Getting to the core of financial know-how at UK Power Networks
Core benefits, such as retirement and health insurance, have evolved over time to meet the changing requirements and expectations of employees. The problem is that employees don’t always understand how to best plan for retirement or navigate insurance policies.
Employees, who might not know exactly what they need, require a bit of extra support to understand their benefits. That’s why when financial education is a core benefit, organisations can expect increased benefit uptake, engagement and improved employee experience as a result.
Financial boost to employee experience
UK Power Networks said it believes that just like retirement provision, financial education is essential to their people’s financial futures. Since changing its strategy to include financial education as a core benefit it has led to a significant improvement in benefit outcomes and the employee experience.
With a fresh look at their financial wellbeing objectives, the company’s reward and benefits team needed to make some changes to address accessibility, personalization, employee engagement and DE&I. It believed that by moving financial education from a voluntary to a core benefit would be an effective route to supporting its aims.
What happens when financial education is a core benefit?
UK Power Networks repositioned Nudge’s financial education as a core benefit and provided a seamless employee experience, particularly to reach offline workers like engineers out on the road. This meant everyone could benefit from personalised financial education. All existing benefit communications and activities were integrated and streamlined, resulting in better outcomes for both employees and the employer.
For example, the team issued a ‘nudge’ (a personalised notification) to promote UK Power Networks’ annual Flex benefit window, leading to a 94% open rate (nudge benchmark of 30%) and 12.3% click through rate resulting in a boost in benefit uptake.
What is overall impact of change in strategy?
- 84% increase in engagement (based on 14% engagement as voluntary benefit and 98% as core benefit)
- 92% of employees are dedicated to learning about their money
UK Power Networks’ team uses financial education data and insights to evolve its employee benefit experience. For example, the data highlighted a significant uptake in engagement with borrowing and debt topics.
From this insight the team set up a series of financial education webinars , including an anonymous session for managing debt. The live session was well-attended, and a recording was made available to employees who were on the road at the time. The financial wellbeing programme is also underpinned with mental wealth first aider training for the organisation’s Mental Health First Aiders to enable a sustainable ‘train the trainer’ approach to support their people, and the employee experience, going forward.
Revolutionary partnership
The company’s partnership with Nudge has not only addressed issues with accessibility, personalisation, and DEI but revolutionised employee engagement. Sue Bond from UK Power Networks said: “Since changing nudge to a core benefit, we have noticed a significant improvement in our people’s engagement, and this is positively impacting our connection to our employees. It just goes to show that a small change can make a big difference and we can’t wait to see what happens as our people continue to grow in their money confidence as time goes on.”
UK Power Network’s story serves as a compelling case study for organizations to make financial education a core benefit, and the opportunity to improve employee experience and benefit engagement in the process.
Get in touch if you want to find out how to achieve powerful employee engagement outcomes like UK Power Networks.
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A leading financial wellbeing benefit using behavioural science & technology to help employees.
