Employees are feeling more financial stress these days—and it isn’t just centered around healthcare costs or retirement worries.
Today, more than half (52%) cite the rising cost of living as their greatest economic worry, while 46% are struggling to meet household expenses on time, according to PwC’s 2026 Employee Financial Wellness Survey. One in four respondents say they often or always run out of money between paychecks.
Human resources consultant Stacey Berk, founder and managing consultant at Expand HR Consulting, says wage stagnation in recent years—coupled with rising costs from stubborn inflation, higher interest rates, and higher energy costs—has hit household budgets hard.
So many people are feeling that pinch, and having fewer options to earn more in an uncertain job market is taking its toll on employees. And while household spending and budgeting issues might seem like they don’t fall under an employer’s purview, they may actually be affecting the company’s bottom line.
The link between household and corporate finances
The PwC research bears that out: Financially stressed employees are five times as likely to be distracted, and half of them spend at least three or more hours dealing with financial issues at work. Nearly three in four (74%) say financial stress affects their mental health and sleep.
Berk says that when your employees are under that much stress, it’s going to show up in your team’s performance. “Employee wellness is critical because [it] ultimately affects whatever your end goals are,” she says.
Financial psychologist Rikki L. Rogers agrees. She is seeing more financial stress and frustration in her work with couples. She says she often hears some version of: “We’re trying to do everything right. We’re not going out to eat, or we’re not buying fancy cars, and we still can’t make it work.”
Getting the benefits right
Nick Martin, CEO of Cyber Guardian Consulting Group, a cybersecurity firm, takes the matter seriously. The company, which started more than a decade ago, has launched several spin-offs and acquired other companies. Martin’s portfolio of companies now employs roughly 200 people. Martin, who grew up in a household of modest means, says he’s worked at many places that didn’t take their team’s well-being seriously.
“Employers would scream loudly about how much they care about their employees, but a lot of it is fluff,” he says. “It’s what they say as opposed to what they do. And so my thought process was, ‘If I’m at a place to be the employer, we want to treat people well.’”
Therefore, he took a hard look at his company’s benefits and compared them with the challenges and life experiences that were important to his team. The company already paid 100% of health insurance premiums for full-time employees and their families. Cyber Guardian also reimburses co-pays.
On average, U.S. employees with health coverage were responsible for 16% of the premium for their coverage and 26% of their premium for family coverage in 2025, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies healthcare coverage. At an average premium of $9,325 for single coverage and $26,993 for family coverage (for a family of four), employer assistance puts thousands back in the pockets of employees.
From there, Martin looked at other benefits that could help employees.
Many had pets, so he added pet health insurance to the company’s offerings. As mortgage interest rates began to rise, he added a program that allows employees to opt in to a mortgage rate reduction program, which essentially reimburses them for 2% of their mortgage interest rates, making their housing costs more affordable.
But how does he justify the cost?
Benefits and the bottom line
Martin says the company stays focused on offering benefits that employees actually use, instead of spending on a larger suite of benefits that aren’t popular. He also factors the cost of turnover into the equation. He says the team has had no turnover other than employees who were let go for performance issues over the past four years. He’s not paying to recruit, onboard, and train new team members unless it’s to grow the company. And he says he has no complaints about his team’s productivity.
That’s the way to do it, says Matt Bahl, vice president of workplace solutions and innovation at Financial Health Network, a nonprofit that helps people build financial stability.
In fact, the annual Society for Human Resources Management Employee Benefits Survey tracks 230 different offerings—and navigating this sea of options to find the right mix is far more effective than trying to offer everything.
“That is insane to think that spending money on 50 different solutions is somehow going to address the needs of the bulk of the workforce,” Bahl says. “When you have too many choices, you reach a point called choice overload, and you have low utilization across the board.”
Awareness of benefits
Berk agrees and says that employees are often not fully aware of the benefits their companies offer. If you’re eligible for benefits like commuting or training reimbursement, for example, you may be leaving money on the table.
Instead, Bahl says, work from data. Survey employees. Talk to them about what they need. Look at which benefits are actually being used.
“What happens too often is employers rely almost exclusively on market-based benchmarks to understand how their wage and benefit programs compare to their peers,” he says. While those benchmarks are valuable, they don’t tell you what benefits are having an impact among the people working at your company.
Rogers and Berk agree that, beyond essential financial benefits, an employee assistance program (EAP) provides vital tools to manage stress, supporting overall mental health and workplace well-being.
In addition to increasing talent retention, Martin says he likes the ethics of helping employees alleviate their financial stress. “We’ve changed people’s lives,” he says.
