Reuters

Financial Education Could Be the New Employee Assistance

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Jan. 4

70 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck; how many of your employees are among them? According to USA Today, the NUMBER ONE cause of stress on the job is worry over personal finances. Reuters finds that the average worker spends 29 hours each month worrying about and calculating finances, costing employers more than $7,000 per employee annually in lost productivity.

"Employees' money problems are serious workplace distractions that cause issues for business owners and human resource departments," said Heather Davis, director of sales and marketing at Essential Knowledge. "These problems include lower productivity, wage garnishments, increased requests for paycheck advances and personal loans, employee theft, low participation in 401(k) programs, absenteeism, and dissatisfaction with compensation and benefits."

Studies have shown that effective financial education can help.