The healthcare industry is booming. It’s one of the fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. economy, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

But with spectacular growth comes high levels of stress, heavy financial burdens, and significant emotional burnout for employees in the healthcare industry.

As a benefits professional, it’s likely that none of this surprises you — but it might be surprising to know just how impactful it can be to offer financial wellbeing to your healthcare employees. 

Here are five reasons why healthcare organizations are moving quickly to add financial wellbeing benefits to their competitive total rewards programs.

Healthcare is the fastest-growing sector in the economy

The healthcare industry is the fastest-growing sector of the economy, estimated to grow 19% in the coming years.

That means that an increasing number of employees will be joining your workforce, and bringing significant financial burdens with them.

Add medical school debt to the long hours and high stress of the field, and you have a recipe for financially challenged employees.

On top of providing stellar patient care, when can employees expect to find time to keep their financial affairs and plans in order?

That’s where a financial wellbeing benefit comes in. Offering digital, holistic financial education along with access to unbiased counselors can make all the difference.

Programs like LearnLux help your team by arming them with the knowledge and skillset to make financially savvy decisions, and to stay on track towards important goals like paying down debt and saving for retirement.

Graduate degree costs for medical schools have never been higher

As an HR professional in the healthcare industry, there’s a good chance you’re surrounded by people who have graduate degrees — and that all but guarantees a big burden of student loans.

More than 80% of medical school graduates carry debt. Specifically, the average medical school debt is $190,000, and the average pharmacy school debt is $163,000.

Sure, salaries for many healthcare positions can be competitive in some cases and lucrative in others — but that doesn’t negate the heavy strain loans can place on the average worker's shoulders. Go beyond compensation and provide comprehensive financial guidance, empowering every healthcare employee to have a full financial plan. 

There is substantial turnover in the healthcare industry

The healthcare sector might be growing, but it’s also hemorrhaging with employee turnover. As you can imagine, this is a massively expensive phenomenon for hospitals.

The average cost for a hospital to replace one nurse can be anywhere from $38,000-$58,000 — and when you look at the big picture, the annual turnover of nurses for an average hospital can lead to annual losses of up to $8 million.

Since financial stress is one of the top causes of employee burnout, offering financial wellbeing resources to your healthcare employees can serve as one unique incentive for your team to stick around. 

Long hours demand guidance on the go

Does any industry have stranger or longer hours than those who work in healthcare? When you consider the average schedule of a nurse or doctor, it’s no surprise that they might not have time to sit down and pore through their finances after finishing a graveyard shift at the hospital.

That’s the beauty of holistic financial wellbeing resources. Digital benefits not only provide easily digested information on finances, but they offer guidance for those who are always on the go. One-on-one meetings with trusted Financial Planners are also available on a flexible schedule. 

It’s essential for financial wellbeing programs to be mobile-friendly, so that a nurse, pharmacist, or practitioner can access education on-demand, on their own schedule.

Healthcare is an inherently high-stress field

When you add up the long hours, the years and years of graduate school, the debt from those years of graduate school, and the high pressure to perform, it’s no wonder that employees in the healthcare industry are susceptible to some of the highest rates of burnout of any field of work.

And when you consider that financial stress is the #1 cause of stress in the modern workplace, it’s easy to understand why a doctor working 100-hour work weeks with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt might start to feel the pressure.

You can’t solve those hours, and you can’t get rid of the debt — but you can offer your healthcare employees the tools to strive for financial wellbeing, and that is no small gift.

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For details on financial wellbeing in the workplace, check out LearnLux’s trusted program for companies looking to be a leader in employee benefits.