Media Feature
When Financial Stress Follows Employees to Work, Employers Are Paying Attention
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Article Summary
OneDigital's Craig Gabel, quoted in SHRM, on why the link between financial health and mental well-being is one employers can no longer afford to overlook — and what separates organizations that get this right from those that don't.
Financial stress has a way of making itself known at work — through distraction, disengagement, and quiet exits that never get attributed to the right cause.
In a recent SHRM feature on employer financial wellness strategies, Craig Gabel, Vice President of Retirement Plan Consulting at OneDigital Financial Services, offers a frank assessment of what's driving the urgency, what most employers are missing, and why addressing financial stress isn't just good for employees — it's a competitive advantage.
There's a version of financial stress that's easy to see, such as missed deadlines, requests for salary advances, and an employee who seems checked out. But Gabel says that version is the exception, not the rule. Most of the time, financial strain operates below the surface, invisible to the managers and colleagues sitting closest to it.
"For most, the effects of financial stress on mental health are silent to employers, co-workers or even family. This leads to things like burnout, disengagement or turnover impacting employers."
That invisibility, Gabel argues, is part of what makes it so costly. Employers are absorbing the downstream effects — in productivity losses, in healthcare utilization, in attrition — without always connecting them back to financial stress as a root cause. And the scope of the problem is wider than many assume.
"The pressures are very real, not just headlines or responses to surveys, and they impact more people than most think, not just lower-income earners."
A Strategic Moment for Employers
Gabel's comments come as employers are placing renewed emphasis on financial wellness benefits — not as a nice-to-have, but as a meaningful response to a workforce navigating persistent inflation, rising healthcare costs, and the kind of economic uncertainty that doesn't resolve itself between performance reviews. According to Gabel, helping employees address these challenges is top of mind for organizations across industries right now.
The employers best positioned to act, he says, are the ones who understand that financial wellness doesn't exist in a silo. It connects to mental health, to physical health, to the kind of culture where people actually want to stay.
"Helping address employees' financial stress can create a safe place for their employees, showing they care about them as a person and over time create a by-product of an engaged and committed workforce that impacts the growth of their organization."
For Gabel, the organizations doing this well aren't simply adding financial wellness to a benefits checklist — they're making a deliberate investment in the whole person. That distinction, he says, is increasingly what separates employers who attract and retain great people from those who struggle to hold on to them.
At OneDigital, that philosophy shapes how the Retirement Plan Consulting team partners with employers — connecting financial wellness strategy to the broader benefits picture and helping organizations build programs that create real, lasting impact for their people.
Read the full SHRM feature: Employers Lean on Financial Wellness Benefits as Worker Stress Climbs
Investment advice offered through OneDigital Investment Advisors LLC.