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07 Nov 2019

How can reward professionals generate greater interest in financial wellbeing at board level?

Financial wellbeing is still a relatively new area of wellbeing. Although many UK businesses understand that improving wellbeing will have a beneficial impact on productivity, retention, absenteeism and engagement, it can still be hard to convince the board to make it a top priority.

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When putting together your business case, it will be vital to create a balance between appealing to heads and hearts. You will need to present the facts and figures, but if you don’t also create emotional buy-in, chances are little will actually get truly prioritised. We’re all motivated when we feel a connection to something that is driven by how we feel. 

Here are some key areas to focus your business case on:

1. Poor financial wellbeing is negatively impacting the business

Our Employer’s Guide to Financial Wellbeing 2019-20, revealed that 36% of UK employees are worrying about money. We also know that this is having a significant impact on their quality of work, productivity, engagement and retention. Our research also showed that poor productivity results in an estimated 870 lost days per month per 1,000 employees. And, on average, the combined cost of poor productivity, absenteeism and staff attrition is 9-13% of payroll. This is a huge cost to business and can’t be ignored.

2. Financial wellbeing will enhance other wellbeing programmes 

Many organisations have created wellbeing and diversity programmes in isolation from each other. Although some of these initiatives can be successful in their own right, we know that in the future we will see a move towards wellbeing and diversity and inclusion programmes being fully integrated. Even if this isn’t possible right now, investing in financial wellbeing will only serve to enhance existing wellbeing programmes. 

Our research found that people who have financial worries are over four times more likely to also suffer from poor mental health. Having a mental health strategy without a supporting financial wellbeing strategy will never be effective in the long-run, as these two areas of wellbeing are so interlinked. Positioning financial wellbeing as a tool used to enhance other programmes will serve to increase the likelihood of buy-in and support from senior stakeholders.

3. Employee-centred compassionate leadership is better for everyone 

Being employee-centred means that initiatives are driven by the value they will deliver to your peoples’ wellbeing and in-turn the business – not the other way round. Your people are your organisation and companies that put their people first create environments where they are able to flourish at every level. 

We all have unconscious biases and many senior leaders are often people with higher levels of financial wellbeing. This can lead to making unfair and inaccurate assumptions about people with low financial wellbeing. Reward practitioners can combat this by creating opportunities for senior leadership to truly connect with everyone in the organisation and understand the difficult problems people are facing with money. One of the best ways to do this is to share stories.

Our Building a Business Case for Financial Wellbeing guide dispels some of the main myths around financial wellbeing.

Interested in finding out more about how to get Board level buy-in? 

Join us on 12 November for our webinar: ‘How to implement a financial wellbeing programme’. Register here.

This article is provided by Salary Finance.

Salary Finance is sponsoring REBA’s Innovation Day 2019. Join us on 28 November in central London to future-proof your reward and benefits strategy.

In partnership with Salary Finance Inc

We understand the impact finances have on our health, our happiness, our home life & our work life.

Contact us today