Case study: Fair reward is key, but mind the gaps in benefits usage warns Wolseley’s Ant Donaldson
Society doesn’t really equip people to make the challenging financial decisions it increasingly expects them to. As people access key financial products such as pensions and insurances through the workplace, supportive employers are ideally placed to help their people navigate this. Our company history in various incarnations spans almost 140 years, and our approach still has an element of paternalism.
The trade merchanting sector really competes for people, whose expertise is central to our success, so employee wellbeing is an important part of our attraction and retention strategies. But as a relatively low-margin, high-volume business, we haven’t got huge amounts of cash to spend.
We differentiate ourselves with the Wolseley wage – our basic rate of pay – which sits above the National Minimum and National Living Wages, and which everyone receives, regardless of age. We believe that fair reward underpins financial wellbeing.
Our colleague forums across the business tell us that the cost of living is still one of the biggest worries – housing, energy, food and fuel. But we’ve realised that there’s insufficient usage and knowledge of the benefits we offer that could help. We’re focused on promoting and linking financial wellbeing benefits through webinars and all the in-house communications channels we use.
This has also helped us identify gaps. We are very aware that a lot of people have personal, unsecured debt, or might find themselves paying rent in retirement. The financial services industry tends to look at the world through a wealth management lens, with the assumption that people are reasonably well off. As employers, we need to understand people’s lived experiences, rather than looking through those lenses, and offer practical help around the benefits that we offer.
