Helping your employees plan for their financial future.
Encourage employees to plan for the future with a financial wellbeing programme.
As the old saying goes ‘failing to plan is planning to fail’. For employees, planning their overall finances is not something that comes naturally, in fact few would even know where to start. Without a coherent financial plan employees will most likely be going the wrong direction. This often leads to constant stressing and obsessing about their personal finances at a time when they should be focused on their work.
The depth and breadth of an employee’s personal finances reach well beyond their work related compensation of salary and additional perks. In fact a financial plan for an employee is more a question of how do they maximise their total reward and prioritise it in meeting their mortgage repayments, their rental payments, their household and lifestyle expenses, their protection against ill health or death and their ability to save for medium term and retirement needs.
With this in mind here are some top tips in how you can help your employees plan for their financial future.
Work on communications.
In relation to overcoming workforce issues, communication is key. This is why an open door policy is an essential tool to aid employees with their financial concerns. Ask employees what areas of their reward and their finances that they’d like more help with.
Total reward statements.
Rather than having standalone statements around employee benefits, use a total reward statement to remind your employees, all in one document, how valuable their overall reward package with your company is to include salary, bonus, perquisites, share schemes, pensions, life assurance, income protection benefits etc.
Financial wellness programmes.
A financial wellness programme is one of the most efficient ways to empower employees to attain better financial education and skills. It also helps reduce the effects of financial stress on your workforce. When employers appoint independent financial wellness experts to deliver their programmes to employees, it helps to demystify a broad spectrum of inter-related personal finances issues such as household budgeting techniques, managing mortgages and personal debt, saving for children’s education, investing hard earned money, the need for income protection against the threat of ill health or death, planning for retirement years etc.
Provide one-to-one financial fitness clinics for employees.
When employers provide access to independent, qualified financial advisors they allow employees the benefit of impartial advice on the issues that are most important to each individuals circumstances. With proper guidance this allows employees to implement ongoing strategies that will improve their financial skills into the future.
By implementing these tips you are not only fixing this common workplace issue but also showing your employees that you care for their wellbeing. As Richard Branson says “take care of your employees and they will take care of your business – it’s as simple as that”.
