Plan Sponsors Consider ROI Crucial to Financial Wellness Success

Offering the right suite of financial wellness benefits looks different for every organization—especially since employers have different ways of defining what financial wellness means. 

Benefits experts on a panel at the Employee Benefit Research Institute-Milken Institute 2024 Retirement Symposium on Tuesday spoke about the financial wellness benefits they believe best serve their employee populations and reflected on how they measure return on investment and determine their employees’ needs. 

Delta Air Lines’ Emergency Savings Program 

Josh Jessup, general manager of global retirement and financial wellness at Delta Air Lines, said financial wellness is about having a “healthy relationship with money,” which at Delta starts with strong financial literacy.  

“It’s one thing to know information, but it’s another thing to be able to put that information to use,” Jessup said. “I know I’ll be healthy if I eat right and I exercise, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I put together the right meal plan or exercise routine to make sure that I am as healthy as I could be. … So we want to figure out how we can make this process as easy [as possible] for our employees to put the knowledge into practice to be able to achieve the outcomes we’re looking for.” 

Through offering a generous 401(k) plan, an emergency savings program, life insurance and financial coaching, among other benefits, Jessup explained that Delta aims to “provide the connective tissue” to facilitate their employees’ improved financial well-being.  

Jessup highlighted Delta’s emergency savings program, which was rolled out in January 2023, as a benefit that has been heavily embraced by participants.  

Once participants enroll in the program, they are prompted to open an account with Fidelity Investments dedicated to emergencies, funded directly from their paycheck. After opening that account, employees take an online financial education course and a series of one-on-one financial coaching sessions. Once those are completed, employees receive $750 from Delta in their emergency savings account. On top of that, Delta will match up to $250 of employees’ contributions to the account and will cover taxes on the company’s contributions so employees have access to the full $1,000 contributed by the company. 

Jessup said the program has also helped bring more awareness to the free financial coaching available to Delta employees, which many were unaware of or were not utilizing. So far, more than 25,000 employees have completed the education and coaching and have contributed the $250 to earn $1,000 from Delta. 

Jessup added that part of the motivation behind implementing the emergency savings program was that Delta had a high utilization rate of 401(k) loans. He expressed disinterest in pursuing a pension-linked emergency savings account, or sidecar account, newly available this year through a provision in the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022.  

“We want to disconnect people’s thoughts of their retirement accounts as the place to go to for emergencies,” Jessup said. “I don’t have any interest in changing course. … We’ve liked the direction that we’re going.” 

He also said in-plan options involve many regulations, such as income limits, which would disqualify a large portion of Delta’s workforce from participating. 

Amazon’s Financial Wellness Strategy 

Justin Roberts, a principal of global financial health at Amazon, said the implementation of a basic financial assistance program, which was implemented in early 2022, has been largely embraced by employees.  

As many Amazon employees were struggling to get to work because of transportation issues or were experiencing stress at work due to “dynamic life scenarios,” Roberts said the company decided to implement financial counseling. 

“Essentially, we found that the program was utilized [at] a very high rate, [and] we’re seeing that most employees use it for more than just one issue,” Roberts said. “It could be a financial emergency where maybe you’re facing homelessness, or you’re facing food insecurity … but that’s the beginning of the journey. [The participant] uses that financial coach to develop a spending plan, develop a savings plan or to start to work toward buying their first home.” 

During moments of crisis, Roberts said Amazon found that people want to talk to an individual, rather than just navigate through an app. When asked if the financial assistance program relieved financial stress, 70% of employees said even the first visit with a counselor did, according to Roberts.  

Roberts also mentioned that Amazon’s employee discount program is a popular benefit, based on nearly 3,000 deals, including discounts on car insurance, phone plans, travel and entertainment.  

Chantel Sheaks, vice president of retirement policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business advocacy group, said it is often a struggle just to get smaller employers to offer a retirement plan. However, she said offering an emergency savings benefit can be used as a “stepping stone” to encourage participants to start saving. 

According to Sheaks, small and medium-sized employers often feel that they cannot offer a program like emergency savings because they do not have the budget for matching contributions, or to make a $1,000 offer like Delta, but she argued that employers do not necessarily need to offer a match; simply setting up the program itself is a step forward.  

Measuring the Return on Investment 

Sheaks argued that one of the ways to help employers implement emergency savings is by working with researchers who can exemplify the return on investment. 

“If we can get the research to show the ROI to [the executive suite], that is imperative,” Sheaks said. “We have the anecdotal stories, but there’s some research on how [emergency savings] increases [workplace] safety, because you’re not worried about what’s going on, and if you have a healthy relationship with money, you can concentrate at work.” 

Additionally, Sheaks said it is important to present to business leaders examples of companies implementing an emergency savings program while still maintaining high participation in the 401(k) plan—citing Delta and Amazon as prime examples.  

Jessup said Delta also developed a “Flourishing Index Survey,” which provides insight into the financial wellness of participants and how they feel about the benefits offered to them. Members of the Delta benefits team also make an effort to talk to employees at in-person events and ask specific questions about the types of financial wellness programs employees would like to see.  

At Amazon, Roberts said his team measures ROI by looking at each program and evaluating if it is making progress toward its desired outcome. For example, for Amazon’s discount programs, the desired outcome is lowering employees’ cost of living.  

Roberts said Amazon has the luxury of in-house economists that can dive into the specifics of how the programs are performing, but he said employers can evaluate how the programs are doing by using anecdotal evidence as well.  

“You can go out and ask your [employees], ‘What do you think about this benefit?’ [or] ‘Is this the right benefit but the wrong vendor?’” Roberts said. “You can get 90% of that information directly from your employees and ask them, ‘Has this benefit helped you get to work?’ or ‘Has it lowered your financial stress?’”