Mental health and financial wellbeing - Five tips to help your employees.
Mental Health Awareness Week is taking place from 9th to 15th May 2022, and we know how financial wellbeing can play such an important role in our overall mental health.
Helping employees with their financial wellness should be a top priority for companies, in addition to taking preventative measures.
Why? [1] Because two-thirds of employees who are struggling financially have reported at least one sign of poor mental health that might affect their performance at work.
This means that when employees are going through hard times, it can have a knock-on effect on your business. [2] Mental health problems cause 70 million lost days of work each year, costing employers £2.4 billion.
How you can help your employees improve their financial wellbeing…
Here's how to boost your people's financial health. We've outlined five ways to support financial wellbeing at work. Regardless of the size, location, or specialty of your business, these strategies are easy to use and effective:
1. Understand your employee’s financial issues
It's important to understand the types of financial issues affecting your employees so that you can provide meaningful support. That way, you can develop programs and resources that meet their needs and empower them to take control of their finances.
Finances vary a lot based on life stage, work stability, and overall financial knowledge. While some employees worry about saving money for continuing education, traveling, and major life events like weddings and children, others wonder how to save up for a house or planning for retirement. Understanding your employees is a key part of implementing a successful financial wellbeing strategy.
2. Provide professional financial education resources
Employees who are already struggling with finances probably won't have the discretionary funds to pay for these services themselves. Employer-sponsored financial wellness programs can help close this gap – by educating employees on debt, investing, and saving for retirement. It is a win-win situation for both employers and employees when they offer their employees financial planning sessions during the workday.
Financial planning helps employees reduce their stress about money and, on the other hand, gives employers access to healthier, more productive employees. At Lemonade Reward, we have many years experience of in delivering financial advice and guidance and we can help you if you need to explore the options.
3. Employee discount schemes
Employers can take advantage of a variety of loyalty and rewards schemes to enable employees to receive discounts when they shop through these methods. Free or discounted membership to a local warehouse club, such as Costco – where people can buy household items in bulk – also provide financial perks for employees.
However, if you're thinking about investing in employee discount plans, ask your people first if they would value such support or if they'd appreciate you investing in alternative financial wellbeing avenues.
4. Increasing pension scheme contributions
Thanks to Auto-Enrolment, our pension contributions are taken out of our pay checks, so they're saved for when we need them. However, forward-thinking organisations are going the extra mile to help employees get the most out of their pensions.
Taking such action will show your employees you are invested in their future and that you care about their financial wellbeing. Prospective employees will be attracted to it, and importantly, it can act as a retention incentive. If an employee's happy with your organisation and they're building a nest egg for retirement, why would they go anywhere else?
5. Bring in the experts and communicate it correctly
A careful approach is needed when engaging employees in discussions about financial health. Recruiting a financial expert to deliver a group seminar or one-to-one sessions can give your employees a good understanding of the best action to take and help them manage their finances.
In the new world of remote working, providers can offer online education formats such as webinars, educational videos, and interactive tools.
You can have the best offering in the world, but if you’re not communicating it correctly, it will never get the engagement needed to truly help your employees. Make sure you have a communication strategy in place and develop attention-grabbing communications so that the key messages can be understood and acted upon.
In short, put yourself in your employee’s position - If you were an employee having money problems or mental health difficulties, would your know how your employer can help? Do you know your employer offers an EAP? Managerial support? Signposting to external help? Financial support through education or salary sacrifice? Mental health and financial problems aren't easy to deal with, but you can help them to take that first step by talking to someone.
Do you offer support to your employees? If so, does it get communicated effectively? Is it easy for employees to ask for help? If not, speak to us and we’ll provide solutions for you and your employees to ensure your employees are on top of their financial and mental wellbeing.
1. Mental health in the workplace. Mental Health Foundation. mentalhealth.org.uk, accessed 4 April 2022.
2. https://www.mentalhealthatwork.org.uk/toolkit/supporting-the-financial-wellbeing-of-your-employees/
Put Your Benefits Package to the Test With Our Benefits and Reward Healthcheck!
Our Benefits and Reward Scorecard shows HR and reward professionals their blind spots, providing instant and actionable steps that will help improve your employee benefits and reward strategy. So even if you think you’re doing everything right and have implemented some of the ideas in this blog, there might still be ways to ramp it up!
The best part is that it is completely free and only takes 3 minutes to complete and receive personalised results! It will help you maintain loyal employees and really push above the competition in your industry.
Our Scorecard will rank you against the following criteria:
Benefits - This will look at the different ways you reward your staff beyond basic pay and bonuses.
Strategy - Designing your rewards package based on the needs of your employees.
People - This will look at your employee's perception of your benefits.
Systems - This will consider the use of technology used to deliver benefits.
Download our guide to ‘Getting to the heart (and the money) of employee wellbeing’.
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