September 2022
Abstract: Financial wellness programs in the workplace are the best ways to reach a vast majority of the adult population. This report is part of a more comprehensive study that focuses on a particular financial wellness program launched by Edelman Financial Engines (EFE) in April 2022 as a six-week challenge in a Fortune 25 company. This report aims to analyze the impact of the six-week challenge on financial knowledge, confidence, and behavior. Adopting a before-and-after design, we conduct the impact evaluation on 668 employees; we found that after being exposed to financial education resources, employees improved their financial knowledge (2.5 percentage points, p.p.), their self-assessed financial knowledge (4.5 p.p.), and their attitudes toward retirement planning (5 p.p.). Exposure to the six-week challenge might have also increased employees’ awareness of their financial issues, which may make them feel more anxious when talking about their personal finances (5 p.p.) and more worried about running out of money in retirement (5.5 p.p.). This report also includes insights on forward-looking behaviors, such as employees’ willingness to be savvier about their finances in the future and greater eagerness to talk with a financial counselor before taking important decisions. Our findings should interest both companies and researchers that are validating existing financial wellness tools and guiding stakeholders and policymakers toward future policies to improve financial wellness in the workplace.