About half of Americans lack basic financial literacy skills, and that can hold your business back. A financially fluent workforce can help your organization build resilience and drive growth, because they can view decisions through the lenses of value creation, revenue preservation and risk reduction. Financial literacy benefits can also improve employee experience by reducing stress that can contribute to disengagement and churn.
The challenge for CFOs and other leaders is to develop a culture of financial literacy across the organization without taking on additional long-term roles as educators. Understanding the scope of the problem and the resources available to address it can help you establish best practices that help your employees and your organization.
What’s The Data On Financial Literacy Rates?
The 50% financial literacy rate has held more or less steady since 2017, as measured by the annual TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance (P-Fin) Index. The 2025 Index saw some big differences based on age:
• Gen Z, the youngest group in the workforce, scored an average of 38%.
• Baby boomers, who’ve been in the workforce the longest, scored an average of 55%.
Despite those differences, the overall low scores across age groups support the idea that financial stressors caused by a lack of knowledge can affect employees at any income level or career stage. When employees face financial challenges, their personal turmoil often shows up in their work. Over 80% of HR professionals surveyed by SHRM agreed that personal finance problems can negatively impact employee performance.
How Financial Literacy Can Strengthen Your Organization
Not understanding personal finance makes life harder for employees. When your employees are spending their time off trying to figure out how to pay their bills, manage debt and cover unplanned expenses, they’re not getting the rest and relaxation they need. That can translate into disengagement and distraction at work. P-Fin found that adults with the least financial knowledge spend 10 work hours a week thinking about their personal financial issues.
Low levels of financial literacy can also indirectly impact the way employees make decisions at work. For example, only 36% of P-Fin respondents correctly answered questions about risk comprehension, and less than half correctly answered questions about reliable information sources.
By helping your employees understand their finances better, you can help reduce their stress and free them to focus on their work during work hours. There are other potential benefits as well, including:
• Higher employee engagement and lower turnover. The literature review found that financial education reduces employee churn while boosting productivity.
• Stronger problem-solving skills. Better risk assessment and savvy about choosing sources of information help with personal finance and other domains.
• Better understanding of company budgets. Managers with better financial literacy will have an easier time tracking expenses and developing accurate budgets.
• Improved communication with the finance and accounting team. When other departments have a better understanding of what F&A does, it’s easier to “speak the same language” when discussing budgets, projects and business goals.
Cultivate Financial Literacy Without Overcommitting Your Team
By offering resources to understand the basics and build on them, organizations can strengthen their workforce in ways that can improve engagement and reduce turnover in the near term and over time. As your workforce’s financial knowledge grows, you may be able to empower and reward strategic observations and actions that support the company’s financial well-being.
Ask Your In-House Experts
Your finance and accounting team has plenty of knowledge, but members can’t be expected to teach the rest of the workforce. Instead, they can serve as a resource for recommendations on introductory concepts they think everyone should know and trustworthy outlets for that information.
See If Resources Are Hiding In Plain Sight
Audit your employee benefits programs to look for untapped or underutilized resources. If you find financial literacy tools already in your benefits portfolio, how can you best promote and use them? If you don’t already have this kind of resource, explore your options for third-party education providers.
Customize Your Financial Education Offerings
A single type of training is unlikely to be a good fit for everyone from new hires to senior managers. Instead, think about how you can tailor financial knowledge for different groups while keeping it available for anyone who’s interested. For example:
• New hires are learning the ropes, and that can include a detailed introduction to their financial education and retirement savings benefits during onboarding.
• Early-career employees may be relatively new to managing a household budget. Information about saving for retirement and student debt management can set them up for less stress later.
• Mid-career employees may need information on saving for education, catching up on retirement contributions or planning for long-term care needs for their parents.
• Senior employees may be looking for information about retirement budgeting and tax-savvy ways to help their children or grandchildren with school, a home purchase or something else.
Make Financial Literacy An Ongoing Companywide Conversation
All types of learning are more effective when they’re regularly reinforced and not stuck in a silo. One-and-done events aren’t enough to build a financially literate organization. Instead, schedule information sessions throughout the year and include basic financial literacy quizzes or games into department and company meetings.
Building a culture of financial literacy can help your company improve employee engagement, retain more talent, empower more strategic decision making and support better communication about budget and finance topics. Each of those improvements can strengthen your company. Together, they create a powerful set of advantages that can compound over time.