How to ensure that financial wellbeing is joined-up with your wider wellbeing programme

One of my favourite innovations in benefits over the past few years has been the expansion of the wellbeing agenda to encompass financial wellbeing. The growing need for employers to provide support to colleagues in relation to managing their finances is not going to go away any time soon, with the changing landscape of the workforce being impacted financially in terms of:

the extension of working life beyond age 65 – as a consequence of the move to defined contribution pension provision from the final salary pension enjoyed by previous generations, making a comfortable retirement more challenging
millennials leaving university with debt in excess of £50k – according to analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies – who are also trying to save for rental or mortgage deposits
the growing number of employees caught in the middle, providing support to their children, paying for their own housing costs and potentially with carer responsibilities and associated costs for elderly relatives.

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An area where some companies lose out on the maximum gain from their financial wellbeing offering is that it’s set-up as a standalone benefit, as though the provision of the support alone is sufficient. However, the impact of a financial wellbeing offering is maximised when it is linked to the overall wellbeing programme.

There are many steps that you may want to consider in creating or enhancing that alignment, but here are my top 10.

Make sure you know what you already have in your existing benefit programmes. For example, many Employee Assistance Programmes will already include a debt counselling service. If you simply drop in a financial wellbeing product without understanding what you already have, you can end up with unnecessary duplication and cost.
Research shows that stress related to financial concerns can either lead to or be derived from other mental health issues. For example, alcohol or gambling addiction can create severe financial difficulties, but dealing with this solely through the financial wellbeing provision will not get to the root cause of the problem and may only be a temporary sticking plaster. It’s important to make sure that there are links to the mental health wellbeing services on the financial wellbeing platform.
Following on from the point above, it is important that any external/3^rd party counsellors are aware of the other support mechanisms that your business provides so that they can guide employees quickly and easily to the right information and services.
Although the 3^rd party providers involved in your mental health and financial wellbeing services are bound by confidentiality, they will share high-level information. This data should be reviewed regularly so that you can work with these 3^rd parties to understand what is and maybe isn’t working in the current programme. These discussions will help you to target and promote the benefits you provide in the most effective way.
Treat your wellbeing provision as something that needs to be adjusted and adapted. In recent years, we have become more aware of the changing demographics within our organisations and the differing needs of these various populations. All the indications are that this increase in the level of tailoring will be more of a feature in the future as we continue to use our benefit provision as a differentiator to attract and retain an ever-diversifying workforce.
Clear employee communications are a fundamental factor in delivering an integrated wellbeing strategy. Where possible organisations should try to ensure that the way in which employees access the wellbeing resources are simple and coherent, enabling employees to access the available resources with the minimal amount of online click throughs or the need to delve through intranet pages to find the information they need.
The over-arching wellbeing strategy should cater to the varying employee population within the organisation. For example, many employees in the early years of their career are not as likely to have the same concerns and focus around pensions or worries about ill-health as some of their older colleagues. Whereas older colleagues may have carer responsibilities for elderly relatives and require additional support to deal with the challenges they face.
It is important to ensure that the wellbeing strategy is aligned to the organisation’s goals and objectives. The reason for this is that you want the delivery of the elements within the wellbeing programme to be understood as key operational elements and not seen as ‘nice to have’ benefits. Understanding and being able to articulate the return on investment is key to ensuring that the wellbeing strategy receives the investment required to be successful.
Ensuring that the roll-out of the education programme around financial wellbeing has clear links to your organisation’s overall wellbeing strategy is another essential element of the communication strategy. Bringing the strategies together under the over-arching wellbeing strategy will provide employees with the clear line of sight of the overall proposition, leading to better utilisation and improved engagement.
Finally, once you believe that you have an integrated wellbeing strategy that fully encompasses physical, mental and financial wellbeing, it is important to regularly seek out feedback from employees to ensure it is fit for purpose and delivering the results both the employees and the organisation expect. The field of wellbeing in the workplace is continually evolving and improving as organisations introduce more effective programmes and communication tools to support their employees, and as such, reviewing the wellbeing strategy should be a regular part of the reward workload.