In today’s modern work culture, it’s safe to say that supporting the physical and emotional health of your employees has become a fairly standard practice. After all, the healthier your workforce, the better their performance. However, when it comes to the general welfare of their staff, there is still one important component that business owners continue to overlook: their financial wellness. So, what can you as a business owner do to help your employees feel more secure about their finances? In this episode, Jon Aidukonis, Gene Marks, and Grant Gallagher, Head of Financial Wellbeing and Brand Communications at Affinity Federal Credit Union, discuss how small business owners can support the financial wellness of their employees.

Executive Summary

0:33 —Today’s Topic: How Can I Promote Financial Wellness
Within My Small Business?

1:05 —In contrast to traditional banks that are typically beholden to their shareholders, credit unions are only accountable to their members, all of whom serve as equal partners within the organization.

2:05 —Not only can businesses become members of the co-op, but many credit unions actually offer resources and services that are specifically geared towards small business owners.

4:17 —Financial wellness refers to a person’s emotional mindset with regards to their personal finances. Ultimately, your goal should be to address the stressful aspects of your financial practices so that you can have a more positive attitude when you deal with money.

5:38 —A financial wellness professional will not only be able to provide you with the resources you need to alleviate some of your financial stressors, but they should also help you understand the full context of your situation to ensure that you’re not trying to live up to any unrealistic standards.

7:51 —As a small business owner, the most effective way to support your employees’ financial wellness is to give them access to all the necessary resources, whether it be an app or a live professional who can offer them personalized advice.

10:20 —The decision on whether to rely on technology or an actual person to help you manage your finances will ultimately come down to which one you’re most comfortable using.

11:44 —If an employee chooses to work with a professional from your credit union, you need to assure them than anything they say will be kept strictly confidential between them and their financial advisor.

12:38 —You should only invest in something if you have a fair estimate of its potential return.

14:17 —One strategy you can use to keep your finances in order is to set up automation wherever you can, provided that you can maintain enough of a balance in each account.

15:14 —Another way to promote your financial wellness is to try and plan out your expenditures and savings in advance.

18:10 —When it comes to saving for the future, try to set different levels of goals according to the amount of time you think it will take to accomplish them. While you should hold yourself accountable for adhering to your savings plans, don’t be afraid to ask for support when those plans get derailed.

21:07 —Experts have seen a definite correlation between an individual’s income level and the state of their financial wellness. The consistency of a person’s cash flow will also have a significant impact on a person’s financial views.

22:38 —Setting future goals can improve your relationship to money by giving you something to look forward to; this in turn, will make tending to your finances a more rewarding experience.

23:09 —Taking the time to audit your subscriptions or refinance your loans can also help you improve your cash flow, both in terms of your personal and business-related finances.

25:36 —Cash flow forecasting needs to play a role in your regular financial practices too since this will enable you to determine whether you need to increase or decrease your current available capital. Even having a poor cash flow forecast is better than none.

29:19 —The amount of savings that you need to have for emergencies is entirely based on your circumstances, such as your location, your available capital, and your personal comfort.

30:22 —Even if you’re saving for future goals, you don’t need to adhere to a scarcity mindset. Give yourself permission to enjoy your money because this will improve your overall wellbeing.

Links

• Affinity Federal Credit Union

Transcript

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Gene: Hey everybody. Welcome back to The Hartford Small Biz Ahead podcast. My name is Gene Marks and I am here with my co-host Jon Aidukonis, Jon, say hello to the crowd.

Jon: Hey everybody. How’s it going today? Thanks for listening again.

Gene: We have Grant Gallagher here. Grant is the head of financial wellbeing and brand communications Affinity Federal Credit Union. And we’re going to talk about finance wellness. So first of all, Grant, thank you very much for joining us.

Grant: Hey Gene. Hey Jon. Thanks for having me. Appreciate being on the podcast.

Gene: Yeah, I’m glad you’re here, so let’s get into it. So, first of all, two questions off the bat. Let’s talk about, first of all, Affinity Federal Credit Union. Talk to me a little bit about what Affinity does and just for our audience, because it’s always, I know you’ve probably been dealing with this your entire life. Explain to us what a credit union is compared to say a traditional bank or a financial services company.

Grant: Yeah, happy to go through that. Credit unions are member and cooperatives. So unlike a traditional bank where they have their shareholders that the business responds to, credit unions, we’re accountable to our members. Everybody who joins, it doesn’t matter if you have $5 with us or a million dollars with us, you’re an equal owner of the organization, and we take any sort of revenue that we do produce and put it back into the business to provide our members with better rates, fewer fees and whatever other perks and benefits we can come up with. We’re headquartered in New Jersey. We’re the largest credit union headquarter in New Jersey. And we have a branch footprint throughout New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.

Gene: Very cool. So our audience Grant are small business owners as well. So just to be clear you guys serve small businesses, right? I mean, small businesses as a company or individually and their employees can become members of your credit union, correct?

Grant: Absolutely. Yeah. We have a dedicated team for our business members. They provide hands on service, they make sure that they have all the products and services and solutions that they need. One of the common misconceptions about credit unions is that we don’t have the same product services or resources that the bigger national banks do, but that really hasn’t been the case for quite some time now. We are involved in everything you can imagine in the financial services industry and I like to think that we do it better most often. Anytime that a business member has a need, they can reach right out to somebody that they know. They’re not calling in just a general 1-800 number to get help, they have a representative that they know and they can reach out to and trust. And we do all of the basic banking services for small businesses, as well as commercial lending. We’re pretty big in that space as well. And we have a dedicated commercial lending team for any of those lending needs.

Gene: So your title is Head of Financial Wellbeing and Brand Communication. So tell me what that job-

Grant: So it has a couple different facets to it. I’ve actually been with the credit union since 2009 and doing different job functions. For a long time I was really focused on our financial education and health programming, providing seminars, educational content, really just making sure our membership knew what they needed to know to make sure they were living their best financial life.

Grant: Well, in the past few years, I’d say about three or four years ago, we’ve partnered up with some other credit unions and the world renowned research group Gallup, and we’ve started focusing a lot more on and our members’ financial wellbeing. So at that point, I started leading that initiative and have been digging into that for quite some time, making sure it was being integrated into everything that we do as an organization. So we’ve been doing that for quite some time now. And then there’s some other functions that I’m involved in. I’m leading many of our communication efforts. And I also am involved in some of our political and regulatory advocacy. So I do a little bit of a grand bag at the credit union, but I would say our first and foremost, most important thing that I focus on is our financial wellbeing as that’s truly core to who we are as an organization.

Gene: Fair enough. So how do you define financial wellbeing? What exactly does that mean?

Grant: So that’s a great question. Most people start to hear that a