Benefit your bottom line: How to launch a financial wellness pilot in HR

October 28, 2025

Drew Maginn

Of all the different stressors and distractions impacting your workforce, concern about personal finances continues to top the list for most employees. For human resources professionals looking for a way to help, offering a financial wellness pilot for employees might be the piece missing from your benefits program. By understanding the steps to roll out a wellness pilot program and how to evaluate its impact, you can play a key part in creating opportunities for employees to take control of their finances and bring less of this worry into the office each day.

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What is a financial wellness pilot program?

According to the FP Canada 2025 Financial Stress Index, 42 per cent of Canadians report money as their leading source of stress, with 52 per cent adding that the fear of making a wrong decision keeps them from actively taking steps to improve their situation. For organizations looking to offset this trend, offering a financial wellness pilot program consisting of different initiatives and services to support the financial health of employees might be the answer. If the pilot program leads to positive results, it can receive greater investment and be rolled out to the entire organization.

How to know whether a pilot financial wellness program is right for your organization

While piloting a financial wellness program may seem like a natural fit for many organizations, you still need to take the time to make sure it is feasible for you. This begins by asking some key questions before initiating your pilot program:

Does your organization currently offer any financial wellness support to employees, or have they in the past?
Most organizations have previously offered financial wellness support or include some type of assistance in their current benefits program. Although changing workplace demographics may limit the usefulness of this information if it’s out of date, it can still be a useful starting point to understand what has and has not worked in the past.

Is there multi-level support for piloting a new or expanded financial wellness program?
For any pilot to be worth implementing, there needs to be a certain amount of interest and support to get it off the ground. While this doesn’t necessarily need to be organization-wide, stakeholder buy-in at multiple levels is critical. This includes senior leadership members who are supportive of this work and open to hearing about the results, as well as employees with a genuine interest in participating and providing their honest feedback.

Are there any internal barriers that will limit your ability to run a successful pilot?
Unfortunately, many pilot programs’ opportunities to succeed are quashed before they even begin. If you find yourself running into challenges relating to employee interest, senior level support or available resources before initiating the program, you may be better served to hold off rather than move ahead with a pilot program that could be destined to fail.

” It’s difficult for employees to perform at their best when financial stress is weighing on them throughout the workday. ”

Your checklist for a financial wellness pilot in HR

If you decide to move ahead with a financial wellness pilot, there are a number of support organizations, like the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, that offer useful resources on how to offer quality financial wellness programs. While specific activities may vary across different organizations, there is a common checklist of best practices that can give your program the best chance at success.

Manage your pilot as a project: Sometimes using the term “pilot” can lead some organizations to take a more casual approach to trying out a new program. In reality, any pilot should be treated like a project, including developing an approved project charter, like this one offered through the Project Management Institute, that outlines important information to guide the work, including the scope, timeline and available budget. Without a project charter approved by senior management, there is a significant risk of moving ahead with a plan that doesn’t work toward a shared understanding of project success.
Assess your employees’ needs and avoid making assumptions: Before deciding on the tools and resources to be offered to your employees, take the time to gather preliminary feedback about the type of financial support that will best meet their needs. Your employees can guide you by outlining their financial goals and the type of assistance that would support them in getting there. Whether it’s budgeting for a first home purchase, paying down debt or preparing for retirement, your employees need be engaged at the beginning of your planning phase to steer you in the right direction and maximize uptake.

Measure your impact: If you want to move your program beyond the pilot phase, it’s necessary to develop an evaluation plan that will demonstrate whether this initiative has been a success. There is plenty of research available on the impact of financial wellness programs, but you need to be sure that you’re measuring what matters to your organization. This could include sharing a list of potential impacts and outcomes for employees (e.g., accessing tailored financial coaching, improving personal cash flow through earned wage access, budgeting through an easy-to-use app) as well as senior leaders (e.g., improved productivity, lower absenteeism, reduced stress levels) to better understand what will demonstrate success of this work and increase your odds of expanding your program in the future.

It’s difficult for employees to perform at their best when financial stress is weighing on them throughout the workday. While financial wellness programs can’t eliminate all of this worry, they can be a powerful addition to your benefits program if your employees are willing to accept the help and your senior management is supportive. A pilot program can be a practical way to test out this type of employee engagement, and if you see positive results, you can improve the financial health and well-being of your employees while also increasing the odds that they can stay present and focused throughout the day instead of losing productive hours to financial worry and stress.

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