Jeri Hawthorne
CHRO
Aflac
Episode 309
Your Benefits Aren't Working? Tailor Wellness for Real Employee Financial Health
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleFebruary 10, 2025 · 17:28
Thesis
“Organizations must deeply understand their employee population's unique financial and wellness needs to offer tailored, preventative programs and education, ultimately leading to mutual benefits for employees and the company's financial health by maximizing existing offerings rather than just adding more.”
Show notes
Aflac's annual Workforce Report — conducted for more than 15 years — consistently finds the same uncomfortable truth: a significant portion of American workers are financially vulnerable, with expenses outpacing wages and emergency reserves that wouldn't cover a single unexpected medical bill. For Jeri Hawthorne, former CHRO at Aflac, that data isn't an abstract finding. It's the operating context for every benefits decision she's made.
Financial vulnerability doesn't stay at the front door. It follows employees into meetings, affects focus and decision-making, and quietly drives turnover in ways that exit surveys rarely surface accurately. Jeri's conviction: a holistic employee wellness strategy — one that encompasses financial, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being — isn't a progressive benefit offering. It's a business strategy. The organizations that understand this invest in employee financial resilience not because it's the right thing to do (though it is) but because the cost of not doing it shows up in absenteeism, productivity loss, and avoidable attrition.
One of her most innovative programs at Aflac was a student loan assistance benefit structured around 401(k) matching: employees who documented loan payments received a matching 401(k) contribution, addressing two dimensions of financial stress simultaneously. She's also a thoughtful practitioner on the deployment of technology in benefits navigation — using digital tools for the high-volume, transactional financial education work while reserving human benefit advisors for the moments that require judgment, empathy, and personalization. The efficiency and the humanity, she argues, aren't in competition. They're complementary when designed correctly.
- Financial vulnerability as a business metric — why employee financial stress shows up in productivity, absenteeism, and turnover long before exit surveys
- Holistic wellness strategy — designing programs that address financial, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being as an integrated system
- Innovative benefit design — the student loan + 401(k) matching model and other programs that address multiple stress points simultaneously
- Technology and human advisors as complements — when to deploy digital tools and when only a human conversation will do
- Maximizing existing benefits — why employees often have more support available than they know, and HR's job in closing that awareness gap
- Listening to employee populations — using survey data to design benefits that address the actual needs of a specific workforce
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What you'll take away
- 1Financial vulnerability is on the rise due to expenses outpacing wage growth, forcing employees to make difficult choices between essential needs like medical care and daily living costs.
- 2A holistic employee wellness strategy, encompassing financial, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being, is crucial for both individual employee health and the company's bottom line through reduced healthcare costs and absenteeism.
- 3Innovative benefit programs, such as student loan assistance where 401(k) matches are provided for documented loan payments, can effectively address specific employee financial burdens while still promoting long-term financial stability.
- 4Leveraging technology for initial financial education and benefit navigation, combined with human benefit advisors, is the most effective approach as employees still prefer personal guidance for complex financial decisions.
- 5HR professionals must prioritize understanding their specific employee population's demographic and financial nuances to educate them on maximizing existing benefits, rather than simply adding more programs without strategic alignment.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Instead of continuously adding more programs, organizations should focus on helping employees become better educated consumers of the benefits and services already offered, tying existing resources to clear organizational goals.
In Jeri's words
“The Aflac Workforces Report, which is something that we've done for about the last 15 years now, we actually found that almost half of the folks we surveyed, employees that we surveyed, they don't have more than $1,000. They can't afford more than $1,000 for an out-of-pocket medical expense or a planned one.”
Highlights the severe financial vulnerability of a significant portion of the workforce, directly impacting their ability to afford essential medical care.
“If you ask my employees, they would all just say, believe me, if I could, I think we would pay everybody more. What I do is to think about it through the lens of we need our employees to maximize the offer, to maximize savings programs, in the 401(k), in your health savings accounts, things like that, to become almost better educated consumers of the different programs and services that we offer in order to try to limit those unplanned expenses.”
Illustrates a pragmatic approach to supporting employees financially by maximizing existing benefits and education rather than solely focusing on salary increases.
“Our CEO actually has a statement that is, if you take care of the employees, they'll take care of the customer and the company.”
Reveals a foundational leadership philosophy at Aflac that directly links employee well-being to business success, making the case for HR initiatives easier.
“One of those is around student loan assistance. So we actually have a program that we're starting in 2025 whereby if you have student loan debt and you're one of our employees, which we know more than half of our employees do, you can actually pay down your student loan debt rather than contributing to your 401(k). And then if you document that and demonstrate to us that you did that, we'll still put that— put the company match that you would have received had you put that money in your 401(k), and we'll do that at the end of the year.”
Provides a concrete example of an innovative and flexible benefit program designed to address a major financial burden for employees while still supporting long-term savings.
“The Aflac Workforces Report actually found, I think, that 3 out of 4 folks who are enrolling in benefits in 2024 said that they actually wanted to work with a benefit advisor.”
Emphasizes the ongoing importance of human interaction and guidance in navigating complex benefits, even with the availability of technology.
“So my advice is know your population, know your programs and policy, become educated yourself, understand the financials and how it all ties together for your organization, and make sure that you're talking to your business partners, your financial partners, as in their language, as financial partners.”
Offers critical advice for HR professionals to effectively advocate for and implement employee well-being initiatives by understanding both employee needs and business financial implications.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Employees are making difficult choices between essential expenses (e.g., medical care vs. gas) due to wage stagnation and rising costs.
- •Almost half of employees cannot afford a $1,000 out-of-pocket medical expense or go one month without a paycheck, leading to significant financial stress and anxiety.
- •Rising healthcare expenses are a top concern for companies, and delayed medical care by employees leads to higher costs and increased absenteeism.
- •Student loan debt significantly impacts over 50% of employees, hindering their ability to contribute to retirement savings.
- •Employees often lack the education and understanding to fully utilize and maximize their available benefits and savings programs.
- •The 'sandwich generation' (Gen X) faces unique financial pressures, balancing care for both children and elderly parents.
- •HR leaders struggle to articulate the financial ROI of employee well-being initiatives to executive partners, making it difficult to secure resources.
- •Changes to employee benefits, such as increased emergency room co-pays, can lead to significant employee backlash if implemented without a deep understanding of their impact on the workforce.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
Jerry Miller: I got into human resources in an unplanned manner
Aflac's Chief HR Officer on His Career Journey
How have you observed shifts in financial vulnerability among employees
Aflac CEO on Financial Resilience
How do you balance employee financial well-being with company's own financial health
Marathon Health Care: Employee Financial Well-being
Jeri, what role does technology play in helping employees manage their finances
An Aflac Financial Advisor on Employee Financial Planning
Aflac is addressing financial vulnerability in the workplace with innovative programs
Aflac Financial Protection: Challenges and Opportunities
Any parting advice that you'd like to share with other HR professionals navigating financial vulnerability in the workplace
Financial Vulnerability in the Workplace
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
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