2024 Wellness Barometer Survey

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About The Survey

BrightPlan surveyed 1,400 United States knowledge workers, including C-suite executives, HR decision makers, and employees, at organizations of 1,000+ people with a global footprint. The finding leading our report is that 91% of workers carry financial stress, and the cost lands squarely on the business, with Gen Z employees losing over 8 hours of productivity every week to money worries.

What makes the rest of the report uncomfortable reading is the gap between what leaders believe about their own workforce and what employees report about the same benefits, measured question-by-question across financial confidence, literacy, emergency savings, and debt. Every finding breaks out by generation, income level, and demographic segment, so you can see which parts of your own population the numbers describe. Download the survey for the full data set and the methodology behind it.

The state of financial
well-being is grim

91% of employees are stressed about their finances, and it’s driven by inflation, high cost of living, higher interest rates, a potential recession, and market volatility.

Financial literacy and
preparedness remains low

Only 18% of employees have basic financial literacy. 79% have debt and 38% have no emergency savings or only enough for up to 2 months.

Employee stress is
translating to employer costs

Employees report losing an average of 7 hours of productivity each week due to financial stress, costing employers $183 billion annually.*

Employers see and feel the need to
support their employees

Employees say the top innovative benefit they want is financial wellness, and at least nine out of ten leaders believe they should provide financial well-being support.

Disconnects between employees &
leaders are staggering

92% of leaders believe their company offers the financial guidance, support, and tools employees need to achieve their life goals, compared to 56% of employees.

Employer well-being is the top priority
for business leaders

HR and C-Suite’s biggest people-related challenges this year are supporting employees’ holistic well-being, and attracting and retaining top talent.

Financial stress is affecting employee well-being and business success.
Discover the impact financial wellness can have in the workplace.

Explore Results

*Assumes there are 100,555,000 knowledge workers in the U.S. with an hourly wage of $40.20. 23% of knowledge workers have high or very high levels of financial stress and 54% of them have 7.3 hours of lost productivity per employee per week as a result of financial stress. Source: Federal Reserve Economic Dataset, BrightPlan.

On behalf of BrightPlan, Walr and Workplace Intelligence surveyed 1,400 knowledge workers at companies that have a global presence with 1000+ employees in the U.S. in January 2024. This included a mix of C-Suite, HR decision-makers and employees in various industries including technology, healthcare, financial services, education, manufacturing, energy, accounting, and government.