Part 4: Navigating Employee Financial Stress – A Personal Reflection
Chapter 4: A Personal Reflection
Before you start, have you read the previous chapters?
Chapter 1: The First Signs of Trouble
Chapter 2: A Tough Meeting with Leadership
Chapter 3: A Heart-to-Heart with Employees
The office was quiet, the hum of the HVAC system the only sound as I sat at my desk, staring at the city lights outside. The town hall had ended hours ago, but I couldn’t shake what I had heard. The exhaustion in my employees’ voices. The anxiety in their eyes. The weight they carried, not just at work but in every part of their lives.
I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my temples.
I knew what financial stress felt like.
I thought back to my twenties, fresh out of college, drowning in student loans. There was a time when I had to ration groceries, stretch a paycheck that never seemed to last, and pray my car didn’t break down because I couldn’t afford the repair. I remembered lying awake at night, running numbers in my head, trying to figure out how to make it all work.
Back then, I had no safety net. No one to turn to … and now, sitting here as a CEO, I realized some of my employees felt that same helplessness.
I swiveled back to my desk and pulled up the company’s financials. We weren’t struggling, but we weren’t in a position to make sweeping changes overnight either. Raises across the board would be impossible without cutting the budget elsewhere. And if I proposed increasing benefits, the shareholders would push back, demanding to see the ROI first.
They would tell me this wasn’t my problem to solve. That employees were responsible for their own finances. That our job was to pay them fairly and let them figure out the rest.
But I knew better.
Financial stress wasn’t something you could leave at home. It followed you to work. It slowed you down, drained your energy, made every task feel heavier. And right now, it was costing the company in productivity, absenteeism, and morale.
I opened a blank document and started jotting down ideas.
- Financial wellness programs—budgeting, debt management, emergency savings?
- Flexible scheduling—could we adjust shifts to help people with second jobs?
- A small emergency relief fund—something for employees in crisis?
I wasn’t sure what the solution was yet, but I knew one thing: doing nothing wasn’t an option.
I leaned back again, staring at the ceiling.
Somewhere between those nights of scraping by and this moment as CEO, I had made it. But now, I had people depending on me—people who deserved more than just a paycheck.
I wasn’t sure what my next move would be.
But I have gathered data from the managers and the employees and have some concrete ideas for solutions. It’s more progress towards turning things around.
Employees are more stressed than ever. This already has or will negatively impact your numbers. We have something that will help. Check out our digital financial wellness platform, WISE Pocket of Money.
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Stay tuned for the next chapter to see what this CEO does next. Chapter five is coming up.
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