Voluntary financial benefits, including financial planning at all career stages, have become a popular way to boost employee productivity, satisfaction and retention while reducing their stress and health care costs.

These benefits, such as budgeting sessions, group education seminars, or software applications that help track expenses, aim to help employees deal with financial issues while also helping them manage their spending and savings.

Many employers have offered various forms of financial education for years. What's new is the shift away from the traditional focus of those benefits on retirement and onto a holistic picture of financial health.

It's a trend that shows no sign of slowing. According to a 2015 survey of nearly 250 employers, benefits consulting firm Aon Hewitt found that 93% of companies were very likely or moderately likely to broaden their efforts on financial wellness beyond retirement decisions. In the same survey last year, only 76% of firms said they were likely to do so.

The shift to a focus on financial wellness comes as an improving economy allows companies to offer more voluntary benefits to their employees and also to pick up the tab. It is one of an emerging group of voluntary benefits that companies are offering for free or at a small cost to employees.

“Increasingly, employers are saying, 'There's much more to financial health than just helping our employees be able to retire on time,'” said San Francisco-based Lori Block, principal of Buck Consultants at Xerox.

Instead, particularly when it comes to a young workforce, topics such as credit card debt, student loans, saving for a house and even caring for elderly parents may take precedence over pensions and retirement, Ms. Block said.

That's the case at Microsoft Corp., where the majority of employees are in the early to middle stages of their careers, with many hired straight out of college. The challenge is prompting employees to think “about what their decisions do to their long-term success, and really putting it into meaningful terms for them,” said Sonja Kellen, Microsoft's director of global retirement.

So after years of offering financial education in a “classroom” format, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft in fall 2013 revamped its financial wellness offerings to include investment advice, managed accounts and a financial planning tool, myFiTage, which helps employees manage spending and track progress toward financial independence.

Supporting employees' financial health helps Microsoft attract and retain its workforce, Ms. Kellen said. Additionally, by helping to relieve the stress that comes with dealing with complicated financial topics, employees have “more mind power and time to spend working and doing what they're here for,” Ms. Kellen said.

The benefits of alleviating financial stress in the workforce stretch further than productivity, said Charlotte, North Carolina-based Rob Austin, director of retirement research at Aon Hewitt.

“We know that there's a link between stress and health cost, and we know that financial stress is a big, huge component of stress,” Mr. Austin said.

He said employers are asking, “If we can help out our financial wellness, doesn't that translate to better physical wellness, and then hopefully lower claim costs and lower premiums and lower medical expenses overall?”

That's the thinking at the University of Denver, where 23% of employees on the health care plan account for 49% of the claims costs, said Lynnette Woodbury, the university's associate director of total rewards.

Much of the university's financial wellness program is aimed at reducing stress and depression. That way, employees can “alleviate or eliminate some of the physical health issues they might have, like high blood pressure (or) high cholesterol,” which will help reduce claims, Ms. Woodbury said.

In addition to financial workshops, such as Budgeting 101, and individual counseling, the University of Denver offers a financial planning tool called HelloWallet. The tool allows employees to track expenses, manage debt, set budgets and plan for retirement. What's more, it helps them figure out how to tackle these goals simultaneously. Ms. Woodbury said 20% of employees use HelloWallet, which the university pays for per eligible user.

Since the university implemented targeted financial wellness four years ago, health claims costs and the severity of those claims have decreased. Also, participation in the 403(b) retirement plan has increased to 86% from 80%, Ms. Woodbury said.

Meanwhile, Greenville, South Carolina-based Michelin North America Inc. is beginning to shift its financial voluntary benefits focus toward comprehensive financial health.

Because Michelin's employee base skews older, the tire manufacturer has historically focused these benefits on all things retirement, including financial planning workshops, individual counseling and retirement modelers. During the past 10 years, however, the company turned over half of its staff due to a wave of retirements, leaving a younger workforce in need of a different benefits strategy.

Connie Judkins, Michelin's manager of retirement plans, said the key is finding balance between educating employees about saving for immediate and eventual needs.

Ms. Judkins said talking to employees revealed “an undercurrent of financial stress” at Michelin. It was that revelation that prompted the company to begin looking into tools to help employees with debt management and budgeting, and in turn reduce the amount of loans and hardship withdrawals from their 401(k) retirement accounts.

Financial wellness opportunities may be hidden within the financial benefits an employer already offers, Buck Consultants' Ms. Block said. For instance, an employer offering an employee-assistance program may find that debt-counseling services and other education materials already are within the program. In that case, it's a matter of repackaging or rebranding the benefits, and promoting them to employees.

Sometimes, it requires creative thinking. Chicago-based human resources software company StratEx Partners, which employs about 60 people, offers a 401(k) with a matching contribution. Even though employees are automatically enrolled upon being hired, participation in the 401(k) plan hovered between 25% and 30%.

Confused by the low participation, founder Adam Ochstein asked his employees, most of whom are in their late 20s, why they were “giving away money.”

He found they didn't understand the importance of financial planning. So he spoke to them in terms they were familiar with: He gave a presentation in which he compared the power of 401(k) savings with the cost of a beer or weekend night out. He broke the numbers down, proving that saving for the future, even contributing as little as $25 to $30 before taxes per paycheck, is “not going to impact their beer fund too much.”

It worked. Participation in the company's 401(k) plan skyrocketed to two-thirds of StratEx's employees.