The impact of personal financial wellbeing on total employee cost

Abstract

The present fast-changing economic environment contributes to the daily challenges faced by organisations in their attempts to maintain a competitive edge. Employees need to be innovative continuously and maintain high levels of productivity in order to reach organisational goals. From a global perspective, a lot of research has been done concerning personal financial wellbeing, yet very little research on this topic could be found in the South African context. Seeing that intellectual capital is regarded as one of the most important assets of any organisation, the current study set out to determine the impact of personal financial wellbeing on employee productivity and absenteeism as part of total employee cost. For this purpose, a confidential online questionnaire was completed voluntarily by sampled employees (n=872) from the manufacturing industry. The results showed that financial interference is an outcome of the level of financial wellbeing; therefore, financial wellbeing does have an impact on financial interference. It was also determined that financial interference, in turn, does have an impact on both productivity and absenteeism. According to the results, personal financial wellbeing also affects both productivity and absenteeism directly. One recommendation for future research is to use this study as a basis from which to more generally improve financial wellbeing in the South African context. Also, more research could be conducted on suitable financial educational programmes to improve financial wellbeing in the South African workplace, as well as on determining a monetary value of the impact of financial wellbeing on productivity and absenteeism.