Financial wellbeing trends in 2025

Financial wellbeing was much more spoken about in the 2024 event though physical and emotional wellbeing remain centre stage. Most surveys point out that financial wellbeing is the top challenge faced by employees and the gap between the employer offering and employee needs has to be addressed urgently.
While organisations have implemented financial wellbeing in some form, the results have been mixed and financial wellbeing has not percolated across. Financial wellbeing is expected to be one of the key trends defining employee benefits in 2025. Here is how organisations can effectively plan financial wellbeing for a widespread impact.
First, have measurable financial health at an organisation level. This can be done by running focused programs like Save More and Retirement Readiness, which are driven by the leadership. Nobel prize-winning economist Richard Thaler along with Shlomo Benartzi have designed a behavioural program to get Americans to save more for retirement. The program entails employees to commit to contribute a higher amount to their retirement savings and increase this amount annually. The program targeted 3 financial behaviours which lead to lesser wealth – inertia, procrastination and self-control. Their Save More Tomorrow program has helped more than 15 million Americans to significantly boost their savings for retirement.
Also read: Overcoming challenges in financial wellbeing programs
A similar program can be implemented in India wherein employers run a savings challenge to get employees to save 15% more from what they were saving earlier and this would automatically increase with an annual pay rise. This could be further enhanced to nudge employees to utilise these savings for retirement with the national pension scheme. This way organisations can make a significant and measurable impact on employees' retirement savings. Even with just the savings challenge, organisations are driving better financial habits which will yield long-term positive results for employees.
Second, an integrated, holistic financial wellbeing platform is a must to address the workforce’s diverse needs in one streamlined solution. This platform should have the ability for employees to learn about personal finance through byte-size content and also track their financial progress. Holistic platforms ensure continuity, scalability and personalisation by providing solutions around investing, borrowing, insurance and financial planning based on each employee’s evolving financial journey.
Third, while awareness sessions should continue, there needs to be focused group intervention to help specific cohorts overcome their financial stress points. From my sessions, I find that single-income earners with children are under high stress due to their financial responsibilities. At the same time, they have limited time and resources to manage their finances. Associates close to retirement, people in a debt trap, and women are other employee groups who need interventions beyond general awareness programs on goal planning or tax planning. Specific, scalable programs with handholding and regular nudges need to be designed. For example, for single earners with family, a 3-month program can be implemented wherein the associate is given a weekly one-hour learning plan and tasks to be implemented along with access to query resolution. These programs would have targeted, measurable outcomes. Most programs for women tend to be generic and leave them with more questions. Hence any program needs to have the option for follow-up queries and guidance on taking action. This can be done by providing a webpage with calculators and directions on the next steps.
Four, foster a culture of financial well-being that encourages open discussions about financial challenges and solutions. This can be supported by having employee resource groups and a helpdesk which employees can reach out to for their specific financial needs.
Finally, have financial wellness champions who help create some noise around the wellness programs. With a variety of wellness programs being offered across physical, emotional, financial and social wellness, employees may tend to miss out on the programs which could be important to them. Wellness Champions could work like influencers, who share anecdotes, and small bytes on how these programs have benefitted them, thus motivating other employees to attend the wellness programs and action the learnings.
Let financial wellbeing take centre stage in 2025!