlan, a leader in Total Financial Wellness, today announced the launch of its new Workforce Financial Wellness Gauge. Based on patented technology, the capability surfaces valuable insights in real-time for employers and HR leaders via anonymized, and aggregated employee financial data. This data, which is unique to BrightPlan, provides insights into gaps in workforce financial well-being, empowering employers to create proactive solutions that help boost productivity and influence key business metrics such as employee turnover and engagement.

Employee financial stress is at a record high. 72% of employees say they are stressed about their finances and 88% expect their employers to offer financial wellness tools and resources according to BrightPlan's 2022 Wellness Barometer Survey. Financial stress leads to lost productivity¹, disengagement², turnover² and delayed retirement³, which costs U.S. companies $261 billion per year. To counter these challenges, the Workforce Financial Wellness Gauge (Gauge) empowers leaders to take direct action and help their workforce better optimize benefits, plan for retirement and improve overall financial well-being. This drives key business outcomes.

• The median BrightPlan user has a 61% higher retirement savings rate compared to the national median.⁴
• The median BrightPlan user has a 2X higher emergency savings rate compared to the national median.⁴
• For enrolled employees, BrightPlan customers see a 55% increase in retention over the national average.⁵

"According to Brandon Hall Group research, only one third of organizations today feel they have a good understanding of what their employees need and want most," says Claude Werder, Senior Vice President and Principal HCM Analyst at Brandon Hall Group. "Digital tools that reveal the right data and insights and provide a deeper understanding of workforce needs are essential to enhancing the employee experience."

Data is the key to revealing the needs of an increasingly diverse, distributed and global workforce. With the Gauge, BrightPlan offers robust insights that surface employee financial well-being gaps and guide the employer on how best to address these through benefits optimization, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, on-time retirement support, vendor partnerships, education opportunities and more.

"BrightPlan's data-driven Total Financial Wellness solution with patented AI technology turns raw data into valuable insights and advice for both employers and employees," says Marthin De Beer, CEO and founder of BrightPlan. "This enables organizations to make smarter decisions and better support their employees' real-time needs, while driving key outcomes such as increased productivity, reduced turnover, decreased absenteeism, significant time and money savings, and most importantly–happier employees."

How the Workforce Financial Wellness Gauge Works

The new Workforce Financial Wellness Gauge is an aggregated and anonymized measure of Employee Financial Wellness Scores. As employees engage with the app, BrightPlan's AI-driven Financial Wellness Coach assigns each employee a score and delivers customized advice on every aspect of personal finance including spending and budgeting, retirement and goals-based planning, investments, estate planning, insurance needs and financial education. As employees take recommended action towards building their financial plan, their Financial Wellness Scores increase, having a real-time effect on the Workforce Financial Wellness Gauge.

The Gauge provides a single aggregate measure that leaders can monitor to see the overall financial health of their workforce. Within the Gauge are three key pillar measurements each corresponding to different aspects of financial well-being.

• Financial Commitment: Encompasses metrics like debt load, emergency savings, and self-reported credit scores. A low score might indicate employees need help with financial basics.
• Financial Engagement: Looks at data related to BrightPlan log in frequency, educational content consumption trends, and recency of employee conversations with financial planners. A low score might indicate employees could use support taking the right actions to improve financially.
• Financial Empowerment: Measures retirement readiness, progress on education-related savings goals, and more. A low score might indicate employees aren't planning well for their financial future.

Companies can leverage the insights derived from the Gauge to analyze and work with BrightPlan to build targeted action plans to improve their workforce's financial health. This data can be segmented by demographics to surface critical needs and gaps. With the focused approach employers can save valuable time and money in the decision-making process as they strategically match benefits programs and financial resource offerings to the top priorities of their workforce.

To learn more about BrightPlan's approach to data, read this blog post from our Chief Product Officer Larry Robinson.

About BrightPlan
BrightPlan is a leader in Total Financial Wellness. BrightPlan provides a comprehensive solution that addresses all aspects of employees' financial health at every stage of life, and empowers HR teams to enhance the employee experience and better attract, retain and engage talent. Its unique combination of digital platform and human advisors enables employers to deploy at scale while delivering personalization for employees. The company is the first financial wellness solution certified for fiduciary excellence by the Centre for Fiduciary Excellence (CEFEX). For more, visit brightplan.com. 

Media Contact: brightplan@nextpr.com

Disclosure:  BrightPlan LLC is an SEC-registered investment adviser that offers digital and human investment advice to US residents. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training nor does it imply endorsement by the SEC. BrightPlan is neither registered with any international agency to provide, nor does it provide, any investment advice to non-U.S. residents. BrightPlan is a registered trademark of BrightPlan, LLC. We derive our information from a variety of sources we consider reliable, including historical data from fund managers, exchange data, published research, industry digests, and news media, but we do not guarantee that the information is accurate or complete.

Sources:

1. Cost of Lost Productivity: BrightPlan 2022 Wellness Barometer Survey
2. Cost of Employee Turnover & Absenteeism: American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries. 2018. "Measuring the ROI of Financial Wellness."
3. Cost of Delayed Retirement: Prudential. 2019. "The Cost of Delayed Retirements."
4. Savings rate is defined as national median retirement savings and national median emergency savings divided by the national median annual income.
5. Based on BrightPlan customer retention data against the national average for retention.

SOURCE BrightPlan