Financial planning is a tricky subject. It has the potential to affect various aspects of an individual’s life. From the simplest of things like buying groceries to the more complex matters like filing taxes, financial planning takes up a lot of energy.
Work performance and workplace productivity depend a lot on what’s happening in an individual’s financial sphere at the moment. A company’s stamina to function relies upon the stability, productivity, and performance of its employees. A highly effective and dominant factor in determining whether workplace productivity is at its best is financial planning.
The best financial planning strategies are always at work across workplaces that have a healthy workforce. Since finances are a key factor in everybody’s life, making sure that your employees are paid well and provided with the necessary benefits is important. If you feel like your employees are lethargic and lagging behind in work, consider looking around at the work environment that you have provided them with.
What Is Financial Planning?
Financial planning, from where a business stands, incorporates all the factors that have the potential to affect the business – either positively or negatively. It includes everything from human resources to material resources and from setting objectives to achieving goals. The importance of financial planning for a business as well as the people involved cannot be stressed enough.
Financial planning helps a business set goals that are sustainable and achievable. Moreover, it also leads to analyzing some crucial information that is required for further implementation of a business plan. From monitoring to modifying and executing a plan, a budget is required – the first and foremost step of which is financial planning.
Efficiency And Productivity In The Workplace
It is a commonly known fact that people tend to take up jobs that pay well and match their fields of interest. These two factors of efficiency and productivity go side by side and are correlated. While productivity is the result of working more and better in the specified time period scheduled for that work, what efficiency does is speed up the process and drive better results in comparatively less time.
Efficiency and productivity in the workplace are highly sensitive factors, thus are disturbed by the slightest of discrepancies. These discrepancies, more often than not, stem from reasons related to mismanagement in financial planning. This mismanagement could be a result of not paying attention to personal finances or a lack of organization within the workplace.
Related: Conducting Financial Checkup is Important for Your Financial Wellbeing – But Why
Importance Of Financial Planning In The Workplace
The top three factors that drive job satisfaction for employees in workplaces are a respectful environment, meeting salary expectations, and providing compensation. As per a survey report published by Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), an employee’s overall satisfaction from the compensation package is 65 percent.
Moreover, other factors like paid time off and medical benefits brought satisfaction levels of 77 percent and 66 percent respectively.
Financial planning not only covers the salary of employees. It covers all of the following factors.
One: Living From Paycheck To Paycheck Can Be Difficult
Let’s face it. Most people with 9 to 5 jobs live from paycheck to paycheck. We earn, we spend, and then we wait for another paycheck to show up in our bank accounts. With this comes many problems.
You might not be realizing it, but your employees who wait for the meager paycheck you pay them for all their efforts could add to troubles in productivity. Problems like unprecedented expenses, such as medical bills, can come off as a huge task for some people to cover in an instant. Thus, when you pay your employees a minimum salary with no other benefits included, it would be foolish to expect a booming workplace performance.
Two: Financial Planning Creates A Better Environment
When you plan in terms of finances, you also plan to build an inclusive workplace. An inclusive not only as regards a nice workspace with colorful walls and pretty cubicles. Inclusive in the sense that you take into account the personal finance issues of your employees.
When being financially stable till the next paycheck comes takes most of the thought process of an employee, it becomes difficult to improve workplace performance. Thus, if you intend to go for financial planning, prioritize the financial wellbeing of your employees – because your employees are what makes your company operational.
Working while worrying about a school fee due in a few weeks and errands missing from home does not make things work. What makes things easygoing in a workplace is when employees are directed towards their work with full concentration.
Three: Inaccurate Financial Planning Means Less Focus
In a business, it is crucial that you first lay out a financial plan that includes every aspect of the finances. Without a clear path to lead towards finances, you’ll be left with either a lot of expenses or a lot of loss – and no good would come out of either case.
Thus, plan the finances so that your workplace is stable in all aspects.
The smallest of expenses can leave a big dent in your finances. Thus, plan ahead. Planning ahead in financial matters also makes it easy for your employees to course through work – as nobody has to worry about minor financial matters all the time.
Four: Your Gateway To Employee Loyalty
If your employee is working with you for 8 to 9 hours a day, and then heading off to another job to cover expenses – that’s a red alert. In this case, financial planning can be your gateway to fostering loyalty within your workplace.
Along with improving workplace performance and workplace productivity, financial planning also brings in the limitless loyalty of your employees. If you see your employees working hard for you and then struggling to cover minor expenses, maybe its time you considered some factors;
- Is your organization exploiting human reosurce?
- Are your workplace ethos out of place?
- Is there a lack of communication that needs mending?
Consider all of these factors and ponder what is that is breaking the loyalty stream. More often than not it is a lack of good financial planning. Make sure you assist your employees and let them know you are open to helping in work-related matters.
Five: Your Performance Depends On The Performance Of Your Employees
Financial planning is one of the best ways to avoid distorted focus. If your employees are not happy with the financial outcome of their work, it creates a void. And this very void is where glitches and issues creep in – which take a huge toll on workplace productivity.
Thus, with better financial planning you allow your employees to focus more on the work at hand. It directly boosts efficiency in the workplace, leading to goals better achieved.
Key Takeaways
Financial planning, without a doubt, leads to efficiency and productivity in the workplace. Most of the time it is not even about just the salary package. There are plenty of things in the periphery that matter a great deal. It could be a promotion, a health benefit, a paid sick leave, a paid maternity leave – everything to do with the satisfaction of your employees that is within your reach.
And if you are in a top position and reading this – the next time you pitch about increasing productivity, ask your employees if they are happy working with you.
