Eighty percent of the global workforce is deskless: working in warehouses and distribution centers, serving customers in retail, staffing hospitals, driving trucks, and building infrastructure. New research shows they are financially stressed—and it’s costing everyone: employers, consumers, and communities.
A new study from Financial Finesse’s Think Tank estimates the hidden cost of deskless employees’ financial stress at $28.9 million per year, per 10,000 employees, spanning lost productivity, excess turnover, wasted benefits spending and workplace safety incidents.
The gist of the study? The people who keep the economy running are its most financially neglected, and everyone is paying for it.
According to industry research, a worker spends an average of 150 hours per year distracted by personal finance issues. That picture is even bleaker for the deskless workforce. At the point of first engagement with a financial wellness program:
- Nearly 44% of deskless workers reported high or overwhelming financial stress, compared to 37% of their desk-based peers.
- Only 14% of deskless workers were financially resilient, compared to 17% of office-based employees.
Deskless workers start at a disadvantage from day one and are generally paid less than their desk-based peers. According to the ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook report—drawing on data from over 90 countries—they are also more likely to hold temporary contracts, work irregular hours, and have less access to training and social protections, making them one of the most financially vulnerable, and most underserved, groups for financial coaching.
Least-served when it comes to financial wellness
Yet, by a wide margin, these employees are the least served by the traditional systems designed to support their financial wellbeing. For many organizations the issue isn’t whether they offer financial wellness programs. It’s whether their deskless workers can actually access these programs in a realistic, usable way.
“Too often, these programs are designed and communicated without considering that an employee working a 14-hour shift in a hospital or on a construction site can’t just hop online to join a webcast about personal finances in the middle of the day,” said Liz Davidson, CEO and founder of Financial Finesse. “That gap in understanding is costing employers considerably.”
A study by Dr. Carrie Leana and Dr. Jirs Meuris supports the cause and effect of deskless workers’ financial stress in the workplace. In their study of more than 1,000 truck drivers, published in Research in Organizational Behavior, financial worry was a stronger predictor of preventable accidents than fatigue or tenure. They deem this a cognitive tax: financial stress consumes mental bandwidth that workers need to perform their jobs safely. The findings are consistent across industries, including nurses, warehouse workers and others in high-stakes physical environments.
Easy access means real progress
The research also surfaces a finding that runs counter to common assumptions. The barrier for deskless workers has not been motivation. On the contrary, deskless workers are actually more successful at improving their finances than their white-collar peers, when they have easy access to services that meet their needs.
“Deskless workers are not harder to help; they simply need to be reached differently to accommodate their schedules and mobility,” said Greg Ward, Director of the Financial Wellness Think Tank. “Our data shows they not only close the gap with office-based peers, they surpass them and that’s consistent across multiple pillars of financial planning critical to financial resilience.”
Among workers actively engaged in financial wellness programs:
- 41% of deskless workers who struggled to make ends meet achieved the milestone of living within their means, compared to 30% of desk-based employees.
- Deskless workers who regularly participated in workplace financial wellness programs averaged a 113% increase in their level of financial resilience compared to 95% for desk-based employees.
Financial Finesse’s data indicates that mobile-first delivery, SMS-based outreach and shift-aligned enrollment windows are producing measurable gains and outlines a framework for benefits leaders to literally and figuratively meet deskless workers where they are, rather than expecting them to adapt their lives to access financial education and benefits guidance designed for 20% of the workforce.
“Employers are already investing heavily in benefits, but a lot of that investment is going unused. What this research shows is that closing the access gap is about results just as much as it is about doing right by essential deskless workers,” said Laura Stamps, Director of Client Engagement at Financial Finesse and lead contributor to the report. “When employees are more financially stable, you see it in lower turnover, better productivity, and stronger workforce performance. This is one of the clearest ways organizations can get more value from what they are already investing in. And the impact goes beyond the workplace, strengthening the communities these workers contribute so much to.”
The full research brief is available for download at: https://ffinesse.box.com/s/bnf8jyl2t9cg98xg8je32t4f4b0vste7.
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