Horse Education

By Roger Travis
Founder of ExperienceLab Inc.

As the old adage goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. The same holds true for employees and financial well-being education. Because financial literacy promotes financial wellness, many employers offer financial education. Yet, most employees shy away from financial training, and benefits teams struggle to identify the best candidates. How should the benefits teams design their outreach to maximize engagement and utilization of these valuable initiatives?

How can Persona^tm help?

ExperienceLab’s Persona^tm research identifies the employee segments who would benefit more from financial training than others.

To illustrate, the charts below show by-segment responses (each segment is represented by a separate bar) to two survey statements in the Persona^tm research:

My household already has a financial plan

The chart below displays the percent of each Persona^tm segment that answered “yes” to the statement, “My household (already) has a financial plan.” It demonstrates that a high percentage of employees in Segments 2, 4 and 5 (the three bars at the left of the chart) already have a financial plan. They are deemed the least likely groups to be interested in financial planning education.

Other segments have no plan

Yet, according to the same chart, only 7.6% of workers in Segments 1 and 14.6% of workers in segment 7 have financial plans. Might they be more interested in financial education?

It would reduce my stress if I learned more about planning my finances

The chart below indicates that the same two segments (Segments 1 and 7) that most lack plans say they would have less stress if they were better educated about financial planning. So employees in these two segments, by and large, don’t have financial plans, but, for example, 60.8% of Segment 1s would reduce their stress if they learned more about planning their finances.

Insights available for your business

The list of your employees who are in the two groups (Segments 1 and 7) are available for your use with a subscription for Persona^tm from ExperienceLab. With them you can focus educational efforts on the employees who are most likely to have interest in financial planning.

The list and the other detailed research survey results are available for license. The tools allow employers to target their health and finance benefits campaigns for employees most likely to welcome communications and tailor those communications to best fulfill their program objectives. 

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