How helping employees with their financial worries can improve their work performance

We’ve all had days when we’re not feeling great: not ill, but maybe just a bit flat. The simplest tasks that normally we’d fly through take twice as long and we need to read emails several times to understand them. The best description is ‘brain fog'. We lack focus and mental clarity – every task feels like walking through mud.

Ultimately, we’re not performing at our best.

But luckily for most of us, these are just one off ‘bad days’ and nothing to worry about; we might have had a restless night and need to catch-up on sleep. But for most people at some point in their lives, this ‘bad day’ becomes an ongoing concern; there’s an underlying issue.

'Brain fog' or Long Covid?

There can of course be medical conditions. For example, ‘brain fog’ is one of the symptoms of Long Covid. But where there isn’t an underlying health condition, one of the biggest causes is stress and worry – and one of the biggest causes of stress and worry is, you guessed it, financial problems.

In a survey, 70% of employees told Cushon that financial worries had a negative impact on their mental health and nearly 60% reported an adverse affect on their work performance.

The research is clear: financial problems adversely impact our mental health and poor mental health stops us being as productive as we otherwise would be. We’re left feeling depressed and anxious about issues that could be tackled and solved. And this is where a robust financial wellbeing programme is crucial to getting people back to being the best they can be and improving performance levels.

But what does a good financial wellbeing programme look like?

At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s a programme that people will actually engage with. With the best will in the world, you can have a comprehensive offering with the best support, education and solutions available, but if your people aren’t engaging, they’re not being helped.

There are three big barriers to engagement – the stigma associated with money worries, language and accessibility.

Losing the stigma is about making it normal

There’s a double whammy here: the stigma associated with mental health and the stigma of money troubles. And as we’ve now ascertained, these two conditions are closely linked – money worries can cause mental health problems.

Making money worries ‘ok’ is about encouraging people to talk about them and the more that they are talked about in the workplace, the more they become ‘safe’ topics and normalised; no longer taboo.

A national initiative called Talk Money Week held every November is designed to increase people’s sense of financial wellbeing by encouraging them to open up about money. As it’s a national event, it’s a time when there’s increased awareness among employees and so is a great time for employers to hold workshops, events, educational programmes and show support.

We at Cushon run campaigns during this week and provide clients with materials to support their own financial wellbeing initiatives, and the feedback we’ve had great feedback. The CIPD, MoneyHelper and the Money and Pensions Service also have great material available that employers can use to build campaigns.

Perceived complexity

One of the biggest barriers to dealing with money problems is perceived complexity. It all feels too difficult for some people and a lot of this has to do with financial services jargon. For example, our own research found that nearly 60% of people feel that the information around their pension is too complex and full of jargon and more than 52% of people would save more if they understood their pension better. The simple truth is, people don’t engage with complex things.

If we want to help people with their money, we need to use plain, everyday language, and this is certainly something we are focused on. It makes a huge difference to engagement levels.

Making support accessible

The last key area that is really important to getting employees engaged is accessibility. People want to be able to access support, education and solutions when they need them and in a medium that suits them the best. Basically, everything needs to be available digitally.

We are all now used to managing most things digitally and we expect everything to be available on demand. Nearly 66% of employees told us that they would engage more with their pension if they could manage it through a mobile app.

Although the workplace is important to delivering financial wellbeing, people need to be able to access everything at home too and this can only be achieved by embracing technology.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t run webinars and workshops. These are important components, but you need to make sure they are recorded and available on demand as and when people need them.

How much difference can a financial wellbeing strategy make?

According to the report Financial Well-being in the Workplace: A Way Forward by the Financial Advice Working Group for the Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority:

70% of the workforce spend a fifth of their working hours worrying about money
6.2 workdays a year are lost in Europe due to absence in employees with high financial stress
Absenteeism and presenteeism due to financial stress costs businesses about 4% of payroll per year.

A good financial wellbeing programme that employees engage with and use, will improve performance which will, in turn, improve the bottom line. It’s an investment in your biggest asset, your people.

The author is Steve Watson, head of proposition at Cushon.

This article is provided by Cushon.