How many of your employees understand the basics of personal finance? How many know what a household budget is and how to use it? How many know the benefits of saving for retirement, especially the benefits of starting at an early age?

As one way to attract and retain employees, you could offer financial literacy courses to your employees and their immediate family members. Topics could include:

• managing credit cards,
• how to finance a car or apply for a loan,
• what a credit score is and how it affects the interest rate on their loans (and how it can be improved),
• how to create a basic personal budget,
• how and why to save for retirement, including the huge benefits of starting early,
• how to reconcile a checking account (even if they use their debit card for all their transactions),
• and others.

How would this work? You can furnish the space, the munchies, and the instructor at minimal cost.

• The instructor: A local banker or financial planner would probably be delighted to teach the course at no cost to you. They could provide a certificate of completion. They would be compensated in two ways: 1) helping the community, and 2) gaining potential customers.
• Space: if you don’t have an appropriate room, a local church, motel, senior center, or other organization like a Chamber of Commerce or a bank would probably be willing to provide space at no cost or very low cost since you’re doing this as a public service.
• Munchies: people learn better on full stomachs, and munchies help build camaraderie. Participants would really appreciate light finger foods and non-alcoholic beverages.
• Incentives: You might even create a relationship with a local financial institution (e.g. local bank, savings & loan or credit union) to offer an incentive for your employees to bank there.
• Payroll cost: the course would be offered after hours, so no payroll cost.
• Expectations: participation would be completely voluntary.

The result: your employees become more loyal. Not only those employees taking the course, but other employees who appreciate how you’re helping your people have better lives. And they tell their friends how well they’re being treated at your organization. So their willingness to move to another organization goes down at least one more notch, especially if their family members have also participated in this course, and your reputation in the community as the best place to work goes up a notch or two. Isn’t that worth organizing the class and buying a little food?

If this proves popular, you might consider asking your employees what other life skills they would like to learn more about.

What do you think?

Thank you for reading,

Gary