What does a best practice financial wellbeing strategy look like?
Here are five key tips to help you plan your next moves:
1) Build financial wellbeing your way
Every workforce will have different financial needs, so what works for a competitor organisation may not work for your staff. Understand your employees’ needs to make sure you get the strategy right.
What to do next:
- Use any data that you already collect to help you better understand your employees’ needs. If you have an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), this can be a rich source of anonymised data on problems that staff are facing. Information from HR, payroll and pensions systems can also help you to put together a picture of employees’ current financial situation.
- List out any forms of financial support you already offer. This could include pensions, affordable loan schemes, or other benefits such as season ticket loans. Think about how these will fit into a broader strategy.
- Ask your staff what they need and how to deliver it. Use staff surveys as well as face-to-face feedback.
2) Set measures for success
Unless you have a clear definition of success, it will be difficult to prove the effectiveness of what you’ve done. Create measurable and realistic targets for any financial wellbeing project that you put in place.
What to do next
- Measure current activity. For example, if one of your measures for success is employees increasing their pension contributions when they get promoted, assess how many staff currently put more money into their pension when they change role.
- Be realistic. Some plans will take time to come to fruition, and might only affect certain parts of the workforce. Make sure that anyone involved in measuring success understands the parameters.
3) Be inclusive
Financial wellbeing isn’t just about retirement or debt management, it’s about giving employees a full picture of how to stay in control of their money. That should include seven key areas:
- Planning and budgeting
- Managing debt
- Protection
- Savings
- Planning for retirement
- Investments
- Tax efficiency
What to do next
- Look at the seven steps above. Identify gaps in the coverage that you currently offer, and ways that you could address these.
- Think about how to deliver it. Although parts of the above might already be covered by a specific provider, such as your pension scheme, the support that they give might be restricted to their own specialism, or they might not be in a position to deliver objective advice.
4) Make it part of the culture
Like any other benefit, financial wellbeing will become another dusty initiative that no-one takes up if it’s not supported properly. Making it a part of everyday company culture is a great way to ensure it’s really effective.
What to do next
- Make it part of everyone’s culture. Get support from board level, but also make sure line managers are aware of what’s on offer and can promote it with staff - and consider using staff ‘champions’ to help spread the word.
- Use different channels. People learn in different ways, so make any education multi-channel. But don’t make assumptions about learning style or financial priorities based on factors such as age or seniority - everyone’s financial situation is unique.
5) Keep checking
As employees’ needs change - and as your strategy starts to take effect - your approach will also need to evolve. Make sure that what you offer continues to be appropriate, valued and used by employees.
What to do next
- Check with your staff. Employee feedback is the most valuable indicator of whether what you’re offering is right for your workforce.
- Keep evaluating against the measures you’ve put in place, and also continue to question whether your indicators are still appropriate.
- Keep up to date with what’s new. Legislative change, as well as new tools and services, are just some of the reasons for keeping your strategy fresh. And, every change is yet another chance to communicate with your employees about what’s on offer.
To find out more about best practice for building a financial wellness strategy, download the Technical Guide to Getting Started with Financial Wellness.
In partnership with Close Brothers
Close Brothers has been providing financial education services to employees of some of the UK's best known organisations for over 50 years.
