Financial wellness is one of the most purchased and least used categories in benefits. The product is often fine. The launch is a portal link, a webinar, and a poster. Then leadership asks why nobody is reducing high-interest debt or contributing to the HSA, and the vendor gets blamed for a distribution failure.
Employees do not have a “financial wellness” job to do. They have a cash-flow problem, a debt problem, a retirement problem, or a medical-bill problem. Programs that speak in the category name lose to programs that speak in the problem. That is the whole communication brief.
This is how we launch and sustain these benefits so the first action happens — and so you can tell whether the benefit is weak or just unheard. It sits next to total rewards and engagement, but it has its own failure modes.
Name the problem, not the platform
“You have a financial wellness benefit” is a press release. “If a $400 emergency would go on a card this month, start here — 12 minutes, no one at work sees your numbers” is a communication. The second one produces logins. The first one produces a slide in an OE deck.
Pick two or three problems your population actually has. The census and the 401(k) data already tell you: low deferral rates, high loans, no HSA contributions next to a high-deductible plan, student loans in a young professional group, paycheck volatility in hourly populations. Write one message per problem. Do not write one message that lists eight vendor modules. People do not shop a menu when they are embarrassed or tired. They do one thing if the thing is obvious.
Privacy has to be in the first three lines. Employees assume HR can see their debt and their balances. If that is false, say so in plain language. If a coach can see it and HR cannot, say that too. Silence on privacy is why utilization stays in the single digits even when the benefit is good.
Tie it to money they already believe
The employer match, the HSA contribution, the student-loan payment, the emergency-savings deduction — those are real dollars. Lead with them. A 50% match left on the table is not a wellness tip. It is a compensation error the employee is making, and you get to say that without being paternal. Show the annual dollar amount for a typical wage, not a “don’t leave money on the table” cliché.
HSA communication fails when it is taught as an investment product in week one. Teach it as this year’s deductible in a tax-advantaged account, then the investment story for people who have cash to go beyond the deductible. Mixing those two audiences in one email is how both tune out. High-deductible households who never fund the HSA are one of the costliest quiet failures in the plan; the communication is usually “here is a video about markets.”
Student-loan and emergency-savings benefits die in the same way: announced at enrollment, never mentioned when a paycheck looks tight. Those are year-round messages. They belong on the same calendar as the rest of year-round communication, timed to bonus season, tax refund season, and open enrollment — not to a vendor’s product-marketing calendar.
The first action has to be small
Do not ask for a full financial plan. Ask for a 12-minute setup, a $25 recurring transfer, or a 1% deferral increase. The vendor’s “complete your profile” flow is designed for their metrics, not yours. Your metric is a first funded action. If the path to that action is seven screens and a credit pull, rewrite the path or pick a different entry module.
Managers should not coach personal finance. Give them the same card you give them for medical: here is the link, here is the privacy line, I do not see your numbers, HR does not see your numbers, here is who to call. A supervisor who tries to help with debt in a huddle is a lawsuit and a rumor. A supervisor who can point is an asset.
What not to do
Do not run a leaderboard. Do not gamify someone else’s paycheck stress. Do not send “have you thought about your future?” to a night shift that just got overtime cut. Do not bury the benefit inside a 20-item wellness platform and call the click a success. And do not measure success as registrations. Registrations are how vendors renew. Funded actions and reduced hardship withdrawals are how you defend the line item.
Burnout and money stress travel together. If you are already talking about burnout, a financial-wellness module that only talks about retirement at 65 will feel disconnected. An emergency-savings or paycheck-planning entry point will not.
A 60-day launch that is honest
Days 1–14: pick two problems and write the two messages, including the privacy sentence and the minute-count. Days 15–21: put them on SMS and the open resource page, not only on the portal. Days 22–35: suppress people who completed the first action; remind the rest once. Days 36–60: report to leadership the first-action rate by segment, not the vendor’s “engagement.” If hourly and salaried rates are far apart, you have a reach problem, not a content problem. Fix reach before you buy another module.
That is enough to know whether the benefit deserves another year. A program nobody can find is not a wellness strategy. It is a subscription.
Key takeaways
- Speak to a cash, debt, medical-bill, or retirement problem — not to “financial wellness” as a category.
- Put privacy in the first three lines. Employees assume HR can see the numbers.
- Lead with match, HSA dollars, and loan payments — compensation they already believe.
- Optimize for a first funded action, not a completed vendor profile.
- Managers point; they do not coach personal finance.
Frequently asked questions
Why is financial wellness utilization so low?
Usually because the launch was a portal link and a category name, the privacy story was never told, and the first action was a long profile instead of a small funded step. The product can be fine. The communication is asking people to shop a menu while they are tired or embarrassed.
Should we promote financial wellness during open enrollment?
Yes, but as one decision — HSA funding, deferral rate, or emergency savings — not as a tour of the vendor. Enrollment is crowded. A single next step survives. A platform tour does not. Then keep talking in January and at tax time, when the money stress is different.
Can HR see employee financial wellness data?
In a well-built program, no — and you should say so in the first message. If a third-party coach can see details and HR only sees aggregate utilization, write that sentence. If the architecture is messier than that, fix the architecture before you market the benefit. Silence reads as surveillance.
What should we report to leadership?
First funded actions, deferral or HSA contribution changes, hardship and loan rates over time, and utilization by hourly vs. salaried. Do not lead with registrations or content clicks. Those are vendor metrics. Leadership is buying fewer emergencies and a workforce that can afford to stay.
If utilization is the problem, communication is usually the cause. Take the employer scorecard.
A co-founder of Touchpoints with two decades of experience in employee benefits communication. He partners hands-on with benefits firms and employers nationwide to build strategies that deliver real outcomes.
