Crafting Financial Wellness Programs That Excel

Financial wellness offerings vary by firm, but plan sponsors can help their employees be more financially resilient and less distracted from work by monetary concerns.

Employers say some of the best wellness benefits they have offered to their workforces include emergency savings accounts, retirement readiness programs and financial planning sessions. Both anecdotally and numerically, the participant feedback on Delta Air Lines Inc. and Alomere Health’s solutions has been overwhelmingly positive.

Emergency Savings Accounts

Josh Jessup, Delta’s general manager of global retirement and financial wellness, says Delta’s emergency savings program is the best-known financial wellness program among the company’s employees. Launched in January 2023, the program was intended to help participants rebuild financially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We built the program to try and not only facilitate emergency savings, but also help employees learn how to overcome some basic financial pitfalls or challenges,” Jessup says.

Delta’s emergency savings program requires employees to receive education about the program and financial coaching before earning contributions from Delta. Once participants complete the education and coaching prerequisites, Delta provides them with a “free” $750. Participants who contribute $250 of their own funds can then receive an additional $250 match from Delta.

Once participants earn the full $1,000, Delta no longer contributes to the fund. However, participants may continue to contribute to their accounts on their own. Jessup says that while he worried participants would sign up for their accounts just to receive the “$1,000 carrot at the end,” that has not been the case.

Aside from building “sustained saving behavior,” Jessup says participants have gotten much more out of the education components of the program than they anticipated. Some have told him they learned not only the principles of saving for unexpected expenses, but also how to get out of debt. The goal of the program was to “teach somebody to fish, not just give them a fish,” Jessup says.

At the end of 2025, 58,000 Delta employees had opened emergency savings accounts with payroll deductions, 82% have continued to contribute to their accounts after earning the company incentive, and the average employee has saved $4,085.

Prioritizing Next Steps

Jessup says some Delta employees wanted help figuring out the “next best step” in their pursuit of financial independence. In response, Delta launched its “Ascent” financial wellness program.

Ascent is delivered primarily through live classes for groups of employees. The program begins with financial coaches encouraging employees to understand their spending habits and to use them to produce a “go-forward” budget. Participants are then encouraged to build their base $1,000 in emergency savings; maximize their 401(k) match; eliminate bad debt; protect their assets and loved ones through optional insurance coverage, beneficiary designations and wills; and continue building their emergency savings beyond the initial $1,000.

At each step, Delta provides information to employees on the financial benefits available to help them advance to the next level. The big prize stands at the top.

The last step is to “fulfill your dreams,” Jessup says. “Once you have your other steps in place, that puts you in the pilot seat to be able to navigate where you want to go.”

That might include, for example, vacationing, retiring early or donating to personally important causes.

Building Retirement Readiness

Delta’s retirement readiness program, “Ready, Set, Retire,” has also been popular among employees, Jessup says. The program offers a course for employees who are approximately five years away from retiring, designed to help participants understand not only what they need to know to retire as a Delta employee, but also what to know about broader topics for their age group, including Social Security and Medicare.

Some participants have told Jessup they wish someone would have told them 30 years earlier about information they got from the program, including how critical it is to save for retirement. Delta then built out an early-career version of the offering to educate employees in their 20s, 30s and early 40s about the “magic of compounding,” as well as a mid-career version to help people in their mid and late 40s gauge whether they are on track for a timely retirement.

The programs are open to employees outside the recommended age and career brackets,. Jessup says he believes the sessions help participants better understand the principles of investing.

While Delta does not have a 360-degree evaluation of employees’ financial health, the company does have a lot of data to measure employees’ wellness, Jessup says.

The company scores cohorts of employees based on factors such as their health savings account usage, whether they are saving the maximum amount allowed, and whether they have taken 401(k) hardship withdrawals. Delta plans to use the scores to determine how best it can support, communicate with and even propose solutions for specific groups of employees. Jessup says employes in Delta’s reservations division in Atlanta might have different scores, needs and opportunities than flight attendants based in New York, for instance.

Financial Wellness During a Transitional Period

Not all financial wellness benefits are well-established as Delta’s or born out of public health crises.

The catalyst for Minnesota-based hospital Alomere Health to offer financial wellness benefits to its employees was the firm’s transition last year from being a public, county-owned hospital to one organized as a private, nonprofit 501(c)(3). Having a 401(k) account was a new concept to many Alomere employees, especially those who had spent their entire careers as public employees earning a state pension. After the change, those employees had more direct control over both the accumulation and decumulation of their retirement savings.

Celeste Gardner, Alomere’s director of human resources, says Alomere leveraged Francis LLC, a corporate financial wellness and retirement plan investment advisory firm, not only to help with the transition, but also to provide the crux of Alomere’s financial wellness benefits.

Francis employees visit Alomere’s campus twice per month to provide one-on-one financial planning sessions to hospital employees. Plan participants can also meet with Francis virtually, which Gardner says allows some to include their spouse or join from home.

While meeting with Francis planners, employees can ask retirement readiness and tax-related questions, such as how to determine whether contributing after-tax to a Roth retirement plan is right for them. Before transitioning to a defined contribution system, Gardner says she had the sense that many employees had not used a financial planner, and she has only heard positive feedback about the process.

Financial wellness benefits are just one part of the “total rewards package” Alomere offers, but they are especially important to the hospital’s healthcare workers. Gardner says the people who are busy caring for others may not always be the best at performing self-care.

“Our mission is to focus on the health and well-being of our family, friends, community and everyone we work with,” Gardner says. “Wanting to support the health and well-being of our community starts with [tending] to the health and well-being of [our] employees.”

 

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